There is widespread criticism in lebanon of the countrys politicians, who are being blamed for tuesdays massive explosion in beirut, which killed at least 135 people, injured 5000, and made a huge number of others homeless. Teams are searching rubble for at least a hundred people still missing. A number of officials at the port are to be kept under house arrest while investigations go on. Lebanese Officials Say the storage of around 2700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate at a warehouse in the port caused the blast. Thursday injapan marks 75 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of hiroshima, killing thousands. Theres been a silent prayer at the exact time the Nuclear Weapon hit the city. The coronavirus pandemic has forced the scaling back of ceremonies to honour the victims. About half past two in the morning, its time now for click. This week influencers, influencing. But can you tell which one is the real thing . Hey, welcome to click. Hope youre doing 0k. This week we have Something Special for you. You see, every so often, we start investigating a subject thinking it will make a nice, interesting 5 minute film, but then we tug on a particular thread and it turns out that there is something way bigger and way weirder going on than we thought. Talking of way weirder, heres 0mar mehtab. Hey mate. Hey, hows it going . Yeah, good, thanks. So, do you want to start off by telling us what you were originally sent out to look at . We wanted to find out how online influencers, the big personalities that you see on social media, have been impacted during the pandemic. It seemed pretty straightforward. Yeah, and then things got really interesting, right . Yea, it did. We started doing a little bit of digging and a pattern emerged of influencers abusing the trust of their millions of followers for their own financial gain. So, our story started here with some of the biggest social Media Influencers in the world a group called faze clan, famous for esports and entertainment. Emcee put your hands together for faze clan they have 230 million followers and were recently valued at 250 million. Social media influencing is the new frontier for marketing. Influencers like faze clan make deals with brands to promote products to their millions of followers. So these are the first ever faze beats pill. Im a big man city fan. For some, its easy to dismiss influencers, but they are trusted by hundreds of millions of people. And brands know that when it comes to marketing their products, trust translates into money. But the pandemic had financially impacted a lot of these companies and so, we wanted to know if that meant that influencers had also been hit. But it turned out that things had actually been going pretty well for faze clan. So just before the pandemic, a new trend was emerging of influencers moving into huge houses together, and these guys now live in a 35 million estate in los angeles. Hey, everyone. So would you mind giving me a tour of the house . Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Its incredible to think that social Media Influencers have become so big that these guys are able to live in a mansion in la. Its meant to help them colla borate a nd co nsta ntly create new content to feed their hungry fans something which has come in very handy during the pandemic. This is another spot where we come and spend some time. Oh, my god so when you said lake, you meant an actual flipping lake . Yeah more people are watching, more people have time to watch more and they want more even when they are done, because they are still on the phones, theyre still looking for content to consume. What happens during the pandemic where people are home more, right . We have direct access to our fan base on a seven day a week, 365 day cycle. And then you have traditional
production all on hold, both film and television, and here we are in the gaming space that we can still keep the trains running on time. And we had even an added benefit of some of our celebrity friends and partners, they are all home also with very little to do, and we could lean on them to help participate in different pieces of content. We closed deals that were in the pipeline and we developed new deals during the pandemic. But the truth is it hasnt all been huge deals and the la high life for most. Heres the thing the majority of influencers dont have hundreds of millions of followers and a slick ceo. There are millions of influencers who are sole traders, and they are actually able to make a living with only tens of thousands of followers. The people who are famous to you on instagram may not be the same people who are famous
to me on instagram, because there are millions of them who have varying levels of followers and influence. Over time, once people got followings that reached a certain level, people realised that they were basically owners of mini media empires. And once the money became clear in that relationship, people started to seek out more followers, more engagement, more brand deals, and build businesses themselves. But those millions of mini influencers depend on smaller brands, smaller deals, and a lot less of them. And we found out that many of them have struggled during the pandemic. Zara mcdermott is one influencer who sits in the middle ground. She has gotjust under 1. 5 million followers and she works with a lot of mid level brands. I have seen influencers taking on jobs that i wouldnt necessarily see them taking
on maybe before the pandemic. Just because i think there is a little bit of an air of like maybe lets take as manyjobs as we possibly can. But this was the moment it became so much more. Right at the end of the interview, zara said something which took our investigation to an unexpected new direction. So since the pandemic began, we found that we have received a really large quantity of e mails from brands selling what i think is counterfeit goods and basically trying to get influencers to market these on their channels, and ijust believe that a lot of these brands are trying to exploit influencers during this time by offering them excessive amounts of money for very small deliverables. And not all of these influencers had turned these offers down. Hey, guys. As you can see, i have my new wireless earphones in. I literally use my airpods every single day. It is cute and they are all wireless. I have got a lot of dms. The sound quality is banging, really good, and they connect to any bluetooth device. Off camera of zaras interview, her manager charli paton told us that her e mail inbox was flooded by Companies Offering thousands to get them to advertise knock off products. So we went to find out more. Some of the slightly more suspicious brands that reach out to us are often willing to pay and i know they do actually pay a lot more money than the going rate in the industry sometimes even up to three times the price that we would usually charge for certain promotions. I think that they prey on the fact that influencers and Management Companies dont always do this Due Diligence and they will get through to work with an influencer and potentially be able to scam that influencers followers. So charli was fed up of getting
all these scam e mails, asking them to promote knock off products and put their business at risk, so she wanted to find out who was behind it all. And there was just one product that kept on coming up again and again and again knock off apple airpods. So the first thing to do seemed very obvious we would go straight to the influencers to ask them why they were doing this. We found one influencer called metisha who had been getting a lot of flak for promoting a fake airpods brand whose products did not even make it to their customers. But to be fair to her, she reimbursed every follower who got scammed. There are a lot of scammy, like, companies. But honestly i havent experienced anything like this until the pandemic. So this didnt happen to me before the pandemic and i was quite comfortable, because my girlfriend was like, oh, i saw this that a lot of uk influencers
already do this. I thought, oh, it must be legit and i didnt even look into it. It was my responsibility to make sure this company is legit. I did not do that. So, in order to fix it, i have to stand behind my mistake. And to get scammed, its notjust the money they get angry, you know, why People Like Us or people that are in public actually do this type of promotion without looking into it, and they are totally right. Like, i cant say anything but to apologise, and i think if somebody like kylie jenner do this, they need to, like, get it right and they have the money, they should reimburse every single person, i think. If i can do it, they can do it, too. And then we found out that even the biggest influencers in the world were being paid to promote these knock off airpods. So swipe up each airbud comes with a charging case and a charging cable. Swipe up to check them out right now. Their whole site is 70 off, and use code kylie for free shipping. Kylie and kendalljenner have a combined following of 337 million followers on instagram, and there they were, promoting a Company Called nova play, whose earbuds seem to be an exact copy of apples airpods. So we e mailed thejenners, and after speaking to their representatives multiple times, in the end, they declined to comment. Hey, mate hows it going . Hey not bad, not bad. Its quite crazy, actually. Weve uncovered a lot of videos of influencers promoting knock off apple products on their instagram. This is what happens, i think, when just people become traders and they havent had the training and they are not aware of the laws, they can end up just flogging any old stuff. Im actually about to order a couple of pairs for ourselves now, to have a look. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that google announced plans for a new transatlantic Undersea Network cable to connect the uk,
us and spain. Universal and movie theatre chain amc cut a deal to make new films available for streaming online faster from up to three months to just 17 days. And we heard that ces, one of the Worlds Largest tech gatherings, with thousands of people meeting in las vegas, will next year be an all digital, online only event. It was also the week that the heads of apple, amazon, facebook and google faced claims of harmful power from us lawmakers. Appearing before congress, tim cook, jeff bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai defended their companies, saying they had spurred innovation. The us is considering tighter regulation of the tech giants, with some critics saying they need to be broken up. Computers at the vatican were reportedly breached by a group of state backed hackers from china. A us Cyber Security firm made the claim ahead of a sensitive meeting between the vatican and china. Israeli Ultrafast Battery Charging Company storedot company demonstrated a five minute charge of a commercial drone, which they said would normally take 60 90 minutes. Storedot says this will allow a continuous mission using charging stations. And finally, spot, boston dynamics robot dog, is back with a newjob and a new name this week. Fluffy, come here ford have renamed spot fluffy, and have leased a pair. Equipped with five cameras, they will help create 360 degree, 3 d scans of their factory floor. So wed uncovered lots of videos of influencers promoting knock off airpods. The next logical step was to order a couple of pairs for ourselves. And the First Company we ordered them from was arkencia. I heard something weighty go through my front door letterbox. Its here alright 0nly taken about a week or so. Hey you alright . Hows it going . Yeah. A bit of a surprise. 0k. Here they are. The hinge is similar. All of its the same. Oh, my god look i have a pair of airpods here. Hold on. Wait, hold on. I will mix them up in my hand. Which one is the real one . So, ones on the left. Yeah, those ones. Those ones. These are fake. They must be breaching apples, like, design work. Who do we actually show these to to get these. . Well, go to trading standards. So we went to see trading standards, who were well aware of influencers promoting knock off goods, and we wanted to know if they could ever combat this. Even though its not necessarily bearing the apple trademark, the overall impression of the packaging, the design of the case, the design of the earbuds inside, is designed to give that impression that this is an apple product, and that is clearly an issue. I think the important thing when were talking about influencers in particular is that anybody would look at taking a stepped approach in terms of any formal
action against influencers. In the first instance, we would probably look at providing some advice to influencers. Having had those conversations around advice about consumer law, influencers then continued to exhibit breaches, and at that point is the time when trading standards could consider more formal action against influencers. And, because of the way these transactions are happening, it makes it harder for regulators to track the knock offs. It does make it easier for products to enter the uk supply chain that perhaps otherwise would have been more readily detected if they were coming in perhaps in large quantities. Ok, so, another company that charlie had forwarded to us was one called soundplay who were also selling these earphones. And i ordered them
about a month ago. Here they are theyre obviously copying apples images. It keeps stopping and starting, these arent even functioning properly. Yeah, these are really bad. Im going to charge them up because this one works and this one doesnt. So i charged them and unbelievably, this one earphone still didnt work. So i e mailed soundplay about them selling knock off airpods and mine not even working, but they didnt reply. So talk to me about apple, have you found out whether apple are doing anything about this problem . Well, apple did tell us theyre taking action against Companies Selling knock off goods. There is one company weve been looking at, however, nova play. Kyliejenner made a video advertising them back in november and made one as recently as may as well, and since then theyve been operating this whole time. So for a company thats being advertised by a massive influencer, youd think they would pick up on that. Apples not shy about protecting its reputation,
lets be honest, although, i suppose kyliejenner is also a massive personality so maybe this is a case of the Unstoppable Force meeting the immovable object. I tell you, its really interesting, stay in touch, let me know how you get on. Apple did provide a statement for us and said that last year alone, they sought the removal of close to a million listings for counterfeit and knock off products from online marketplaces. It was about this time that we started talking to some e commerce experts to find out who was behind this wave of knock off product and influencer promotions. And there was one word that kept coming up. Drop shipping. Drop shipping has become this highly accessible business for a lot of people. All you need is an Internet Connection and a laptop and youre ready to go. The issue of drop shipping is a relatively new phenomenon. Its a very, very fast moving Business Model thats
constantly changing, were constantly seeing new entrants into the market, new platforms that provide the service, so as regulators and enforcers, to a certain extent, were always trying play catch up. We started searching and we found hundreds of people saying they were making a fortune drop shipping. But what is it . Heres a little rundown. The drop shipper goes to an online chinese marketplace, often ali express. They find a low priced product, set up a website and add a huge markup. Influencers are paid to promote the product and send you straight to the website. When you buy the product, it ships directly to you from china. The seller could be on a different continent and never even see the product. Drop shippers dont hold any inventory so theres no financial risk. And its important to be really clear. Drop shipping isnt illegal. For example, heres kevin david whojust moved into his pretty sweet new apartment in miami. And he gave us a very honest insight about the insane amount of money that drop shippers are actually making. You can have a massive business without ever going to china, right . Ive personally sent millions of dollars to china, ive gotten millions and millions of dollars worth of products, ive never been to china. Those airpods, ive actually seen, some of my friends have stores doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month selling those, right . Someone will spend hundreds of millions, however much money it costs to create it and then china will essentially reverse engineer it. Some sharp drop shippers take advantage of that and they create massive, massive incomes by leveraging those trends and being able to offer those really exclusive High End Products for much cheaper. Its very easy to take
the moral high road but i think if a lot of people had the skill set and caught a trend at a certain time and were making 1000 profit a day or 10,000 profit a day, i think they would probably think slightly differently about that circumstance. So we contacted loads of drop shippers and even chatted to quite a few of them and there was one thing that really stood out amongst them all, theyre just like you and me. Some of them even work out of their bedroom. But the difference is, theyre making huge sums of money. I couldnt even afford the rent so i blew it up, i blew my credit up. So fast forward, i grabbed one of the products that took me to, it was a super bowl ring, i made 55,000 in that month, quit myjob, and then fast forward, i made over 20 million in the last five years. Drop shipping dramatically changed my life. All we needed to do was look on youtube at these guys bragging about how much money theyre making and sharing tips
on how to get in on it. And when we were going through all these videos, we found something incredible. One guy was even showing other drop shippers a template letter to copy and send influences. It was that easy. And the template that i give to my students that you can just copy and paste and use for yourself. Its right here. Instagram influencer reach out script. And im going to say hey, and the name of that person my name is, and youre going to put your name. That youtube explainer was a stunning and revealed so m