Sep 05, 2022 08:00:00

What is a bold trick to become a big musician on Instagram and get an authentication badge illegally?

The blue '

authentication badge ' attached to the Instagram accounts of celebrities and entertainers is not only a simple identity verification, but also a status symbol for Instagrammers. ProPublica, a non-profit and independent news agency, revealed the problem that Instagram is rampant in the business of tailoring clients who are not musicians to top-notch musicians in order to obtain such certification badges.

Inside a Million-Dollar Instagram Verification Scheme — ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/instagram-spotify-verified-fake-musicians

ProPublica said on August 31, 2022, that at least hundreds of people, including cryptocurrency business entrepreneurs and reality TV performers, had fraudulently obtained verification badges as musicians on Instagram after 2021. 's article has been published.

One of the people ProPublica claims to be a client of its verified badge business is Martin Jugenberg, a doctor who at one point boasted 150,000 followers. Eugenberg, an orthopedic surgeon in Toronto, reportedly used to post images and videos of mostly women's belly-tightening surgeries and facelifts on Instagram, but has been asking for advice on breast augmentation surgery. In 2021, his medical license was suspended for six months after he published an exchange with a woman he had done without her consent.

And another face of Mr. Eugenberg is the musician 'DJ Dr. 6ix'.

Jugenberg, aka DJ Dr. 6ix, has contributed five songs to music platforms such as Spotify, one of which has been played nearly 60,000 times. gtfrde' and a strange composer name like an automatically generated string was credited.

Also, in the self-introduction column of DJ Dr. 6ix posted on Spotify, it was stated that it was featured on EDM.com, Billboard, and The Source, but there are no corresponding articles on EDM.com or Billboard. did not exist. There was also a seemingly paid article on The Source, which described DJ Dr. 6ix as 'the Los Angeles-based artist who has firmly established himself as one of the most celebrated musicians on 'Umbrella'.' was introduced. As mentioned above, Mr. Eugenberg is a Canadian doctor, so the introduction of The Source is false.

Upon further investigation, ProPublica found nine articles very similar to The Source's article about DJ Dr. 6ix. Those articles said that the text was exactly the same, only the artist name and song title were replaced.

The following is 'Umbrella', the representative song of DJ Dr. 6ix. ProPublica points out that these songs, which were distributed on Spotify, were 'monotonous loops of audio samples, or worse, long silence tracks.'


ProPublica also pointed out that 'Jungle,' a song by another musician with a similar profile, closely resembles 'Umbrella.' These songs also said that the composer's name was a character string such as 'wehkuudhs wehdgjg' and 'trudbkds prosbhkdfs'.

'Jungle' can be played from the following.


After being contacted by ProPublica about these allegations, Spotify removed DJ Dr. 6ix's profile. Meta has also removed verified badges from more than 300 Instagram accounts following ProPublica's findings.

In this regard, ProPublica points out that there is a large-scale scheme to forge a career as a musician to obtain social media verification badges. This business starts by creating a Spotify or Apple Music account for a client, where they upload album art and songs to get more plays. Then, they churned out articles about the hits of that song, turned them into famous musicians, posted their profile on Instagram, and submitted an application for a verified badge to Meta.

Of course, Meta also conducts a review when granting a certification badge, but since the client has already become a big artist listed as a musician on Google's knowledge panel, it will pass the review without difficulty.

According to ProPublica, the person who guided the fabrication of such a career as a musician was Dillon Shamoun, an aspiring DJ in Miami and an aspiring entrepreneur in the cryptocurrency business. Mr. Shamoun denied being involved in the authentication badge acquisition business on Instagram in an interview, but was expelled by Meta after being notified by ProPublica.

A Meta spokesperson said, 'Scammers selling fraudulent services continue to target online platforms, including ours, and are constantly changing their tactics to adapt to industry detections. urges users not to pay for verification badges and to be on the lookout for scammers, and we will take action against such schemes as soon as we come across them. I will continue,' he commented.