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Comment by rockbruno | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? According to the article, their only "proof" is that four criminals said "oh yeah I do this trust me bro". This qualifies as "investigative journalism" today?

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In the Swedish coverage they also identified bot farms that are actively used for this purpose. So it's a bit more than hearsay.

Botted plays are definitely real, but not typically used like this. Typically the scam for botted plays is either someone straight up selling stream purchases i.e. "buy Spotify 10000 plays for $10" or using them to boost perceived legitimacy. You would do the latter with a typical label scam, where you contact someone on Soundcloud, saying you are XXX Record Label and you want to sign their track, linking to XXX Record Label's Spotify account which shows impressive play numbers. You "sign" the track but then request a $50 "mastering fee" from the artist before release.

In either case, Spotify (usually, afaik) doesn't pay out for the actual botted streams, but it doesn't matter. The money is made by the scammer from the artist.

Bot farms is wildly different than money laundering.

Yeah it isn't clear how they are doing it. Are they using fake accounts with paid membership or free accounts? Both are ineficient but the latter is way more inefficient

They are using bitcoin (dirty money) to buy Spotify plays (clean money)

>Seriously? According to the article, their only "proof" is that four criminals said "oh yeah I do this trust me bro".

Same article mentions further down that the Police have also basically confirmed it is an issue but Spotify aren't acknowledging them.

I couldn't find any official statement from the Swedish police about this case. The "proof" is once again that an "anonymous investigative police officer" said it and they assumed it to be true.

I imagine that there might be some degree of truth to this story, but as it's written right now it's pure clickbait.

Saw this same article on a Finnish news site last week and it indeed feels like clickbait / bullshit reporting with no concrete proof of any of this happening.

Judging by the quality of journalism these days, yes this qualifies as investigative journalism.

People get the quality of journalism they pay for I guess...

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