Episode
03 March 2026 Official episode · Official transcript
research cybercrime
The episode examines manipulation of social-media and streaming algorithms, music-stream fraud, account takeovers, bot networks, and the use of streaming platforms to launder money.
Topics: Social-media Like and Follow manipulation, Clickjacking and like-jacking, Advertising fraud and traffic arbitrage, Artificial video-view generation, Music-stream fraud detection, Rules-based and model-based anomaly detection, Account takeover and credential reuse, Compromised-device streaming farms, Hashed and anonymized telemetry, Fraudulent artist and label identities, Royalty-pool manipulation, Money laundering through streaming-service payouts, Use of distributors and aggregators to distribute fraudulent content, Privacy and security controls for streaming telemetry
Links published on the Darknet Diaries episode page. Not LLM output.
No Sources heading on this episode page.
Qualified statements from this episode, not graph facts.
Andrew Batey USES Like-jacking
Andrew says like-jacking was one of his favorite techniques and that his group used it to drive large numbers of fans to pages.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“My favorite thing at the time was like-jacking.”
“we could drive millions of fans to things”
Andrew Batey USES Ad arbitrage
Andrew says his group used ad arbitrage by buying inexpensive traffic while selling higher-priced advertising inventory.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“Another thing we did in the early days was kind of an ad arbitrage.”
“we would be able to sort of print money”
Andrew Batey USES Facebook
Andrew says his group used Facebook-related manipulation to launch artists and artificially increase followers and likes.
Explicit Confidence 95% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“we launched an artist on Facebook”
“we could drive a million fans to something”
Andrew Batey USES YouTube
Andrew says his group loaded muted YouTube videos into pop-under windows to rapidly increase view counts and reach YouTube's front page.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“We would load it with YouTube videos on mute”
“we could basically break into the algorithm on the front page”
Beatdapp DEVELOPED_BY Andrew Batey
Beatdapp is described as the company Andrew co-founded and whose blockchain and stream-analysis technology he helped build.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 171 Details
“the name of the company that Andrew co-founded was called Beatdapp”
“We built this technology.”
Morgan is described as Andrew's co-founder in the team that built Beatdapp's technology.
Explicit Confidence 97% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“Morgan, my co-founder”
“Andrew and his co-founders Morgan and Poria built a tool”
Poria is described as part of the co-founder team that built Beatdapp's tracking technology and as a machine-learning engineer.
Explicit Confidence 97% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“Poria was a really gifted machine-learning AI engineer”
“Andrew and his co-founders Morgan and Poria built a tool”
Beatdapp USES Blockchain
Beatdapp initially used blockchain as the proposed solution for tracking music plays and later built blockchain infrastructure for that purpose.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“we believe blockchain could be a solution”
“we built one of the fastest blockchains in the world”
Beatdapp USES Private permission chain
Andrew says the company operated its blockchain as a private permission chain capable of very high transaction throughput.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“10 million transactions per second per region in a private permission chain”
Beatdapp USES Anomaly detection
Beatdapp uses many detection models and anomaly-detection methods to identify fraudulent streams and abnormal playback patterns.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“We’re building — we have probably close to 700 models looking for different things”
“they were mostly using rules-based anomaly detection.”
Beatdapp USES Community clustering
Beatdapp uses community-clustering techniques over streaming-service metadata and device characteristics to identify coordinated activity.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“we have all these types of community-clustering techniques”
Beatdapp receives anonymized, hashed streaming data and uses it while avoiding personally identifiable information.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“We’re seeing an anonymized version, generally hashed data”
“we didn’t have any PII ever”
Beatdapp ASSOCIATED_WITH Streaming fraud
Beatdapp is described as a company that analyzes music streams to detect and investigate streaming fraud.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 171 Details
“Beatdapp in order to analyze music streams to detect fraud”
Jack Rhysider REFERENCES Spotify accuses Drake of forging billions of fraudulent streams
Jack references the article about Spotify accusing Drake of forging fraudulent streams.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 171 Details
“I saw this article last week. Spotify accuses Drake of forging billions of fraudulent streams.”
Jack Rhysider MENTIONS Reddit
Jack mentions Reddit posts reporting that users' Spotify accounts showed playback of unfamiliar artists.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 171 Details
“I’ve actually seen many Reddit posts where people are saying, hey, what’s up with my Spotify account?”
Jack Rhysider AUTHORED Darknet Diaries
The outro identifies Jack as the creator of the Darknet Diaries show.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“This show is created by me, the hashed brown Jack Rhysider.”
Jim Trustee MEMBER_OF Department of Justice
Jim Trustee is described as a former Chief of Organized Crime for the Department of Justice.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Andrew Batey EP 171 Details
“our lawyer for the company is this guy named Jim Trustee. He was the former Chief of Organized Crime for the DOJ.”
Works mentioned in the transcript. Distinct from show-note sources.
Model gpt-5.6-luna · prompt 1.5.19 · schema 1.5.19 · 2026-09-13T08:55:52.140656+00:00