Bad//Dreems Detail Devastating Blow After Extremist Group Hack Facebook

Bad//Dreems are just two weeks out from releasing their fourth album, HOO HA!, and they’ve lost access to their Facebook and can’t promote their new music or upcoming June tour on the platform.

If you look at their account now, you will see recent posts from the band. Those posts have been cross-posted from Instagram – the band’s Facebook page is linked to drummer Miles Wilson’s personal account, which was recently hacked by ISIS extremists.

“It's become quite real because we have to promote it [a new album] coming out in two weeks, and we're not sure what to do,” vocalist Ben Marwe tells The Music.

“Miles, our drummer, started a Facebook event for his birthday party. I think that because his personal account was linked to the Bad//Dreems profile, a bot got in that way,” Marwe continues. “We got hacked by ISIS and they started posting. What they do is – I’m just reading about it now – They break into your account, remove all of your photos and replace the profile with ISIS propaganda, which is pretty crazy. That's where we're at.”

Marwe confirms that the band can only post on Facebook through Instagram now, and without direct access to the social media platform, they risk losing the attention of 31,000 followers; many of whom the band suspect only uses Facebook and no other social media apps or websites.

It’s a lot of people to lose “When you're just trying to promote an album and sell a tour,” Marwe says, “We can’t even become admins for the events.”

He adds, “Luckily, we're working on this one with [tour promoters] Love Police, and they've been able to sort out all of the events with all the other bands, but we can't access that. What's crazy is this [promoting tours and albums on Facebook] is one of the only ways that you can do it, given there aren’t crazy amounts of street press anymore.”

Marwe says that Facebook is doing “nothing” about the band’s predicament. Facebook has “Agencies that send affidavits to Facebook on your behalf,” he notes, but “because it is an extremist operation, it does fast track the process, but I think it could end up costing us thousands of dollars and potentially six to twelve months before they do anything about it.”

There are lots of things Marwe would like to say to Facebook, but he’s choosing to see the “funny side” despite the “serious element”. Bad//Dreems hopes Facebook “helps us out. It's not the end of the world – we're not saving lives one Facebook profile at a time, but we'd love to use it to try and address our fans, tell them going on with the music we're releasing and the tours we're doing.”

HOO HA! will be released on Friday, 19 May. You can pre-order or pre-save the album here.

BAD//DREEMS 

THE HOO HA! TOUR

Friday 23rd June        Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide SA
 Saturday 24th June    Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC                
 Friday 30th June        Triffid, Brisbane QLD                    
 Saturday 1st July        Factory Theatre, Sydney NSW

Tickets here.