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Recently, Douyin released the "Announcement on Continuously Cracking Down on All Kinds of Internet Water Army Selling Accounts, Phone Cards and Related Services". Data showed that since June 2024, the platform has cleaned up more than 50,000 video content, handled an average of 3 million illegal comments per day, and punished more than 4.3 million accounts. It also introduced the five types of water army behaviors that have been focused on in the near future.

The first category is "selling phone cards with or without real-name registration". Selling phone cards is one of the typical illegal and irregular behaviors of the black market of water army. Some black industries "promote" through accounts on the platform, with nicknames containing the words "already real-name registered" or "no real-name required", and publish videos or texts showing multiple mobile phone cards, indicating that they can be used without real-name card insertion, etc., to attract target users to contact and guide them to other platforms for transactions. The other category is selling "accounts on various platforms". The black industry publishes information on the Douyin platform, indicating that various network accounts can be recycled or sold. After potential users contact them, they are guided to other platforms to complete the transaction.

Douyin Security reminds that the sale of accounts and "unauthenticated" or "authenticated" phone cards not only affects the ecology and order of various websites, but may also breed various illegal and criminal activities. For example, they are purchased by criminals for telecommunications fraud, online gambling, spreading obscene information and other criminal activities. In response to such behavior, the platform will immediately ban the relevant accounts and transfer clues of suspected illegal activities to relevant departments.

Some black industries or criminals need to use other people's mobile phone numbers to receive verification codes required for registration, login or other scenarios in order to circumvent real-name registration or bypass certain platform restrictions to conduct illegal operations. Another type of black industry water army specializes in providing verification code receiving services. They post "advertisements" on the platform, using text or pictures to indicate that various verification codes can be received, and guide target users to conduct transactions.

Another scenario is that a large number of platforms have threshold restrictions on some of their functions, such as the need to reach a certain number of fans, or the need to accumulate a certain amount of experience points, credit points, etc., and the online water army uses the platform to publish information, claiming that they can open various "permissions" for users without any threshold. The behavior of these water army accounts not only seriously affects the rules and community environment of the relevant platforms, but also provides criminals with online tools to commit crimes. Douyin said that it will continue to crack down on such water army accounts, establish a sample library from multiple angles such as account names, copywriting, videos and pictures to strengthen identification, and permanently ban them once verified.

The last category is selling "swearing on behalf of others". The Internet water army posts a large number of texts with the same content in the comment areas of various hot events or other netizens, showing that they can provide services such as "cyberbullying and scolding on behalf of others", attracting the attention and private messages of the target audience, and then guiding them to transactions on other platforms. After the transaction, the Internet water army insults others online as promised, and provides the insulting recordings, videos or screenshots to the purchaser of the service. This type of behavior is not only a black industry of Internet water army, but also cyberbullies others and continues illegal and irregular behavior to offline scenes.

In addition to selling this service, the black market water army also recruits "swearing agents" online, using tactics such as charging by the piece, part-time work at home, and safe and risk-free to attract people who are in urgent need of income to engage in water army activities.

The Douyin Security Center reminds you that bulk recycling and selling of accounts and services related to personal information or real-name authentication are illegal activities of the online water army black industry. Selling your own account also faces the risk of information leakage, being "impersonated" and committing crimes. If you encounter such behavior on the platform, you can report it directly or send the details to the reporting email address [email protected]. The platform will verify and deal with it as soon as possible.