Is it very profitable? At the beginning, celebrity "high imitation account" profit chain, counterfeit Mo Yan account | celebrity | high imitation
On August 13th, Bilibili announced on its official WeChat account that the suspension of Mo Yan's writer account was a rumor.
It is reported that some online accounts have recently fabricated claims that "Mo Yan's Bilibili account has been banned.". Regarding this, Mo Yan himself posted on Weibo on the 13th, stating that while recording the variety show "I am Reading on an Island" recently, "my old friends who were recording together asked if I had opened an account on Bilibili, and I was unaware of it. I also want to know who opened it."
▲ Mo Yan responded. Image source: Mo Yan Weibo
After verification on Bilibili, it was found that a user registered under the pseudonym "Mo Yan Writer" account and moved content posted by Mo Yan himself on other social media platforms. Bilibili has permanently banned the highly imitated account and removed all infringing articles.
In addition, according to the news of Rule.cn, according to several media reports, from May to July this year, Shanghai Jing'an police went to many provinces and cities to carry out the "fake Jindong" fraud gang's network capture operations, and successively captured 8 suspect. Several aunties in their 60s were deceived in supporting "fake Jin Dong". A netizen said, "Why is it him again?"
According to Upstream News, Mo Yan is not the first celebrity to be "highly imitated", and Jin Dong encountered "Li Gui" in 2020. According to a previous report by Southern Metropolis Daily, there is a hidden industry chain behind "fake Jin Dong" and others who use celebrity images to raise and sell accounts on short video platforms.
More than 1 celebrity encounters highly imitated "Li Gui"
In 2021, aiming at a large number of "Gaofang accounts" falsely using the name of "Bai Yansong" on the Internet, Bai Yansong openly cracked down on counterfeits in his program on the evening of April 13: he did not have any microblog, WeChat or official account, and "none of the online homonymous accounts were me."
Bai Yansong responded. Image source/network
According to a report by Shangguan News in April 2021, there are various accounts called "xx Baiyansong" on Sina Weibo, and even an account called "Baiyansong". The profile picture is of Baiyansong himself, located in Dongcheng District, Beijing, with the tags of News Channel, Baiyansong, and CCTV. The educational information is from Communication University of China, and the career information is from CCTV. But this was not actually created by Bai Yansong himself, but by Bai Yansong's high imitation number. Upon seeing such a detailed introduction, unsuspecting netizens may have thought it was Bai Yansong's own account. On the WeChat public platform and WeChat video account, there are countless accounts named "Bai Yansong".
▲ Screenshots of some high imitation accounts of Bai Yansong. Image source/network
Among them, only the WeChat official account "Bai Shuo Yansong" and "Yansong Digest" publicly declared that they were not the official accounts of Bai Yansong, and no statement was found for other accounts, even the accounts publicly claimed that they were Bai Yansong himself. Taking the "Bai Shuo Bai Yansong" video account as an example, the account's profile picture and introduction are all called Bai Yansong. The video content is a public video of Bai Yansong's past, and the account's store sells books.
There is a high imitation number claiming to be Bai Yansong himself. Image source/network
Prior to this, on October 13, 2020, the term "fake Jin Dong" became a hot topic on Weibo. According to media reports, a woman in her sixties was crazily infatuated with actress Jin Dong while watching short videos, claiming that the two had expressed their feelings through the videos and that the other had promised to buy her a house for 600000 yuan. On October 13th, Jin Dong Studio issued a statement stating that Jin Dong has never opened an account on any short video platform, and none of the "Jin Dong" series accounts are owned by him.
▲ Jin Dong High imitation account homepage.
Southern Metropolis Daily found in this investigation that such accounts all use photos of Jin Dong as their avatar, mostly using nicknames such as "Jin · Dong", "Xiao Dong", "Dong Ge Ge", and "congratulatory letters". They edit Jin Dong's photos, film and television clips, and then dub them. Under the celebrity effect, some accounts even started live streaming to monetize their products by deceiving likes and fans. There are 22 items in the window of "Dongdi Youyu", one of the accounts of "Fake Jindong", including 19.9 yuan of love charm makeup mirror lipstick, 198 yuan of beehive firming facial mask, 239 yuan of hip lifting and fitting socks, etc.
▲ Part of Jin Dong's high imitation numbers. Image source/network
In addition, there are many celebrity "high imitation accounts", including "fake Dong Qing", "fake Liu Kaiwei", "fake Liu Dehua", and so on. According to previous reports from Qilu Yidian, the most popular actresses, celebrities, singers, artists, and others can all see replicas on some platforms, with some high imitation accounts having millions of fans. Some of these highly imitated celebrity accounts only post content related to celebrities, while others earn their own money by exploiting the popularity of celebrities. According to media reports, such "high imitation account" scams are also constantly upgrading, even using "AI face swapping".
2 can be sold or monetized as a fan account
According to Shangguan News, in fact, this type of high imitation account is a type of marketing account. The trick is also the same: first register an account containing the name and nickname of a celebrity, and then share the celebrity's public videos, articles, etc. to attract fans. Due to the abundance of such personal accounts, celebrities are unable to pursue copyright issues one by one, so these types of accounts can be operated at almost no cost. They use the fame of celebrities to quickly gain traffic and then transform themselves into e-commerce businesses to monetize. The content posted on the high imitation account does indeed come from the celebrity themselves, so fans cannot determine the authenticity of the account. Even if they buy something with the wrong version in the store, most people will not pursue it. But this harms the original authors and the entire cultural market ecosystem, causing the phenomenon of bad currency driving out good currency.
Screenshot of a chat between netizens and Jin Donggao on a fake account. Image source/network
On a certain platform, an article entitled "Am I guilty of making tens of thousands of yuan a month in Tiktok?!" analyzed the business experience of Gaofang. The article mentions how to quickly monetize short videos, utilize celebrities to attract traffic, and create high imitation celebrity accounts, which is a good method. This method has low cost and quickly increases followers. Some colleagues have reported that a highly imitated celebrity account can gain 100000 followers in just 15 days and sell for 7000 yuan. The monetization methods also include live streaming rewards, live streaming sales, and traffic attraction.
According to a report from Qilu Yidian, in addition to selling highly imitated celebrity accounts, there are also people online who specialize in account maintenance services, one-on-one teaching, and a tuition fee of 499 yuan. "From three days to a thousand followers, seven days to ten thousand followers, traffic monetization, live streaming monetization, and traffic monetization are all possible." The other party said that for an account with ten thousand followers, "there is no problem earning 4000 yuan per month."
According to a previous report by the Southern Metropolis Daily, a QQ group administrator for a short video account who sells accounts introduced that whether a celebrity has personal charm is the least important in the logic of account maintenance. "You need to think from the perspective of recommendations from short video platforms. Stars like Han Hong, who have a national foundation, are loved by all age groups. Your likes, comments, and viewing time will not be short, and it takes minutes to do it."
Screenshot of Jin Dong's official WeChat account on July 21st this year. Image source: Sina Weibo
In addition to individual trading and small workshop operations, there are also many professional companies on the market that do business around high imitation celebrity short video accounts.
A consultant from "Fish X New Media", who claims to be the "largest short video account protection trading platform in the country," revealed to the media that in addition to selecting product types, account categories, price ranges, fan numbers, fan preferences, fan age groups, and average single fan prices, they can also filter whether to open live streaming, showcase, authentication subject, opening time, and whether there are penalties based on customer needs.
3. View authentication information to identify genuine and fake accounts
High imitation accounts often use the old tactics of marketing accounts when reposting celebrity and celebrity comments, such as using inappropriate headlines, containing private goods, creating panic, inciting emotions, and incorporating subjective judgments. The distorted celebrity discourse has been widely spread and misled the public. These high imitation accounts often attract middle-aged and elderly people, who have a single channel to obtain information, weak identification ability, and certain economic ability, and are easily led by high imitation accounts.
The hottest actresses, popular celebrities, singers, artists, and more can all be seen as replicas on some platforms. Image source/Qilu Yidian
These "high imitation accounts" will imitate the Weibo account, avatar, signature and other information of legitimate accounts, and at a rough glance, they seem to be "legitimate". But if you look closely, you will find that there is still a difference between "high imitation accounts" and genuine accounts: they often add various symbols after the imitated genuine Weibo name, and cannot replicate the number of followers and Weibo content. However, in order to increase confusion, "Li Gui" will attract attention through friends who frequently interact with the @ genuine account on the Weibo account of the "high imitation account".
In fact, just one more step can identify "Li Gui". According to the survey of Shanghai Ballad Repelling Platform, most social platforms, including WeChat, Weibo, Tiktok, etc., support the public to view the authentication information of the account. Based on this, netizens can develop the habit of viewing account authentication information. A celebrity account without a real name authentication mark should be vigilant and is likely to be a fake account.
According to Zhang Xiaofeng, a member of the Legal Daily Lawyer Expert Database and a lawyer from Kyoto Law Firm in Beijing, this fraudulent behavior of impersonating celebrities mainly utilizes people's admiration and curiosity for celebrities, as well as the high interactivity of social media platforms. By using and processing downloaded celebrity photos, videos, and voice changing audio, fraudsters can more easily gain people's trust and obtain sensitive information, money, or other personal interests.
Lawyer Zhang Xiaofeng stated that using the celebrity's portrait and voice to engage in fraudulent activities constitutes an infringement of the celebrity's portrait rights. At the same time, if the perpetrator fabricates themselves as a celebrity and engages in fraud against the victim, causing the victim to have a wrong understanding and delivering property based on the wrong understanding, it constitutes the crime of fraud.
Experts suggest in media interviews that in order to crack down on high imitation accounts, platforms should strengthen management, use technical means to identify and clean up in a timely manner, and also upgrade intelligent algorithm push programs in a reasonable manner to prevent the occurrence of high imitation account videos being pushed to the program homepage. More importantly, it is necessary to collaborate with multiple parties to fill regulatory gaps and ensure that high imitation accounts have nowhere to hide.
