Introduction
The theatrical release of major films in India today is preceded and overshadowed by a surge of online activity including trending hashtags, viral edits, mass positive reviews, and coordinated praise across social media. This creates an impression of overwhelming public enthusiasm even before the audience interacts with the work. While such activity may be attributed to passionate fan communities, evidence suggests that a certain part of this digital buzz may be as a result of strategically orchestrated paid campaigns operating behind the promotion of films. This phenomenon popularly known as ‘astroturfing’ blurs the boundary between genuine audience support and covert commercial promotion. The term astroturfing can be defined as the practice of creating a false impression of widespread, grassroot support for something when in reality very actual support exists.
Artificial amplification of trends can influence consumer decision-making by projecting a misleading perception of quality of the work. Additionally, they may distort competition between simultaneously released films by manipulating algorithm-based visibility. Existing frameworks, including consumer protection doctrines and competition law addresses misleading advertisements and market distortion in traditional contexts but remain ill equipped to face decentralised, anonymised digital hype campaigns that sways public opinion.
Paid Fan Armies as Commercial Promotion
Digital fan activity surrounding film releases has traditionally been understood as spontaneous expression of audience enthusiasm. However, a more complex reality has emerged, where support of a film is garnered by cultivated, or directly incentivised by producers and marketing agencies. However, establishing such producer involvement is very tedious since such an astroturfing campaign is by design meant to leave no visible trail back to its source. The dispute surrounding “It Ends With Us” is one such case that portrays this very phenomenon. Court filings alleged that the film’s PR team discussed hiring outside contractors to shape online narratives in ways that would be intractable back to the studio.
Paid campaigns deploy multi-layered tactics, including paid-hashtag campaigns and coordinated timings that push the name of the movie to top rankings on social media, creating illusionary virality that influences streaming algorithms and revenue. Secondly, offshore bot farms generate fake interactions using proxy servers to evade detection. This inflates engagement rates to secure paid media placements or influencer tie-ups. Finally, review platforms receive a plethora of top reviews from incentivised accounts, scripted via google forms. This skews film ratings, misleading ticket buyers. While coordinated timings and paid hashtag campaigns may be counted as aggressive but disclosed marketing, however, the use of bot generated interactions and undisclosed incentivised reviews seeps into the deceptive commercial domain, a conduct that must be treated as differentiated from legitimate promotional activity. Hence, these campaigns are driven by artificial promotional communication rather than purely expressive behaviour.
Unlike conventional advertisement, the origin of these campaigns is undisclosed. However, the output appears indistinguishable from genuine audience opinion, leveraging perceived peer endorsement.
Astroturfing and Consumer Protection Law
Under Section 2(42) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, films are classified as "services". In Yash Raj Films Private Limited v. Afreen Fatima Zaidi, the Supreme Court held that a person who watches a film after paying consideration is a consumer, and the service rendered is entertainment. Consequently, manufactured digital hype raises consumer protection concerns by distorting the information on which audiences decide whether to watch a film. As viewers increasingly rely on online trends, ratings and perceived popularity, covertly manipulated indicators may amount to misleading advertisements affecting consumer choice.
Section 2(28) defines a misleading advertisement as one that gives a false guarantee or is likely to mislead consumers regarding the nature or quality of a product or service. Artificially inflated engagement metrics and fabricated reviews create a false impression of popularity which consumers often associate with quality. Although no express guarantee is made, such campaigns project a film as widely acclaimed despite contrary public reception, thereby indirectly misleading consumers.
Such practices also undermine consumers' right to make informed choices by replacing genuine market signals with undisclosed promotional content. Recognising this concern, the Advertising Standards Council of India issued the 2023 Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media, requiring disclosure of commercial promotions. Although paid fan campaigns operate through personal accounts and fall outside the influencer framework, they exploit the same lack of transparency while appearing as genuine audience opinion, thereby satisfying the rationale underlying the statutory prohibition.
A further challenge is attribution, as film promotions often involve multiple agencies. Nevertheless, Nikhil Jain v. Emami Limited recognised that liability depends on the overall effect of commercial conduct rather than formal authorship. However, the absence of specific provisions governing astroturfed promotion continues to create evidentiary challenges and a regulatory gap between traditional advertising law and contemporary digital promotion.
Anti-Competitive Implications of Digital Hype
Beyond deception, manufactured hype campaigns also raise competition law concerns by distorting the level playing field within the film exhibition market. The industry operates in a time-sensitive environment where opening-weekend revenues depend heavily on visibility, perceived popularity and social momentum1. Artificial promotional amplification therefore influences market outcomes through manipulation of attention rather than product quality. The relevant market comprises the exhibition of films in theatres, including multiplexes and single-screen cinemas in India.
A central concern is the distortion of market visibility. Social media platforms prioritise content through engagement-velocity algorithms that treat rapid engagement as a proxy for audience demand. Coordinated campaigns exploit these systems by concentrating interactions within short periods, artificially elevating films to trending pages, recommendation feeds and search rankings. Since these are finite attention spaces, competing films lose visibility despite comparable merit. In the Indian exhibition market, where booking and screen-allocation decisions are concentrated around the opening weekend, such manipulation can significantly restrict market access, amounting to practical foreclosure recognised in MCX Stock Exchange Ltd. v. National Stock Exchange of India Ltd..
A similar principle emerged in Google and Alphabet v Commission, where the Court recognised algorithmic visibility as a critical competitive input and held that preferential ranking can foreclose competitors without denying formal access. Although that case involved platform self-preferencing, the competitive harm is analogous: manipulated engagement similarly reduces competitors' discoverability through distorted rankings.
Likewise, Shamsher Kataria v. Honda Siel Cars India Ltd. recognised that practices restricting consumer choice and fair competition violate competition law. Manufactured popularity likewise constrains meaningful consumer choice by replacing genuine competition with artificial visibility.
Conclusion
The orchestration of digital hype campaigns in the Indian film industry exposes two distinct but structurally related regulatory failures. Under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, paid digital mobilisation that masquerades as organic audience endorsement constitutes misleading advertisement distorting the informational environment in which consumers exercise choice and undermining the transparency that informed consent requires. Under the Competition Act, 2002, the same conduct, may manipulate algorithmic discoverability to confer competitive advantages unrelated to merit, raising concerns of abuse of dominance and practical market foreclosure within film exhibition markets.
These frameworks are complementary rather than parallel. Consumer protection law addresses informational harm, while competition law addresses structural market distortion. Together, they demonstrate that astroturfed promotion is a legally cognisable practice capable of attracting liability under multiple statutory regimes.
Nevertheless, significant challenges remain. Defining algorithm-driven markets, establishing dominance, and attributing coordinated campaigns to identifiable market actors require evidentiary standards that competition and consumer protection authorities have yet to develop.
Three reforms follow. First, the ASCI and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs should extend mandatory disclosure obligations to coordinated digital engagement campaigns on the lines of the Endorsement Guidelines, 2023. Secondly, the CCI should develop a framework for algorithm-mediated markets, drawing on European self-preferencing jurisprudence to address practical foreclosure. Finally, social media platforms should disclose engagement-velocity anomalies to regulators to facilitate attribution and enforcement.
Ultimately, astroturfed promotion is both a consumer protection and competition law concern. Addressing it requires coordinated action by the CCI, consumer protection authorities and digital regulators to bridge the gap between traditional regulatory frameworks and algorithmically mediated markets.
Competition Commission of India, Market Study on the Film Distribution Chain in India: Key Findings and Observations (Oct. 14, 2022), https://www.cci.gov.in/images/whatsnew/en/market-study-on-the-film-distribution-chain-in-india1665747371.pdf