False information attack and defense war: brushing orders, irrigation, everything is an illusion?

Reporter | Lu Keyan Yu Hao

Edited | Wen Shuqi

This is a mysterious organization. About four hundred people gathered in a chat room with real-time voice communication software, each with only a number, no real name, and members were not allowed to type, but could only communicate "tasks" by voice. Every two or three months, the organization would disappear en masse, evade platform consolidation, and then find another stronghold.

"Brushing" is the main task of this organization. Under the blow of major e-commerce platforms, most of the brushing organizations that once swept major e-commerce platforms have fallen apart. But in fact, where there is demand, there will be a market, and in the dead corner that is difficult to be noticed by the regulator, the single black production is still maintaining operation.

Mo Han (not his real name) was a member of the group. Even in it, Mo Han felt that this organization was too mysterious. The division of labor among members is strict, recruiting new, training, salary calculation, and actual combat, and does not interfere with each other. Her superiors told her that QQ and WeChat group chats are easy to be blocked, and real-time communication voices are not easy to detect. Each time a task is done, the brusher is pulled into a small group to listen to the administrator's dispatches. After the task is completed, the group chat is immediately dissolved.

It's not easy to make a single task. First, search for stores, but do not search for the full name, but keywords - "cartoon", "T-shirt", "white"; then, to browse more than 3 similar stores for more than ten seconds, add similar products to the shopping cart, exit; then, click into the target product page, pretend to be "shop around", and then delete other products, fill in the address, click on the settlement. After a few days, each brusher will receive an empty package, after confirming the receipt, to write an emotional 15-word praise, coupled with the picture or video given by the merchant, it is considered to be a successful completion of a single.

Mo Han has calculated that it will take at least 20 minutes to brush such a single order, but it can only earn 6 yuan at most. In organizations, there is one thing that is more profitable than brushing orders itself – pulling people's heads. But not all members are qualified to pull the head, which requires more complex training assessments.

"Girls are the best, they have a loud voice and a higher degree of credibility." The trainer told Mo Han that she had a list of potential intentions to join the organization and needed one-on-one telephone communication. The main point of communication is to convince the other party that the matter is legitimate, that money is coming quickly, and that there is no risk. The tone should be sincere, be sure to speak without inducement, and don't let others think she is a liar.

Mo Han did not pass the examination in the end. The examiner commented that she lacked the confidence to speak, and Mo Han was a little weak-hearted: "Because I feel in my heart, I am a liar." ”

Three months later, she quit the organization.

Everything is fake?

Mo Han is now a Taobao shop owner, and in a system of millions of merchants, she can clearly tell which store reviews are brushed. "For example, a snack or fruit shop, this kind of category that can't write a long review, but there are 100-word evaluations, and the pictures are more than three, and the background of the pictures is mostly similar, or after blurring to prevent platform recognition, it must be fake."

This is just one way to judge the brush order. She opened a women's clothing store that ranked No.1 in a single category on a certain platform and had nearly 10 million fans, and all the monthly sales of all the babies on the store page were 1k+, and even many tens of thousands, but there were only a few baby reviews, or even 0 reviews. In a few strip reviews, buyers' photos also bear many similarities: tall figures, designer bags, a certain style of decoration and exquisite makeup.

"This one is very brushed, and there is nothing that does women's clothing that does not know." Mo Han opened a store that had ranked in the top ten annual sales of women's clothing on the platform, which was the same scene.

This is a popular advanced version of the brush list, also known as the buyer show to send photos, mainly female products. The seller sends the clothes to the modeling agency, and the model tries them on, takes photos, evaluates them, and finally sends them back. Mo Han has contacted many such hosting agencies, the other party does not have any business license, but the business is booming, "because the risk is much lower than the brush order, so the store is willing to pay." ”

The brushing industry will always keep up with the wind. In the era of live e-commerce, brushing orders in the live broadcast room has become a new unspoken rule. The example of celebrity flipping with goods is no longer new, and it is no secret that the single service commercial machine "cloud control" multiple mobile phones is not a secret, but it is interesting that the amount of brushing so far hardly requires any threshold - searching for "live viewing" related keywords on Taobao can find "live broadcast services" that are injected with water on major platforms.

Ye Ying, who worked in a public relations firm for many years, remembers a live broadcast she brought. Each live broadcast should prepare the water army budget in advance, and everyone in the team must monitor a platform and keep an eye on whether it needs to be guided at any time - whether the number of viewers reaches expectations, whether the content orientation of the bullet screen meets the preset, and whether the climax of the live broadcast is a gift, are all issues she needs to pay attention to. Once the expectations are not met, the "water army" will start playing.

The brushing behavior does not only exist in e-commerce.

Cao Dawang (pseudonym), who specializes in review brushing services, showed Interface News two of his recently negotiated businesses: a Shanghai chain of Internet cafes, each with a rating of more than 4, and the top reviews were all above 3 pictures and good reviews; a seafood restaurant with more than 1,500 reviews, of which nearly 1,000 were Cao Dawang's handwriting.

Cao Dawang introduced that there are many forms of brushing volume, such as popular lists, store rankings, exposure, visitors, collections, views, Q&A, as long as it is the list data can be done. However, between the platform has an anti-brushing mechanism, brushing five-star praise a day up to two, brushing the number of evaluations up to three. If 1,000 reviews were to be added, the entire brushing process would last for a year. He concluded that the studio's copywriting ability is very strong, completely invisible, and the key to success is to raise a large number of idle mobile phone numbers.

Lu Lin (pseudonym), who works at a media company, is also familiar with brushing. She said that she has thousands of part-time brushing student resources in her hands, and once she receives customer tasks, she will send them regularly in the circle of friends: "A Douban variety show evaluation is 5 yuan, requiring account registration for more than one year, and the evaluation is more than 15 words", "A small red book cotton pad review, requiring more than 1,000 fans, releasing 100 words evaluation + 9 picture posts, remuneration 50 yuan", "Public comments 15 yuan, release 100 words + 3 figures or more".

Lu Lin said that although this kind of real evaluation has raised the cost of merchants, the advantage is that it is packaged as a kind of business cooperation, which is not easy to be defined by the platform as a single brush, and the operation risk is extremely low, so it has become the most popular form of brush order.

Water injections for Weibo comments are also common. Weibo users often encounter such a scene: click into the hot search, in addition to one or two popular Weibo comments are real interaction, the top few Weibo are mostly bulls not on the horse's mouth of the robot speech. Lu Lin explained that this situation is generally related to the hot search mechanism of Weibo, and a large number of re-evaluation and praise interaction will push up the discussion of the content and make it easier to rush to the hot search.

Dong Dong, who has long been a "water army" on Weibo, told Interface News that she has "done data" for almost all the traffic stars who can be named by the outside world, but in her opinion, this is perfectly normal: "Will anyone think this is abnormal?" Everyone knows that tens of thousands of re-evaluation data is fake, hot search is fake, interaction is fake, but fans are more than data, brokerage companies are more than data, and the business of finding stars to promote is also more than data, then there will always be someone to do data. ”

"This story is so touching! After watching the crying out of the movie theater, half a day did not ease up! The actors are so good! Dong Dong typed these words on his mobile phone and copied them into the comment area under three different movie promotion microblogs. One war movie, two love movies, she hadn't seen one.

Offensive and defensive battles

The gray and black production of brush quantity control and evaluation is endless, so that the risk control of anti-gray and black production has become a good business.

Lao Fang is the technical leader of Shumei Technology, and his main business is to help enterprises fight against online black production. A few hours before a big promotion on an e-commerce platform, through the computer screen, Lao Fang and his colleagues had already launched an offensive and defensive confrontation with an opponent they had never met.

The promotion will officially begin at 9 p.m. At 6 p.m. that night, the background data showed that there were a large number of newly registered accounts that abnormally seized inventory. The screen shows that the data is abnormal, and the old party knows that the opponent has begun to act. The black production began to place a large number of orders, but did not pay, as if it was exploring his bottom.

Fortunately, the old side deployed the corresponding strategy early. After 6:00 05, the strategy takes effect, and the newly registered abnormal account is restricted to a single account with only two orders in the background. But the opponent did not panic and immediately changed his strategy. At this time, the background data shows that the account that preempts the inventory has changed from a newly registered account to an old account. The old party knows that this is the opponent starting to use the hoarded old account to place orders. The old team also responded to this side, and immediately stepped forward to intercept.

Around 8 o'clock, this small offensive and defensive battle entered a climax. The platform has abnormal data again, and judging from the operation of the abnormal account and the past records, there is no correlation between the account, and the operation path is closer to the real person. The old party speculated that the other party began to acquire other people's accounts, and switched from machine brushing orders to real people. After seeing through each other's routines, the old party once again started the prepared model algorithm interception.

The old strategy has worked again. Until the start of the activity at 9 p.m., the brushing team has not yet achieved a large number of orders. After the end of the promotion, the Laofang team intercepted as many as 60,000 abnormal orders, while the actual number of normal orders completed by the platform was only 18,000.

The black-produced organizations' plans have always been perfect. Lao Fang said that taking "Xue Wool" as an example, the other party has four strict links of intelligence collection, resource tools, black production execution, and cash arbitrage - first, the wire newspaper collects the details of promotional activities and the anti-fraud rules of the platform; second, the resource buyer acquires resources such as mobile phones at a low price to form an equipment farm; then, the AI-powered coding platform is responsible for getting the verification code, and if it is frustrated at this step, it uses real people; finally, the coupons and goods that are obtained by the "monetization master" are realized.

It is not easy to successfully block the black production of routines. At first, Lao Fang was mainly responsible for building a back-end strategic model, but he soon realized that in this offensive and defensive war, data monitoring and inherent algorithms alone were not enough. Background monitoring can only find data anomalies, but where data anomalies come from, and where the other party will focus on, this information can not be known. Therefore, lurking in the black telegram group and dealing with black industry practitioners has become the main task of him and his team.

As the industry that bears the brunt of single black production, e-commerce has invested a lot in cracking down on black production. Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have all launched "anti-cheating systems" to ensure the authenticity of data by controlling the standards of statistical transaction volume, monitoring the weight of packages to prevent logistics from empty packages, and explicitly prohibiting "praise cashback" to maintain the quality of reviews. However, "there are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom", and the means of the black industry are constantly innovating.

The relevant person in charge of Dianping told Interface News that the brush hand of the review platform has a complete set of processes: first search for the store online according to the fixed search path, report the "connector code" to sign in after arriving at the store, and then publish the prepared "praise homework" and record the video to the organizer, and the organizer will refund it after verification. In this set of "true simulations", because most of the transaction process takes place offline and social media, the abnormal clues that can be detected by the platform are scattered in various links, which is extremely difficult to control.

"At present, Dianping's solution to the gray and black production of brush evaluation is 'online blocking, offline crackdown'. The above-mentioned person in charge said that after the abnormal behavior triggers the platform early warning mechanism, in addition to the platform punishment for such high-risk accounts, the data model will also submit the collected evidence and clues to the law enforcement agencies, and cooperate with the law enforcement agencies to dig up the black and gray production organizations behind them and crack down on them offline.

The confrontation is escalating. The interest-driven gray and black industry is still evolving in the dormant, and the technical level is constantly improving, even if it has been working for six years, the old party feels that the struggle between itself and the black industry is far from over.

Who's going to shout stop

The other side of anti-gray and black production risk control is that there are always people who are willing to pay for data fraud.

Mo Han understands the mentality of the owner of the single shop. She concluded that for a Taobao store, the most important two indicators are conversion rate and customer unit price. Conversion rate refers to the ratio of all the people who arrive at the Taobao store and generate purchase behavior to all the people who arrive at the store, as long as the conversion rate is high enough, Taobao will tilt the traffic to the store.

There are two quickest ways to improve the conversion rate, one is to brush orders, the other is to promote activities, the latter requires sellers to make profits, so most sellers will be more inclined to brush orders, not only can do high conversion, good-looking buyer shows can further attract customers. Mo Han feels that to some extent, the platform's traffic tilt mechanism is also forcing merchants to use various means to find traffic.

In April this year, Amazon launched the most severe wave of store closures in history, mainly for single merchants, and a large number of cross-border e-commerce from China suffered Waterloo. A cross-border e-commerce employee who suffered a store closure told Interface News: "This store closure has taught the industry a lesson, but in fact, the entire industry is doing the same thing, brushing singles brings popularity, high ranking, high weight, high sales, so why not brush it?" Brushing praise is like a star advertising, the star said that the use of whitening products can be whitened, but the use of white is not white. ”

"When you start to want to brush orders, it means that you have to do a lot of things in order to brush the conversion rate data, you have to prepare budgets, fake buyer shows, to contact the single platform, but also to adjust the store design, picture size and a series of other things, you will rely on the data you get through the brushing, and then you can't go back." 」 Mo Han said that brushing is a bottomless pit, and once invested, there is no way to turn back.

The Anti-Unfair Competition Law, which came into effect on 1 January 2018, stipulates that business operators may not mislead consumers with false user evaluations, nor may they help other business operators to carry out false or misleading commercial publicity by organizing false transactions. Violators will be ordered to stop the illegal acts, fined between 200,000 yuan and 1 million yuan, and if the circumstances are serious, the business license will be revoked.

In Mo Han's view, if the Internet platform wants to firmly crack down on brushing orders, Amazon's strike-hard attitude is an example, but on the mainstream e-commerce platform in China, there are still many high-sales and high-authority stores that can be seen with the naked eye. "In the view of practitioners like us, this is because there is a bundle of interests between the top-end stores and the platform, and there is room for negotiation between the two sides."

Where there is demand, there is a market. Ye Ying was all too familiar with this. In some marketing plans, in order to achieve the desired effect, finding someone to brush the comment brush data is one of the most common means they use. This is an open secret within the industry, and to some extent it is constantly normalized. Each time an order is placed, Ye Ying signs a contract with the supplier, and on this document, the "brush volume" is called "providing network services".

In order to ensure that a good communication report can be handed over to the customer, the "Brush Supplier" payment budget is prepared in advance at the event planning stage. According to Ye Ying, the budget ratio is about 1% - if it is a ten-million yuan plan, about 100,000 yuan will be allocated as a special "emergency" fund for asking the water army and brushing data.

"We give fake data to customers, customers give fake data to the boss, as long as the boss approves, everyone is happy, then the fake data has meaning." Lu Lin said.

Counterfeiting is increasingly like a gentle trap jointly woven by a platform, a merchant and a third-party service provider. It may seem that the participants are all beneficiaries, but in fact, everyone is also a victim.

Whenever a customer asks for an unrealistic communication target, Ye Ying feels insulted. "For a while, I wanted to leave the industry," Ye Ying said, "that number we in the industry know at a glance that it is fake, if he wants this number, I can only do fake." ”

In the era of traffic first, all walks of life urged "Ye Ying" and "Deer Lin" to give orders to the inner volume of data, which became the nourishment that nourished the continuous iteration of the gray and black production of brush single control evaluation, and eventually became a source of pressure for the "old party". In this circle, everyone has completed their own KPIs, and the seemingly multi-profit happiness circle is born. But the lingering anxiety of practitioners and the disruption to consumers as a result have been a constant reminder that this is nothing more than an illusion.

"Why don't you want something real?" This is the question that Ye Ying has always wanted to ask but ultimately did not ask the exit.