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Some Instagram Employees Sell Verification For Thousands of Dollars (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report from Mashable, written by Kerry Flynn: "I mean if Mashable wants to pay for it, I can get you a blue check over night," reads a recent Twitter direct message. This is a guy who knows a guy, a middleman in the black market for Instagram verification, where anyone from a seasoned publicist to a 22-year-old digital marketer will offer to verify an account -- for a price. The fee is anywhere from a bottle of wine to $15,000, according to a dozen sources who have sold verification, bought verification for someone else, or directly know someone who has done one or the other. "These guys pay all their bills from one to two blue checks a month," another message from the middleman added later. The product for sale isn't a good or a service. It's a little blue check designated for public figures, celebrities, and brands on Instagram. It grants users a prime spot in search as well as access to special features. More importantly, it's a status symbol. But it's clear from people who spoke on the condition of anonymity, many of whom have their own blue checkmarks, that a black market for Instagram verification is alive and well. "Instagram has helped create this underground market," the report adds. "While anyone can apply for verification on Facebook and on Twitter, Instagram has made itself exclusive and therefore rather elitist. Influencers who have press clippings and work with big brands on sponsorship deals often can't manage to get that elusive blue checkmark, according to several verified and unverified influencers and people who have sold verification."
Instagram? Isn't that just yet another facetube wannabe?
Or do companies like Twitter also have employees who will yank a target's blue checkmark for a fee (assuming a halfway plausible excuse exists)?
So, some people behave badly. Other people fund poor behavior. Nobody's putting a gun to their heads... it's done voluntarily. That said, glad to know what the title blue checkmark is worth, or not worth, as the case may be.
Since they didn't have any way to verify the verifications, this seems to be designed as a fringe benefit for the employees.
Or they are too stupid to not think out the ramifications of their process ahead of time, Which is of course, more likely, and scarier when you imagine all the other things they didn't foresee, like security, privacy...
I'm guessing the workers doing the verification aren't paid much more than the janitors...
Speaking of which, how much for the Orange Star on /. ?
I bet it goes anywhere from a foot rub to paying for your Uber.
Someone please explain like I'm 5
This article (and others) give ways to make money from Instagram. I find Instagram a place for soft porn photos but there are a lot of users who are very concerned about the number of their followers. I can't say I 100% get it. But I don't get 99% of the economic choices people make these days.
So... if you have followers and a blue checky thingy I presume would get more hits via searches and those hits would lead to more clicks to either the stuff you are pushing or your own products.
More hits would also mean more followers would likely build up... blah blah blah... extrapolate (oh wait... you are only five... so) zoom zoom zoom and you can now by Manhattan (oh... sorry...) your very own ice cream truck.
Another great place to waste your time. Hopefully it will disintegrate as it's stock is doing.
Yet one more example why Instagram is the most over-rated piece of crap app out there..ugh..I have no idea how this garbage became so popular, it's an abysmal platform from nearly any perspective.
Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches-
Had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches-Had none upon thars.
Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches
Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort
“We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”
And whenever they met some, when they were out walking,
They’d hike right on past them without even talking.
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It's not the fault of the author but rather that of... um... those who'd be Slashdot editors.
IF Slashdot had any actual editors.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Occam's razor say the majority of these offers are scams.
I commute via train every day. Here's what everybody under 25 is doing during the whole darn train ride: Either scrolling aimlessly on instagram, or look at their own pictures. So with like everything that's cool, you have to wait for the next generation.