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Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by kurmouk on Thursday October 08, 2026 @09:00PM (#50014678)
He is still defrauding the streaming platform. It is like creating a userbase just to get investments in your company.
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by mrheosuper on Thursday October 08, 2026 @11:54PM (#50015805)
If that "created" userbase give you the similar profit of "real" userbase, i dont see what's wrong.
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by zbentley on Friday October 09, 2026 @08:10AM (#50019362)
It wasn’t giving Spotify similar profit, though. Their subscription pricing assumes both a) ads and b) that on average listeners won’t listen more than a certain amount, and will listen relatively broadly such that a single artist isn’t disproportionately rewarded (and thus lots of different artists find it lucrative to be on the platform, increasing its appeal).

In short, this isn’t a “cool infinite money hack” whereby you can pay a subscription fee and make it back with dividends as an artist. Instead, it’s https://xkcd.com/1494/

Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by RobRivera on Friday October 09, 2026 @08:42AM (#50019672)
You need help understanding why spotify paying a man for fake users isn't being defrauded?
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by nomilk on Friday October 09, 2026 @02:06AM (#50016591)
Didn't reddit famously do this.
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by rebolek on Friday October 09, 2026 @02:23AM (#50016707)
If he created a startup to do the exactly same thing, he would be a millionaire.
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by RobRivera on Friday October 09, 2026 @08:43AM (#50019686)
Matter of factly, if he did create a bot farm for hire, and NOT get paid for streaming, but paid just to scale the bots FOR other people, yes lol
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by genxy on Friday October 09, 2026 @12:07PM (#50022572)
That startup exists already it is an A16Z thing.
Re:US Man Given Prison Sentence for Bot-Farming Music Streams by kennywinker on Friday October 09, 2026 @02:35AM (#50016811)
Or like streaming artists music to users while not paying the artists.