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Comment by Kaotique | Hacker News Reader

What 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?

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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.

Yes. But even assuming a desire to limit verification to notable people, it seems very odd that minor musicians are allowed but not minor actors.

I 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).

Anyone 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

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.

What could he do with your passport?

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