The Case of Fake IMDb Credits

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.

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