Chinese authorities have sentenced an app developer to five years in prison and fined him 100,000 yuan ($15,345) for operating a mobile app that artificially inflates a person's social media popularity.
The app had reportedly been used by some of the country's most popular pop idols.
The sentencing is part of China's ongoing crackdown on apps and companies that generate fake internet traffic. The People's Court of Fengtai District in Beijing found 26-year-old developer Cai Kunmiao guilty of providing programs that intrude into other people's computer systems.
His program called Xinyuan, which translates to "star support" in English, allows people to artificially inflate their social media interactions. The software controls thousands of so-called zombie accounts that automatically share, like, and comment on social media platforms. Authorities said that these types of activities violate the terms of service of social media platforms.
These types of programs gained widespread attention two years ago when a post made by Chinese singer Cai Xukun saw an unprecedented uptick in social media activity. Her post was liked and shared by nearly a quarter of all Weibo users in China.
The seemingly impossible feat led to an investigation on how the post had garnered so many interactions. The issue eventually caught the attention of government regulators and social media company Weibo. The company announced that it would be working with the government to crack down on fake online engagements.
In 2019, Weibo said that it would be implementing measures to prevent such incidents - including the imposition of a cap on the number of likes and shares a post will get at any given time.
Court documents showed that Xinyuan had control of over 30 million fake accounts on Weibo. Cai reportedly raked in more than 6.3 million yuan ($970,000) from membership fees from his one app before he was arrested in 2019.
The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet watchdog, has been fighting the spread of fake traffic, which has become a troubling trend for major tech companies. The agency has proposed that the government pass a law to punish individuals and companies that break the "internet integrity system."
