[HN Gopher] Who's running the Vincere bot network on Instagram?
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Who's running the Vincere bot network on Instagram?
Author : mbellotti
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-07-11 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| lemedro wrote:
| https://archive.is/RQ6A0
| tyingq wrote:
| 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/...
| Aulig wrote:
| Such a scummy thing to do - sadly effective and all too common.
| Also illegal depending on your legislation.
| joeblow21 wrote:
| Most influencers buy bot followers to scam advertisers so what
| goes around comes around I guess
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| If overpriced merch were abuse, kanyewest(dot)com and
| supremesclothingonline(dot)com would have been taken down a
| long time ago....
| pc86 wrote:
| What exactly is the abuse in this case?
| cloudking wrote:
| "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
|
| [2] https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-start-dropshipping
| teej wrote:
| > 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?
| tyingq wrote:
| >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.
| tylersmith wrote:
| They can spend time discovering the product and then price-
| shopping to find that AliExpress has the best deal, or they
| can pay the premium of the dropshipper to skip all that and
| just get the thing they want right now.
| tyingq wrote:
| >just get the thing they want right now.
|
| This particular site (vincerewears.com) has guidance that
| usual shipping times are 15 to 40 business days, but to
| expect 60 business days (3 months).
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Scam is probably not the right word for dropshipping. Though
| dropshipping does seem like a parasitic activity that captures
| the energy and capital of the dropshippers in order to increase
| prices.
|
| The scam in this article seems to be the bots that try to trick
| would be Instagram influencers into buying merchandise to sell
| to their audience. As I understand it the bots are really just
| trying to convince the influencers into buying the goods
| themselves and the influencers don't get any cut of whatever
| product they do sell.
| tylersmith wrote:
| > if you are foolish enough to pay markup on items that you
| could order yourself directly from AliExpress that's your own
| problem
|
| It's not necessarily foolish, they're providing market-
| knowledge arbitrage which has value. If the reseller made me
| aware of the product in the first place and I'm willing to
| their price then the premium was the price I paid to not have
| to discover the product on my own, and to not have to bother
| with price comparison shopping.
|
| I know $15 is an agreeable price and I can buy it right here
| right now instead of spending 30 minutes comparing vendors to
| find that I could save $5 on AliExpress, or just never having
| it at all because I didn't know about the product.
| hwayne wrote:
| Dropshipping itself looks totally legitimate, and there's
| market value of selling things for a small markup. The
| scammers in this case are doing a 500% markup.
| hwayne wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That's explicitly brought up in the article:
|
| >> These schemes are very easy to set up. Shopify has a number
| of helpful tutorials on how to do it. [these were inline links]
| And the margins on them can be quite significant if the
| customer doesn't realize the brand is just a front. For example
| here's a shirt Vincere is currently selling for $99, here's the
| same shirt on AliExpress for $16. That's a markup of 500%.
|
| > 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?
|
| Also brought up in the article:
|
| >> Then on top of that if by chance someone does use your
| ambassador code to buy something, most of these brands do not
| have any affiliate marketing infrastructure... so they pocket
| your promised commission too.
|
| EDIT: Also, later in the article, she discusses the second
| layer of scamming here, which is botnet operators scamming the
| dropship scammers.
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(page generated 2021-07-11 23:00 UTC)