No real desire to argue the semantics of what I wrote. This is bizarre. Anyhow, the difference is that one situation is an issue of perception and the other is of actual fraud. Not sure why you think perception and reality are identical things.
Botnets 'listening' or 'streaming' is fraud.
That it's not immediately identified is obviously not an issue. E.g spotify isn't affected by the fact that the steps outlined in this post occurred. They are however affected by the fact that this is possible on a larger scale.
The post has demonstrated that the cost of server time for generating 'listens' is less than the amount of royalties paid out. Therefore any artist with the appropriate technical ability could code up a botnet that generates him more revenue then he is spending whilst having literally 0 legitimate fans/listeners.
Are you seriously not able to understand why this is an issue?
Yes; In isolation, this singular post isn't a problem. But when freemoneyforbadmusic.ru pops up offering 10000000 listens for 5$ spotify will have a real problem.
What are you not understanding about this?
There's nothing really semantically wrong with what you've said. It's just factually incorrect.