How an innocuous profile has led Baid to fake profiles and IMDb . like platforms down the digital rabbit hole of gaming
How an innocuous profile has led Baid to fake profiles and IMDb . like platforms down the digital rabbit hole of gaming
I was casually browsing IMDb last month when I saw a name that I couldn’t find listed as the top cast in the upcoming film opposite Ranbir Kapoor, beast, This was clearly a case of IMDb vandalism. Any website that allows its users to add or edit content is vulnerable to this.
It was amusing at first, but a Google search confirmed it was not an isolated case. Many people have figured out how to build their online dominance through the sweat-free route. At first I came to the dozen. Then, as I understood their methods better, I found hundreds. Interestingly, more than 95% of the profiles were from smaller cities in India. Is it because they don’t have as many resources as they have in metros and are thus trying to gain visibility and followers on social media platforms? The answer isn’t clear yet.
Gaming is only a small part of what IMDb is doing today. These ‘creators’ have added their Profile and Biography On many self-editing websites. They target websites that have high SEO rankings but loose or no content verification systems, such as IssueWire, Filmfreeway and WikiAlpha, and feed off misinformation. This leads the Google search algorithm to believe that these citations are valid proof of their notability – thus helping them gain knowledge panels, which, in turn, help them get verified on other platforms (eg, Spotify).
The ultimate goal appears to be to increase the surface area of their online influence. Building an audience is tough for any budding content creator. Having their own Google knowledge panel or being verified on a music distribution platform gives them legitimacy in the eyes of their followers. This is a method of digital flexing.
I found not everyone is a cheater; There are some content creators who have a lot of followers on Instagram and YouTube. But mostly Choudhary and Noatia have found the flaws and used it to their advantage. His social media followers (37.1k and 28k respectively) are surprising and suspicious, especially considering seven posts from Choudhary and a series of generic marketing tips from Noatia. But having these numbers with validation on other platforms should be useful if they want to do collabs, connect with sponsors, or for more sinister things like asking people for money, gifts, or favors—by simply telling them, ‘Google me, I’m famous!’
There is a responsibility on these multi-billion dollar valued platforms to have an effective content verification and review system. They have a massive impact on our digital lives and require them to take more responsibility for what gets published there.
Prashant Baid is a software engineer from Bangalore and writes a newsletter here peabee.substack.com, His latest post reveals how one cloud kitchen is operating multiple restaurant brands under the same FSSAI license. It has 189 on Swiggy and 127 on Zomato.