the impact of the coronavirus outbreak will be felt "for decades to come". the who's emergency committee was meeting to assess the pandemic and discuss what more can be done to control the virus, six months after declaring a global public health emergency. james murdoch, the younger son of media mogul rupert murdoch, has resigned from the board of news corporation, which owns fox news, the times, the sun and the sunday times — citing "disagreements over editorial content". three youths including a 22—year—old in florida, a 19—year—old in the uk, and a juvenile have been charged, suspected of being behind a major hacking attack targeting twitter. many leading users, including barack obama, bill gates, elon musk and kanye west, had their accounts compromised. now on bbc news it's

time for click. this week: influencers, influencing. but can you tell which one is the real thing? hello, welcome to click, hope you are doing 0k. hello, welcome to click, hope you are doing ok. this week we have something special for you. every so often waste start investigating a subject —— we start investigating a subject thinking it will make an interesting five minute film and then we tug on a particular threat and it that is something way bigger and way weirdo going on than we thought. i am talking of way weirdo cinema ——

talking of way weirdo cinema —— talking of way weirdo, here is omar mehtab. do you want to start telling us what you were originally looking at? we wa nted originally looking at? we wanted to find out how online influencers, the big personalities you see on social media, have been impacted during a pandemic. it seemed pretty straightforward. and then things got really interesting. it did we started doing a little bit of digging and a pattern emerges of influencers abusing the trust of their millions of followers for their own financial gain. our sorry started here with some of the biggest social media influencers in the world —— our story. a group famous for a sports and entertainment, called facecloud. they have 230 million followers, and were recently valued at $250 million. social media

influencing is the new frontier for marketing. influences like phase clan get deals to make —— promote products. —— fazeclan. it is easy for some 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 tra nslates their products, trust translates to 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 fazeclan. so just before the pandemic, a new trend was emerging of influences moving huge houses together, and these guys now live in a... $35 million estate

in los angeles. hey everyone, would you mind giving me a tour of the house? absolutely. it is incredible to think that social media influencers have become so media influencers have become so big that these guys are able to live in a mansion in la. it is meant to help them collaborate and is meant to help them colla borate a nd co nsta ntly create new content to feed the hungry fans. something which has come in very handy during the pandemic. this is another spot that we have spent some time... oh my god. so when you said like you meant an actual flipping weight? more people are watching, more people have time to watch more and they wa nt time to watch more and they want more now done because they are still on the phones are looking for content to consume. what happens during the pandemic, where people are home more, we have direct access to out more, we have direct access to ourfan more, we have direct access to our fan base on it, seven days a week, 365 days cycle. and then you have traditional

production all on hold, both film and television, and here we are in the gaming space that we are in the gaming space that we can still keep the trains running on time. and we had 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 we developed new deals during the pandemic. and the truth is it hasn't all been huge deals and the la highlife for most. here is the thing, the majority of influencers don't 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. 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 so over time, once people got followings that reached a certain level people realised that they were basically owners of many 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 many 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 hasjust underi.5 middle ground. she hasjust under 1.5 million followers and works with a lot of mid—level brands. i have seen influencers taking onjobs brands. i have seen influencers taking on jobs that i wouldn't necessarily consider taking on before the pandemic. just because i think there is a

little bit of an era of like, let's ta ke little bit of an era of like, let's take as manyjobs as we possibly can. but right at the end of the interview this became so much more. zara said something that took our investigation in an unexpected new direction. since the pandemic began we found 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 i just 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 influencers had turned these offers down. as you can see i have my new wireless earphones in. every single day... and they are wireless... the sound quality is banging.

really good, and they connect to any bluetooth device. off—camera of zara's interview, her manager told us that her e—mail inbox was flooded by companies offering them thousands to advertise knockoff products. so we wanted 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 don't always do their due diligence, they will get through to work within influencer and potentially be able scan that influenza's followers. —— influencer. able scan that influenza's followers. -- influencer. so charli was fed up with getting

all these scam e—mails asking them to promote knockoff 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. knockoff apple air pods. —— airpods. so the first thing seemed very obvious. we would go straight to the influences to ask them why they were doing this. we found one influencer called literature to was getting a lot of fla k literature to was getting a lot of flak for promoting a fake airpods brand whose products did not make it to their product. but to be fair to her she did reimburse every follower who got scammed. there area follower who got scammed. there are a lot of scanty companies, idid not are a lot of scanty companies, i did not experience anything like this until the pandemic. this didn't happen to me before the pandemic and i was quite co mforta ble the pandemic and i was quite comfortable because my girlfriend was like oh, i saw

this, a lot of uk influencers are doing this, though, it must be legit. it was my responsibility to make sure this company is legit, i did not do that. so in order to fix iti not do that. so in order to fix it i have to spend behind my mess “— it i have to spend behind my mess —— stand by my mistake, and because it is a scam it is not just the and because it is a scam it is notjust the money, they get angry why people like us or people who are in public actually do this type of promotion without doing into this. and they are totally right, like i can't say anything but to apologise, and i think if someone like kylie jenner do this, they need to get it right and they have the money, they should reimburse every single person, if i can do it they can do it. and then we found out that even the biggest influencers in the world were being paid to promote these knockoff airpods. each airbag comes with a charging case and a charging cable. i am going to check them out right now. their whole site

is 70% off and you use the code kylie for three —— free shipping. kylie and kendall jenner have a combined following a 337 million followers on instagram. and there they were promoting a company whose earbuds seem to be an exact copy of apple's airpods. so we e—mailed the jenner ‘s and after speaking to the representatives multiple times, and in the end they declined to comment. how are you going? not bad, we uncovered a lot of videos of influencers promoting knockoff apple products on their instagram. this is what happens when people become traders and they don't have the training or they don't have the training or they are not aware of the laws, they are not aware of the laws, they are not aware of the laws, they are just flogging any old stuff. i am 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 to make new films available for streaming online faster from new films available for streaming online fasterfrom up to three months to just 17 days. and we had at ces, one of the world's largest tech batteries with thousands of people meeting in las vegas will next year be an all—digital online event. —— largest tech events. it was the week that the heads of apple, facebook and google appeared before congress. tim cook, jasper goss, mark zuckerberg and sundar picchai said they had spurred innovation. computers of the vatican were reportedly beached —— breached bya group reportedly beached —— breached by a group of state backpackers from china. the us cyber security firm made the claim ahead of a sensitive meeting between the vatican and china. israeli ultrafast battery company demonstrated a five—minute charge of a commercial drone which they

said would normally take 60—90 minutes. the company says it will allow a continuous mission using charging stations. and finally spot, boston dynamics‘ robot dog is back with a new job ina robot dog is back with a new job in a new name. ford have renamed spot fluffy and have at least a pair equipped with five cameras, they will help create 360 degrees scans of their factory floor. so we don‘t cover lots of videos of influencers promoting knockoff sundar —— airpods. the next step was to order some for ourselves. i heard something weighty go through my front door letterbox. it has taken about a week or so. hey! all right? how's it going. a bit of a surprise. ok. all of it is

the same. oh my god! look! i have a pair of airpods here. hold on, i will mix them up in my hand, which one is the real one? the one to the left. these are fake. they must be breaching apple‘s design work. who do actually show these two to get these... so we went to see trading standards, and they we re see trading standards, and they were well aware of influencers promoting knockoff goods, and we wa nted promoting knockoff goods, and we wanted to know if they could ever combat this. even though it is 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 a n apple product. and that is clearly an issue. i think the important thing when we are

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 knockoffs. 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. 0k, ok, so, another company that charlie forwarded to us was one called sound play who are also selling these earphones. i

ordered them about a month ago. here they are! they are obviously copying apple‘s one. i‘m going to charge them up because this one works and one doesn‘t. so i charge them and unbelievably, this one earphones still didn‘t work. so i e—mailed soundplay about them selling knockoff airpods and my not even working but they didn‘t reply. not even working but they didn't reply. have you found out whether apple are doing anything about this problem? they did tell us they are taking action against companies selling knockoff goods but another company we looked at, nova play, kylie jenner advertise them back in november and made one as recently as may and made one as recently as may and since then they have been operating this whole time. for a company being advertised by a massive influence, you would think they would pick up on

that. apple is not shy about protecting its replication, let‘s be honest, i guess kylie jenner is a massive personality so jenner is a massive personality so maybe this is a case of the unstoppable force. stay in touch, it is really interesting. apple did provide a statement for us and said last year alone, they sought the removal of close to 1 million listings for counterfeit and knockoff product 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 knockoff product and influencer promotions. and there was one word that kept coming up. drop shipping. drop shipping has become this highly accessible business from more people. all you need is an intimate connection and a laptop and you are ready to go. the issue of

drop shipping is relatively new phenomenon and a fast moving business model that is consta ntly business model that is constantly changing where we are constantly seeing new entrants into the market, new platforms that provide the service, so as regulators and e nforce rs, service, so as regulators and enforcers, to a certain extent, we're always trying play catch up. we started searching and found hundreds of people saying they were making a fortune drop shipping. but what is it? here‘s a little rundown. it goes to an online chinese marketplace, often ali express. they find a low—priced product, set upa they find a low—priced product, set up a website and have a huge markup. influences are paid to promote the product and send you straight to the website. when you buy the product, it shipped directly to you from china. the seller could be on a different continent and never even see the product. drop shippers do not hold any inventory so there is no financial risk. and it‘s

important to be really clear. drop shipping isn‘t illegal. for example, here‘s kevin david who just moved into for example, here‘s 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? i have certainly sent millions of dollars to china and gotten millions and millions of products from china, and i‘ve never been there. air pods, some of my friends have stores doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month selling those stops someone will spend thousands of millions, however much it costs to create it and china will reverse engineer it. some sharp drop shippers will ta ke some sharp drop shippers will take advantage of that and create massive, massive incomes by leveraging those trends and being able to offer those really exclusive high end products for much cheaper. it‘s

very easy to take the moral high road but i think of 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 differently about that circumstance. 50 we 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, they arejust like really stood out amongst them all, they are just like you and me. some of them even work out of their bedroom. the difference is, they‘re making huge sums of money. difference is, they‘re making huge sums of moneylj difference is, they‘re making huge sums of money. i couldn't even afford rent so i blew it up, ilive even afford rent so i blew it up, i live my credit up. fast forward , up, i live my credit up. fast forward, i grabbed one of the products that took me to, it was a super bowl ring, i made so was a super bowl ring, i made so much money and i made over $20 million in the last five yea rs $20 million in the last five years drop shipping. it dramatically changed my life. will be needed to do was look on youtube at these guys dragging about how much money

they‘re 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. a template that i give to my students that you can copy and paste and here it is. instagram influencer reach up is. instagram influencer reach up prescription. i am going to say hey, the name of that person and my name is, you will put your name. that youtuber explain it was a stunning and revealed so much was the professional looking e—mails charlie showed us a cent from the mysterious companies were actually just from the mysterious companies were actuallyjust from bedrooms around the world. —— sent put up around the world. —— sent put up and the shadowy drop shippers? just influences trying their luck. like everything, you have good guys and bad guys, but the problem is, it is really easy to be a bad guy when you are an anonymous person sitting behind anonymous person sitting behind a laptop. and gabrielle told us

how some drop shippers can easily scan people. icy schools, they literally steal money from people. one of the stores were selling ironman hat which was like a real hat and it was up and down and it was being sold for $29. when you go to ali barber, the selling price is less and those stores make million of dollars and then they just wipe make million of dollars and then theyjust wipe the entire store and collect the money and they disappear and they don‘t ship any products. those stores are literally, everywhere. anybody, literally, can identify and source products online. can set up a means to have those products shipped. can do so to a good degree of anonymity, quickly sell a whole bunch of dangerous or counterfeit products and then exit the system before regulators have had a chance to even catch up, it is usually a considerate —— a significant

concern for us. we went to a store on instagram and they replied telling us there is no place forfraudulent or inauthentic behaviour on instagram and they have root —— removed the accounts brought to their attention. they didn‘t a nswer their attention. they didn‘t answer the question about taking any action against the influences themselves, however, they told us they must follow local laws and brands before agreeing to any paid partnership. so, from zara telling us about the suspicious e—mails she had been receiving, we delved into a world made possible only either modern internet. —— only by the modern into —— internet. now in kansas, in london, to promote a product. that leads to someone in stockholm buying something from a factory in china which copies the design of a company in california. it‘s a truly global story. what are your

final thoughts on this subject? well, with everyone we spoke to, there seems to be a consensus that influences should be held to a same standard as other traders. and if influences continue to promote these imitations goods, the trust will be eroded, too. —— —— influencers. what do you suggest people do? take your time. don‘t have a knee—jerk reaction, check social media, check social media websites. if there are complaints against there are complaints against the company or what people are saying about the product additives too good to be true... then it probably is. so much. that is it from us. you will be interested to know that omar also investigated a number of other companies that are using and abusing social media companies and you can leave that part of his investigation on the trending podcast on bbc

sounds. you can find us on the shore media and last time we checked, you can trust us. we are on facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter. thanks for watching and we will see you soon. theme music plays. hello there. the heat on friday was certainly extreme. it arrived quickly and it is going away quickly. but the heat was far and wide. we had temperatures of 37 degrees and at london, 29 in edinburgh. but a significant drop on the way for saturday. for liverpool and sheffield, a drop of 11 degrees or more. the heat has been coming to an end with a bang. we‘ve had this band of cloud coming in from the west bringing some thundery rain

and we scooped up some eastwards, out into the north sea, and behind that band of cloud, we are seeing atlantic air spilling our way and that‘s the reason why the temperatures will be dropping. things will feel different as we head into monday. still going to be very warm for eastern parts of england, mind you. by the time we get to the morning we have rain affecting shetland and may be a few showers coming into some other western parts of the uk. throughout the day on saturday, it‘s going to be a mixture of sunshine and a scattering of showers, mainly across western areas, a few will push their way eastwards gradually through the day. much of the day may well be dry with sunshine at times and it stays dry right across the southeast and east anglia until the evening. and we‘ll find temperatures at 25, 26 degrees, warm but it is a cooler day everywhere in the temperatures 18 in the central belt. i‘m sure the footballers for the fa cup final will appreciate the change in the weather it looks like it should be dry at wembley.

more showers to come into northern ireland on saturday evening. those will push their way into scotland, we keep the cool air coming in on the westerly breeze. so temperatures overnight, saturday night into sunday morning, a little bit lower, probably a more comfortable night for sleeping. 11 to 1a degrees. again on saturday, a day of sunshine, and showers. probably more showers around on sunday. especially across the northern half of the uk and some of those could be on the heavy side as well. it‘s continuing to cool off, temperatures continuing to drop away a little bit, our high on sunday in the southeast is 23 celsius. more of the same on monday. same sort of temperatures, sunshine and showers, perhaps heavier showers in the afternoon for the eastern side of england. it‘s getting a long way away but i think around tuesday and wednesday we could be in for some wetter and windier weather. but by end of next week, probably turning quite a bit warmer once again. goodbye.

this is bbc news. i‘m aaron safir. our top stories: the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in mexico has overtaken britain, becoming the third—highest in the world. it comes as the world health organization warns that the impact of the coronavirus outbreak will be felt for decades to come. the pandemic is a once in a century health crisis, the effect of which will be felt for decades to come. cracks in the murdoch empire as rupert murdoch‘s sonjames resigns from the board of news corporation, citing editorial disagreements. three people including a teenager are charged in the united states in connection with the hacking of high—profile twitter users. and one of britain‘s most acclaimed film directors,