They can't allow obvious fraud, or there'd be money to gain in spinning up lots of VMs to inflate your stream count (and thereby your share of the total pie).

But people must be trying, I assume. Some will fall more or less clearly on the fraudulent side, and some are probably technically ok, just a little annoying or deceptive. Like duplicating popular playlists and adding your song to it: https://celebrityaccess.com/2020/01/08/the-dark-arts-of-spot...