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Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme
- Kaotique 4y agoWhat 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?
- jtbayly 4y agoYes. But even assuming a desire to limit verification to notable people, it seems very odd that minor musicians are allowed but not minor actors.
- danso 4y agoI would have to guess the infrastructure/digital bureaucracy of Spotify provides a scalable verification method in a way that doesn't exist for minor actors. Having a Spotify artist account at least implies you have an identity with connected financial credentials (i.e. to receive streaming revenues).
- thewebcount 4y agoAnyone with $19.99 can sign up for DistroKid and get their stuff distributed on all the major music apps and websites.[0] Plus, it's not like DJ Dr6ix wasn't actually the doctor in question. He just wasn't a musician. He wasn't pretending to be someone else, just something else. [0] https://distrokid.com https://distrokid.com
- abbusfoflouotne 4y agoDefinitely not interested in giving ol Zuck my passport and bank statements
- winternett 4y agoThats 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.
- chrisseaton 4y agoWhat could he do with your passport?
- wongarsu 4y agoVerification 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.
- colpabar 4y agoI 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?
- reidjs 4y agoSort of like how there are only Wikipedia pages for “notable” people, only people with some amount of fame get a blue check mark on these platforms.
- riffic 4y agothere are at least cut and dry criteria for what notability means on wp.
- danso 4y agoIt'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 the divide between "important" people and the rest, they would have by now.
- gilleain 4y agoHowever, 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 painter Matt Smith, and so on.
- pjc50 4y ago
- _fat_santa 4y ago> 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 whether the person that operates an IG account is really that person, so why does a persons public image have any bearing on that? The DMV isn't going to issue you an License, then call you a month later saying "hey we suspended your license, no one's heard of you". But we all know that badge is just a "Famous" badge. If we think of it that way then yeah, Meta was in the right because those accounts were fraudulent, because the person did not actually famous. I realize these badges can lead to potentially lucrative brand deals. But how sad does your life have to be if you're dumping all this money and time to having a blue checkmark next to your name.
- coastermug 4y agoMy partner runs a small brand, which attracted a copycat page clearly designed to scam users out of money for giveaways. She attempted to “get verified” and was denied because there was not enough news stories about the brand. We own the trademark to the brand name, and the verbatim copying of the copycat clearly infringes copyright. The only option we have is to file a trademark dispute through Instagram, but that involves handing over business information to the offending scammers, which seems like it could have unintended consequences. My whole strategy has been to tread lightly, as I’ve read so many horror stories of people losing their accounts, or the wrong account being banned. I genuinely don’t understand why the Instagram platform is so permissive to clear scammers.
- soco 4y ago"I genuinely don’t understand why the Instagram platform is so permissive to clear scammers" - more traffic, apes together strong?
- orangepurple 4y agoGenerate several cleverly designed scam accounts yourself using burner credentials which eventually redirect to the official entity. Out-scam yourself and the scammers by becoming the flood.
- adamgordonbell 4y agoWow, this article caused me to google myself and find that google has labeled me a music artist as well. I should start my own service since it seems maybe all you need to do is create a podcast, then google says you are a musician and presumably the verification process at Facebook follows google's lead.
- llacb47 4y agoYour song LISP in space is a classic!
- bombcar 4y agoIs it you or a name-doppleganger? The best is when you share a name with a famous criminal, and they don't have a picture of the criminal but do find your linked-in photo ...
- adamgordonbell 4y agoOuch that hurts. No it's me, its just they must label all podcasters as musicians.
- InitialLastName 4y agoA (mid-20s) friend shares a name with a (70-year-old) ex-IRA member, and has been pulled out of the line for extended interrogation every time he's flown since he was a child because his name triggers anti-terrorism flags. Last I heard he even had to get a special insert for his passport where the US State department affirms that he is not, in fact, an elderly Irish paramilitant.
- Unknoob 4y agoI wonder if airports would accept an Instagram verification badge as proof that he's not a terrorist. Hold on, no one dare steal my new business idea.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y agoButtle, I mean… Tuttle?
- photochemsyn 4y agoThis looks like a bit similar to various 'vanity publishing' operations in the writing world. These varied quite a bit, there was an era (pre-Internet) when it wasn't uncommon for the up-and-coming corporate executive to hire a writer and publisher to write a glamorous biography and print a few thousand copies, to be handed out to whoever would take them. I suppose today that approach could plausibly provide a 'source reference' to base a Wikipedia page on (See! See! Someone wrote a Book about Me!). I suppose this is relatively harmless, if a bit ridiculous. However, another side of the vanity publishing world is pretty scammy, basically promising writers and musicians and artists (generally ones with little commercial promise) 'a chance at success' by taking their money and doing things like this. https://selfpublishingadvice.org/what-is-vanity-publishing/ https://selfpublishingadvice.org/what-is-vanity-publishing/ > "A reputable company empowers clients with the information they need to choose the right service for their needs. That's in stark contrast to the deceitful and manipulative tactics used by vanity presses, where the goal is to sell the authors as many services as possible."
- bombcar 4y agoA similar thing exists in the music industry outside of Instagram, continually selling wannabe musicians "agent access" and "recording sessions" for $5-10k a pop and never actually doing anything.
- digitallyfree 4y agoI think there have also been cases where celebrities or politicians have hired fake "fans" (basically actors) to show up to their appearances and make them appear more famous then they actually are.
- willcipriano 4y agoPaparazzi are typically tipped off if not outright paid to show up at the right time.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago>However, another side of the vanity publishing world is pretty scammy, basically promising writers and musicians and artists (generally ones with little commercial promise) 'a chance at success' by taking their money and doing things like this. My wife’s mother is a lovely lady whose hobby is writing. I won’t say she’s particularly good at it, but hey, let a 60 year old lady do whatever makes her happy, right? Then one day she announced that she won a “contest” with one of her novels, and it’s going to be printed by a publisher! She was super pumped about the whole thing, but gradually it came to our knowledge that she’s gonna pay a substantial sum for this from her pension, because the “prize” was actually just a 50% “discount” on getting her book printed with this publisher… Clearly, there was no real contest at all. This was just a vanity publisher preying on less sophisticated aspiring writers to part them from their money. It’s a complicated situation, because on one hand we didn’t want to ruin her happiness; on the other hand, she was clearly getting scammed badly… In the end we managed to convince her to go with the smallest possible quantity, which was of course then distributed mostly among family and friends. Very disgusting and sad practice.
- dncornholio 4y agoThe 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
- ComodoHacker 4y agoI find it useful on Telegram. There's a lot of scamming/phishing there too. It has helped a lot during pandemic peak to filter out misinformation. But if it's for everyone, it won't make much sense. You can legally change your name to match anyone's, get that tag and scam others.
- bluetickinstant 4y ago
- riffic 4y agothese are basically arbitrary labels bestowed upon an account. let's not kid ourselves that "verification" goes anywhere beyond that.
- rewrewrewqf 4y agoI see some people are having trouble working out what this badge means. It's pretty simple, really - they are for content-creators that make Meta lots of money.
- leonidasv 4y agoThis bears much similarity with this scam discussed on HN some days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32377063 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/star/custom box on their products Guess we'll see a lot of those scams being uncovered as the time goes, a lot of people still think that Spotify/IMDb/etc. has some strong background-check policy for user-submitted content.
- duskwuff 4y agoYep -- 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.
- yashap 4y agoWorth 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.
- wyclif 4y agoIt'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."
- winternett 4y agoThe pipeline for musicians on social media is to pay an online source to publish disingenuous articles and Wikipedia entries about them as an artist, and then to use those (purchased) sources for verification. Any artist can get official looking press interviews done on them and then get verified if they are willing to pay for it. Many artists also buy accounts on social media that already come with thousands, and often millions of followers already on them, and then simply change the name on the account to their own artist name. You can also directly pay for verification with any corrupt side-dealing marketer that has access to Twitter, IG, or many other business platforms on those very same social apps. Thousands of artists do this, they also leverage bots to drive their streaming numbers high to further boost their public impression. The platforms do very little to counter or authenticate this activity because people churning makes them money, and keeps their platforms looking alive, when in truth, it's all pretty much a pit of desperation for popularity with very little realness to it. Citing all this, there is little value in spending all that money to fake success, most of the artists that engage in it lose money every year, and can rarely perform live as headliners because their audiences would be embarrassingly low (unless they perform at a big festival lined up with many other artists of course). Fakery is even less fulfilling for music artists when you look at the fact that most popular artists are losing a lot of money and time trying to look like they are successful... It also makes having any success as an authentic musician a total washout, as the industry is flooded with all the individuals that are impersonating success, which keeps authentic musicians almost totally out of view. Until people wake up to how social media coddles the industry of fake credibility, things will get a lot worse. Just imagine fake credibility infiltrating the medical industry (for example), there would be a lot more botched surgeries and diagnoses. Private companies shouldn't serve as the grantor of credibility, they always do it from the perspective of what generates profit, not what generates authenticity.
- dizzystar 4y agoThere is a sinister underpinning to the pay-for-stream stuff. The "influencer / musician" gets penalized hard for boosting Spotify streams (*), then they go on social media and complain that they only make $10 for 1M streams, and attempt to promote other "more ethical" platforms. In my own accounts, my Spotify streams pay just as much as any other platform. The tricks used for standard influencer accounts don't work for musicians, probably because you can't trick people into believing you make good music when it is clearly garbage. (*) I should be more clear on what I mean. A stream in the US would pay about 1/2c for each stream, while a stream from Eastern Europe would pay far less. Of course, these streaming farms are located in these areas.
- kuramitropolis 4y agoAnyone seen using Instagram automatically becomes dead to me until proven otherwise.
- tough 4y agoA crypto bro scammer using a (from a friend) stolen verified account tried to buy mine for 700 via Discord Cringey stuff
- boredemployee 4y agoThat is so funny and in a nice timing: Tom Cormen just started to beg Twitter to have a verified account: https://twitter.com/thcormen/status/1564767028375945217 https://twitter.com/thcormen/status/1564767028375945217
- riffic 4y agothis happens so often and there's something about this (begging Twitter to notice you exist) that rubs me the wrong way. I previously said that Twitter verification is just an arbitrary label that Twitter, Inc, bestows upon someone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Nition 4y agoHe says Twitter required five news articles mentioning him as a political candidate and he was only able to send them one. Seems pretty clear why he wasn't considered notable enough.
- dqpb 4y ago> 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
- bluetickinstant 4y ago
- jorpal 4y agoI thought propublica was for hard hitting investigations on big issues of public importance? Who cares about fake badges on social media?
- yieldcrv 4y agoHundreds of millions and billions of dollars of sales are driven by the clout of badges on social media. That's where we are now. Small one off ethical problems become social problems when they aren't one-off and then become legal problems. Of course it is up to consumer, investor, vendors to be more discerning. Of course, they aren't. So it's not a legal problem, right now, it is a social problem and that is being addressed by reporters and the platforms. That's where we are. It is completely congruent for ProPublica to be involved at this stage.
- echelon 4y ago> In response to information provided by ProPublica and the findings of its own investigation, Meta has so far removed fraudulently applied verification badges from more than 300 Instagram profiles, and continues to review accounts. That includes the accounts of Mike Vazquez and Lexie Salameh, two stars of the MTV reality show “Siesta Key.” Rather than get verified for their TV work, they were falsely branded online as musicians in order to receive verification. They lost their badges approximately two weeks ago and did not respond to requests for comment. ProPublica "journalists" Craig Silverman and Bianca Fortis are total douchebags for doing this and bragging about it. For all intents and purposes, the MTV stars are public figures and have visibility. This is such a lame move by ProPublica to attack the brand of these folks, which is what they derive their income from. I feel like so much of this industry has turned to attention and drama seeking. This isn't journalism. This is throwing stones and complaining and trying to get clicks for it. Shame on Craig, Bianca, and ProPublica.
- Unknoob 4y agoThey did participate in a fraudulent scheme to obtain the badges. If they had been verified for their real accomplishments they would still have it. Consider the following lame analogy: A man who has been working as a programmer for 30 years has no diploma because he is self taught. He is having trouble finding a new position because for some reason companies are asking for a degree in a related field. He decides to buy one from a sketchy random university. People find out about the scheme and the diploma is invalidated. Should he be able to keep it because he probably knows everything he would be taught at university?
- coldtea 4y agoThis 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.
- pvillano 4y agoThe business strategy for social media moderation seems to universally be "offer the least support possible without breaking people's addictions or losing advertisers." In no particular order: misinformation, foreign influence on elections, low quality content, unfair bans, report abuse, content theft, scams, unresponsive support, cyber bullying, harassment, spam, addiction, monetization instability, mental health effects, impersonation, radicalization, grooming, etc. aren't addressed because they usually don't affect ad sales enough to motivate action. When the perception of a site becomes too negative, the absolute minimum is done as a response. Porn and copyright infringement do affect ad sales, which is why they are resolved instantly, even at the cost of these other problems e.g. unfair bans.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoA couple of thoughts 1. We have seen a major period (past decade) of "wild west" online where platforms could reap but not regulate. From AirBNB renting out homes not legally entitled to, uber validating people who assaulted passengers, to whatever this verification thing is, this period is well and truly over. 2. The problem is we don't actually know what regulation we actually want. More and more we seem to find that regulation in modern world is ... less than we expect. The SEC mostly regulated by retroactive "no", professions similarly. The problem is that's fine on a case by case basis, it's not how you can code up something to discover at the scale we see. Facebook could not cope with nursing mothers groups at their beginnings and most professions are at the same level. It's not bad but it certainly seems all the regulation we have is retroactive and not codified. Or is it just we had cosy situations between regulators and regulated. And new entrants, sneaky or otherwise broke that
- t0bia_s 4y agoSame companies apply similar practices for fact checking. Just saying.
- Nition 4y agoThe fake articles are incredibly bad. I hope the future Internet isn't made up of wading through mostly bot-generated nonsense like this to find real content. DJ Dr. 6ix: > “Umbrella,” DJ Dr. 6ix’s most recent single, has taken his listeners’ breath away. It’s only been a few months since the song was released. The song, on the other hand, has developed a large fan base in such a little time. Every day, the number of individuals who follow you increases by a little proportion. > 6ix was born and raised in the metropolis of Los Angeles. He understands what the people of Los Angeles want from house music. They’re looking for something thrilling to start the celebration and lift their spirits. People are looking for a song to liven up the celebration. And 6ix, who is fully informed of the situation, is capable of doing so. > Thanks to Rumor Records, 6ix has been able to share music with the world that he is proud of. He has been quite vocal during the development process. Rumor Records was kind enough to listen to his worries and requests. We are speechless when we hear the ultimate decision. No Limit Boss: > “Despair,” a new single by No Limit Boss, has been released. The song became highly popular within a few days of its release. It is currently quite popular on the internet, with thousands of streams available. This song was created with a lot of effort by No Limit Boss. > No Limit Boss’s knowledge of house music allows him to create tracks that are tailored to the tastes of house music fans. As a result, it has become plainly clear that he is the artist to watch. > “Despair,” No Limit Boss’s opus, is simply beautiful. It has made it quite clear that he is not just another artist to be compared to. No Limit Boss’s record label, Whiteout Promotions, has outdone themselves with the song’s impeccable production and mastering.
- paulpauper 4y agoBillionaires reading be like "at least they are not writing about us again" Too bad these fake musician pages are taken down. I am curious as to what fake music sounds like. Also, this is not about verifying identity but verifying fame or being 'approved'. I have another idea: if meta requests account verification for anti-spam purposes, does this mean they will verify me too? ProPublica only revealed how stupid or pointless account verification is overall. Either let anyone verify or what is the point of it.
- smm11 4y agoGuy plays guitar outside my Trader Joe's, hat out for money, sad sign on carboard. I toss a water bottle his way, he catches, music still playing. Funny, that.
- phantom_of_cato 4y agoIMO, 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.
- nonameking2026 4y ago"small fee" actually just fixes the problem (mostly)
- bluetickinstant 4y ago
- bluetickinstant 4y ago
- sellmethepen 4y agowhat's the ROI for someone actually paying 25k for verification?
- bluetickinstant 4y ago
- herbst 4y agoYou can buy those starting from about $1000. I never tried but the service includes spinning up fake media coverage, usually a wiki article they guard until verified and then having the right connections. As said I never tried, but the reality is there are plenty of offerings for this on the open market. Not to mention you can buy verified accounts sometimes for less than $1000 as well.