The Case of Fake IMDb Credits (substack.com) 30
How some people tricked Google into getting their own knowledge panels and fooled Amazon-owned IMDb into believing they are top stars in dozens of movies. From a report: I was casually browsing IMDb when I landed on the page for an upcoming Ranbir Kapoor starrer movie "Animal." I saw the cast details and I found a face and a name I didn't recognize. Finding out about this guy led me to a whole new world of how so many young Indian men from small towns are gaming the system to manufacture their own fake online clout. So who is this guy? I had not heard of him before and he is named in the "Top cast" category for this movie, alongside Indian actor Ranbir Kapoor. According to his IMDb page, he has acting credits in some big-budget productions. I am beginning to suspect that this could be a case of IMDb vandalism. IMDb allows anyone to add and edit pages. They don't allow you to see the edit history of a page though like Wikipedia and evidently, the edits are not reviewed effectively either.
I googled this guy. Wow, so Google has a knowledge panel on him. There are also links to his music on various music platforms. Okay, so probably he is pretending to be an actor on IMDb but according to his google search results, he is actually a legit musician? Skimming through the search results, I found biographies written about him on a few websites of doubtful credibility. Like this one on a website called issuewire.com. I looked at his YouTube and other social media profiles and he doesn't have a lot of followers or any music content on there. I shazamed a couple of his songs and they're just copies of existing random music mashed together with some audio editing tool like Audacity. Possibly to avoid getting copyright notices. Hmm. I think I am now beginning to get a clearer picture of what's going on here.
He set up a profile on a bunch of different music streaming platforms. Uploaded remixed mash-up of existing songs using some audio editing software. Published biographies and profiles about himself on sites that do not verify submissions. Set up an IMDb page with fake credits. All this to trick google into believing he is a person of eminence. [...] I went back to his IMDb and checked the cast details of some of the movies he is part of. And I found a few dozen profiles with the exact same modus operandi.
I googled this guy. Wow, so Google has a knowledge panel on him. There are also links to his music on various music platforms. Okay, so probably he is pretending to be an actor on IMDb but according to his google search results, he is actually a legit musician? Skimming through the search results, I found biographies written about him on a few websites of doubtful credibility. Like this one on a website called issuewire.com. I looked at his YouTube and other social media profiles and he doesn't have a lot of followers or any music content on there. I shazamed a couple of his songs and they're just copies of existing random music mashed together with some audio editing tool like Audacity. Possibly to avoid getting copyright notices. Hmm. I think I am now beginning to get a clearer picture of what's going on here.
He set up a profile on a bunch of different music streaming platforms. Uploaded remixed mash-up of existing songs using some audio editing software. Published biographies and profiles about himself on sites that do not verify submissions. Set up an IMDb page with fake credits. All this to trick google into believing he is a person of eminence. [...] I went back to his IMDb and checked the cast details of some of the movies he is part of. And I found a few dozen profiles with the exact same modus operandi.
...and? (Score:2)
So what? Is this really news worthy on slashdot?
Re:...and? (Score:4, Funny)
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Norman, correlate!
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On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
Re:...and? (Score:5, Funny)
On the Internet, nobody knows you're Ranbir Kapoor..
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There is a lot of stuff on IMDB -- plot summaries of movies or television episodes -- that is incorrect, or seems to have been written by a retarded monkey, or is just outright spam. I tried to edit a few of them but IMDB's editor is such complete and utter shit that it is nearly impossible to use.
Apparently I am not part of the right clique because on the rare occasion when I was able to make the edits that I wanted I just get a message that my edit is being reviewed by
Re: (Score:3)
Then, the movie industry caught wind of it and they've been bombing it with false information ever since.
Sadly, even the ratings are no longer reliable - and that means that its a complete waste of time.
Who'd have thought that journalistic integrity would be more than just an oxymoron?
Re: ...and? (Score:2)
Journalistic integrity is like air. You only notice it when it's no longer there.
This belongs on Slashdot, if only ... (Score:1)
... so Google's AI bot will see it and figure out it's being scammed.
This explains ... (Score:3)
Most things in the world only exist (Score:3)
Some of us remember IMDB stealing all our work (Score:5, Interesting)
Sod 'em - let 'em be vandalised to hell and back. Couldn't happen to a nicer company.
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and then suddenly this company appeared claiming all our work as its own.
IMDB is owned by Amazon. i wouldn't expect anything less from them.
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This was before Amazon bought IMDB.
Same thing happened to CDDB, too.
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India's a treasure trove of web trolls (Score:2)
There are roughly five million "web developers" in India. Based on my study of one, about 95% of them aren't developers at all - and they have a lot of downtime to sit there as part of that "team of 25 web developers" marketing ploy for naive PHBs around the world while 1 or 2 people do the actual work.
So what are those other 23-24 "devs" gonna do with their time? Scams [justice.gov]. href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsLJZyih3Ac">Lots https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/08/08/1914250/the-case-of-fake-imdb-credits# [nytimes.com]
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to let anyone edit.. (Score:2)
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to let anyone and everyone edit encyclopedias.
I've stopped trusting any and all crowd-sourced information repositories, with perhaps the exception of tvtropes.
Wikipedia, IMDB, etc seem all to be ran by people determined to re-write history.
I, for one, pine for the days when there were 3 or 4 encyclopedias, and they all took great pains to ensure a true unbiased presentation, and that the info provided was true to the best of their knowledge.
But on crowd-sourced platforms, anyone
I wondered... (Score:4, Insightful)
The other night I was adding a credit for myself for a film I actually worked on (and was credited for on screen) and I wondered what the vetting process was. Was there really a human somewhere looking at every submission? It seemed to indicate that the addition would be vetted somehow, and it appeared the the next day.
One popular (and legitimate) use is many cast extras and crew use it to add themselves when they appear in uncredited roles. And it will note it as (uncredited). This helps their portfolio when they would otherwise be invisible. It would be good to crack down on gaming the system but somehow still allow for minor actors or other crew to add their roles when they don't automatically appear. Vetting uncredited roles would be very difficult. You basically have to take their word for it.
Credit lists for major films appear to be submitted by the studios the day of release, and others seem to fill in the rest.
I too remember when IMDB was a student project, and you would download the database file and run it through a parser. Then it went permanently online. I actually designed a set of icons for IMDB back in the 90s on an Amiga. They used them until the next site revision a few years later.
Today IMDB on the professional end markets itself as an industry tool for actors, crew and filmmakers to pull up information in a centralized place. (not without some controversy - to avoid age discrimination female actors were unhappy about having their real age listed - they lost on first amendment grounds)
It's owner Amazon also targets consumer users to drive ads and sales. It's frankly amazing it's lasted this long as a stand-alone site. You have to dig a bit deeper in the UI but my favorite features are still the trivia, goofs and other informational features. As a cinema fan and occasional participant, it's a useful tool. Wikipedia seems to have film listings but I don't know how complete they are in comparison.
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These days IMDB mostly seems to be a platform for angry people to leave fake reviews on, presumably in the hope of influencing the direction of future movies. Fortunately, I don't think the industry actually cares what they think. In fact controversy is just another form of marketing.
And now his credibility is rising (Score:1)
Celebrate him and may his tribe increase (Score:3)
With the level of data being collected by the big companies, how can I hide from them? I used to despair.
Now, the answer is staring at our face. Where do you hide a tree? In a forest, of course! Let millions of people create millions of fake profiles, created by bots too. At some point all the information you can find on the net becomes useless, noise overwhelms the signal, info about me being the signal.
Great turn of events, I should say.
It's just the continued decline of information. (Score:2)
No surprise. Anything that you would like to classify as "truth", "fact", and "history" is dissolving before our eyes. It's universal. Information of any kind will no longer be trustworthy. Welcome to the inevitable future - guaranteed as soon as you grant everybody a megaphone.
"Dystopia" doesn't even begin to describe it.
So ...? (Score:2)
Somebody went overboard with their curriculum vitae?
How do they benefit? (Score:2)
Apart from bragging rights, how do they benefit? Is it just a game?
Fantastic! (Score:1)
All to get the blue checkmark (Score:1)