Uncovering the Violent Pornography on WeChat

“You can never cheat the Chinese out of their money,” the person named Y who was sitting in front of me said to me, then smiled and paused for a moment.

“As long as you shake the phone, 80% of the beautiful girls’ portraits you get are controlled by me.” Y said with a rising tone.

Y is a mysterious person who cannot be named in the gray industry chain of WeChat ecosystem. In the process of visiting these people, in addition to being amazed at the strong vitality of folk wisdom, I was also saddened by this huge battle between money and human nature.

When technology begins to deconstruct the social structure, we like to whitewash it with the beauty of "the return of human nature". But there is always a shadow behind the sunshine, and human nature is naturally sinful - arrogance, jealousy, rage, laziness, greed, gluttony, and lust become the gaps for speculators to survive, and the sticky and delicate dark side becomes the source of endless business.

Sex and violence - all human motivations come from sexual impulses

"Freud said that all human motivations come from sexual impulses," Zhang Xiaolong said in an interview with Blog China. From the national "masturbation" and "shake" of the original nude sculpture David, to the final sound of rifle loading and the opening and closing of the screen flower, the subtle grasp of primitive desires has made WeChat a success, and has also attracted a large number of keen-nosed opportunists.

In 2013, when the WeChat public platform was just launched, a large number of suggestive keywords such as "beauty", "stockings", "sex", and "temptation" were registered, successfully intercepting a large amount of traffic. As the WeChat public platform frequently took security actions, the traffic entrance moved from the WeChat public platform to Shake, Drift Bottle, Nearby People, and Moments.

The shift in the battlefield means that traffic harvesters have moved beyond "people and accounts" and are beginning to capture the social city of "people and people."

The picture comes from public data search

In the industry, fans converted through "pornography + social interaction" are called "sex fans" (S fans), and the traffic converted through them is called "sex flow" (S flow). Street prostitution software, traffic-generating software, automatic shake, automatic greeting and other simulation software (using seductive avatars of beautiful women to attract people to add them to their personal WeChat) have become popular black market trading software.

WeChat naturally does not allow this kind of situation to happen. "So now we have updated the gameplay," Mr. Y, who was sitting in front of me, took out his phone and showed us the product video. "Now we are running real machines. I have 10,000 machines running at the same time every day, and each machine has 10 accounts running. The daily traffic is 10 million, and 5% is converted into adding personal WeChat accounts."

With endless numbers of people to deceive and endless ways to monetize, the platform builds high walls to prevent the invasion of wolves, but there are too many wolves and too little meat. Driven by interests, a large number of cannibals continue to pour in. "As long as you shake, 80% of the beautiful girls you shake are controlled by me," Y said with a rising tone.

Different from the crude way of attracting traffic through Moments, S uses public accounts to attract traffic. This veteran who has studied S flow for many years is a guest speaker at the "God of Wealth Big Coffee Club". His theme is "Various ways to cash in on S flow, earning 1,000+ a day".

He divided the process of cultivating an account into: purchasing a public account on Taobao → renaming the public account to tempting names such as "Rent Me" or "Appoint Me" → using fake information to improve the content of the public account → leaving your work WeChat ID at the bottom → starting to attract traffic to your circle of friends.

Screenshot from S

"When we create a female account's Moments, it is enough to post 40 statuses. The first one must say: 'Don't add the previous account anymore, the previous account is full.' The second to 40th posts are restored to the Moments, and you can just post daily photos." S is sharing the routine with voice.

Interestingly, most of the group members are men. After a few days, a large number of "female accounts" who understand the male psychology and are well versed in seductive techniques came out collectively, targeting men aged around 18 to 30.

Training screenshots from S

After the drainage is completed, there are three ways to realize it:

1. Routine red envelope

W is a student in the group. In practice, he believes that asking for rewards and consulting fees are all physical work and thankless, so it is better to directly join high-end groups, such as sports car groups and gambling groups.

"My friend bought a Porsche with a loan. He posted pictures of beautiful women and luxury cars on WeChat Moments every day, and was dragged into sports car groups and rich people groups. As a result, he got the money for the Porsche back after grabbing red envelopes for a month."

The real battle of grabbing red envelopes in one night, 4 accounts earned 38,000 yuan

2. Rewards on dating platforms for men and women + consulting fees
"Those chatting with you are all robots." According to W, this routine is the same as the robots that place fake orders on live streaming platforms.

3. Selling pornographic videos

Taking the risk of policy and committing crimes, these speculators are more pursuing the efficiency of realization: striving to hit the target every time. In order to ensure the conversion rate, they start to control the source - the accuracy and effectiveness of the traffic. Therefore, they prefer "hot spots + pornography" to get close to potential people.

"The articles that leaked before the auto show, including the model list, measurements, and WeChat ID numbers, were all fake," W said, leaning forward slightly. "We lured these people over and then lured them into buying all kinds of videos."

Hot spots are their usual routine

What's more, after downloading the live dance video of the female anchor, they use the still frame before the video and replace it with a sexy cover. Through social platforms such as WeChat and Momo, they use the gimmick of "XX star, celebrity XX video is exposed" to attract fans to pay to watch. It is sold at a monthly package of 28 yuan, with a daily turnover of 4 million, and the cost paid is only the channel cost.

When asked if they were worried about their accounts being blocked, Mr. W and Mr. Y, who had very little interaction with each other, said the same thing - "there's no way they'll be blocked."

Greed for profit - Once people start fighting for profit, their greed spreads like poison in their blood.

"100% chance of winning! You can get a Longines watch", "Buy facial masks for 1 cent", densely arranged red fonts, followed by exclamation marks, and exaggerated numbers stacked layer by layer... This is a way to quickly capture the minds of users. "Underground" is greed flowing freely, and "above ground" is disguised as gratitude and welfare.

The screenshots are from "The Temptation of Violence", which specializes in teaching the monetization rules of various social platforms.

Different from the target group attracted by S flow, the target group of this method is focused on uncles and aunts aged around 40-50 in third- and fourth-tier cities.

In the "10 cents to buy facial masks" event, users placed orders through WeChat, paid 10 cents and then paid 20 yuan for postage to buy facial masks priced at 198 yuan. In this event, facial masks were three-no products with almost zero cost, and Mr. F (the main planner) made a profit through the logistics price difference (express delivery cost 8 yuan), and sold 3,000 orders in one day.

This is exactly the same as the "Longines watch" that caused a sensation at the time. Following the account will give you three chances to win the big wheel lottery, with prizes including Apple laptops, Longines watches, and thank you for participating. The first two chances are thank you for your patronage, and the last one is definitely a Longines watch. After winning the prize, users only need to pay a shipping fee of 49 yuan to get the product.

"Of course, the Longines watch I bought for 9.9 yuan was a fake one. This is an open secret in the industry. We just took advantage of people's desire to get a bargain and made money from the difference in logistics prices," said Mr. Y.

In this game chain, copywriting, timing, products, and rules are closely linked and indispensable. Copywriting can be copied and timing can be chosen, but rules and products are the key factors to stimulate profits.

In terms of product selection, first, they choose products with high frequency of use and weak decision-making power on Taobao, such as selfie sticks, duck eggs, cotton shoes, plush toys, etc., with prices ranging from 9.8 yuan to 19.8 yuan including shipping. Secondly, they find a large number of high-commission products through Taobao affiliate software, some of which have commissions as high as 90%.

High commission products purchased through Taoke software

There are usually two types of rule settings. One is activities like "snatching facial masks for 1 cent" and "Longines watches", which earn the difference in logistics prices through lottery and rush purchases. The other is activities that give away products for free, that is, after 5-15 friends follow the WeChat account, they can get the product for free, thereby increasing the number of fans.

Free gift example

"After testing, the effect of increasing followers increased from a few thousand at the beginning to 20,000 to 30,000 followers a day at the peak. The promotion rule I set is to give a gift for every 15 followers. The cost of the gift is only 50 cents. In other words, one fan costs about 3 cents." Nowadays, when the cost of online traffic is high, there are still speculators active even at the risk of having their accounts blocked.

Whether it is to make a profit from the price difference or to increase followers, the rules of these two types of activities have one thing in common: users are required to fill in personal information such as name, phone number, and contact address. After obtaining the data, sellers can sell the data publicly online or flow it into the black market for secondary transactions. Once personal information is used by criminals, it can be harassed by a large number of spam text messages or spam calls at the least, or even threaten personal life safety.

A search on QQ group for “buy and sell express delivery order numbers” yields dozens of active groups.

At the end of the interview, I asked: "Let's not talk about WeChat rules, won't this behavior be reported by users?"

"During the Longines watch promotion, users did not complain about fake watches, but rather about manufacturers not delivering on time," Mr. Y blinked, "because they were so popular that they couldn't pack them all and the demand was insufficient to meet the supply."

There are cracks in everything—that’s how the light gets in

Due to the closure of WeChat and the continuous upgrading of its security policies, the WeChat gray industry is just a drop in the bucket compared to the entire underground industry chain of the Chinese Internet. Unlike when content entrepreneurship was popular, this "grassroots gameplay" often truly restores the true nature of human nature - the animalistic illness often breaks out.

During my visit, I met a lot of unspeakable business stories and unnamed people. They wandered between money, human nature, and policies every day. They were excited about making a fortune one second, but when asked if they were willing to clean up their name the next second, most of them chose to remain silent.

As long as they still regard themselves as "barbarians", this game rooted in human nature will not stop.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.