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经济学人 | 浑水做空YY直播——眼球经济下的繁荣假象

每日双语经济学人  · 公众号  ·  · 2020-12-10 08:00

正文

(本文选自《经济学人》20201128期)


背景介绍:

11月19日,浑水通过其官方账号发推称YY直播几乎全部造假。据浑水在一份简短的报告中称,调查显示YY直播有大约90%都是欺诈行为,是一个虚假的生态系统。高收入直播表演者的收入只占报告总额的一小部分。消息一出,欢聚时代股价随即大跌,收盘跌超26%,市值蒸发21.5亿美金,约合141亿人民币。


Is the attention economy being captured by virtual eyeballs?

眼球经济将被虚假的“眼球”攻占?

A short-selling row highlights the dodgy metrics of online commerce

一场做空行动显现了在线商务不可靠的衡量指标

It was a spectacular bit of timing. On November 16th Baidu, a Chinese online-search giant, said it would buy YY Live, a China-focused video-streaming service with 40m monthly users, for $3.6bn.

这个时间点未免太过巧合。11月16日,中国在线搜索巨头百度宣布将以36亿美元的价格收购YY直播,YY直播是一个月用户量达4000万的专注于中国市场的视频直播平台。

Two days later Muddy Waters, an American short-seller, published a report claiming YY Live was “an ecosystem of mirages ” and “almost entirely fake”. The share price of JOYY, YY Live’s parent company, slid by 26%.

两天后,美国做空机构浑水公司发布了一份报告,声称YY直播是一个“海市蜃楼般的生态系统”,而且“数据几乎完全是假的”。消息一出,YY直播母公司欢聚时代的股价随即下跌了26%。

Muddy Waters alleges that JOYY’s platforms, including YY Live, are infested with “bots”—computers that log on to “watch” streams, pretending to be human. Many, it says, appear to sit in JOYY’s internal networks. The upshot , it alleges, is that somewhere between 73% and 84% of JOYY’s revenue is suspect.

浑水公司表示,欢聚时代旗下的各大平台(包括YY直播)都充斥着“机器人”——假装真人登录并“观看”直播的计算机。许多机器人似乎都来自于欢聚时代的内部网络。这最终导致,欢聚时代营收中的73%至84%都是存疑的。

JOYY responded by saying the report contained “numerous errors, unsubstantiated statements and misleading conclusions and interpretations”. It said it would be open to “cash verification and diligence” conducted by “competent third-party advisers”. (JOYY and Baidu did not respond to requests for comment.)

对此,欢聚时代回应称,该报告中存在“大量错误、未经证实的陈述以及具有误导性的结论和解释”。该公司表示,愿意接受“有资质的第三方机构”进行“资金验证和全面调查”(欢聚时代和百度均未对本刊记者提出的置评请求做出回应。)

The allegations are unusual in accusing the platform of creating its own fake users. Technological complexity and minimal human oversight means the “attention economy” is full of virtual eyeballs.

这种指责平台自己设置虚假用户的指控并不多见。技术的复杂性以及人为监管的缺乏意味着“眼球经济”中充满了虚假的“眼球”。

But such mischief tends to be the work of outsiders. Last year America’s Federal Trade Commission fined the boss of a firm called Devumi $2.5m for selling fake YouTube views, the first time such a complaint had been brought.

但这种假象一般是由外部制造的。去年,因提供 YouTube 视频虚假播放量服务,Devumi 公司的老板被美国联邦贸易委员处以250万美元的罚款,这也成为首例因制造虚假播放量而被处罚的案例。

Digital advertisers pay to have their ads shown to users. It is an open secret that many end up served to fake viewers, generated by computers infected with malware written for this purpose.

数字广告客户付费向广大用户投放他们的广告。结果许多广告是由感染了专门编写的恶意软件的电脑生成的虚假用户观看的,这已经成为了一个公开的秘密。

A new report by the University of Baltimore and CHEQ, an anti-fraud firm, estimates that $35bn is lost annually to such scams, from a total market worth $333bn. South-East Asian fraudsters employ humans to scoot between racks of smartphones, tapping ads and installing apps, says Gary Danks of Machine, a firm that offers ad-fraud detection. Those in places with higher labour costs simulate phones on computers.

巴尔的摩大学和反欺诈公司 CHEQ 联合发布的一份最新的报告估计,在中国价值3330亿美元的在线广告市场中,每年因此类欺诈行为而造成的损失达350亿美元。Machine 公司(一家提供广告欺诈检测服务的公司)的加里·丹克斯说,东南亚的诈骗公司会雇佣人员穿梭在一排排智能手机之间,点击广告并安装应用程序。而在那些劳动力成本较高的地区,诈骗公司会利用计算机模拟运行手机。

Companies are fighting back. Last year Uber sued more than 100 ad agencies, accusing them of buying fake views on its behalf. Facebook launched a lawsuit against firms it says create malware that hijacks users phones, forcing them to generate fake ad clicks. Neither suit is likely to stem the fraudsters’ rise.

各大企业正在对此予以反击。去年,优步对100多家广告代理商提起诉讼,指控它们提供了虚假的广告播放量。脸书也对那些开发恶意软件以劫持用户手机并制造虚假广告点击量的公司提起诉讼。但仅凭这两起诉讼根本无法遏制诈骗公司的嚣张气焰。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)


本文翻译:Vinnie

校核:Vinnie

编辑:Vinnie


小编说

在百度刚刚宣布收购YY直播之际,YY直播便遭遇了美国著名做空机构浑水公司的做空。虽然互联网时代下的数据作假早已成为业内公开的秘密,但YY直播遭浑水做空还是暴露眼球经济下的繁荣假象。



重难点词汇:
dodgy [ˈdɑːdʒi] adj. 狡猾的,逃避的;善于骗人的
mirage [məˈrɑːʒ] n. 海市蜃楼;幻想
infest [ɪnˈfest] vt. 骚扰;寄生于;大批滋生
upshot [ˈʌpʃɑːt] n. 结局;要点
malware [ˈmælwer] n. 恶意软件






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