Fake SpaceX YouTube channel with 36k live viewers scams people out of money
youtube.com
youtube.com
As an example, from his latest non-pinned tweet, the second visible reply is a BTC scam: https://i.imgur.com/ibO94uG.png
How does twitter have such a high tolerance for this?
There's absolutely no reason for them to care.
These bots increase "growth" and "engagement" and are good for their user numbers.
The damage these bots do doesn't seem to be enough for people to leave the platform and hit their bottom line.
Nothing will change until we have proper regulation that will consider them complicit of such scams and fines them accordingly.
> If the transaction does not process properly, please try by sending the same amount to the BTC address again, and it should go through. Your original transaction will be refunded as you can only participate once.
Also interesting is these scammers are using fake viewers and fake chat messages to make it look more legit.
I submitted the reports anyway and, shortly thereafter, got an email from Youtube telling me "Unfortunately the information you provided in your report to YouTube does not meet our impersonation reporting guidelines." Seems they automatically ignore any reports without tagged videos/comments.
There's a lot of live viewers, probably many bots, but some real people too. It's high in youtube algorithm, I reported it obviously, but it will take a long time.
4.08663416 BTC already
I guess the answer to your question would be "normal every day folks." But, still, how does the thinking that leads them to believe this stuff even actually work? I don't get it.
These bots still contribute to their "growth" and "engagement" and user numbers. Some of them might even be real users being paid to participate, which means YouTube is still showing them ads and profiting off them.
We need proper regulations where platforms should be considered complicit of these scams when they fail to remove such content or outright promote it. As it stands, is is absolutely irresponsible from them to let any new account set up a livestream, boost its popularity with fake viewers and the algorithms will do the rest and start recommending it to real viewers.
Looking through my watch history I can't seem to find it though...
But it is often the case that the owners of these accounts try to get access back from YouTube, to no avail. Several animators I subscribed to had their accounts hacked (maybe poor passwords) and filled with crypto scam nonsense and the process of getting them back was hopeless and took many months of concerted effort from them and their fans.
At that point, though the scammers are of course primarily at fault, I'd also place blame on YouTube for allowing the scam-turned accounts to remain. Protection for user content that is sometimes illegal should cease when a host repeatedly fails to remove that (specific instance of) content in good faith.