US man given prison sentence for bot-farming music streams

A North Carolina man, Joshua Harmon, has been sentenced to 12 months in prison for his role in bot-farming music streams on platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, and TikTok. Harmon operated a network of fake accounts that artificially inflated stream counts, earning him an estimated $250,000 in revenue. The scheme began in 2019 and used a software program to create thousands of fake accounts, which were then used to stream music and artificially boost an artist's popularity. The scheme was uncovered by the US Department of Justice, and Harmon pleaded guilty in January 2020.