7 ms·

Who’s running the Vincere bot network on Instagram?

134 points by mbellotti 5y ago

smoldesu 5y ago
Looks like GoDaddy is providing the domain name for a lot of these fronts. Someone could cause an awful lot of ruckus by emailing abuse@godaddy.com with a list of the offending sites (Urban Ice, Hype Authority and Brute Impact are still online: you can find the links in the article). Just food for thought.
- pc86 5y ago
  What exactly is the abuse in this case?
- rPlayer6554 5y ago
  If overpriced merch were abuse, kanyewest(dot)com and supremesclothingonline(dot)com would have been taken down a long time ago....
  - foolmeonce 5y ago
    Do those sites have fraudulent affiliate marketing programs? It sounds to me like they are over edges MLM companies are careful not to cross. I.e. they probably don't know if they could legally pay the "influencer" they are chatting with an affiliate fee.
  - dna_polymerase 5y ago
    Kanye and Supreme sell out on a weekly basis. The products are afterwards flipped for significant markup. If anything their products are underpriced.
    - PedroBatista 5y ago
      If only bought to flip, it must be valuable just as Bernie Madoff’s fine product.
cloudking 5y ago
"Thousands of fake Instagram accounts are powering scams targeting influencers. The scams are run by different people, but are the bots?" I'm trying to figure out what part of this story is the scam. Shopify's business model encourages people to build dropshipping sites, there are literally hundreds of thousands of them. They promote plugins like Oberlo[1] that let you import products directly from AliExpress into your store to markup and dropship. They have blog posts[2] that teach you how to dropship. I feel like the author is implying that dropshipping is a scam, well if you are foolish enough to pay markup on items that you could order yourself directly from AliExpress that's your own problem. I think the bot issue is highlighting that these "scammers" have figured out a way to automate driving sales through influencer marketing. However, any dropshipper could do the same thing manually, and some likely are. Influencer marketing is basically sending influencers your products to promote, in this case they are asking them to purchase, but they are still getting real products. Is that a scam? [1] https://www.shopify.com/oberlo https://www.shopify.com/oberlo [2] https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-start-dropshipping https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-start-dropshipping
- teej 5y ago
  > if you are foolish enough to pay markup on items that you could order yourself directly from AliExpress that's your own problem How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress?
  - gandalfian 5y ago
    >How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress? Google Lens/image Search on an image or screenshot is often pretty good for this. Whether that's reasonable for the average consumer I don't know.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    >How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress? I think that's probably a good question most of the time. On this site (vincerewears.com), though, it's pretty obvious. First, the t-shirt is priced at $99, with no notion of brand or why you might pay $100 for a t-shirt. Next, it has this warning on the product page: "CLOTHING ARE ASIAN SIZE. KINDLY CHOOSE 1-2 SIZE BIGGER FROM YOUR US MEASUREMENT." And this on shipping policy: "In regards to shipping, we are still offering free worldwide shipping to nearly all countries, however there will be delays. Our usual delivery time is 15-40 business days, however please allow up to 60 business days for delivery." So, 60 business days is, ugh 12 weeks? 3 months? Heh.
lemedro 5y ago
https://archive.is/RQ6A0 https://archive.is/RQ6A0
tyingq 5y ago
Poked around on vincerewears.com to see what was there. There's a widget that pops up periodically that says "Someone in {city}, {country} purchased {product}". It looked a bit fishy, so I poked around the source code. Sure enough, the faked purchases are in the source code. They don't even bother to load them via XHR to at least give some semblance of legitimacy. Lol. s = [{ "sn_city": "Pompano Beach", "sn_country": "United States", "sn_discount": null, "sn_first_name": "Erick", "sn_handle": "natu-t-shirt", "sn_img": "https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0283\/5824\/6448\/products\/product-image-1183227221.jpg?v=1600916205", ... From: https://sales-notification-cdn.makeprosimp.com/v1/published/21209/a04b44b9edb142a4b9fa39692cb95d43/13615/app.js?v=1&shop=vincerestreetwear.myshopify.com https://sales-notification-cdn.makeprosimp.com/v1/published/...
- Aulig 5y ago
  Such a scummy thing to do - sadly effective and all too common. Also illegal depending on your legislation.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    I think many hotel booking sites do this too, "A user just booked a room!", to entice you to hurry up and close the deal on that "special rate?".
    - dna_polymerase 5y ago
      "Booked 2 times for your dates in the last 12 hours" "1 other person looked for your dates in the last 10 minutes" Booking.com is the worst.
- oars 5y ago
  I'm relatively new to web development but how were you able to get a link to this JavaScript code? I thought this logic was usually done in the backend and can't be viewed from the front? E.g. right click > view source in Chrome only shows HTML and some frontend JS doesn't it?
joeblow21 5y ago
Most influencers buy bot followers to scam advertisers so what goes around comes around I guess
pluc 5y ago
"Marketing"
blunte 5y ago
But also, who are the people buying a sloppy looking tshirt with bad lettering for $99?
- RNCTX 5y ago
  Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find the correct answer. “Anyone who is trying to hawk 99 dollar t-shirts is a scammer by definition.”
  - Fuzzwah 5y ago
    How much is the maximum you'd spend on a t-shirt?
- maest 5y ago
  At least for some, the answer is "to show they can/conspicuous consumption"
  - blunte 5y ago
    Sure, maybe if it has some pointlessly expensive brand label… but what about a generic looking, obvious low quality item such as in TFA? Is this just some kind of money laundering engagement?
jonnydubowsky 5y ago
The author's Github for this article is pretty cool: https://github.com/mbellotti/instagram_ambassador_scams https://github.com/mbellotti/instagram_ambassador_scams
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Awful truth behind the valuation of SaaS payments companies: pure scammers
maest 5y ago
On fireforx, at least, there is a 1 second lag between pressing down on medium and the page scrolling down, probably because of bad js. Deactivating js paywalls you, though, so no way around it.
- eythian 5y ago
  I didn't notice an issue on firefox, though I have this installed which maybe helped. https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited-read-for-free/ https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited...
vegardx 5y ago
You have a similar thing happening with Enchroma-glasses for colorblind. Tons of often somewhat professionally made, heartwarming videos about friends or students buying "expensive glasses" (not that expensive) to someone so they "finally can see colors" (usually without actually saying it directly). And they always go viral with tons of suspiciously similar comments flooding them. All comments about how they actually work, and why they don't work as portrayed are buried by very aggressive comments.

134 points by mbellotti 5y ago

Looks like GoDaddy is providing the domain name for a lot of these fronts. Someone could cause an awful lot of ruckus by emailing abuse@godaddy.com with a list of the offending sites (Urban Ice, Hype Authority and Brute Impact are still online: you can find the links in the article). Just food for thought.

pc86 5y ago
What exactly is the abuse in this case?
rPlayer6554 5y ago
If overpriced merch were abuse, kanyewest(dot)com and supremesclothingonline(dot)com would have been taken down a long time ago....
- foolmeonce 5y ago
  Do those sites have fraudulent affiliate marketing programs? It sounds to me like they are over edges MLM companies are careful not to cross. I.e. they probably don't know if they could legally pay the "influencer" they are chatting with an affiliate fee.
- dna_polymerase 5y ago
  Kanye and Supreme sell out on a weekly basis. The products are afterwards flipped for significant markup. If anything their products are underpriced.
  - PedroBatista 5y ago
    If only bought to flip, it must be valuable just as Bernie Madoff’s fine product.

cloudking 5y ago

"Thousands of fake Instagram accounts are powering scams targeting influencers. The scams are run by different people, but are the bots?" I'm trying to figure out what part of this story is the scam. Shopify's business model encourages people to build dropshipping sites, there are literally hundreds of thousands of them. They promote plugins like Oberlo[1] that let you import products directly from AliExpress into your store to markup and dropship. They have blog posts[2] that teach you how to dropship. I feel like the author is implying that dropshipping is a scam, well if you are foolish enough to pay markup on items that you could order yourself directly from AliExpress that's your own problem. I think the bot issue is highlighting that these "scammers" have figured out a way to automate driving sales through influencer marketing. However, any dropshipper could do the same thing manually, and some likely are. Influencer marketing is basically sending influencers your products to promote, in this case they are asking them to purchase, but they are still getting real products. Is that a scam? [1] https://www.shopify.com/oberlo https://www.shopify.com/oberlo [2] https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-start-dropshipping https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-start-dropshipping

teej 5y ago
> if you are foolish enough to pay markup on items that you could order yourself directly from AliExpress that's your own problem How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress?
- gandalfian 5y ago
  >How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress? Google Lens/image Search on an image or screenshot is often pretty good for this. Whether that's reasonable for the average consumer I don't know.
- tyingq 5y ago
  >How do you expect the average consumer to automatically know if a product they’re looking at is being resold from AliExpress? I think that's probably a good question most of the time. On this site (vincerewears.com), though, it's pretty obvious. First, the t-shirt is priced at $99, with no notion of brand or why you might pay $100 for a t-shirt. Next, it has this warning on the product page: "CLOTHING ARE ASIAN SIZE. KINDLY CHOOSE 1-2 SIZE BIGGER FROM YOUR US MEASUREMENT." And this on shipping policy: "In regards to shipping, we are still offering free worldwide shipping to nearly all countries, however there will be delays. Our usual delivery time is 15-40 business days, however please allow up to 60 business days for delivery." So, 60 business days is, ugh 12 weeks? 3 months? Heh.

lemedro 5y ago

https://archive.is/RQ6A0 https://archive.is/RQ6A0

tyingq 5y ago

Poked around on vincerewears.com to see what was there. There's a widget that pops up periodically that says "Someone in {city}, {country} purchased {product}". It looked a bit fishy, so I poked around the source code. Sure enough, the faked purchases are in the source code. They don't even bother to load them via XHR to at least give some semblance of legitimacy. Lol. s = [{ "sn_city": "Pompano Beach", "sn_country": "United States", "sn_discount": null, "sn_first_name": "Erick", "sn_handle": "natu-t-shirt", "sn_img": "https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0283\/5824\/6448\/products\/product-image-1183227221.jpg?v=1600916205", ... From: https://sales-notification-cdn.makeprosimp.com/v1/published/21209/a04b44b9edb142a4b9fa39692cb95d43/13615/app.js?v=1&shop=vincerestreetwear.myshopify.com https://sales-notification-cdn.makeprosimp.com/v1/published/...

Aulig 5y ago
Such a scummy thing to do - sadly effective and all too common. Also illegal depending on your legislation.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  I think many hotel booking sites do this too, "A user just booked a room!", to entice you to hurry up and close the deal on that "special rate?".
  - dna_polymerase 5y ago
    "Booked 2 times for your dates in the last 12 hours" "1 other person looked for your dates in the last 10 minutes" Booking.com is the worst.
oars 5y ago
I'm relatively new to web development but how were you able to get a link to this JavaScript code? I thought this logic was usually done in the backend and can't be viewed from the front? E.g. right click > view source in Chrome only shows HTML and some frontend JS doesn't it?

joeblow21 5y ago

Most influencers buy bot followers to scam advertisers so what goes around comes around I guess

pluc 5y ago

"Marketing"

blunte 5y ago

But also, who are the people buying a sloppy looking tshirt with bad lettering for $99?

RNCTX 5y ago
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find the correct answer. “Anyone who is trying to hawk 99 dollar t-shirts is a scammer by definition.”
- Fuzzwah 5y ago
  How much is the maximum you'd spend on a t-shirt?
maest 5y ago
At least for some, the answer is "to show they can/conspicuous consumption"
- blunte 5y ago
  Sure, maybe if it has some pointlessly expensive brand label… but what about a generic looking, obvious low quality item such as in TFA? Is this just some kind of money laundering engagement?

jonnydubowsky 5y ago

The author's Github for this article is pretty cool: https://github.com/mbellotti/instagram_ambassador_scams https://github.com/mbellotti/instagram_ambassador_scams

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Awful truth behind the valuation of SaaS payments companies: pure scammers

maest 5y ago

On fireforx, at least, there is a 1 second lag between pressing down on medium and the page scrolling down, probably because of bad js. Deactivating js paywalls you, though, so no way around it.

eythian 5y ago
I didn't notice an issue on firefox, though I have this installed which maybe helped. https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited-read-for-free/ https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited...

vegardx 5y ago

You have a similar thing happening with Enchroma-glasses for colorblind. Tons of often somewhat professionally made, heartwarming videos about friends or students buying "expensive glasses" (not that expensive) to someone so they "finally can see colors" (usually without actually saying it directly). And they always go viral with tons of suspiciously similar comments flooding them. All comments about how they actually work, and why they don't work as portrayed are buried by very aggressive comments.