Weibo Announces Crackdown on Internet Water Army and Cyber Dark Industries
TapTechNews, June 20th. The shadows of 'internet water armies' can be found behind illegal behaviors such as rumor-mongering for traffic diversion, paid post deletion, and manipulation of view counts and comments.
According to CCTV reports, the police in Xinxiang, Henan recently destroyed a large 'internet water army' criminal gang with a large number of 'internet celebrities' and 'big V' accounts. This criminal gang also uses a dedicated control software to implement batch forwarding, likes, and comments, and one person can operate hundreds of accounts.
It is introduced that the company has many 'internet celebrities' and 'big V' accounts that are actually used, as well as a large number of ordinary Weibo accounts, which can boost the customer-specified content to the hot search list.
In response, the official Weibo released a statement tonight, claiming that there are still many deficiencies in both the 'prevention' and 'crackdown' levels, failing to live up to the expectations of all sectors of society, and needing to further improve the governance ideas and optimize specific measures.
In addition, Weibo also announced that it will step up the crackdown on various types of cyber dark industries including the hot search dark industry on the basis of the regular anti-cheating governance, and launch a three-month special crackdown campaign. TapTechNews attaches the original text of the announcement:
Recently, Weibo noticed that there are media reports about the public security organ's capture of an 'internet water army' gang that provides 'paid hot search boosting' services. Since the Weibo hot search list was launched in 2014, there have always been cyber dark and gray industries eyeing its high attention and high influence, trying to蹭 hot search, maliciously divert traffic, and even boost the list to obtain illegal commercial benefits by various means.
To maintain the normal information dissemination order of the platform and the solemnity of the hot search list, under the guidance and unified deployment of the competent authorities, Weibo has continuously invested from the technical and operational levels, strengthened the comprehensive management of various illegal behaviors such as brushing views and data, faking traffic, maliciously diverting traffic, and recruiting part-time 'internet water army' members to swipe the screen and like, and regularly announced the phased results of governance to the outside world. At the same time, to ensure the fairness of the hot search list, Weibo has been upgrading the anti-brushing machine strategies at the user level, behavior level, and content level, and will exclude abnormal data in the process of generating the list ranking. Currently, it seems that there are still many deficiencies in both the 'prevention' and 'crackdown' levels, failing to live up to the expectations of all sectors of society, and we need to further improve the governance ideas and optimize specific measures.
This time, the rapid action of the public security organ in capturing the illegally profitable 'internet water army' gang is a great deterrent to the cyber dark industries that haunt various major Internet platforms. Weibo will step up the crackdown on various types of cyber dark industries including the hot search dark industry on the basis of the regular anti-cheating governance, and launch a three-month special crackdown campaign. At the same time, it calls on all sectors of society to work together to promote the governance of cyber dark industries from online to offline and gradually cure this tumor that threatens the healthy development of the Internet.