Fake IMDB credits

Reminds of this &quot;Man fools security to backstage at a Peking Duk gig by changing the band&#x27;s Wikipedia page to describe himself as a family member&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-3345074&#x2F;Man-fools-security-letting-stage-Peking-Duk-gig-editing-band-s-Wikipedia-page-make-look-like-family-mamber.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-3345074&#x2F;Man-fools-s...</a>

There&#x27;s a reason wikipedia classifies IMDB as an unreliable source. Apparently Michael Madsen has a real problem with people adding him to films in production in an effort to get financing.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cinemablend.com&#x2F;new&#x2F;Why-Michael-Madsen-Hates-IMDB-70936.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cinemablend.com&#x2F;new&#x2F;Why-Michael-Madsen-Hates-IMD...</a>

&quot;Besides being an Actor, he tried his luck in acting and singing.&quot;<p>I thought I was cross-eyed for a second, but it really says exactly that. [0]<p>[0] reupload as substack URLS are daunting to say the least: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jasper.monster&#x2F;sharex&#x2F;Ygg0w8VuhP.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jasper.monster&#x2F;sharex&#x2F;Ygg0w8VuhP.jpg</a>

IMDB created a Top Rated Indian Movies section to mitigate spam [1]. However some obscure Indian movies make it every now and then into the regular Top 250 list.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;india&#x2F;top-rated-indian-movies&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;india&#x2F;top-rated-indian-movies&#x2F;</a>

I remember imdb being meticulous in its record keeping ~15 years ago&#x2F;before it got bought by Amazon (though its quality held up for at least a few years after). I remember looking up details for kinda obscure movies and talent, and my mind being blown when info for either was listed. Now, it takes years to see the filmography of a given actor from a streaming show.

&gt; the edits are not reviewed effectively either<p>But when I tried to fix typo in the cast list of a movie, my submission was rejected:<p>&gt; <i>Your contribution has been declined. We have been unable to verify your contribution. Unfortunately we were unable to accept your submission as we were unable to verify the information provided.</i>

I remember the imdb-ratings on movies from India were also absurdly high, I brushed it off as a cultural thing back then; but unfortunately [0] the rigging seems to be norm on imdb across the board (not limited to India).<p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiatoday.in&#x2F;movies&#x2F;bollywood&#x2F;story&#x2F;the-kashmir-files-imdb-rating-changed-from-9-9-to-8-3-after-unusual-activity-vivek-agnihotri-calls-it-unethical-1925398-2022-03-15" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiatoday.in&#x2F;movies&#x2F;bollywood&#x2F;story&#x2F;the-kashmir...</a>

A bit of a tangent but the unemployment crisis in India has reached unprecedented levels. Expect a lot more of &quot;hustle&quot; coming from young enterprising Indians who have no other avenues to earn.

Happens everyday all day in BigCo land!<p>You think those execs really did all those things they said they did?

I wonder how many people have successfully bootstrapped acting gigs this way. Perhaps not the guy in the example, as his various poorly written bios expose him. But surely there are people that are better at this game.

Online fraud is rampant across major platforms. Companies lack the resources and immediate financial incentives to combat it. Google Maps is another good example. I live in Vietnam and businesses stealing another business&#x27; unclaimed listings is common practice, or claiming the listing for a public landmark and using it to advertise their tour company for example. Then there&#x27;s fake reviews... These platforms simply can&#x27;t combat fraud at scale, undermining trust.

The fake musician thing mentioned in the article is also used to get verified accounts in Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well.

Wait. You&#x27;re saying I can make myself an actor in a major motion picture? Hold my beer.

I looked my own name up on IMDB and found that I had starred in a soft-core gay porn movie. I was intrigued, but somewhat disappointed that I didn&#x27;t remember any of it. Also disappointed that it seems to have been the start and end of my illustrious film career.

I stopped IMDBing long ago and switched to Metacritic, which is what I currently trust for anything entertainment-related.

Anyone know how to replicate this to get a knowledge panel for startup-building clout? Asking for a friend

&gt; In a world where your online clout is everything…<p>It’s a long arc, but I think we are bending away from this.<p>It’s harder than ever to convincingly be a competitive content creator.<p>Going from largely Insta photos -&gt; tiktok forced non-linear video editing &#x2F; performance on fast trend cycles.

I find it interesting that nowhere in the article did the author write the name of the actor &#x2F; musician he&#x27;s referring to, it&#x27;s only highlighted in pictures. Maybe trying not to add to this guy&#x27;s SEO?

Maybe part of a scam, like Geo Slam who pretends to be a top notch Hollywood producer which lots of connections to get money (and vacations, and...)<p>Strg+f, german investigative journalists, made a nice story about that case. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8KV8i2Q1TXU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8KV8i2Q1TXU</a> (german, should have english subtiltes)

BTW since India makes a great many of medications and supplements for the USA and the world, and those factories are never inspected or products tested, do you think this &quot;cheating&quot; &#x2F; &quot;hacking&quot; attitude doesn&#x27;t spill over into each and every industry?<p>Webpage is one thing, how about things you consume?

The comments at the end of the article are funny<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peabee.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;16-the-case-of-fake-imdb-credits&#x2F;comment&#x2F;8238009" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peabee.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;16-the-case-of-fake-imdb-credi...</a><p>(apparently commenting has been turned off :-))

Man creates internet.<p>Internet helps man.<p>Man creates spam.<p>Spam destroys internet.<p>Spam destroys man.<p>Spam rules the world.

There is a profile for a person named Giuseppe Macario on IMDB. The profile claims he was a writer for a commercial involving Julia Roberts. It&#x27;s a lie.<p>He created the profile prior to running for office in Italy under the political party &quot;Free Flights to Italy&quot; in 2018. A reporter for Rolling Stone (Italy) dug into the claim. She discovered it was fake along with many of his other claims.<p>The guy has a long, long history of making questionable claims about himself online.<p>Here is the profile:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;name&#x2F;nm6868326&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;name&#x2F;nm6868326&#x2F;</a>

While working on Lost in Random someone went to the iMDB page ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt12545922" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt12545922</a> ) and realised the cast listing was entirely wrong. No impostors, but a bunch of us in the wrong roles. Most humorously I, our graphics programmer, was credited as all kinds of things, including director, animation director, and production coordinator.<p>We had a laugh about it, then someone fixed it. To this day we don&#x27;t know how it happened.

This kind of happens in the podcast world as well.<p>Many people&#x2F;companies create fake podcasts and submit to all podcast directories &#x2F; apps. The main purpose is to do blackhat SEO - links in the rss feed will be syndicated to podcast directory sites &#x2F; apps.<p>In fact, any &quot;directory of something&quot; sites will be gamed if user created contents are allowed, e.g., directory of movies &#x2F; podcasts &#x2F; local businesses &#x2F; books...

I have always wondered about the ratings. It seems to me that all movies below 6 is trash. Has this always been this way? One would imagine that a 5 star rating would be ok since it is right between 0 (bad) and 10 (great). I guess some kind of inflation in the ratings is going on, but how is such things prevented in these kinds of ratings over time? Is it even possible to prevent?

More likely is that this guy used a service. Or, he could start a service. Or he is the service, and this profile is his calling card.

When I discuss these type of things or phone scams with my Americanized Indian friends, their response is always the same and scary:<p>&quot;They don&#x27;t think they are scamming, they think Americans are rich and they just get their share. Otherwise they will suffer and find no food to eat.&quot;

You can see the same effect on Quora

I think Subhankar has a good future ahead of him writing copy and press releases for startups.

Is the Apu trilogy good for real?

Gamification.<p>Also it&#x27;s producer 101 to have everyone involved in the movie in any way to 10&#x2F;10 the movie months before release.<p>Movies start out at 10&#x2F;10 or 8&#x2F;10, day of release it will fall steadily to 3&#x2F;10 or whatever.

This is super common amongst tons of fakers. I am sure the Indian niche is just one subsection. I have run into a ton of fake white Americans doing just this to pump up their cred count.

Will a knowledge panel on google help you get verified on various social networks? Or does anyone here have connection$ for getting verified on social networks?

Hahaha the guy has found and commented on the article

&lt; Some of them are genuine content creators with a lot of followers on Instagram and Youtube.<p>Oh really? Ill take your word for it.

What do you get for doing that though?

What exactly are these guys getting out of it?

it harmful for indian film growth, evently. it is also happen in china, with real account to post a high score to bad movie, somebody can get money from this event.<p>create fake data by fake account or sub account, someone even have no watch the movie in theater, just post low score, it make people angry

That guy is a living meme.

fake it till you make it

I&#x27;m a Swiss working in Bangkok (I&#x27;m fluent in Thai). So I&#x27;m quite a bit acustomed to people cheating in many situations of life. When we started hiring a couple of Indian coworkers for management level as well as data science roles, I became close friends to the whole group.<p>Whenever we discussed frauds like that, I always said that we shouldn&#x27;t think people (or Indians in particular) wanna game the systems and not everyone would act in malicious self beneficial ways, tricking systems like that. But: Whenever I held this position in our discussions, my indian friends smiled at me. They were the ones saying that you usually can&#x27;t trust a bunch of people to follow rules there. That most would simply game the system for their own benefit. I tried arguing that this is probably the same for all human beings, if they just have the chance and live in a system where there are no (or little) consequences of doing this. They kept arguing that it&#x27;s part of the indian mindset to just game systems like that, from state schemes, to work to anything. It&#x27;s shocking how one nation can see themselves in such a negative way.<p>I still believe though that Swiss or Indians or whatever nation doesn&#x27;t matter. Humans will game systems if the circumstances are right.

IMDB lost all my respect many years ago when they made clear with their actions that they support fake reviews. When the problem started to grow beyond the occasional vandalism, they still had a very effective discussion section in which users soon began to expose fake reviews. Their response? Of course remove the discussion section! IMDB today has some use for their database only; but they lost any credibility on everything else.

Poor boys from India game a system that was set up by Rich Tech Bros in Silicon Valley to fund their &quot;family foundations&quot; and 20-room houses in Atherton?<p>I don&#x27;t call it Outrage; I call it &quot;Slumdog Millionaire: Part II&quot;