Falling outside of its borders triggers the (mis)reading of fans not as human audiences but as bots: artificial figures whose streaming and purchasing habits exclude them from the category of genuine music consumption. 1 In cases like these, the streaming and purchasing practices of K-pop fans code their engagement outside of so-called "human" digital behavior, a normative window drawn (and maintained) by platform algorithms and industry gatekeepers alike. In February 2020, YouTube removed millions of views from a newly released BTS music video as "part of standard precautions taken against bots," a move that directly affected the views accumulated by a fan-coordinated campaign to break the 24-hour debut record on the platform. A song looped on Spotify too many times, a track purchased and then re-purchased on the same music site, a YouTube video watched too-repetitively and without enough variation to bypass the platform's bot filter. In online tests of human verification, K-pop fans will often fail.
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