The Dark Side of China’s Social Media

Fake Fans and Digital Manipulation

Hive Media, the largest MCN on Weibo, is accused of falsifying data. Parties involved in the whole incident - the advertisers, Hive and Weibo site - all received negative comments on social media in China.

MCN, or multi-channel network, refers to companies that work with multiple channels and content creators, consulting or assisting towards success on streaming video platforms such as Taobao Live or Kwai. MCNs are unaffiliated with the platform owner.

What happened

There is this Taobao shop, who paid to have one of Hive’s big influencers, "@ Zhang YuHan" to produce a promotional Vlog, which has 3 million fans.

The Vlog was played millions of times, with over thousand reposts and comments. All data looked good, people commented even said they either would place orders or have done so. However, the advertiser inquired about the back-office sales volume and found the actual purchase volume was zero. The only two people who claimed the coupons are Hive's own staff.

The advertiser disclosed this. It said that Hive asked for 1 million yuan for a “Matrix Advertisement Project” that Hive planned. But they decided to choose one of the online celebrity as a trial. The advertiser did not mention in the post how much they actually paid.

Weibo and Hive responded subsequently. According to them, the cost of distributing micro-tasks on Weibo’s official platform was 3070 yuan, Hive's cost for producing the video was 28500 yuan, the total amount was 47500 yuan.

The effect of the video mentioned in this post makes people doubtful; is the pricing of 28,500 yuan too high? As for the remaining amount of nearly 16,000 yuan, its purpose is unknown. Some suspect it may well be used to purchase third-party click farming.

According to the advertiser’s post, they found a "blog post maintenance package" (i.e. the click farming), the total cost for 300 thousand clicks, 10 thousand reposts, and 2000 comments was less than 1700 yuan.

The platform, Weibo issued a notice, saying that the commercial order receiving function of the Weibo account has been suspended.

Weibo also said that according to MCN's response, the amount it charged was very different from what was stated in the post. Weibo will verify the facts, including both the click farming and dispute over the order amount. It will deal with the account involved according to the facts and its rules on community management.

Click farming has been an open secret in the industry. Not only small Vs (refer to the "Verified" accounts with a relatively smaller number of followers) or medium Vs as Weibo celebrities, the situation is more serious for big Vs like celebrities.

Some so-called "Key" stars can easily trigger 100 million reposts. However, taking into account that Sina Weibo had only 400 million active users as of the second quarter of this year, that means one in four people will repost.

A Quick History of MCN on Weibo