Dive into the inside story of Moments voting and those money-burning games you don’t know about

Nowadays, the popularity of WeChat is self-evident, and it can be applied to different places of all ages. Whether you are working, living, or communicating or socializing, WeChat is the best choice. It can be said that WeChat has slowly integrated into our lives. In recent years, there have been countless voting activities on WeChat. You must have encountered a friend who you haven’t chatted with for a long time suddenly sent you a message and asked you to help vote. Now that we have mentioned this, today we will focus on voting in the circle of friends to have an in-depth understanding.

Why has voting in Moments turned into a money-burning game?

There are a large number of voting links in WeChat Moments, such as "XX Star Selection", "Best XX", etc., some of which involve voting by minors. In order to canvass votes for their children, some families mobilized all their connections and forwarded the voting link page to N groups in order to get clicks. Some families find other shortcuts and use operations such as swiping tickets from companies and buying tickets to keep their children's votes high.

Investigation by the Crime Unit No. 37 found that some voting links, in addition to simple "voting", also have a "gift" function. Different gifts have corresponding votes. Anyone can spend Money is spent to buy gifts for the corresponding "candidates." The more money you spend, the better the gifts you buy and the more votes you get. The trend of comparison has also arisen, and some parents even spent thousands of dollars to buy tickets. In the end, the so-called voting turned into a "money-burning game." The money parents spend buying tickets is generally split between the web developer and the organizer.

Voting in Moments has begun to turn into a "business" - there are vote-brushing companies that specialize in "canvassing votes", and many WeChat voting-brushing apps have also emerged.

In a canvassing APP, the fare is clearly marked according to the number of votes cast. Screenshot of the APP page

You can send gifts and buy votes on the voting page

On September 11, Zhang Xian from Hubei forwarded a vote for the children's art "Popular Star" to his family group Link. This is a voting initiated by a children's art education institution. The top four will receive gifts such as tablet computers, electric hot pots, children's phone watches, and yogurt machines. More than 40 children signed up for the selection with their paintings, and Zhang Xian's 9-year-old daughter was one of them.

"Please all your relatives vote for No. XX." Zhang Xian finished his speech in the group and sent several "please" emoticons in succession.

According to Zhang Xian, her daughter is good at drawing, and this is the first time she has participated in a similar voting. As parents, she hopes that her children will have a good ranking, which can be regarded as an encouragement to their children.

The voting lasts for 7 days. Everyone can vote every day, but they can only vote once for the same contestant. In order to canvass votes for his daughter, Zhang Xian not only mobilized the whole family, but also forwarded the voting link in more than 10 groups.

"Those days were like a shot of chicken blood." Zhang Xian said that the first thing he did when he picked up his mobile phone every morning was to vote, and he would also remind others that "it's a new day to vote again."

In the view of Xu Wei, who is in his 60s, voting for his grandniece has become "a major event involving the whole family."

After voting every day, family members will report "voted" and the latest vote count to the group. Some people will also send screenshots of other group voting to the group.

Xu Wei, who has retired for many years, usually contacts more than 10 groups, including classmates, colleagues, sisters, retirees, etc., without exception, these groups all have Xu Wei as his grandniece. A "support group" to canvass votes.

In the past few days, her speeches in the family crowd are inseparable from voting.

"I just came back at noon, so I stopped eating and voted." "My classmates woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning and remembered to vote. I was very touched." "I have been overwhelmed these days. I can't relax until the voting is over." "When the ones behind catch up, I'll find a way to send a few more groups."

In order to thank her classmates and friends for their help, she also sent multiple red envelopes in various groups. "The amount is not large, but it is just a small amount."

Driven by the enthusiasm of the family, Zhang Xian’s daughter’s votes once entered the top three. After that, the gap between the number of votes and the previous ones, especially the first place, became wider and wider.

On the 4th day of voting, a family member discovered that the voting page has a gift-sending function. Anyone can spend money to buy a gift for the designated person, and the gift can be exchanged for the corresponding number of votes according to the value.

Zhang Xian said that spending 3 yuan to give "lollipops" can increase the number of votes by 15. There are also gifts of 10 yuan, 50 yuan, 100 yuan and 300 yuan, of which 100 yuan and 300 yuan can increase the number of votes. To buy "supercar" and "luxury cruise ship", the corresponding number of votes is 500 and 1,500.

Family members also began to send "lollipops" to increase the number of votes, but the increase was far less than that of the top few.

After the voting ended, the first place received more than 15,000 votes, and the second place received more than 6,000 votes. Click on the voting page of the first contestant. Under the "Gift List" are a "supercar" worth 100 yuan and a "luxury cruise ship" worth 300 yuan.

"My family has tried their best. This is a waste of money." Zhang Xian said.

In the "Popular Star" voting, gifts such as cruise ships and sports cars correspond to different votes. Screenshot of the mobile page

Third-party production company charges for gift redemption

The "burning money to buy votes" feature that Zhang Xian encountered was reflected in many votes.

On the "Looking for Good Taste of Ruzhou" voting page started on October 6 by a public account, after voting for the candidate gourmet store, the page will also prompt "Dear, give me another diamond."

"Giving diamonds" means spending money to buy diamonds. 1 yuan is rewarded for 1 diamond. 1 diamond is equal to 3 votes. The recharge amount of the system is 1 diamond, 5 diamonds, 10 diamonds, 50 diamonds, and 100 diamonds. and "custom". Spend 100 yuan and get 100 diamonds, which is equivalent to 300 votes.

The reporter also found that some voting involving minors initiated by kindergartens, primary and secondary schools or education and training institutions also have a vote-buying function.

In addition to the children's art "Popular Star" selection mentioned above, the reporter recently saw in the voting link of a dance school "Dancing Star" that the number of first-place votes was 8,168. Received 44 gifts, ***1515 points, one point is equivalent to one yuan. According to the gifts, 288 points are 1500 votes, 100 points are 500 votes, 50 points are 240 votes, 30 points are 140 votes, 10 points are 45 votes, and 1 point 19 votes are given. Calculating the price, 7934 of the votes were offset by gifts, which means that only more than 200 votes were actually cast.

In fact, most of these voting pages with the function of buying gifts and buying votes are developed by third-party companies.

A staff member of a technology company in Harbin told reporters that making the voting page is completely free, and the company provides prizes for voting, including tablets, children's watches, electronic keyboards, yogurt machines, etc. However, the cost of the gift belongs to the company.

In the voting page produced by the company, there is a "gift sending" function. Gifts include lollipops, sports cars, cruise ships, etc., with prices ranging from 1 yuan to 100 yuan, which can be used to redeem 1 to 300 tickets. When spending money to buy gifts, the debit unit of WeChat Pay is the company.

Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit saw on the link of the "Rising Star" voting event produced by the company for an educational institution that as of October 4, there were two days left until the event ended, and the number of participants was 46 people, 10,946 visits, and 9,437 cumulative votes. The second-place player received 1,781 votes, 726 of which were purchased with gifts.

In the gift setting, you can buy 3 tickets for 1 yuan, 15 tickets for 5 yuan, 30 tickets for 10 yuan, 90 tickets for 30 yuan, 150 tickets for 50 yuan, and 300 tickets for 100 yuan.

It states in its prize description, "All gifts are given on a voluntary basis and no reason will be accepted for return after the gift is successful."

In the statement of the company's personnel, they mainly undertake kindergartens and education training Voting services initiated by institutions, etc.

An educational institution claimed to have been deceived repeatedly after cooperating with the company. Relevant personnel said that the company did not require votes at the beginning, but after the event started, it found that the number of votes increased slowly, and changed its tune and required at least 4,000 to 5,000 votes for the first place, and the prize would only be provided if the total number of votes reached 20,000.

"This requires constantly urging others to forward clicks, which can easily cause resentment. In addition, sending gifts will seriously affect the credibility of our organization." The person said, if the customer who finally gets the prize finds that the value of the prize is not worth it at all. The cost of paying for gifts will be considered as our organization using votes to make money.

In the "Looking for Ruzhou Good Taste" voting, "giving diamonds" means spending money to buy diamonds, and 1 yuan will be rewarded with 1 diamond, and 1 diamond is equal to 3 votes. Screenshot of the mobile phone page

The vote-swiping company claims that 8,000 yuan guarantees first place

In addition to using gifts to buy votes on the voting page, many people also choose to find offline vote-swiping teams to buy votes. Behind various voting in Moments, industrialization has begun to take shape, and voting has become a "business."

A cultural media company in Shenzhen promotes "professional voting, service first" on its website.

The "Company Profile" on the web page states that the company has been committed to the research of voting systems since 2006, using real independent IPs to conduct formal voting according to the requirements of the event website. The company has tens of thousands of voting members across the country and has strong technology that can quickly make your vote count exceed that of other competitors. In recent years, we have received many voting activities, and the customer satisfaction rate is 100%.

On October 7, Manager Zhang, the person in charge of the company, said that they use manual voting. You can first reach the ideal ranking, pay a 30% deposit, and then pay the full amount after the entire voting activity is over. If results are not achieved, a full refund will be given.

Manager Zhang said that if it is just a voting activity for kindergartens or small companies, there is no need to contact his company because the company's quotation is higher, but some people have spent more than 100,000 yuan to swipe votes. If it is a voting event involving the government or related institutions, you can contact them to guarantee your ranking for voting.

Manager Zhang did not shy away from saying that he would also take the initiative to call some candidates to promote the vote-brushing business.

Beijing citizen Li Lin participated in a character selection event last year. As soon as the voting link came out, he received a message from Manager Zhang’s company, saying, “We can help you vote here. Ranking service included, members vote manually, the first place is worth 8,000 yuan, the top three are worth 6,000 yuan, the top five are worth 4,000 yuan, and the top ten are worth 2,000 yuan to ensure ranking."

In this regard, Manager Zhang said that the company has specialized personnel to pay attention to some more important voting activities, and then find the contact information of some players and send text messages to conduct business.

Under normal circumstances, after these vote-brushing companies obtain the vote-brushing business, they will look for pitchers, known as "professional voters," to complete the vote-brushing task.

"Bote directly to No. 12, only successful pictures will be accepted, wrong pictures will not be accepted." "Vote will be stopped after 17,000, over-votes will not be collected, one vote is 0.15 yuan (yuan)"... In a crowd of more than 400 people In the WeChat voting group, similar messages flood the screen at a frequency of 5 to 20 per hour throughout the day.

There are pitchers and people who issue tasks in the group. Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit met Gao Jun, a pitcher in the QQ group. He said that he could earn several thousand to tens of thousands per month as a pitcher, and told Agent No. 37 of the Crime Unit to pay 200 yuan to join the membership. Agents can be recruited into the group of professional pitchers and taught how to use the voting APP.

Gao Jun said that professional pitchers have WeChat accounts ranging from 15 to hundreds. Whenever tasks such as voting, liking, following, downloading and registering are posted in the group, they use multiple software to open and control multiple WeChat IDs to vote.

When completing a task, take screenshots as required, and after the task is completed, send the screenshot privately to the person who posted the task, and you will be rewarded accordingly.

Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit noticed that the voting tasks include direct voting, follow-up voting, regional voting, and mobile phone verification voting. Click the voting link and jump to the voting page. You can click to vote immediately to vote directly. Only those who follow the corresponding WeChat public account can vote are follow votes. Regional voting has restrictions on the pitcher's WeChat IP address. Only those who log in to the WeChat ID of the IP in a designated area can vote.

Mobile phone verification voting requires entering a mobile phone number. Some links also require the verification code obtained after entering the mobile phone number before voting. Some votes also require downloading a specific APP and verifying login via mobile phone.

A pitcher gives "Insider Inside the Industry." Screenshot of WeChat page

Clearly marked price The "business" of vote-swiping APPs

Searching for vote-swiping apps online will reveal many specialized WeChat voting APPs.

Gao Jun recommended Agent No. 37 of the Crime Unit to use an APP called "Lai Qian Dao". This APP cannot be searched in the mobile application. You have to scan the QR code given by Gao Jun to download it. When entering the APP homepage, you must enter the recommendation code he gave you, and the page will only be displayed once.

The largest icon on the homepage of "Lai Qian Dao" says "Start Earning". Click it to enter the task page, and you can start doing tasks to earn ingots. On the page, tasks priced at 8 or 13 Yuanbao almost fill the screen, and occasionally one or two tasks with 22 Yuanbao and 14 Yuanbao can be seen.

There is a "Tutorial" icon under "Start Earning". After clicking it, you will find that it introduces the use of the "Lai Qian Dao" APP in four steps: setting up WeChat, how to do tasks, how to withdraw cash, and how to earn commissions. method.

The tutorial explains that each registered user has his or her own referral code. Whoever the recommendation code filled in when logging into the APP for the first time belongs to, that user will automatically become his "subordinate". By binding to the APP WeChat official account, 105 Yuanbao can be withdrawn to RMB 1 yuan. Among them, 5 yuanbao is used as a commission and belongs to the "superior" of the person who withdraws the money. There were two notifications floating back and forth on the homepage of the APP, one of which read "Recommend a new user, and the recommender will be rewarded with 200 Yuanbao after the first withdrawal!!!"

But Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit did the task for an hour. I only got 24 Yuanbao and I can't withdraw it.

Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit downloaded another voting APP "Xinwei Voting Platform". Its setting is relatively simple. There are only three icons on the homepage that can be clicked to jump to the correct page: "WeChat Activities", "Weibo Activities" and "Customer Service". The pages of WeChat activities and Weibo activities are the same. Users are required to fill in a form, which includes voting website, voting contestants, other requirements, quantity selection and contact information.

Compared with the first two vote-swiping APPs, the "micro-automatic voting machine" operates a wider range of businesses. Click "Place Voting Order" and the voting business interface will appear on the page. The left side is divided into 7 items: voting, public account fans, public account scan code, personal friends, reply fans, collection of likes, forwarding in Moments, and forwarding in Moments (optional region). Click on any item and the corresponding price will appear on the right.

For example, Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit clicks "Vote Canvassing", and "500 votes (machine voting) = 55 yuan" and "5000 sprint votes (voting starts within 10 minutes) = 900" appear in the right column Yuan" and other options. Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit clicked "Fans of Public Accounts", and an option similar to "20 fans of public accounts = 7 yuan" appeared in the right column.

In these three apps, the development company cannot be found.

The task page of a voting APP. Screenshot of the mobile page

A full-time pitcher can earn seven to eight thousand a month

Throughout the voting process, people who spend money to buy votes do not know whose pocket their money will end up in.

However, various parties such as pitchers, page creators, event organizers, etc. can profit from it.

Take pitchers as an example. The simplicity and complexity of voting are different, and the prices are also different. According to Gao Jun, the general price of direct voting and follow-up votes is about 0.13-0.15 yuan per vote. Due to restrictions on regional votes, the base of the voting population is relatively small, and the price of one vote fluctuates around 0.25 yuan. Tasks that require mobile phone number registration cost at least 0.5 yuan to 0.8 yuan per ticket, and tasks that require downloading an APP start at 1.5 yuan per ticket.

The reporter conducted several tasks in the group. One of them was a voting event for the top ten lobby managers of a bank in Harbin. The event was held from September 1st to September 30th, and there were 47 candidates. After voting, the reporter found that as of 12:00 on September 30, the page had accumulated 236,424 votes, of which the highest vote-getter had 30,315 votes and the lowest vote-getter had 75 votes. The former was more than 400 times the latter. Among the 47 candidates, 11 received less than 1,000 votes, 23 received 1,000-5,000 votes, 5 received 5,000-10,000 votes, and 8 received more than 10,000 votes.

In another large-scale talent show for child actors, reporters participated in manual vote-brushing and the first place was selected with 23,747 votes, the second place was 23,247 votes, the third place was 22,827 votes, and the fourth place candidate was selected with 23,747 votes. The number of votes is 5133. The first place will receive a brand new iPad as a material reward. Before the event ended, at 12:02 when agents participated in the vote brushing, the number of votes for the candidate was 14,200. An hour and a half later, the agent opened the voting page again and found that the contestant's number of votes had become 17,459, an increase of 3,259 votes.

Gao Jun told Detective No. 37 of the Crime Unit that he could only make money by accepting activity orders or placing tickets on his behalf. After finding the "voter owner", he could negotiate the price with him and then set the price for the voters' votes. Earn the difference. The first time Gao Jun found a "ticket owner" to take over a task was a week after he joined the industry. "One day I did 400 votes for 120 meters and made 60 yuan."

Gao Jun mainly makes money by taking on tasks. There is no fixed number for accepting tasks, so his monthly salary is not stable. "Normally it's a few thousand yuan, four to five thousand, seven to eight thousand." Gao Jun remembers that the most he earned in a month was nearly 20,000 yuan, and this was thanks to the fact that he took on a task with more than 100,000 votes. According to him, some full-time pitchers can earn seven to eight thousand a month, and part-time pitchers can earn three to five hundred a month.

In addition to pitchers, a company that produces voting pages stated that the cost of producing a voting page is 1,000 yuan. Voters’ income from gifts of less than 10,000 yuan belongs to the company, and voters’ income from gifts above 10,000 yuan is owned by the company. and kindergarten equally. The number of votes of the contestants can be changed in the background.

A professional pitcher revealed that his monthly income can reach nearly 20,000 yuan at most. Screenshot of QQ page

Random voting can easily reveal personal information

According to media reports, in 2016, a police officer from the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Liaoning Provincial Public Security Department said that businessmen or criminals often use high-value prizes as bait. Create some competitions out of thin air and make money from them.

First of all, voters are required to follow the official account or bind their mobile phone to vote, thereby increasing the influence of their official account or obtaining the voter's personal information. Secondly, applicants are required to fill in real information in order to mail prizes. In essence, this method is used to obtain various information about the contestants and then sell it. Because scammers can use the child's identity, photos or school information to defraud parents by creating scams such as serious illness or kidnapping, this type of information is more expensive. Third, for those who cheat on tickets, they encourage contestants to invest on the grounds that they can cheat on tickets. In fact, the funds for cheating on tickets have long exceeded the value of those first prizes.

The police officer said that canvassing itself does not constitute an illegal act, and our country’s laws do not clearly stipulate the behavior of vote brushing on the Internet. However, if awards or monetary interests are involved, obtaining a higher ranking through malicious vote brushing may be suspected of fraud. .

Therefore, many competition organizers publish through official accounts or website links. Even if there are complaints from the public, the police can only block the official accounts or website links, and their true identities and companies will not be announced to the public at all. Change the official account and Contest names can continue to deceive.

In fact, as early as the beginning of this year, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Regulating Online Voting Activities for Campus Selection". The notice mentioned that online platform canvassing and voting activities such as WeChat Moments were A few places and universities have shown a trend of overflowing, which to a certain extent distracts teachers and students' work and study energy, affects the normal education and teaching order of schools, and is not conducive to the development of good school spirit and study style.

The notice requires an in-depth study of the applicable content and scope of online voting activities for campus selection and selection, adhere to the correct value orientation, adhere to the principle of "not holding unless necessary", and determine whether the relevant activities have legal basis and whether they are legal. Standards that are conducive to the development of school undertakings and the healthy growth of students. At the same time, it is necessary to study and evaluate the value and impact of online voting on campus selection and selection, and adhere to the principle of "not only voting, but only facts."

Zong Chunshan, director of the Beijing Juvenile Legal and Psychological Counseling Service Center, believes that the so-called popular voting has changed. It no longer matters whether someone is excellent or not, but who has the most connections is important.

Zong Chunshan said that he does not encourage the evaluation of children. WeChat voting itself is meaningless and is extremely unhealthy for children. However, the frequent gift-based voting is now completely commercialized and there is no fairness at all. Behind this are the utilitarianism and vanity of adult society, and children will learn from comparison, speculation, cheating, and other improper means in adult society. Even if you get first place, the happiness is short-lived. You will be skeptical about future efforts. Not only is it not helpful for children to develop their specialties and abilities, but it will have a negative effect.