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My 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.

"I genuinely don’t understand why the Instagram platform is so permissive to clear scammers" - more traffic, apes together strong?

Generate 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.

If they're actually infringing your copyright with the copied content then a DMCA takedown should be a more reasonable prospect. Most platforms have highly lubricated paths for that, and you won't need to provide the scammer with more than a contact information for your attorney.

Most likely they won't respond and will just be taken down. They might file a false counternotice but if so you'll get their contact information and shouldn't be worse off than if you'd done nothing.

If you're on the fence because you are concerned that the scammers might retaliate, keep in mind that if you knowingly allow scammers to defraud people under your name when you could do something to stop isn't the most moral choice-- even if its the easiest one.

Then again, I'm currently targeted by a multibillion dollar lawsuit because I called out a scammer in my former industry, so maybe don't take my moralizing at you too seriously. :)

I've had my personal photos stolen by Instagram spammers, and using their DMCA takedown process, I was able to get them removed within 24 hours.

A lot of these platforms will limit or ban accounts that accrue DMCA takedowns. Sumbit a new takedown for each instance of copyright infringement you find.

Meta gives no fucks is why. I’ve reported many scammers and fake profiles on Facebook and always get replies back about that the profile does not violate community standards. That is because the only standard Meta has is if the fake profile keeps posting even if it is a scam even if it is fake news that is fine by them. I had a friends account taken over by some scammer and he changed the profile picture and location and everything so tried to report it, you only get limited options of what to report there is no “someone took over my friends account” option, but nothing was done. So now my friends fake account is out there doing whatever it wants. Just realize Meta gives no fucks about you or your wife and would rather a fake profile on their platform.

They have no incentives to care. You're no one to them, and they have no legal obligation to do anything about it.

See a Trademark lawyer. Do so now.

Does this really work? As various phone scams reveal, most scammers are overseas in jurisdictions outside where lawyers can do anything.

A cease and desist letter from your lawyer to instagram's lawyers should do the trick.

Instagram are the party one needs to get the attention of in this instance as they control the platform.

Instagram is the target, not the scammer. And yes, it works.

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 trend, and randomly mix in memes from shadow accounts, while artificially capping visibility for everyone else (who doesn't pay for ads) at under 100-400 (low-value views).

Whenever the news gets onto reporting platforms, they switch their algorithm to make it look like things are operating fairly/normally, and then switch back to manipulation after the heat dies down. I'm pretty sure they have more psychologists and marketing specialists on staff than actual musicians and developers in management.

Suspending 300 accounts is like flicking a flea off an infested dog's back.

>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

One political party in the UK managed to change their username, banner and description on Twitter to "fact check UK" and keep their badge.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/19/tories-twee...

> But we all know that badge is just a "Famous" badge.

Literally one of the bullet points to get verified[1]:

> Your account must represent a well-known, highly searched-for person, brand or entity.

[1]: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/understanding...

Exactly. Which is why they should stop calling it "verification"

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.

>> 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.

I follow a popular trader on IG and she sells courses for ~1500 USD. A slew of look-alike IG accounts try to sell pirated videos of her course for 100 USD. The fake accounts follow followers of the real account and DM them.

It isn't about having a blue checkmark next to her name nor vanity. I think its literally about protecting her profession as an instructor who has sunk quite a bit of time and effort into a course.

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 implemented where when you login to an app, the app also looks in iCloud or Google storage for the keys associated with your verified identity (which you have to submit documents for, and when submitting documents, your phone creates the keys). Any additional devices the user wishes to use, he or she would have to share the keys from the initial device.

Not a crypto guy, is this the gist of what actual verification would look like and what additional benefits it serves over 2FA or knowing the users password?

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.

Ony one person is able to own @asdf. If you are hacked you can be impersonated in any scheme.

They should either change the verification badge to say “certified famous” or something, or just give out the verification badge to anyone who wants it, provided they successfully prove their identity. I don’t see how verifying my identity negatively affects Justin Bieber’s verified status, for example.

Perhaps there is a second person on earth named Justin Bieber? Then they might try to trick people. The blue check says “this is the one you probably meant”

You still have the problem of two famous persons named the same. It would be better to have separate checks. Have a check that means "this person showed us their passport" and another that says "this account is owned by the famous person mentioned in this news article".

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!

The definition of famous is just too relative. The tag should be considered harmful. Social media platforms should not dictate who is famous or not.

That is the common perception but it is not accurate.

Its a "have you been impersonated before and is likely to occur again" badge. This is merely correlated to fame, all while a famous bucket does exist.

The corollary of this is get impersonated to get a badge (while this article is about be a Fake musician to get a badge).