The pits dug behind the net red fire are all the same in the world. INS, Facebook, and Twitter are all prisoners of traffic abduction.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Zinc scale” (ID: znkedu), author Mai Ke.
Recently, “a zombie stage drama directed by a new media giant”, the real scene, the fuse: a video that bursts red all night, our traffic is 0!” – this title is very long The 100,000+ explosions in the circle of friends directly poked the core of the gray industry chain.
However, many traps such as data injection, traffic fraud, and fan trading are not only found in China, but the pits dug behind the net red fire are actually the same all over the world.
The global temptation to brush powder
In fact, In the era of social media, the binding of traffic fans to commercial interests has gradually formed a gray industrial chain. The past zombie powder has created an illusion of false prosperity in terms of TV ratings, movie box office, e-commerce, and video playback. With the rapid changes in the form of media, it is not new to brush the army from traditional media to social media.
For example, the super-flow star C Ronaldo, the 34-year-old football superstar, has a revenue of 38.2 million pounds on INS, equivalent to 345 million yuan, more than his annual salary of 30 million euros in Juventus. Be high.
It is undeniable that Cristiano Ronaldo, the 16th record-winning candidate for the “French Football” Golden Globe Award, has just crossed the 700-ball green career milestone, honors, and business value premiums.
But more importantly, outside the football field, Ronaldo is also very good at using social media to build momentum for himself. According to Wikipedia, in the past year, Ronaldo was searched 1777 times, even more than the 17.12 million times of US President Trump. His old rival Messi was 11.6 million times.
Colo is also the first athlete in the world to have nearly 400 million fans (this includes 80 million Twitter, 130 million Facebook and 186 million Instagram). Croo’s fans are more than the fans of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States.So, he moved from Real Madrid to Juventus, which also brought a huge fan migration.
The number of social media fans of the Zebra Legion was only 10 million. In less than half a year after the C Ronaldo joined the team, the number of fans has quickly reached 20 million. Every time C Ronaldo sends an INS advertisement, it can earn $750,000, equivalent to more than RMB 5 million.
But the truth and falsehood behind it has long been questioned. In 2015, foreign media pointed out that C Ronaldo was suspected of social media fraud. At that time, his 34.6 million fan data on Twitter was fraudulent, and he was hired by the water army. He has up to 64%. Fans are zombie powder. In other words, as many as 21 million Ronaldo Twitter fans follow their Real Madrid superstars, their Twitter accounts have no movements and are inactive.
There is media exposure of Ronaldo Twitter fans
Some people say that this is a falsification. Some people say that this is a normal state of socializing. From a global perspective, C Ronaldo’s actions are easy to understand, but not any social media can be faked to maximize value.
Data games for big kids
As early as 2014, there was a video on Facebook called “FacebookFraud”, which mainly introduced a blogger’s participation in Facebook’s promotion plan, and there was an increase in the number of fans but the tweet was concerned and the interaction was unchanged. Even with the reduced situation, there are a lot of “machine users” in Facebook users.
Facebook has been questioned for the existence of a large number of “machine users”
In 2015, on Twitter, you can buy 1,000 fans for just 20 euros, and the number of fans has risen to 250,000, just 1800 euros. Moreover, in order to mislead investors in user growth, Twitter’s executives have boasted of Haikou’s promise to “at 2In the middle of 015, the number of monthly active users will reach 550 million, and “in the long run” will exceed 1 billion.
Four years have passed. According to statistics in July 2019, Twitter active users increased by 14% to approximately 140 million people. This face is really painful. However, it has unveiled the tip of the iceberg of foreign data fraud.
In fact, the success or failure of Silicon Valley is based on data indicators, such as the number of users, the length of use, the number of pictures uploaded, and so on. Therefore, Many executives of technology startups will exaggerate company data on different occasions, even in order to achieve beautiful report data.
Snapchat, Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb, no one is spared. Among them, Snapchat’s criticism of data indicators is particularly serious, because its former employees claimed that the company’s problems exceeded the scope of calculation errors or beautification data.
The reason why Snapchats dare to take risks is because in the case of unprofitable startups, investors must be given greater confidence in the statements of user data.
At the same time, these big companies will also take advantage of different measurement indicators to publish data that is beneficial to them. So we heard that Facebook has the most users, and Twitter only discloses monthly active users, not mentioning daily active users. Snapchat only discloses daily active users and never mentions active users.
But Selectively announced cancers will gradually devour themselves because of the market.
For example, September 2016: Facebook’s virtual high-definition video views, misleading to buy based on two-year data volume Advertiser for the next video time. January 2017: Uber was fined $20 million for exaggerating driver revenue and understating the financial costs of the vehicle. August 2017: Google refunds for false traffic. October 2017: Twitter acknowledges that the number of users has been artificially high for the past three years.
In this regard, Jason Schisse, a data expert who worked on Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Facebook, broke the point of the matter – “In the early days, you will value user retention and sticky data. This trap is easy to fall in. They call it Fire circle. You may have 1 user on days 1, 4, 8, and 16, but you won’t stay in the first user’s stage forever.”
The most serious thing that is swallowed up by the fire circle is social media hobbies.- US President Trump, the global super-big V, has also been controversial because of Russia’s promotion on the online platform during the 2016 presidential election. Facebook, Google and Twitter legal counsel are all members of Congress in 2017. Question.
In August 2018, Facebook deleted the fake account that tried to intervene in the US midterm elections; in this regard, MonnessCrespiHardt analyst James Cockmark believes that Trump’s use of Twitter does not directly affect Twitter’s market value, but if he No longer used, then Twitter may lose $2 billion. Investors will re-evaluate Twitter because of the loss of head users, rather than directly from daily active users.
Self-rescue of traffic prisoners
Behind the glamorous data, no one can hide the consequences of fraud. The social platform plays data games while dealing with user traffic fraud.
In this regard, Facebook’s lesson is particularly painful. At the end of January 2019, Greenspan published a report on Facebook. The more than 70-page report directly pointed out that more than half of Facebook’s 2 billion monthly users were fake accounts.
Last year, Twitter has cleaned up the zombie powder, and the red people on its platform have dropped powder.
According to Statista’s data, Facebook’s advertising revenue in 2018 was as high as $33.8 billion. If the number of “fake accounts” of 1 billion is true, then the advertisers will get a hard-core certificate from the Facebook pit.
In response, Facebook officially jumped out and denied: “The report on false accounts is obviously wrong and irresponsible.” However, since then, its practice has revealed the tip of the global gray industry chain. .
Because, Facebook directly sued four Chinese companies and three individuals, including Jiuxiu Network, accusing them of creating and selling fake online accounts, likes and followers such as Facebook and Twitter, for spreading false news or Other frauds.
Starting in 2017, these companies go through six sites like myfacebook.cc and 9xiufacebook.com with FacEbook has a similar domain name for website marketing and sells a large number of fake accounts. Nowadays, in the United States, similar to Devumi, SocialBoss and other marketing promotion websites, content likes, powder, video playback and brushing are all available, the price ranges from 1 to 20 US dollars, and some websites directly sell related accounts.
However, is also the Shuijun. The Chinese Shuijun purchase account is more paving the way for cross-border e-commerce, network red goods, traffic realisation, and the US Shuijun is used to purchase powder for powder, Increase the amount of praise and so on.
Facebook also pointed out in the 2017 observation report that most of the fake accounts came from countries such as Bangladesh, India, Egypt and Pakistan. And behind this, it also reflects the crime cost gap between the entire fake account and the false traffic market in different regions.
In addition, for Facebook, there are many technical problems that need to be solved to combat traffic fraud. For example, if you kill more people, it will affect the user experience. Because Facebook’s ban is carried out from multiple dimensions such as device hardware, account login status, and operational content. The platform is already using machine learning to determine fake accounts.
There is no coincidence, Facebook is on vacation, and Instagram is not idle. Recently, Instagram announced that it will add 6 countries to conduct “hidden praise and video viewing data” function test.
It is reported that during the functional test, users will not be able to see the number of clicks and video views of other people’s posts. Once, the number of praises is a key indicator of Instagram, and the algorithm directly links to the traffic that can be obtained by the post. .
Therefore, even if the New Deal is introduced, some surveys show that in 4,000 British KOLs, 52% of KOL will still buy reviews, likes and fans. After all, the traffic bonus is too tempting.
Social platforms such as Instagram launch new features to curb user traffic fraud while also driving the interests of KOLs
In addition to Instagram, not long ago, there was news that Twitter is considering hiding the number of followers. It seems that foreign social media have realized the potential harm caused by the water army’s brushing, especially for advertisers with digital marketing growth, if the precise delivery becomes a digital game, then it is likely to lose the potential customer population. .
In the final analysis, as a false social currency, when a business is asked about the implementation of the content, everything is like, like, forward, fan, etc.The consistent standard will lead to a gray industry chain that is simple and rude, quick and profitable, rather than stimulating the creation and dissemination of high-quality content. The final result will transform the influence into a concept of stealing and become a prisoner of traffic abduction.