Article Claims to Show How Users Manipulate Profiles on IMDb

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is the largest, most comprehensive movie database on the web. It is an extremely detailed and rich source of film data that features top movies, news, reviews, celebrity profiles and more. If you’re a movie buff then you must have come across the IMDb website.

Now, an article has claimed that some reviews and profiles of the actors available on IMDb are fake. To prove the point, the author of the article on Pea Bee took the example of Ranbir Kapoor’s upcoming film “Animal”. The film is directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, and apart from Mr Kapoor, it also stars Anil Kapoor and Rashmika Mandanna.

According to Pea Bee Substack article, the link for which has been posted on Reddit, the IMDb page of “Animal” previously featured an unknown name as well- which turned out to be fake. The author also pointed out that a lot of fake profiles have appeared on IMDb in recent days.

“Finding out about this guy led me to a whole new world of how so many young Indian men from small towns are gaming the system to manufacture their own fake online clout,”  the author of Pea Bee article wrote.

As per the article, earlier, instead of Ms Mandanna, there was some person named Subhankar Bagchi from West Bengal whose name was being displayed on the star cast of the page. After researching on Google, the author also found that Subhankar Bagchi has acting credits in some other big-budget productions as well.

The Pea Bee author then found the fake person’s links to his music on various platforms. He found biographies written about him on a few websites.

“He set up a profile on a bunch of different music streaming platforms. Uploaded remixed mash-up of existing songs using some audio editing software. Published biographies and profiles about himself on sites that do not verify submissions. Set up an IMDb page with fake credits. All this to trick Google into believing he is a person of eminence,” the author explained.

He further also went on to say that Subhankar Bagchi manufactured his stature online by feeding misinformation to the sources that Google uses to construct a knowledge panel. “He (Mr Bagchi) has fooled the mighty google search algorithms into believing that he is a person of certain notability,” the Substack article read.

After researching more, the author also found a few more fake profiles on IMDb. These imposters have similar IMDb bios, with several things in common. They also have profiles on a few other websites and even managed to have their own Google Knowledge Panel.

“In a world where your online clout is everything, these young boys have figured out a way to manufacture a fake one for themselves. I laud the effort they’ve put into the whole scheme, but in the end, they are frauds who are misleading their social media followers with information about themselves that’s just not true,” the author wrote.

The author ended the post by saying that one should always exercise their own due diligence before believing anything online.