These 3 steps lure thousands of users into fake competitions and commission programs every day.
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Who doesn't know these promises that you find again and again on Facebook and now also often in WhatsApp messages. They all promise us lots of great winnings, they also look like a competition, but the participants are seriously deceived during their course.
And they all have something in common:
They operate on three levels that allow you to see what it's really about. Because fake competitions, which have a strong virality, are a business model. In contrast to real competitions that are organized by companies for advertising purposes, fake competition organizers use the product as a decoy.
3 steps
The first step is the bait. This bait usually appears in the form of a status message on Facebook, a WhatsApp message or, in rare cases, an Instagram message. These baits are all identical in nature: they convey a profit that you basically already have in your pocket. They convey the ease of participation and attract people to a website. This is the bait . The bait is the viral entry into the competition process.
Step two is usually a website that pretends to be a competition with a question and answer session. This round of questions is not necessarily always present because, on the one hand, it is irrelevant and is only intended to simulate the nature of a competition. We also call this step two the bridge . The bridge appears in the form of a fake competition. In this bridge, you are usually promised the prize directly, there is deception and fake elements are used. Ultimately, this bridge is also an illegal component because the promises made are not kept and the structure and presentation uses protected graphic elements. The corporate design of existing companies and their products are mercilessly exploited; on the bridge people also like to pretend to be the company depicted. Goal of the bridge:
a) Generate virality (example: forward this competition to 20 contacts)
b) a link is installed that should lead to the supposed prize
The third and final step is a so-called affiliate program. You leave the bridge via a link that contains an affiliate code that belongs to a commission program. This is an affiliate whose content, if possible, correlates with the fake competition taking place in the bridge. We call this final link the exit. Note: The exit itself, i.e. the affiliates that are linked to, is not illegal! These are business models in which the respective provider of such programs compensates its sales partners through commissions. These sales partners are recognized by the provider through an identification code, so that every newly registered participant in the affiliate competition can also be assigned to the sales partner. By the way, the person who designs the bridge freely decides which partner program he uses as an exit. We also often find systems that read the participant's origin and device information and thus direct them specifically to different commission programs. Therefore, you can never say clearly which commission program will ultimately be used; in the worst case, you will end up with dubious WAP billing stories or opaque subscription services.
The fake counts!
Therefore, the author of Bait and Bridge, who is also likely to be the respective sales partner of the affiliate provider, has a great interest in ensuring that his fake story sounds as credible as possible in advance, but at the same time also has a high potential for virality.
A good lie is therefore half the battle when it comes to fake news and fake competitions.
Both use the same elements and can therefore be seen as related. However, fake competitions are usually designed in a somewhat more rudimentary manner and are also simpler in their presentation, as the pseudo-editorial part is much smaller. This is probably also the reason why fake competitions are much more widespread than commercial fake news.
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

