Many accounts with millions of fans have been blocked. Why are scripts being banned repeatedly for promoting sales and selling poorly to attract traffic?

On September 20, Liangshan Prefecture in Sichuan Province notified a group of Internet celebrities who were selling miserably under the banner of helping farmers, and the accounts and companies behind these Internet celebrities were punished accordingly. Under the guise of helping farmers, these Internet celebrities create fake characters through scripts to increase their followers, and then start live broadcasts to sell goods. However, the products they carry are branded as "specialties of Daliang Mountain", but are actually fake and shoddy products. Many of them have accounts with millions of fans.

A few years ago, many leading anchors in the industry used charity as a banner to ask for rewards in the live broadcast room. With the rise of short video and live broadcast e-commerce, many celebrities have packaged themselves as agriculture experts or charity ambassadors to help farmers, thereby selling goods and monetizing them.

Why is it that such scripts that promote sales and sell poorly to attract traffic are repeatedly banned? What warning does it bring to practitioners?

I originally thought it was a beautiful story about helping farmers, but I didn't expect it to be just a carefully arranged script.

In the second half of last year, a short video expert named "Zhao Ling'er" became popular on Douyin, gaining nearly one million followers in a week. In the video she posted, she met Qu Bu, a Yi boy from Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan.

In the video, Qubu, who has clear eyes and a simple personality, was once evaluated by netizens as "the second Ding Zhen".

Unexpectedly, the direction of the story became confusing - Zhao Ling'er went to Qu Bu's house for dinner and saw Qu Bu's large family and poverty. She said in the video that she wanted to help Qu Bu. Things fell into place after that. Not only did Zhao Ling'er use Qubu to make a short video, the two also started a live broadcast to sell goods, focusing on alleviating poverty and helping farmers.

At that time, some netizens felt that Zhao Ling'er's character and content were scripts, and some people questioned the price of his products in the live broadcast room.But Qubu's character is very solid, and his actions and words in the video are always convincing. This drives the two men to continue their “agricultural and poverty alleviation career”.

It was not until September 20 that Liangshan Prefecture in Sichuan Province held a press conference on the "Series of Internet Celebrities Live Broadcasting Cases" that netizens discovered that Zhao Linger and Qu Bu, two so-called poverty alleviation Internet celebrities,From beginning to end, they are all "fake characters" packaged by the company., their stories are also scripts.

It is understood that in July 2022, the person in charge of Chengdu Xiaoyu Zhunong Media Co., Ltd., the MCN behind Zhao Ling'er, came to Liangshan, found Zhao Ling'er, who was self-employed at the time, and Qu Bu, a local, and then shot a video of the two encountering each other from a travel perspective. After that, it was time to eat, communicate, and let Qu Bu perform miserably in front of the camera, thereby gradually establishing Liangshan's poverty alleviation character.

After having the corresponding characters and basic fans, Zhao Linger and Qu Bu started selling goods.Instead of selling local products from Liangshan, they purchased a batch of low-priced goods from other places and labeled them as "Daliangshan native products" to make huge profits. Their "poverty alleviation" products are sold to more than 20 provinces and cities across the country, with sales exceeding 10 million yuan.

Zhao Ling'er and Qu Bu, as anchors for bringing goods, their commission income for bringing goods in seven months exceeded 700,000 yuan.

Not only Zhao Ling'er and Qu Bu, Liangshan Mengyang and Liangshan Aze also used the banner of Liangshan to help farmers to label low-priced products as "Liangshan specialties" and sell them at high prices in the live broadcast room, deceiving consumers. These institutions also stimulate user consumption in the live broadcast room by purchasing trolls and brushing orders.

Data show that a total of 54 suspects were arrested in Liangshan Prefecture’s series of Internet celebrity live broadcast cases, including 11 Internet celebrity anchors involved, and 18 arrests have been approved; 5 MCN institutions were destroyed, and 14 companies involved were seized; more than 20 tons of honey raw materials involved were seized, more than 4,700 bottles of counterfeit “Daliang Mountain Native Honey” finished products, more than 50,000 pieces of product packaging, and 3 sets of production equipment; more than 5 million yuan of funds involved in the case were frozen.

It is understood that the companies behind these blocked Liangshan farmers’ internet celebrities are all newly established.

Like Chengdu Xiaoyu Zhunong Media Co., Ltd. behind Zhao Ling'er and Qubu. According to Qichacha, the company was established in 2022 and is located in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province. The registration cost is 100,000 yuan, and its main business is labeled as water conservancy management.

Chengdu Aowei Culture Media Co., Ltd., the company behind Liangshan Mengyang and Liangshan Aze, was established in 2021. Tang Shengjie, who holds 60% of the shares, also works for Sichuan Wochen Agriculture Co., Ltd. and Sichuan Wocheng Agriculture Co., Ltd. Chengdu Xinxin Fruit Co., Ltd. and Chengdu Zhongyi Auto Sales Co., Ltd. have both been cancelled.

It can be seen that these companies are not only established not long ago, but also belong to industries that have almost nothing to do with the short video live broadcast track. Therefore, they aim at short video live broadcasts for traffic, and the ultimate goal is to quickly bring goods.

Some people from MCN organizations also said that the MCN organizations reported by the Liangshan Prefecture Public Security Bureau are generally known as "wild MCNs" in the industry. Related rectification actions have been ongoing, and the live broadcast platform side has also been monitoring them, because such actions hurt the trust of the entire content e-commerce industry in the hearts of consumer groups and directly affect the development of e-commerce business.

02Why are script sales so rampant?

In fact, there are many short videos and e-commerce live broadcasts in the agriculture, rural areas and rural areas, and there are many scripts and hype content with themes of selling people, helping farmers, and alleviating poverty.

A senior fruit e-commerce practitioner told Xinbochang: "The Liangshan Internet celebrity was arrested, and there are many Sichuan Internet celebrities (who are claiming to be alleviating poverty and helping farmers) who have not been arrested."

He said that on content platforms such as Video Accounts, Kuaishou, and Douyin, if you shoot a video expressing the hard work of farmers and hang it on a small yellow truck, you can achieve good sales.

The reason is that this kind of "fake record" video content can easily arouse sympathy. At the same time, the products sold are packaged as agricultural products and will be emphasized by institutions and experts as natural, healthy and pollution-free. Coupled with the price advantage, users who do not know why will place orders to buy.

After the accounts of "Zhao Ling'er" and "Qubu" were blocked, some fans expressed disbelief. "They shot it so realistically, I can't believe it."

This also explains why the content of the script is repeatedly banned: low cost, fast account creation, and high traffic.

In 2017, a leading Internet celebrity recorded a live broadcast of himself doing charity in Liangshan, Sichuan, distributing money and supplies to local residents. He received very high attention and received high rewards. However, in September of the same year, it was revealed that the Internet celebrity's charity was fraudulent. The distribution of money and materials was just a formality. He only used this behavior to increase the popularity of the live broadcast room and attract users to reward him under the pretext of poverty alleviation. In the end, the internet celebrity was also convicted of fraud.

Since 2017, there have been many similar penalty cases and rollover cases.

For example, @Niu Aifang’s Xiaochunhua, a Sannong guru with over 10 million followers, was originally very popular among fans for her videos recording the lives of a family in rural areas. However, after the live broadcast overturned, netizens found out that the so-called rural characters were fake and the shooting location was specially built.

With the overturning of the character design, Niu Aifang's Xiaochunhua has also stopped updating from November 2022 to the present.

Before the "Daliangshan Internet Celebrity" was exposed, there were other hot searches for false content on Douyin.

At the beginning of September, the master @黑niu seasonal fruit (hereinafter referred to as "黑牛") released an "accidental encounter" video. In the video, he was driving to the countryside, and a little boy carrying pomegranates came to him and asked him if he needed to buy pomegranates. Then, the little boy’s grandmother appeared in the video. After understanding, it was learned that the little boy’s parents lost contact after they went out to work, and the grandfather and grandson made a living by growing pomegranates. So Hei Niu spent money to buy dozens of kilograms of pomegranates from the little boy's basket, and drove his grandfather and grandson up the mountain in his car.

This "helping others" video quickly attracted attention. The innocent and clear little boy in the video aroused the sympathy of many people and wanted to express their support. But when netizens found the little boy’s grandmother, she said that she did not grow pomegranates and that the content of the video that day was paid by Heiniu to stage it.

Daren Hei Niu is an e-commerce anchor who sells fruits. Shooting such works not only increases traffic to his account, but also labels his products as "helping farmers." But after Grandma’s clarification was issued, Heiniu’s account was immediately blocked by the platform.

Corresponding to the proliferation of these scripts and disgraceful content, there is continuous rectification at the platform and regulatory levels.

The relevant person in charge of the Cyberspace Administration of Liangshan Prefecture Party Committee introduced that since this year, the Liangshan Cyberspace Affairs Department has joined forces with the public security, market supervision and other departments to carry out an in-depth special campaign to "clarify and strictly rectify the "self-media" chaos" and severely crack down on illegal activities such as "tragic auctions", "false aid to farmers" and "fake charity". So far, a total of 14,157 pieces of illegal information on the Internet have been cleared, and 346 illegal accounts have been dealt with.

Nowadays, both the relevant departments and the platform itself are increasing their efforts to crack down on such script-hyping and misselling content.

The warning to practitioners is that only by producing good content and selling good products can they last long, and only then can we truly drive out bad currency, eliminate users' resistance to live streaming, and make the entire content e-commerce industry develop better.