I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comments responding to that. All obvious bot accounts.
It's obvious on the channels, because these reply sets usually don't contain a lot of replies to comments (if there are any comment replies, it's almost always from the channel owner). It's so obvious, in fact, that I'm surprised YouTube hasn't done something to address it.
Yes and what they do is use actual registered investment advisors names and set up scam websites for them. This way it's more legitimate because if you research that person you will find that they are actually registered in official databases.
Oh I love these comment threads! I like to add another reply saying something like “oh my goodness, I used Elizabeth Ferguson for my investing too!! She went to my college, so I thought I could trust her. But then I found out she was cheating on me with my wife! We got a divorce and i lost half my assets in the separation. Elizabeth Ferguson probably is enjoying them now :(. Just one experience, but buyer beware!”
I'd be careful with that. Sounds like you could be mistaken for a bot that is part of the scheme and get your Google account banned.
Then again, you should live under the assumption that your Google account could be banned at any time with no recourse. You do have local backups of all your Google account data and don't need your Gmail account to access anything important, right?
That makes me realize that banning is a punishment only usable on people who care about their account. Scammers don’t, a new bot account is a click away. But basilikum would be sad to lose his account.
It's been well know to happen on reddit too for many years. Whole posts and comment threads copied verbatim with new accounts. Nowadays with AI you can make it way more dynamic.
I’ve been seeing this kind of spam on forums all the way back in 2004. I wonder if it was a feature in Xrumer or whatever they used to post spam back then.
If you have a forum and haven’t found a thread that is just one guy arguing with himself on twelve sock accounts; well then you haven’t been looking or only have one user.
Nice. I run a site that depends on user submitted content, and it's really interesting to observe how some people try to get around the guardrails. Not sure if your tool does this, but I would perform some additional checks for comments that have links in them.
I’m not a heavy Reddit user but I’ve noticed a sharp increase in comment spam disguised as real discussion.
I think the turning point was when they allowed accounts to hide their comment history. Before, when you could click on an account and read all of their other comments it was easy to tell when an account only existed for fake conversations about a product they were spamming.
Now the spam accounts hide their comment history so they can do nothing but spam similar comments all over Reddit and walk the line where it’s not obvious if any single comment is spam or an one off comment from someone trying to be helpful.
Users are using Google and other services to find their other posts and post warnings, but it takes so much more effort now.
Just a thought, but I wonder if Reddit are hiding this information deliberately to prevent anyone from publishing a study estimating what percentage of their traffic is driven by bots (anecdotally, it's a lot - and they used to be mostly organic even half a decade ago).
This has been a thing since blogs became a widespread thing 25+ years ago. Especially with the advent of Wordpress. It was even a “commonly accepted” SEO tactic for awhile.
I also see a ton of this here on HN as the political topics have ramped up.
Not enough people are flagging those when it aligns with their bias. It's even less likely to get flagged when it's a double whammy of politics and AI. Loosely being about AI should not give it a free pass.
It's obvious on the channels, because these reply sets usually don't contain a lot of replies to comments (if there are any comment replies, it's almost always from the channel owner). It's so obvious, in fact, that I'm surprised YouTube hasn't done something to address it.
Then again, you should live under the assumption that your Google account could be banned at any time with no recourse. You do have local backups of all your Google account data and don't need your Gmail account to access anything important, right?
“Wow! Seems like it’s so easy to change over with savings like that!”
I think the turning point was when they allowed accounts to hide their comment history. Before, when you could click on an account and read all of their other comments it was easy to tell when an account only existed for fake conversations about a product they were spamming.
Now the spam accounts hide their comment history so they can do nothing but spam similar comments all over Reddit and walk the line where it’s not obvious if any single comment is spam or an one off comment from someone trying to be helpful.
Users are using Google and other services to find their other posts and post warnings, but it takes so much more effort now.
Not enough people are flagging those when it aligns with their bias. It's even less likely to get flagged when it's a double whammy of politics and AI. Loosely being about AI should not give it a free pass.
If we don’t police our side nobody will.