In 2023, the influencer industry was hit with a viral trend known as “de-influencing.” The trend has expanded to include honest reviews of products that miss the mark, content that empowers underrepresented consumers and holds brands accountable, and changes to the influencer industry that promise deeper accountability and greater authenticity. As consumers become more critical of influencers and their struggle to present an authentic persona to their audiences, de-influencing has emerged as a potential return to the origins of the industry. I argue de-influencing is not only impacting influencers, but other actors within the industry, like intermediary companies looking to build successful businesses through the public avoidance of influencer culture while still providing similar services. This study explores the role of a particular intermediary called The Hummingbirds Co., an emerging company that applies the logic of de-influencing to their business to avoid common critiques of the influencer industry and further cement their claims of creating more authentic partnerships and thus, greater success for commercial brands and creators alike. Intermediary companies like The Hummingbirds Co. are attempting to benefit off the de-influencing trend by promoting themselves as anti-influencer and anti-influencer culture. The preliminary findings within this extended abstract begin to explicate how this shift toward de-influencing has impacted actors beyond influencers themselves and how this particular intermediary is benefitting off the trend.

Whenever a celebrity posts a photo on Instagram, it is almost inevitable that the first comment on it will be made by a porn bot (Alvarez 2020). Observations of this kind – some focusing on the distorted perception of ‘sexiness’ and social media authenticity (Thing 2020; Salim 2023), others contesting Instagram’s community guidelines prohibiting both nudity and automation (Santos 2023) – have been ubiquitous in online tech reports for years. In academic discussions, scholars usually define porn bots as automated or semi-automated software agents that operate via sexual solicitation to capture attention (Narrang 2019). Twitter porn bots using Not Safe for Work (NSFW) hashtags to advertise commercial links have been addressed in their generic patterns (Paasonen, Jarrett, and Light 2019). Tumblr porn bots have generated significant controversy due to their uninterrupted operation during the platform’s so-called ‘porn ban’ (Pilipets and Paasonen 2020). Within Instagram, as we will show, porn bots continuously intervene in a network of relationships that users forge with the platform, avoiding detection through a range of circumvention tactics. In all these instances, porn bots operate as medium-specific, heterosexually scripted ‘personas’ (Bucher 2014), demonstrating remarkable adaptability to the platforms’ current cultures of use.

This article builds on a growing body of research on content creators and authenticity through examining practices of performing authenticity of a rising labor figures, e-commerce streamers in China. Along with content creation, they interrogate agricultural products, infrastructure networks and their own body to create an authentic rural China. Their invisible labor on logistical level to ensure the data flow contributes to a richer typology on platform labor and global perspective on platformization studies.

Based on one-year field work, I investigate how these e-commerce streamers handle logistical challenges from three aspects. Firstly, they select and define the authentic rural products considering the visibility requirements on platform. Secondly, they put extract work to maintain power networks to ensure streaming, like prepare portable electrical generators. Thirdly, they discipline their own body and develop labor degradation to simply the intense streaming activities. Borrow concepts from logistical media studies, this research theorize their labor as logistical struggle.

In conclusion, the practice of these e-commerce streamers in marginalized rural China informs the diverse process to perform authenticity in platform economy era and the multiple layers of platform labor across global scales. It also shows how authenticity based on structural inequality, urban-rural divide policy, is commodified and enhances the social status of marginalized social group by enforcing them more invisible labor.

Examining and explaining tensions between being public and private on the internet is an enduring aspect of the work of the Association of Internet Researchers. In this paper, I present a concept to aid those working in this space: digital identity integrity, the ability to use a range of personal accounts and platforms to meaningfully participate in digital cultures and economies. When an individual can maintain a reasonable amount of privacy over their identity, knows how to effectively use platforms and services, and is in a position to contribute to broader digital and data justice projects, they can be said to have digital identity integrity.

This paper is drawn from a larger research project into digital identity integrity, and presents the results of its first two stages: establishing the discourse of the identity verification industry, and conducting pilot workshops on evaluating digital identity integrity. The project builds a case for including resistive practices to identity unification – like being anonymous or creating multiple accounts on one platform – to get a fuller picture of digital identity and inclusion.

The goal of this research project is to work with the idea of digital identity integrity as a way to evaluate the push and pull between public and private when it comes to identities on the internet.