Fake IMDB credits
peabee.substack.com
peabee.substack.com
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3345074/Man-fools-s...
It didn't work out though, they didn't get past security. I think one of the major flaws in their attempt was that they arrived too late, thousands of regular people were already on the premises. They should have come early in the morning.
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[1] https://f7.pmo.ee/Rur-qzbdJAu0h_EKSRoidSHPFsg=/1536x0/nginx/...
I used to live and socialise in a place where a lot of my city's security guards and bouncers drank, and became if not friends, at least familiar with many of them. (Kings Cross in Sydney in the 80s/90s)
I also used to pretty much exclusively wear black jeans, black t-shirts and when it was cold enough a black leather bike jacket.
I would often show up to clubs or gigs, and just get waved in by whoever was on the door because that assumed I was arriving for work.
I've never worked as security in my life.
> I would often show up to clubs or gigs, and just get waved in
I’m clearly missing the accidental nature of your actions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Recession#ATTENTION_NEW_V...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
How would I want them to handle it?
https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Why-Michael-Madsen-Hates-IMD...
External users are not part of it. It's a "curated" model. IMDb clearly stakes their reputation on accuracy and comprehensive coverage. IMDb's TOS ensures that you relinquish all copyright claims and grant them an exclusive license to your content. IMDb won't cite their sources nor attribute contributors. They own and control everything on the site. Their rates for abuse and misinformation are unpublished. IMDb is an opaque, black box.
Wikipedia has a similar model for protecting articles known as "Pending Changes". Anyone can submit an edit to the article, but the revisions and new data is held back from the "front page" publication until approved by someone with the proper user rights. Almost anyone in good standing can obtain those rights, and it's 100% transparent. Every edit is reviewable by anyone with Internet access, every edit is attributed and licensed under CC-BY-SA. The servers, editors, and bots track and tag vandalism and other forms of abuse with public records. Verifiability is mandatory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Wikipe...
> Content from a Wikipedia article is not considered reliable unless it is backed up by citing reliable sources. Confirm that these sources support the content, then use them directly.
But, unlike IMDB, it's (supposed to be) verifiable.
It cites its sources. In fact, all it is a list of citations.
And if I don't have the book at hand I can identify the person who added the citation and can see what other edits they did to judge their domain knowledge.
There is a list of known incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...
No, it doesn't.
2) That was the point of the parent's comment! There are many pages at wikipedia that contain conflicting information.
But I have to push back about the first part. The throwawayaug8 did say "According to Wikipedia Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla. That's how reliable Wikipedia is" - which I understood as a claim that "Wikipedia is unreliable". Then marak830 claimed that such claim is wrong and IncRnd claimed that the original claim is true because 'Simple' Wikipedia has an article with such text.
But I just have to disagree here - I believe that the 'main' Wikipedia is mostly or more accurate than any other Wikipedia - be it 'simple' or 'lithuanian' (https://lt.wikipedia.org/).
I believe that it's unfair to judge the main wikipedia project by using it's smaller 'translation' branches - the main one has hundreds of thousands of contributtors, and smaller wikipedias have way less.
In a same way I wouldn't say that whole javascript is bad because there are some bad frameworks that are based on it.
But I don't know, I am not an expert, I'm just a random wikipedia user :shrug_emoji:
I understand there are differences in languages. But in this case, in english, the most important information is missing. So it's just a movie, all fiction?!?
Well, yes.
In this case, there was a "historical inaccuracies" section which was removed due to sourcing concerns. Not sure how well it holds up to what is (/was was the time) up on the German one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:JFK_(film)/Archive_1#Qu...
Sometimes it can be up to chance or culture, sometimes editorial differences.
EDIT: Come to think of it, in this case maybe the German Wikipedia just has misproportionate coverage and activity for its speaker-base (this would certainly fit with my preconception)? I recall reacting to pages on topics from other countries where I'd be surprised to find it covered in German and not the native language,
Fast forward a year and now there are 5 films credited to my name. I had nothing to do with 4 of them. I am unclear how and why this is happening.
There was a brief time that my 2nd account showed as endorsing my other one. Despite me never doing such a thing.
Probably a bug but I know I've heard lots of similar stories and I'm always sus of just automated engagement in any social media curated or created site. Including imdb.
Its 1 thing when its bots, its another when its real accounts.
Just kidding. But I do wonder - what parts are you talking about? Like some specific languages? Or topics?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_composers_by_name
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Com...
I thought I was cross-eyed for a second, but it really says exactly that. [0]
[0] reupload as substack URLS are daunting to say the least: https://jasper.monster/sharex/Ygg0w8VuhP.jpg
e.g. "I have a doubt about installing Java"
At first I thought it was a simple grammatical thing, but I started seeing it so often that I looked it up.
* "He is one of the known names when it comes to [field]."
* "His incredible set of musical videos and songs makes makes him a known face in his circles and fans."
* "His expertise in making different types of songs makes his popularity soaring in the recent past few months."
* "[name] has already got verified on some leading music streaming platforms among the mentioned."
* "Since then it was no looking back for the [profession] as he kept on coming with one and the other."
* "Being inspired and dreamful by that, he wanted to be a [profession]. His deep passion and determination for [occupation] made him self-influenced and that took him a step forward."
* "[name] realized his true potential and today he's one of the [superlative] [profession] from [location]."
They were bought by Amazon 24 years ago now, in 1998.
But when I tried to fix typo in the cast list of a movie, my submission was rejected:
> Your contribution has been declined. We have been unable to verify your contribution. Unfortunately we were unable to accept your submission as we were unable to verify the information provided.
[0]https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/bollywood/story/the-kashmir...
And you've got trakt.tv now too, not sure if anyone owns that
Yes, but several years later, since Amazon bought IMDB back in 1998!
I do really like the "X-ray" feature in Amazon Prime, which I assume is partially powered by IMDB. I miss it when using other services like HBOMax, Netflix, etc.
In the west the biggest offender is A24 btw.
And to be fair to the Indian movies: The top Indian movies are usually better than the best western movies. But we didn't have top Indian movies for almost over a decade now.
Is that because they are in your native tongue ? Or is there some kind of rating site.... oh wait ;)
Since Indian movies rarely make to to western festivals (mostly only Rome), there's not much to compare with. The ones which make it into Cannes are entirely different, and not as the good ones which make it into Rome or dominate the local markets. Berlin has nothing (but Dil Se won there ages ago, still the top Indian movie), Sundance had at least Gangs Of Wasseypur.
> In my opinion, the top Indian movies are usually better than the best Western movies.
You think those execs really did all those things they said they did?
https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/management/telstra-shou...
In a perfect world, there should be. But sadly we don't live in that world.
> The fact that you can't tell the difference speaks volumes for your moral character.
I seem to have hit a nerve there. Sorry if I ruined your day or something..
Say somewhere in the bowels of their ML pipelines, features that get scored include things like "has a favicon.ico and it's unique and not seen elsewhere". Well, then doing that isn't really fraud to me. It's just adding "proxies for quality" so you aren't dinged for not having them.
It is not okay to glide over the 'young people' part and generally not being empathetic to those trying to beat the market. If it is fraud, which is a crime, are you suggesting these people should be sent to jail? Because if not then you shouldn't use the that word. Words have meaning.
Jail is too much, but it woukd be nice to have a fine of some sort, because "poisining the well" for everyone is really not cool.
(in practice any such system would be abused a lot, so we are probably better off with status quo.. but in the ideal world we'd punish those people)
Promoting publicly editable database as authoritative is high bar we must achieve at the cost of just banning juvenile behavior.
I am not sure why you keep bringing up Google here -- no one cares about it, it is megacorp and it can take care of itself. We want to protect entities like IMDB and Wikipedia. It does not matter why it was vandalized (and that's what happened here) -- to fool Google, or to impress friends, or to get to backstage -- it was bad, and it should not be encouraged.
And finally, learning that actions have responsibilities is an important part of the growing up. I certainly got some parking tickets when I was younger and it taught me an important lesson. (Of course the punishment should not be excessive, nothing that stays on your record for the whole life).
You defending thia is really just telling more about you. Amazon sits on a domain called "international" movie database where they don't have anyone to verify the biggest block-busters of the biggest movie makers in the world. With your logic you should be out on the streets demanding criminal proceedings against this "fraud".
Nothing else for me to say. Vote me down all you want.
Poisoning the well is a deeply antisocial act, and just because it isn't the literal town water well, but is instead the common information well, doesn't make it less of an 'eff-you-all' act.
There are people like the fake heiress Anna Sorokin who faked being wealthy, who's even getting movie deals after being caught, but never admitting to being wrong (this statement not checked for accuracy, I just noticed an interview where she seems to be claiming it's all been a misunderstanding). The world's a funny place.
A Formula 1 racer got his career started when he got himself a lift with 2 bosses of 2 different teams - each of them thought he was friends with the other guy. He talked his way into a driving job, but of course, once there, he had to show he could race.
Google Search tries too hard to present "facts". Take this top result snippet which messes up the difference between speedometer and odometer:
https://www.google.com/search?q=speedometer+or+odometer
Google is using and presenting data from the top website in an attempt to "know" the functional difference between speedometer and odometer. Google pretends to be smart. I'm not surprised people are finding it easy to manipulate "knowledge" panels.
It’s a long arc, but I think we are bending away from this.
It’s harder than ever to convincingly be a competitive content creator.
Going from largely Insta photos -> tiktok forced non-linear video editing / performance on fast trend cycles.
Strg+f, german investigative journalists, made a nice story about that case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KV8i2Q1TXU (german, should have english subtiltes)
Webpage is one thing, how about things you consume?
I interned at a pharmaceutical company's factory in India for the summer that used to regularly export medications to it's subsidiaries in the western world including United States. The standards are super high, we literally threw away millions of medications due to small uncertainty in a Quality control check.
Besides the local regulations and inspections, a team from FDA regularly visited the factory to audit it for like 10-15 days. Just for one factory. I distinctly remember this as we had a more americanized menu for lunch when the team visited LMAO.
So yeah, when you don't know or are not sure, please don't make statements like "factories are never inspected". It makes it seem like you know something, which you clearly don't.
Sometimes once when they are opened and never again. There's just no funding because that's how our political forces fight, they defund things.
https://peabee.substack.com/p/16-the-case-of-fake-imdb-credi...
(apparently commenting has been turned off :-))
Internet helps man.
Man creates spam.
Spam destroys internet.
Spam destroys man.
Spam rules the world.
He created the profile prior to running for office in Italy under the political party "Free Flights to Italy" in 2018. A reporter for Rolling Stone (Italy) dug into the claim. She discovered it was fake along with many of his other claims.
The guy has a long, long history of making questionable claims about himself online.
Here is the profile:
We had a laugh about it, then someone fixed it. To this day we don't know how it happened.
Many people/companies create fake podcasts and submit to all podcast directories / apps. The main purpose is to do blackhat SEO - links in the rss feed will be syndicated to podcast directory sites / apps.
In fact, any "directory of something" sites will be gamed if user created contents are allowed, e.g., directory of movies / podcasts / local businesses / books...
Since the late 80s they have given only a dozen or so perfect 10/10 ratings. Almost half of them was given in the past five years, so I guess inflation creeps up everywhere.
"They don't think they are scamming, they think Americans are rich and they just get their share. Otherwise they will suffer and find no food to eat."
Also it's producer 101 to have everyone involved in the movie in any way to 10/10 the movie months before release.
Movies start out at 10/10 or 8/10, day of release it will fall steadily to 3/10 or whatever.
Oh really? Ill take your word for it.
Works equally well in job interviews, dates, and getting in to clubs.
create fake data by fake account or sub account, someone even have no watch the movie in theater, just post low score, it make people angry
Whenever we discussed frauds like that, I always said that we shouldn't think people (or Indians in particular) wanna game the systems and not everyone would act in malicious self beneficial ways, tricking systems like that. But: Whenever I held this position in our discussions, my indian friends smiled at me. They were the ones saying that you usually can't trust a bunch of people to follow rules there. That most would simply game the system for their own benefit. I tried arguing that this is probably the same for all human beings, if they just have the chance and live in a system where there are no (or little) consequences of doing this. They kept arguing that it's part of the indian mindset to just game systems like that, from state schemes, to work to anything. It's shocking how one nation can see themselves in such a negative way.
I still believe though that Swiss or Indians or whatever nation doesn't matter. Humans will game systems if the circumstances are right.
Wonder if the issue is that it's just perception, i.e. they just "see" it that way, or it is actually that way as in reality? It would seem the people who have first hand experience would be more familiar with the environment.
> Humans will game systems if the circumstances are right.
I think one interesting aspect is whether they view it as a negative or illegal thing or it's merely a cool "hack". They might not even feel guilty at all about it, and if caught would just try harder tomorrow.
(I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.)
I find it interesting that perceptions can be wildly different. In some societies people who don't game the system or try to commit fraud can be seen as naive or stupid. In others, the complete opposite - those who try all these things, are shunned and held in low regard even if they haven't actually broken any laws, because they are breaking social mores.
I have no idea if that's actually true but it that's what he told me.
Systems where caste and societal roles are constrained at birth?
Not really sure I see this. Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. base their entire business model on the masses creating content. Sure there's a Pareto distribution when it comes to creators vs consumers, but the platforms certainly make money from (and encourage) both.
No, it’s about moderation cost and preventing discussions that can hurt their brand or partners or customers. Also SEO spam whackamole.
Many journalists were open about how they didn’t like how comments would question the data or conclusions in their articles. There were too many heckling comments from the peanut gallery so they closed it entirely.
However the reality is that moderating comments is a pain. Too many people writing the most crazy stuff. It doesn't take many "passionate" commentors to ruin a section. One has to simply browse through Facebook comments on any popular topic.
I’m amazed to have just found out that they’re owned by Amazon (from other comments here). I can’t believe I never realised that.
I guess that the increasingly meaningless ratings and reviews should have been a massive clue…
I don't call it Outrage; I call it "Slumdog Millionaire: Part II"
Unfortunately, it was absorbed into Amazon.
Source: ex-HP staffer in Bristol.
Initially was called the Cardiff Internet Movie Database (it was hosted at the university of Cardiff)
Either confirm to international norms, or accept that no one outside your borders cares.
There’s a reason why the only major organization that respects the distinction is the governing body of the national sport.
It's not really pointless. Scotland is way different from England, and I haven't been to Wales but I think that is, too.
As for Northern Ireland: I don't even need to cover that one.
> Let’s say I made a movie about the US where an African-American boy born in the hood, has his mother sell him to a pedophile pop icon, after which he gets molested by a priest from his church, following which he gets tied up to the back of a truck and dragged on the road by KKK clansmen. Then he is arrested and sodomized by a policeman with a rod, after which he is attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants, and then uses these life experiences to win “Beauty and The Geek”.
> Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the “American experience” and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie.
[1]: https://greatbong.net/2008/12/29/slumdog-millionaire-the-rev...
I think depictions of the US in overseas movies are pretty much as silly as that, though. Everything takes place in very rich or very poor parts of NYC or LA.
As for "I would probably be accused" -- maybe in India. In the US it wouldn't even rate a review.
I'm not a fan of Slumdog Millionaire, but that's mostly because it's a poor story, and one that could have been a great one. Arguing it's portrayal deviates like crazy from reality is, well, like most other Hollywood movies.
(Yes, yes I know it's not a Hollywood movie).
Whether something is a "good story" is hard to be objective about. It depends heavily on whether the actors sell it or not. Why do you say Slumdog is a poor story?
"Poor boy makes good" is the plot of a zillion movies and books. The audience knows going in that he's going to get rich and/or get the girl. It's how that either works or doesn't.
A story about a poor boy making it big by things other than "always being lucky" would have been better.
He wasn't lucky. In fact the point of the movie was that the totality of his crappy life experiences before the trivia game ultimately led to him making it big. Essentially, it was a metaphor for karma.
(Spoiler: he almost died several times, his mom and brother died, his friend was sexually abused and he only narrowly escaped similar fates by running away, and he was working as an entry level food cart guy at the present day of the movie. He was beaten by the cops after his initial success at the show. What part of this do you consider lucky? )
The part where the questions just happened to align with his misfortunes. And not even in a meaningful way.
This definitely isn't a movie about someone who made it big by struggling hard. He struggled for sure, but the fortune came not as a byproduct of his efforts, but by being lucky. I mean sure, luck is a factor in everyone's success. In his case, it wasn't merely a factor. It was almost all luck.
Yes, they're lucky. It's a game show. A large part of trivia game shows is a matter of luck with respect to the questions asked.
But the point of the movie was that his luck on the game show was good karma for the decisions he made at the major points of his life. (Contrast with his brother.)
Sure, but perhaps very unsatisfying to a Western audience where one wants stronger connections between decisions and consequences.
Consider "It's a Wonderful Life": Although the struggles and misfortunes were not that great, it's also a movie where the protagonist consciously made decisions that led to a poor life, and in the end benefited significantly because of those decisions (and not just materially). The connection between his decisions and the outcome is much stronger.
Still, that was only a small part of why I didn't like the movie much - it merely added insult to a greater injury - that of not developing the various arcs that appeared. Imagine watching Forrest Gump where each of his life adventures was significantly reduced. The story would still be the same, but a lot less satisfying.
Humbly, I suggest that "western audiences" enjoyed the movie a great deal and had no problems with it and that the issues you are having are your own and stem from your inability to understand the thematic issues of the movie rather than a failure of the movie itself.
Interesting that you cite Forrest Gump as your example, since your problems with Slumdog are the same problems that I have with Forrest Gump: it jumps so quickly through Forrest's life that it fails to meaningfully explore the significance of any of the individual moments of his life other than his connection to Bubba and Sarge.
Please don't ever use a Rotten Tomatoes score as "proving" anything.
People are entitled to their opinions, and Rotten Tomatoes is just an average of a bunch of nobodies who happened to get a "critic" gig at some media outlet. OP didn't like the movie, while I did (and you did).
The substantive arguments about western audiences and Danny Boyle are fine, too. Bring 'em on. But don't use external awards as "proof" of anything.
to put that in context, Indians here and there don't seem to despise the film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_from_India_and_the_I...
The American equivalent was Hillbilly Elegy. The book was well reviewed (though the movie adaptation was not), and friends who grew up poor described it as relatively faithful to the general experience of growing up poor in rural America.
The beginnings of IMDB started in 1990 as personal files, soon moved to Usenet with a few people managing different information, then first on the WWW hosted by Cardiff University in 1993, and the company was then incorporated in the UK in 1996, and sold to Amazon in 1998.
https://www.theatreartlife.com/lifestyle/history-of-an-indis...