▲Wang heard from a friend that it was very profitable to "support" the live broadcast room by brushing traffic, so he bought equipment and set up group control computer rooms in many places in Yinzhou District, thinking that he could make a lot of money. Picture/Internet video screenshot
"This corn is really delicious!" "I have used this foundation before, and it is very comfortable." "The anchor is great!"... You may not have thought that the live broadcast room would be so crowded. Comments may be positive comments sent by one brusher operating dozens of accounts at the same time.
According to reports, the People’s Procuratorate of Yinzhou District, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province recently accepted the first batch of cases in Zhejiang Province where people were convicted of illegal business operations due to fraudulent means of manipulating software to inflate the popularity of live broadcast rooms. Among them, Wang was prosecuted by the procuratorate and was eventually sentenced to one year and three months in prison for illegal business operations, suspended for one year and six months, and fined RMB 50,000.
In an era where traffic is king, with the rise of the live broadcast economy, traffic boosting in live broadcast rooms seems to have found a stage for great efforts. Wang's operation seems simple and crude, but the income behind it is quite huge. According to reports, in less than 4 months from November 2022 to March 2023, its revenue was nearly 3 million. However, even if this market cake is tempting enough, it cannot go too far. The practice of adding positive reviews to falsely increase popularity may seem like a temporary gain in traffic, but in fact it is a way of deceiving consumers to attract traffic to businesses, which will not last long. The case involving
Wang involved fake accounts, second-hand mobile phone sales, and technological equipment applications, etc., which shows that the operating model and related industry chains for brushing traffic in live broadcast rooms have become increasingly mature. This reminds relevant parties that hard measures must be taken to improve the quality and upgrading of its governance work.
In fact, the trick of boosting traffic in the live broadcast room is not a new topic. Last year, CCTV’s March 15th Gala exposed the chaos of online trolls, which seriously hindered the healthy development of the live broadcast economy.
Today, the Internet trolls have once again entered the public eye in the form of a case. We saw that from Wang recruiting people to join the team, purchasing equipment, setting up a group control computer room, taking orders and collecting money, almost every step encountered no obstacles. This shows that the “threshold” for becoming an online troll is still very low.
High returns and low barriers to entry may be the fundamental reason why trolls have been banned for so long. The focus of governance is to make the cyber industry a high-risk industry through strict supervision and punitive measures. Therefore, Wang’s sentencing is also a warning to navy practitioners.
According to reports, various equipment used by Wang to brush orders in the live broadcast room, including a large number of second-hand mobile phones, routers, switches and other network equipment, and even "cloud control software", were purchased from "a technology company in Changsha". This company can provide Wang with a complete set of equipment, and can provide technical and equipment support to more navy forces. How many companies like this are there in the country?
might as well take this as an opportunity to follow the clues and find out the "technical support providers" of the Internet trolls. Especially in the mobile phone recycling market, there may be illegal and criminal activities. Technologies such as Internet positioning and traceability can be used to discover problems in time and interrupt the trolls. The industrial chain of brushing orders.
In addition, it should also be noted that the key to Wang and others' success lies in their purchasing a large number of fake accounts that have not been authenticated by the platform's real-name authentication. With fake accounts, there are "dummy people" in the live broadcast room. For a long time, investigating these fake accounts has been like playing "whack-a-mole", one will appear, and another will appear. In this regard, the platform needs to take an active role and assume the main responsibility. Platforms can consider exploring joint industry governance models and sharing troll blacklists. At the same time, a registration review and filtering mechanism has been established to prevent accounts from coming back after being blocked. A large number of mobile phones in the computer room of
enter the designated live broadcast room to "charge people and increase popularity". Finally, illegal profits are settled based on the time of entering the live broadcast room and the number of mobile phones. The wishful thinking of the Internet trolls should be broken. This kind of profit cannot be allowed. The unscrupulous way of making quick money is arbitrarily interfering with the Internet ecology.
writing / Beijing News commentator Chi Daohua
editor / Ma Xiaolong
proofread / Li Lijun
