What is the industry chain of self-media account creation?

On their respective media platforms, there are often a batch of manuscripts that have the aura of “millions of reads”, but are accused of plagiarism, headline-grabbing, and low quality.

Behind these popular articles are a group of dedicated account makers, some of whom work alone and some of whom work in teams. They can produce an explosive article in just a few dozen minutes. These articles are more like products manufactured on an efficient assembly line, with little thought and general originality. Some articles plagiarize, piece together facts, create clever titles, and even exaggerate rumors, just to get high readings. The high profits brought by high reading volume are their only purpose.

In the online world, a large number of self-media platform accounts are publicly sold, and individuals and institutions provide training services to teach account makers the secrets of creating popular articles. Some even sell "one-click fake originality" The manuscript cleaning software has formed an industry chain of "cheating traffic".

Some lawyers pointed out that for those who spread rumors, exaggerate and seriously misrepresent their claims, their actions are suspected of being illegal; online platforms should establish a quick complaint, exposure and handling mechanism to severely punish those who infringe on intellectual property rights or spread rumors.

At present, some self-media platforms have introduced measures to ban some illegal accounts and other penalties. In recent years, the National Copyright Administration and the Cyberspace Administration of China have also frequently spoken out on the issues of cracking down on online infringement and rectifying "clickbait parties" respectively.

On April 3, an article titled "Deng Chao and Yang Mi wore matching shirts. Yang Mi said: It's not scary to wear matching shirts. Whoever is ugly is embarrassed!" "The article became a popular article pushed by a certain platform.

As of April 9, this article, which contains less than 300 words and 5 online pictures, has received nearly 6,000 comments from netizens.

"The article is actually very simple, but it is definitely a hit." Shi Lei, a 24-year-old senior student, said with some jealousy that the reading volume of this article will not be less than 6 million, and the background advertising revenue may be 500 yuan. about.

Shi Lei's other identity is the boss of a "number maker" team.

He has more than 10 self-media accounts on multiple self-media platforms and supports 5 employees. The team produces more than 700 articles per month, most of which are entertainment and gossip.

He writes various articles about celebrities all day long and admits that he doesn’t usually like to read celebrity entertainment gossip. He only writes articles because he can make money.

In the QQ group, someone purchased a platform account.

Producing "hot articles" has become a routine

In Shi Lei's view, it didn't take long to write the article "Deng Chao and Yang Mi wear shirts", "it's all a routine."

He analyzed that the author of this article should be someone who has been following popular celebrities on Weibo for a long time. Once entertainment topical materials appear, they should be accompanied by Weibo pictures or screenshots of netizen comments, and add some of the celebrities appropriately. The background content can be completed immediately.

This is also one of the common routines of Shi Lei and his team. It usually takes 20-30 minutes to write such a hit article. "It seems simple, but it tests the author's online sense and understanding of the topic." Mastery of entertainment topics."

After Wang Baoqiang's divorce happened in mid-August last year, he wrote an article with more than 600 words and 7 or 8 pictures based on various speculations and rumors on the Internet. , the article was published at around 9 a.m., and by 11 a.m., the article had been read more than 10 million times. Two hours later, the account was directly suspended by the platform.

Shi Lei said that the standard formula for an entertainment gossip article is only three to four hundred words, with six pictures. The star’s recent events are quoted at the beginning, the background is explained in the middle, and a few paragraphs of his own saliva are added at the end. Opinion, "Write wherever you think, and it will be an article."

During standardized operations, he usually spends 10 minutes browsing online information, 15 minutes writing, and the remaining 5 minutes to think of an article that is attractive enough. Human title.

According to his efficiency, he can produce up to 10 articles per day, and at least 5 articles. Over time, he has built up a database of many celebrities. He knows who has the most clicks, how to choose the title, and when the posts are most likely to become popular.

There is an account owner in the QQ group who advertises for writers and is paid based on the number of articles read.

Content bonus spawned an army of account makers

In the first two years of college, Shi Lei was just an engineering student who loved reading. He spent a lot of time in the library, sitting there for half a day. . Nowadays, he laughs at himself that his back will hurt if he sits for two hours straight. "Making numbers requires sitting for a long time, which is very taxing on the body."

What attracts him to continue to "sit" is the "content dividend" behind the article traffic.

In recent years, in order to encourage originality, many self-media platforms have successively launched advertising revenue subsidy mechanisms, originality subsidies and other policies. The level of subsidy is linked to the level of reading volume and other indicators.

Precisely because high reading volume can bring high profits, in the first half of last year, Shi Lei, a junior, decided to join the "number-making army." He started to register accounts on different platforms. “If you distribute the same content on more platforms, you can get more income.”

He did not deny that it was because of money.

As a student, his monthly living expenses are 3,000 yuan. The third article he posted on a self-media platform account in April last year was read more than 3 million times. The advertising share of more than 3,000 yuan for an article is enough to cover one month's living expenses.

The content of the first two articles he posted on this self-media platform can no longer be remembered. “Anyway, they are normal and ordinary articles.” And the third article was defined by him as “an abnormal article.” ".

He remembered that the article read, "An old man was beaten by the urban management, and no passers-by came to rescue him." He said that the first news he saw was a graphic news without time and place. He found more urban management pictures on the Internet and pieced together a four to five hundred word graphic message.

"There are some content and exaggerated expressions that I added." He said frankly, "I would deliberately say that the urban management was holding a stick of 'three to five meters long', and then said that he was beating 'continuously', all kinds of Language processing is used to deliberately guide readers’ emotions.”

After Shi Lei published the manuscript at around 9 o’clock that night, he discovered the next day that the article had received more than 3 million views, even from the junior high school students who had not seen him for many years. The classmates also forwarded it. The final profit from this article was more than 3,000 yuan.

Shi Lei said that he was very excited that day and even called his parents to tell them that he had made a lot of money. I thought I was very powerful at the time, but looking back now, this article was too risky to write.

“I’ve seen many people write like this before, and the reading volume is also very high.” Shi Lei said that driven by the interest of linking reading volume with revenue, many articles are just side projects in pursuit of hits. So make a fuss about the content and title. Once it becomes a explosive article, the income will naturally be high. If once investigated, the account will be banned.

In fact, in accordance with the "Public Security Administration Punishment Law", anyone who spreads rumors, falsely reports dangerous situations, epidemics, police situations, or deliberately disrupts public order by other means shall be detained for not less than five days but not more than ten days. A fine of not more than five hundred yuan may be imposed.

According to the "Criminal Law Amendment (9)", fabricate false dangers, epidemics, disasters, or police situations and spread them on information networks or other media, or knowingly knowing that the above-mentioned false information is false, deliberately spreading it on information networks or other media Anyone who disseminates information on other media and seriously disrupts social order shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention or surveillance; if serious consequences are caused, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than seven years.

Shi Lei said that he started writing articles in the field of current affairs and now he has turned to writing entertainment and emotional articles because articles on social affairs and current affairs are easy to "go overboard" and he does not dare to write.

Last winter, Shi Lei no longer fought alone. Through the introduction of his classmates, he recruited five "editors" and began to operate more than 10 accounts he registered by borrowing relatives' ID cards.

The salary of employees is directly linked to the advertising revenue of the account. Among the five employees, those who do particularly well can earn about 10,000 yuan per month. Several other students work part-time and earn two to three thousand yuan per month. Yuan.

Shi Lei made a rough calculation. Based on the current more than 700 articles per month, the team's monthly income is about 30,000 to 40,000 yuan.

Online sellers sell pseudo-original software for collecting articles from various platforms, and display emotional articles with more than 10,000 reads through searches.

The "traffic fraud" industry chain is formed around account making

In the account making arena, a team like Shi Lei's monthly income of tens of thousands is not a lot.

Ma Weimin, a self-media author who has long observed this field, said that grassroots retail investors and team account makers widely exist, but they are not enough to support the entire market. The real big players have already been institutionalized. “A company with nearly a hundred employees can produce thousands of articles every day.

"

Another insider said that these corporate-run organizations often purchase platform accounts in bulk through underground channels. During the operation process, they also use various types of software to collect articles and conduct " "Washing manuscripts" (Note: piecing together other people's articles and transforming their opinions into new articles).

In fact, an industry chain of "traffic fraud" has been formed around account making.

< p>The threshold for making an account is not high, so people continue to "enter the arena" in pursuit of profits. Some of them are like Shi Lei, and some are willing to spend thousands of dollars to sign up for online training courses.

< p> Last November, Beijing girl Li Min spent nearly 2,500 yuan to receive a systematic online training. In the group, the lecturers would teach how to make money by making accounts, from theoretical systems to practical operations, and how to register in large quantities. Accounts, how to create popular articles on a certain platform, how to quietly enter the advertisements you receive, everything is detailed.

In addition, a large number of self-media platform accounts are publicly sold, and some people even sell "one-click". "Pseudo-original" manuscript cleaning software.

In a QQ group gathered by self-media account owners, a reporter from the Beijing News discovered a software that can collect and retrieve popular articles in various categories on various platforms. The price is For 30 yuan, there is also software that can replace the words in the article with synonyms to avoid the platform's duplication check.

The same "one-click pseudo-original" manuscript cleaning software is also publicly sold on e-commerce platforms. .

In the above-mentioned QQ group, there are many types of account collectors and account sellers. Depending on the platform and account level, the price of each account ranges from more than ten yuan to several hundred yuan. .

According to Ma Weimin’s observation, more than 90% of current self-media accounts are basically account makers, most of which have no real originality. The content they produce comes from salivation, splicing, and alteration. Translation of manuscripts, plagiarism, etc., in order to obtain clicks on the platform to obtain advertising shares, constitute the bottom layer of the self-media ecosystem. Very few of them have the desire and ability to build their own accounts into brands

These. There is no lack of market for the so-called "lowest" people. In the above-mentioned QQ group, there are often open advertisements for part-time writers, which require a certain writing ability and a short article of 800-1000 words with 3-6 pictures. , the fields include history, entertainment, health, emotions, etc. The salary is: 5 yuan per article with more than 50,000 reads, and 10% commission for more than 100,000 popular articles.

The account owner is a "self-media veteran". " He said that he has many public accounts, and better writers can earn tens to hundreds of yuan a day. He recommended that writers start in the entertainment field. When writing about a certain person or phenomenon, you must first have a point of view. Then take a look at the other party’s dark history.

In addition to openly recruiting writers, there are also platforms that “recruit writers”. Ma Weimin said that some platforms’ channels gather account makers into groups and channel editors. Once they find a topic that can be done, they will "place an order" in the group, and then the editor will "grab the order", and the person who took the order will publish the manuscript in the shortest possible time. This is also seen as the tacit approval and support of these platforms for the account makers.

Plagiarism and infringement have attracted criticism

The most criticized thing for account makers is plagiarism and low-quality content.

Shi Lei believes that his own creative method is only the choice of some account makers, and among countless self-media accounts of varying quality, many people still choose the simplest and crudest plagiarism to gain traffic.

In the case where the reporting mechanism of some platforms is imperfect, an account maker registers a similar account, and the high-quality content of platform A is moved to platform B intact. Even if the original author succeeds in safeguarding his rights, the other party has already Earn enough traffic.

Some skilled commentators only change the title, piece it together into a pseudo-original article, or adjust the order and word order of paragraphs to express the same meaning in other words, making it difficult for machines to check for duplication.

“There are also cases where the facts are taken out of context or the facts are distorted.” Shi Lei said that like the previous explosive article on urban management, what he saw was the content that had been improved and processed by other editors. Based on this, he I processed it again, “So originally, I didn’t even know what the news looked like.

”

Zhou Jiacheng, a staff member of the Rights Protection Knight platform that provides third-party copyright management and protection services, said that from May last year to February this year, Toutiao *** had 2,451 active original accounts that received rights protection services. Rights Protection Knight *** detected nearly 150,000 infringing articles, and after final confirmation by all parties, nearly 90,000 plagiarized articles were deleted, and more than 70,000 infringing articles were deleted.

Based on this calculation, no. In 10 months, about 37 articles were plagiarized per account. The most plagiarized self-media account had 2,182 plagiarized articles in 10 months, Zhou Jiacheng said. Or if only some authors want to protect their rights, if all original authors start monitoring, the data may increase to another level.

Zhou Jiacheng said that the high cost of rights protection is also a problem encountered in actual operations. Tens of thousands of articles on some platforms are infringed, making the cost of rights protection astronomical. Even if you sue, the time cost is unimaginable based on a trial cycle of at least three to five months. At the same time, new infringements are constantly occurring.

Han Xiao, a lawyer at Beijing Kangda Law Firm, said that according to the relevant provisions of the Copyright Law, some account makers use multiple articles to piece together hot topics without indicating the source, which infringes on the copyright of the original author. . The account holder should bear civil responsibilities such as stopping the infringement, eliminating the impact, making an apology, and compensating for losses. At the same time, the original author should strengthen his copyright awareness, and the online platform should also establish a quick complaint, exposure and handling mechanism.

Regarding the rumor-mongering and exaggeration in the article, Han Xiao said that if the account maker's article is seriously inaccurate, it may damage other people's business reputation and reputation, and his behavior will be suspected of being illegal. The account maker will also face administrative penalties and even liability. Criminal liability.

Han Xiao believes that major online platforms should also actively punish infringements of other authors’ intellectual property rights. Platforms should improve their self-discipline mechanisms and establish basic rules for respecting copyright in account registration and operation. Mechanisms to severely punish speeches that infringe on intellectual property rights or spread rumors to ensure the legality of articles published on their platforms. Relevant departments should also clean up and set up reward mechanisms for individuals and institutions that illegally operate and plagiarize other people's articles through professors. , encouraging the public to report such behavior

Counterattack from self-media platforms

A person in charge of a Toutiao account said that account makers who make a living by plagiarism have harmed the platform and the public. The interests of original authors, and account makers who produce a large amount of low-quality content, will also affect the reading experience of some platform users. In the long run, it may cause the loss of users and endanger users' trust in the platform.

Some. The platform has also come up with various ways to prevent and plug loopholes. In October last year, Penguin began to implement a credit score system, in which 40 points will be deducted for plagiarism, 20 points will be deducted for fabricating false information, and 10 points will be deducted for headlines. The maximum score is 100 points. .

At the end of February this year, Toutiao made it mandatory for the registered ID card to be the same as that of the bank card account holder during the advertising sharing and cash withdrawal processes, thereby inhibiting account makers from buying and selling accounts in large quantities. Since the second half of last year, an average of more than 12,000 articles have been identified and modified every day for common headline types such as pretentiousness, shock and sensationalism, provocation and threats, and vulgar provocation, and 90% of the authors have made modifications.

In March this year, UC general manager Chen Chao also publicly stated that he would seriously control the clickbait and educate creators through credit scores to prevent the production of similar articles.

In response to the alleged infringement of articles by account makers and the issue of "clickbait", the National Copyright Administration and the Cyberspace Administration of China have repeatedly "spoken" to crack down and rectify in recent years.

In July last year, the National Copyright Administration and other departments jointly launched the "Sword Net Operation", a special campaign to combat online infringement and piracy, highlighting the illegal dissemination of online literature, news, film and television works without authorization. wait.

In February this year, the National Copyright Administration issued the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for Copyright Work", which pointed out that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, copyright law enforcement and supervision should be strengthened, and supervision of online literature, audio and video, games, Monitor and supervise key areas such as animation and software, promptly discover and investigate infringement and piracy, and continue to carry out the "Sword Net Action" to crack down on online infringement and piracy, including APPs, online cloud storage spaces, online sales platforms, etc. into effective copyright supervision; explore and establish Credit evaluation mechanism for infringement and piracy, publishing a "blacklist" of untrustworthy units and individuals.

In response to "title party" behaviors such as randomly changing titles and distorting the original meaning of news, as early as October 9, 2015, the State Cyberspace Administration of China issued on its official website ""Title Party" and "Picture Party" Should Stop "The article" directly pointed out the chaos of "title party" and "picture party" on Weibo and WeChat.

On January 13 this year, the official website of the Cyberspace Administration of China announced that it had cooperated with relevant departments to carry out a one-month special rectification operation, punished five websites with outstanding problems in accordance with the law, and imposed strict regulations on the Internet. Special standards have been formulated for the production of news information headlines to ensure that headlines must not distort the original meaning, take things out of context, generalize; substitute concepts, falsely exaggerate, make things out of thin air; be vulgar, kitsch, violent, bloody, pornographic; sensationalize, attack, insult, or play gimmicks formal language, etc.

In addition, it is strictly prohibited to use uncertain words such as "online exposure" and "online transmission" in titles to organize reports or express the basic elements of news. All kinds of "clickbait" behaviors such as exaggeration, novelty, and unreasonable content expression techniques are strictly prohibited.

Shi Lei can also clearly feel the changes after the strict management of each platform. Titles that express surprise such as "surprise, shock, and horror" will be prompted by the platform, or directly restricted from dissemination. Some peers have plagiarized them. The account will directly face the risk of being banned.

He also found that various platforms tend to favor truly original content. “I am already trying to get the team to write longer articles, even if these long articles are not very profitable now.”

< p>He is not optimistic about the future of low-quality content, "There will definitely be less and less in the future."

As he is about to graduate this summer, he has also begun to think about work issues. He still wants to find a formal job related to writing.