> The coveted blue tick can be difficult to obtain and is supposed to assure that anyone who bears one is who they claim to be...hopefully paving the way to lucrative endorsements and a coveted social status.
Gross
Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
41–50 of 104 posts
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#42This 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/…
Yep -- in fact, this might be another facet of the same scam. From the ProPublica article:
> The source said they also worked to ensure a client’s Google search results would present them as a musician. Google itself proved helpful in this regard. Once articles and music profiles were indexed by Google’s search engine, the site generated a “knowledge panel” in search results for the person’s name.
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#43What I don't understand is why Meta/Facebook thinks you are only a real person if you are a musician. You cannot just upload a picture of your passport and a couple of bank statements. You know, the way any other company verifies the identity of a person?
Verification badges only makes sense for public figures. There are about 125 people in the US named Serena Williams, but giving anyone of those a verification badge for their account real_serena_williams would be counterproductive, since everyone would assume it's the account of the famous Tennis player.
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#44I thought propublica was for hard hitting investigations on big issues of public importance? Who cares about fake badges on social media?
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#45This 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 when he was a nobody, leveraged curiosity about all of this into interviews with reporters at fancy hotels, etc.
The strategy was to make him appear to be famous until he actually became famous, and it worked. Exactly what people confide to do today on social.
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
However, doesn't this "IsFamous" label break down when multiple famous people share a name. No obvious example spring to mind, but it surely must happen... Seems like it would be more useful to have some kind of more general labelling system, where you could be 'verified' as (say) a famous actor, and/or musician, or whatever. Then people could distinguish not only the famous Matt Smith from the unfamous, but also the…
I mean, Michael B. Jordan is a good example of why you don't have a good example. Even if you share the name, you have to differentiate it somehow to be marketable.
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#47> 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!
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#48What I don't understand is why Meta/Facebook thinks you are only a real person if you are a musician. You cannot just upload a picture of your passport and a couple of bank statements. You know, the way any other company verifies the identity of a person?
Definitely not interested in giving ol Zuck my passport and bank statements
Thats exactly the biggest concern. Private companies are asking for government ID and most of the time they're not handling it securely, and it is also stored with other very personal information the application collects from you. Totally sketchy in nature.
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#49> 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 don't know, I think it makes sense to have highly-visible verification UI on profiles that are using names, bios, and/or profile pictures that are clearly claiming to be a well-known public figure. Like, if you see a profile with the name "Jacob Smith" and an unrecognizable photo, what does it even mean to say that profile is verified? You don't have an existing human referent for that profile information anyway, so what is being verified? On the other hand, if you see a profile with the name "Tim Cook" and a picture of the Apple CEO, you do have an existing referent, so it does make sense to be able to quickly spot the checkmark to see that the social network has verified that profile.
Of course, the social network could just attempt to verify every single profile, perhaps by requiring the submission of an approved government-issued photo ID and some human or automated comparison of the ID in the photo and the uploaded profile photo. But that has other obvious issues, namely around privacy and the ability to implement the process reliably.
Re: Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
#50This article reads like reporting on a bunch of pick-pockets stealing a few wallets with $20 in, as if it was the Great Train Robbery.