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Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

propublica.org

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Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#91

Post by wyclif »

yashap wrote: post #45
leonidasv wrote: post #29

This bears much similarity with this scam discussed on HN some days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32377063 > go to some platform with public credibility that allows you to insert unverified but credible data (Spotify, IMDb, etc.) > create entries for yourself > pay PR sites with some good SEO to publish about it > use this data to persuade bigger companies staff/algorithms to think you deserve that badge/…

Worth noting that “fake it till you make it” is a very old/well established strategy in the music world, it’s just being applied to social media. For example, read about some of the things David Bowie’s manager Tony DeFries did. Before Bowie was remotely famous, DeFries hired body guards for Bowie just to give him an aura of fame, had him drive around in stretch limos, hosted lavish after-parties after shows even whe…

It's as old as the music industry itself. The Police's hit single "Roxanne" was labelled by A&M (their record company) as "banned by the BBC" in the UK even though it was never banned...just not playlisted. Drummer Stewart Copeland later admitted, "We got a lot of mileage out of it being supposedly banned by the BBC."

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#92

Post by vonseel »

charcircuit wrote: post #87
vonseel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were a verification badge you’d think someone would develop a technology to sign tweets / posts the same way you can sign and push a git commit, i.e. , the authentication backend would incorporate some sort of signing which requires a special token. All this would have to be hidden from the end-user, of course, so I’m not sure what it offers on top of just knowing the user credentials. Maybe it would have to be…

It's called having an account. If you see a post from @asdf then the post came from @asdf. No one else can make posts as @asdf.

What about if someone pretending to be @asdf makes an account with his name? Or, if he is hacked? Both of these seem like reasonable problems to solve with a verification or signing service. One is solved by verifying the identity of the user once, while the other would be more like each git commit.

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#94

Post by Liquix »

winternett wrote: post #32
gabereiser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the real heart of the issue. It was never a verification badge. It was always a popularity badge. Social media is garbage. We need to find a better way. Obviously having that many eye-balls means business opportunities for the gig-worker economy but this kind of restriction/status symbol is ripe for corruption and fraud by design.

Posting anything authentically promotional on these platforms is mostly a total waste of time... They steer views to foreign countries where no one is likely to buy your music or follow you. Everyone is deceiving everyone on these large platforms now, that why music and many other scams dominate the entire Internet. These platforms have millions of active accounts, but what they do is only let paid promoted posts tre…

>They steer views to foreign countries where no one is likely to buy your music or follow you

Worst case scenario. Best case scenario, your advertising reaches local folks and your business does well... Which makes your main source of revenue instagram, further entrenching you into the page-on-platform-as-a-business model, which makes the internet a slightly less accessible, anonymous, fun place.

See: forums/IRC replaced by discord servers, facebook businesses, record deals hinging on tiktok views, etc

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#96

Post by bluetickinstant »

Justsignedup wrote: post #47
_fat_santa wrote: post #6

> Meta has so far removed fraudulently applied verification badges from more than 300 Instagram profiles It's not a "Verification Badge", it's a "Famous Person" badge. If you verify someone's identity, John Doe indeed controls the instagram account with his face and name, then I don't see how there could be anything fraudulent about it if it's just a "verification badge". The verification badge is supposed to show wh…

I assure you if I had a plan to monetize a social media account, and needed 1M followers to do so, I will happily pay 100k to make a few mil!

No post body was provided.

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#97

Post by bluetickinstant »

danso wrote: post #7
colpabar wrote: post #3

I struggle to understand why verification on social media platforms involves anything more than taking a picture of yourself touching your nose with your left hand or whatever. The point should be to prove that the account is actually you, right? How did it end up being some kind of badge of honor?

It's in a social media company's best interest for its user base to easily find and distinguish between Matt Smith the famous actor and the thousands of other Matt Smiths, especially the ones who might try to fake being the famous Matt Smith for shits and giggles and/or profit. "Verification" is definitely the wrong term for it, but if companies could come up with a different verb that didn't make even more obvious t…

No post body was provided.

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#98

Post by bluetickinstant »

nonameking2026 wrote: post #89
phantom_of_cato wrote: post #88

IMO, verification should be available to anyone willing to provide a solid ID, physically go to an office for that, and pay a small fee for the work required to check the validity of the ID. Validation for celebrity accounts should probably be harder, not easier, due to higher risk of identity fraud. I find the current weird status-signalling thing that it currently is quite ridiculous.

"small fee" actually just fixes the problem (mostly)

No post body was provided.

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#99

Post by bluetickinstant »

phantom_of_cato wrote: post #88

IMO, verification should be available to anyone willing to provide a solid ID, physically go to an office for that, and pay a small fee for the work required to check the validity of the ID. Validation for celebrity accounts should probably be harder, not easier, due to higher risk of identity fraud. I find the current weird status-signalling thing that it currently is quite ridiculous.

No post body was provided.

Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme

#100

Post by bluetickinstant »

dncornholio wrote: post #16

The verified tag is just ridiculous. It should be for everyone or for nobody. Man I was sigh-ing throughout this whole article.. They created a huge grave by adding the verified tag. People will and should exploit this. Blame the social media platform for this lousy, discriminating verified tag

No post body was provided.
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