YouTube has always been slow to react or stop obvious scams on their platform. One of the most known and easy to detect youtube scams has been some channels (potentially hacked) streaming some crypto talks and offering their potential victims easy profits if they send bitcoin or other crypto coins to their wallets. Even after multiple people reporting these scams, they would still be up and running for days if not weeks. While YouTube didn't really pay needed attention to such scams, some people would lose their assets if they ended up believing these scams. One of the common excuses platforms like YouTube can come up is lack of resources to monitor all published content all the time.
Scammers have upgraded their schemes with deepfakes now. Not only they are using the AI technology to create deepfakes of famous people or leaders of crypto projects to deceived their potential victims, they are doing so utilizing YouTube's ads system. They are paying YouTube to run their scam ads. Just today I sponsored content with deepfake of Michael Saylor, which was saying that MicroStrategy was giving away bitcoins to celebrate the year or success. Those who want to participate, need to send some bitcoin to their wallets for which QR code is visibly shown. I saw the same ad twice last week. Even Saylor and MicroStrategy posted a warning that there is deepfake scams happening, and MicroStrategy or Saylor has nothing to do with them.
Yet, YouTube is still running these ads and collecting the fees. What excuse YouTube can have this time? While it is reasonable to argue that YouTube can't monitor all content all the time, but wouldn't it be negligence if they didn't review the sponsored content for which they are getting paid? I don't even think they would need staff reviewing these ads. These are so not sophisticated ads that automated tools could easily detect the fraud. It makes no sense with all the resources YouTube and Google has they would allow such basic scams to take place on their platform, especially when they are collecting fees for these ads. Now not only platform users get to see this content, but also forced to see in the feed because they are sponsored ads, and YouTube loves to place ads for all content consumed on their platform unless users pay monthly fee.
Something is definitely wrong here with what YouTube is doing. I hope they will figure it out soon before many keep losing their money to these scams. Sad part is the fix for this would be very easy. I am surprised YouTube internal tools did not catch these scams before being posted as ads. Or maybe they did, and just don't care.
There will always be those who utilize new tools and technology for defrauding others. Same has been the case with crypto, same will be the case with AI tech. We already see this happening with utilizing both AI deepfakes and payments in crypto. This bad actors always bring negative reputation to innovation because of possibility of such frauds. My example from YouTube isn't even a sophisticated one. Most people would detect the scam here. But more sophisticated scams and schemes will emerge as these bad actors continue using their creativity to deceived and defraud others. Companies seems like won't care either. It may have to be up to altruistic minded people and communities to build tools that detect fraud and prevent such scams from taking place or being successful. It may have to be up to decentralized systems and networks to build tools that benefit people, and make it difficult for fraudsters to advance their schemes.
YouTube Shorts is especially bad, they are almost all scams.
For shorts I doubt they care about quality, but rather their attempt to reacquire attention lost to other platforms.
I saw one of those ads, with Solana CEO presenting an airdrop opportunity where you had to first send some Solana to a walled to get twice as much back. It is incredible how YouTube does not have an audit method to check those scams. Just the hurt it gets to its image is big enough for them to pay attention and get rid of those ads ASAP or don't even let them reach the viewer screens.
This is what Web2 Centralization is all about. The greed where the web2 world is immersed is so big, that they don't even listen to people reporting it until the scam has been running for several days.
Ah yes, I did see the one with Solana too. So crazy!
I've always seen YouTube as one of the laziest companies out there. It's ridiculous how long it takes to get back to you if you write an email even with the main purpose of improving what they are doing instead of asking for help. So no doubt there are a lot of people taking advantage of their negligence overall.
Monopoly makes them complacent.
Scammers are always jumping on new trends,milk as much as they can before. A lot of people are aware.
My worry with googles approach when it comes to this is they just watch. They really look at country policy benefit as much from illegal acts in countries with weak policies. When pretending to care where governments are strict. This is the dark side of web2 make the most wherever you can.
Maybe they hate crypto and BTC so much, that they don´t mind people losing their BTC to scammers. Pecunia non olet.
That is true. There was a time when they actively took actions against crypto content. Not sure where they stand now.
It sucks but I think Google wants the money they make from the ads. So in order to do so, they have to let the ads run for a while so they can get their cut. I think they already have the technology to catch those scam ads when they are submitted, but they just aren't using it.
I agree, tech to catch this shouldn’t be complicated.
Sadly that doesn’t surprise me in the least. They are unscrupulous at best, and knowingly engaging in nefarious activity at worst. They are ultra quick to ban or block content they don’t like but allow scam shit like this on purpose for days or weeks. Par for the course for such an evil company.
These days ads related to investment and crypto are getting very common and the sad part is the majority of them are not even legit that is indeed a big issue for sure. There are still many applications that on going and people are investing there money in these ponze schemes and lossing their money.
It's sad to see what YouTube has become over the years. From friendly platform to a platform full of ads that are mostly scams and google just doesn't do anything about the ads.
YouTube overlords controlling these scams and allowing them 2 weeks to wreak havoc for a % of the profit be like…
Since scammers pay for add, it definitely must be profitable. Two weeks is plenty of time. Unbelievable.
These schemes seem to evolve over time. Sad how the innocents are robbed especially now that BTC and crypto, in general, are quite hyped.
That’s crazy
It is sad that people are going to believe anything they se on YouTube including those scam ads and it will have a negative effect on people later especially when it requires you to invest and on the long run, you don’t get your money
I guess it is time for YouTube to also implement "Community Notes" just like Twitter did! I used to see many scam Ads on Twitter promoting tokens and sharing phishing links and the like.
I am happy that lately under most of these Twitter Ads, there are Community Notes warnings hence flagging them as scams.
Maybe YouTube should think of something similar .
It seems that YouTube cares more about if I upload natural healing methods and suspends my account on that for 3 months, rather than banning the bad actors and verifying the content they share through those ads. Ads are services offered for 3rd parties, they should have someone checking if they are legit or not. Trust evokes trust, right?
You rightfully laid emphasis on the negative impact these scams have on both innovation and the reputation of emerging technologies, urging for a collective effort to counteract these malicious intentions.
It's disheartening that despite the resources available to tech giants like YouTube and Google, these basic scams still find their way onto the platform, affecting users and tarnishing the overall experience.
Youtube really needs to vet their advertisement since they are a centralized platform. If it were a decentralized platform, we could say the advert was made via a decentralized platform.
YouTube put 3 adverts in a video clip. Now they even put in a few before it even begins. Rarely does it start normally !
Youtube knows what is happening but they are not stopping it willingly. I wonder, in the last year, how they banned crypto ads and now allowing this scam. This is hypocrisy.
It is disheartening how every system wants to make profits even from fraudulent channels. This doesn't take place only on YouTube. Other social media platforms allow such.
Shouldn't they be criminal laws that prosecute even the media platforms on these scams insurgent?
It might be something behind it, that's why they are allowing those ads, maybe, they want people to have a bad feelings of those coins, yet it doesn't seems nice that they are allowing something like that in their platform.
That's right, we see that there are many ads on YouTube that are very wrong and that country doesn't like all those ads, but still within that country we see all those things. We get views and YouTube is doing all this just to make money.
Sport on! The same is happening on X. It would be bad if every ad was a rug pull... but it is even worse. They are wallet drainers. Meanwhile, I had a $10 promo for a Space blocked because it "promoted NFTs". I know people that have had ads to onboarding workshops blocked. It's pretty wild that scammers go unchecked.
What! Why will YouTube allow such even when it conspicuous to them. Aren't they scamming themselves? Because if you allow scam to flourish in your watch and you are earning from such, you yourself is a scammer equally.
Scammers are everywhere and corruption everywhere also and it is just a pity that even YouTube that should fight it on the platform are not doing so
I think YouTube needs to do better and act on those scam ads. The excuse they gave is so flismy. YouTube is gradually losing its reputation.
It is normal to expect such a thing from a company which monetizes the contents of a user who has not been approved for their partnership program yet.
$WINE
!WOC
Impressive post, Woc from @geekgirl! kairke(8/8) is blown away by the commitment you've shown in crafting this post. Your hard work and dedication are highly appreciated.
You rock! @kairke knows it, and that's why they sent you this gift of 0.3 WGOLD to remind you of your greatness.
BTW! WGOLD is the token of the War of Clans ecosystem, you can use it to have discounts in all our games or stake it and earn rewards now!
It still amused me why people are still even on those platforms like YouTube
https://reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1dkuqnh/youtube_ads/
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people sharing the post on Reddit as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.