Beijing's internet police shut down an app that had reportedly made 8 million yuan ($1.19 million) by faking likes and shares on Sina Weibo to boost a pop idol's popularity.
The app, Xingyuan, was recently busted by Beijing net police, and the procuratorate in Beijing's Fengtai district approved the arrest of the principal suspect surnamed Cai, for disrupting the computer information system, the Beijing News reported on Monday.
By deciphering Sina Weibo's algorithm, China's Twitter-like platform, the app can help share posts or posts of certain users in large numbers. This kind of behavior severely disrupted the public opinion environment of Sina Weibo and the posts threatened users' accounts, media reported.
The app was the reason behind the fake traffic data scandal of Cai Xukun, a popular K-Pop-style star, which was exposed in March.
It was found that roughly one-third of China's 341 million Weibo users had "shared" and "liked" Cai's new album - a number that is not possible, since Cai only has 25 million fans on Weibo.
According to Cai, the idea surprised him at first because he wanted a boost in popularity. But he began to seek illegal profits with it after more people joined in, said the Beijing News.
The fake data disrupted not only the internet, but also caused a bad influence on Chinese public opinion, Zhu Wei, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Zhu said that the internet reflects what the public talks and cares about, but the fake data tends to distort the facts. And that the fake data sometimes tends to manipulate public opinion.
In January 2018, Chinese rap singer PG One was criticized by Ziguangge (a Party magazine) and other mainstream media for a song that encouraged young people to take drugs and discriminate against women.
PG One's fans fought back the criticism, but only made things worse. Photos that went viral show some PG One fans, mistakenly thinking that Ziguangge is a restaurant, attacking the "restaurant" for using gutter oil.
Besides, such fake data disrupts the industry by creating an illusion of the online celebrity's fame and fools consumers and fans into believing it, said Zhu, noting that cracking down on such would help restore a healthy industry.
After China began to regulate this in recent years, many TV series of these online celebrities flopped. For example, Sweet Combat, a TV drama starring Lu Han, who is dubbed the "Chinese Justin Bieber" by foreign media, was rated 2.7 out of 10 on Douban, China's leading film review platform, for poor performance and quality.
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