the chinese—owned video sharing app — in the us. it comes amid concerns the app could be used to collect americans‘ personal data. tiktok denies any chinese control and says that it is in the us "for the long run". more than 500,000 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in south africa, along with over 8,000 deaths. south africa is the hardest—hit country on the continent and accounts for half of all reported infections in africa. it also has the fifth—highest number of cases in the world. several european governments have expressed concern about the resurgence of coronavirus cases in a number of countries, including belgium and france, where numbers appear to be heading upwards. spain in particular is struggling with a surge of new infections that has sparked european travel warnings, most notably from the uk. now it's time for click.

this week: influencers, influencing. but can you tell which one is the real thing? hey, welcome to click. hope you are 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 there is something way bigger and way weirder going on than we thought. talking of way weirder, here's 0mar mehtab. hey mate. hey, how's 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 you see on social media, have been impacted during the pandemic. it seemed pretty straightforward. yeah, and then things got really interesting, right? 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. 0ur 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. i'm a big man city fan. for some, it's 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. it's incredible to think that social media influencers have become so big that these guys are able to live in a mansion in la. it's 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, they're 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 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 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 hasn't all been huge deals and the la high life for most. here's 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. 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 many influencers depend on smaller —— 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 wouldn't necessarily see them taking on before the pandemic. just because i think

there is a little bit of an air of like "maybe let's 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 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

bms. —— i have got a lot of dms. the sound quality is banging. really good, and they connect to any bluetooth device. off—camera of zara's 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 don't always do this due diligence. they will get through to work with an influencer and potentially be able to scam that influencer‘s followers. so charli was fed up with 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 influences to ask them why they were doing this. we found one influencer called metisha who was getting a lot of flak for promoting a fake airpods brand whose products did not make it to their customers. but to be fair to her, she did reimburse every follower who got scammed. there are a lot of scammy, like, companies. but honestly i haven't experienced anything like this until the pandemic. so this didn't 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 didn't 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 by my mistake and to get scammed, it's notjust the money — they get angry, you know, why people like us or people who are in public actually do this type of promotion without looking into it, and they are totally right. like, i can't say anything but to apologise and i think if someone like kyliejenner 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. 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 the 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 whose earbuds seem to be an exact copy of apple's airpods. so we e—mailed thejenners, and after speaking to their representatives multiple times, in the end, they declined to comment. hey, mate. how are you going? hey! not bad, not bad. we uncovered a lot of videos of influencers promoting knock—off apple products on their instagram. this is what happens when people become traders and they haven't had the training or 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 —— 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 world's largest tech gatherings, with thousands of people meeting in las vegas, will next year be an all—digital online event. it was the week that the heads of apple, facebook and google faced claims of harmful conduct before lawmakers. tim cook, jasper goss, mark zuckerberg and sundar pichai defended their companies and said they had spurred innovation. 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. the company says it will allow a continuous mission using charging stations. and finally, spot, boston dynamics' robot dog, is back with a newjob and a new name. fluffy, co m e fluffy, come here! ford have renamed spot ‘fluffy, ‘and have unleashed a pair. equipped with five cameras, they will help create 360—degree scans of their factory floor. so we'd uncovered lots of videos of influencers promoting knock—off airpods. the next logical step was to order a couple of pairs of pairs for ourselves. we ordered them from arkensia. i heard something weighty go through my front door letterbox. it's here! it has taken about a week or so. hey! all right? how's it going. a bit of a surprise.

0k. here they are. 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. you, those ones. those ones. these are fake. they must be breaching apple's design work. who do you actually show these to to get these...? well, go to trading standards. so we went to see trading standards, and they were well aware of influencers promoting knock—off goods, and we wanted to know if they could ever combat this. even though it's 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 we're 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! they're obviously copying apple's images. it keeps stopping and starting, these aren't even functioning properly. yeah, these are really bad. i'm going to charge them up because this one works and this one doesn't. so i charged them and unbelievably, this one earphone still didn't work. so i e—mailed soundplay about them selling knock—off airpods and mine not even working, but they didn't reply. so talk to me about apple, have you found out whether apple are doing anything about this problem? well, apple did tell us they're taking action against companies selling knock—off goods. there is one company we've 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 they've been operating this whole time. so for a company that's being advertised by a massive influencer, you'd think

they would pick up on that. apple's not shy about protecting its reputation, let's 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, it's 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 you're ready to go. the issue of drop shipping is a relatively new phenomenon. it's a very, very fast—moving business model that's

constantly changing, we're constantly seeing new entrants into the market, new platforms that provide the service, so as regulators and enforcers, to a certain extent, we're 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? here's 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 don't hold any inventory so there's no financial risk. and it's important to be really clear.

drop shipping isn't illegal. 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've personally sent millions of dollars to china, i've gotten millions and millions of dollars worth of products, i've never been to china. those airpods, i've 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. it's 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, they're just like you and me. some of them even work out of their bedroom. but the difference is, they're making huge sums of money. i couldn't 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 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. and the template that i give to my students that you can just copy and paste and use for yourself. it's right here. instagram influencer reach out script. and i'm going to say "hey", and the name of that person "my name is", and you're going to put your name. that youtube explainer was a stunning and revealed so much. the professional looking e—mails charlie showed us, sent from the mysterious companies, were actually just from bedrooms around the world. and the shadowy drop shippers were just entrepreneurs trying their luck. like many things, you've got your good guys and you've got your bad guys, but the problem is, it's really easy to be a bad guy when you're an anonymous person sitting behind a laptop. and gabrielle told us how

some drop shippers can easily scam people. i see stores that come and go that, they literally steal money from people. one of the stores were selling ironman hat which was like a real hat that goes up and down and they were selling it for $29. when you go to ali baba and aliexpress, the selling price is what is real, and those stores make millions of dollars within a month and they they just wipe the entire store and they collect the money, they disappear and they don't ship any products. and those stores are literally, like, everywhere. anybody, literally, can identify and source products online, can set up a means to have those products shipped, can do so, to a large extent, with 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, is obviously a significant concern for us. so we went to the source of all of this — instagram, and they replied, telling us

that "there's no place for fraudulent or inauthentic behaviour on instagram and we removed the accounts brought to their attention." they didn't answer the question about taking any action against influencers themselves, however, they did tell us they must follow local laws and vet brands before agreeing to any paid partnership. so, from zara telling us about the suspicious e—mails she'd been receiving, we delved into a world made possible only by the modern internet. now, a teenager in kansas can persuade an influencer in london to promote a product. then 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 that we've spoken to, there seems to be a consensus that influencers should be held to the same standard as other traders. and i guess if influencers continue to promote these imitations goods, their trust will be eroded, too. so what can people do to protect themselves? take your time. don'tjust have that knee—jerk reaction and buy something that you see come up on your feed. check social media, check review websites. if there are complaints against the company or what people are saying about the product. and, if it's too good to be true... then it probably is. 0mar, thanks so much. that's it from us. you'd be interested to know, i'm sure, that 0mar also investigated a couple of other companies that are using and possibly abusing social media influencers, and you can hear that part of his investigation on the trending podcast which is on bbc sounds. you can find us on social media and last time i checked,

you can trust us. we are on facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter, at bbc click. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. theme music plays. hello there. the heat and humidity ebbed away during the course of saturday and resulted in a much more comfortable night for sleeping. but again, as we know, on friday, we were just shy of 38 celsius. we had our third hottest day on record. just to show you the contrast, just about everywhere was ten degrees down on that on saturday. so, it felt a little cooler, but it most certainly felt less humid, so more comfortable for sleeping — and we'll

keep that fresher feel around for the day ahead — but there will be scattered showers around. we're under the atlantic influence again. low pressure to the north throwing in this weather front, which has given some fairly heavy rain across the northern half of the country through the night. still around, i think, first thing, but look at those temperatures. a much cooler start to the day for many. and what we have in the north, that cloud and rain, will tend to break up, but given we've got that moisture, that will be the spark, if you like, for some heavier showers as we go into the afternoon. now, we're not expecting that many showers across the southern half of england, across wales and the midlands and east anglia, but they can't be ruled out. and temperatures will be a few degrees down on saturdayjust because it will be a cooler start to the day. still a fairly fresh breeze through the channel. after fairly few showers in the morning across northern ireland, they will tend to become more frequent into the afternoon, and there'll be some sharp ones further north as well — but equally, some spells of sunshine in between. and, of course, it's the british grand prix race day and it does look as if she will be mostly dry. there's just that small

chance of a shower. just a small chance. and through the evening and overnight, those showers will tend to ease away, as you can see, with the risk still of a bit of rain brushing close by to the south. but another fairly fresh night for most parts. as we go, then, into monday, we've got a slight ridge of high pressure building in, but it is only slight and i still think there will be the odd shower around. and already looming large in the atlantic, the next low pressure system. so, if we do see some of that rain, it willjust be brushing southern counties, we think. then, we may well have some slow—moving, sharp showers into the afternoon, but feeling quite pleasant in the sunshine with the light winds in between. however, as we go into tuesday, we've got the atlantic low potentially coming in, bringing us some more significant and persistent, quite widespread rain to the north and the west. it will tend to peter out, we think, as it heads southwards and eastwards, but a fair breeze with that as well and some significant rain. that's certainly one to watch.

as ever, you can find out more information from our website.

this is bbc news. i'm lewis vaughan jones with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. tiktok says it's "there for the long run" after president trump says he'll ban the chinese—owned video sharing app in the us. south africa records more than 500,000 virus infections — that's the fifth highest in the world. across europe, several governments express concern about a resurgence in the number of coronavirus cases. and the ancient acropolis of the sea opens to divers, but the treasures are guarded by 21st century tech.