YouTube’s sleazy decline into scam promotion

[Charles-Tim]

Although, not only YouTube promote scam, all social media also promote scam, there was a scam I saw on Twitter today that requested me to pay certain amount of ether to be paid back double or more, thanks to Bitcointalk such can not happen to one of their members like me and fall for the scam, not possible. After, I decided to read crypto news on cointelegraph which has been my habit ever since I joined this forum. This is what I read, starting from the title above:
Last weekend, I was watching a sports stream on YouTube. Talented, fearless athletes on the screen, a glass of wine in one hand and a purring cat under the other — you know, those perfect Saturday evenings. If only the stream didn’t keep being interrupted every few minutes by annoying ads. They usually come in a series of two advertisements played in a row, which can be skipped after five seconds. Just as I was thinking about subscribing to a paid version to free myself from learning more about flying detergents, half-eaten donuts, striped snickers and the best tampons ever, I saw the following:

“To verify your address, just send from 0.5 to 200 ETH to the address below and get from 1 to 400 ETH (x2 back).”

This tired old proposition, which would offend anyone even slightly acquainted with the world of crypto technology (my grandmother included), was accompanied by a video interview with Binance’s Changpeng Zhao taken from what looks to be some Forbes event. The shot was unceremoniously adorned with Ethereum and Binance logos.



A conveniently ambiguous policy
If I want to publish a video of my little nephew dancing to a pop song, it risks being swiftly blocked for violating intellectual property rights. Is that fair? Possibly.

When an educational stream about cryptocurrencies is organized by Cointelegraph or a crypto vlogger, it risks being blocked for “harmful content,” which has happened several times this year so far. Ridiculous.

If people keep falling for fake Elon Musk giveaway scams offering Bitcoin (BTC) from innumerable fake accounts created specifically to deceive, it is not YouTube’s responsibility. OK, I totally agree; everyone needs to conduct their own research when making any investment decision. But no one seems to be responsible for the advertisements YouTube exposes its audience to either. Atrocious. The fact that the biggest video-hosting platform of our time shamelessly permits itself to promote scams is deeply unjust. This brings to mind the Roman expression of pecunia non olet — that money does not stink, regardless of whether it is generated via human waste or exploitative practices. Stink or not, an unpleasant aftertaste lingers and will not be easily forgotten.

With great influence comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, YouTube seems to ignore it.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/youtube-s-sleazy-decline-into-scam-promotion
Try to read the news completely by clicking the link above to see what this person say about how YouTube has failed its users. And of which are all true.

[AakZaki]

The YouTube ad filter that can pass to broadcast seems to be incomplete because there are still many giveaway ads like this that can run several times when we watch the YouTube video which is then followed by this ad. As a YouTube user, we also need to report if we find fraudulent ads like this so they can be blocked immediately.

Indeed, not only on YouTube, but on Twitter there also seems to be a growing number of giveaway scams on behalf of people who are well-known and very influential in the crypto world.

We as crypto activists have indeed learned and the possibility of being cheated is very small, but people who don't understand crypto and just know their name will be trapped by these fraudulent advertisements.

So that ads like that don't appear, we can also use YouTube Premium and any ads won't appear, but we will pay the bill to subscribe to YouTube Premium.

[Coyster]

YouTube just like Google has this same problem of not filtering their ads and leaving it to the users to do their research on any ad that appears as they use the app or Google search/chrome for example. It's right about now so obvious that most of this apps or social media platforms will do nothing to address the issue of scam advertisement, so as not to reduce their traffic or reduce the money they are making from them.

That being said, people should accept the responsibility of either totally not using some of this platforms and even if/when they must do, should take up the responsibility of protecting themselves by using ad blocker and ignoring and reporting any giveaway (scam) that asks for deposit first, or ads that ask them for private keys, seed phrases or anything that will compromise their privacy or funds.

[20kevin20]

Ever since the insane amount of Twitter giveaway scams I got to the conclusion that they're intentionally left alive in order to destroy the image of cryptocurrencies. Nowadays you hear the idea that earning money online is easy so often you get to the point where you may actually believe a giveaway like this - especially if you have never worked before with video editing or have much knowledge about cryptos to find out if they're real giveaways or not.

YouTube could've just filtered the ads, but I believe they simply don't want to. They're in the boat of corporations and the system of enslavement. Why waste your resources filtering out scams when you can just let them lower down the reputation of cryptocurrencies?

[Baofeng]

Ever since the insane amount of Twitter giveaway scams I got to the conclusion that they're intentionally left alive in order to destroy the image of cryptocurrencies. Nowadays you hear the idea that earning money online is easy so often you get to the point where you may actually believe a giveaway like this - especially if you have never worked before with video editing or have much knowledge about cryptos to find out if they're real giveaways or not.

YouTube could've just filtered the ads, but I believe they simply don't want to. They're in the boat of corporations and the system of enslavement. Why waste your resources filtering out scams when you can just let them lower down the reputation of cryptocurrencies?

If that is there intention then it's a win-win for them, I mean they touted to have this so called filtering algo and it's not working why? because their excuses is that the criminals are making it hard for them, like blackhat methods of cloaking that's why it bypass their system, and then they earn money from it, win number 1. And then the believed that they want to destroy crypto's image, win number 2 for them.

[pixie85]

YouTube just like Google has this same problem of not filtering their ads and leaving it to the users to do their research on any ad that appears as they use the app or Google search/chrome for example.

They are lazy and incompetent because when it comes to property rights and even private disputes they're quick to give out strikes and delete channels. They also like to delete od block content they don't like like people talking about covid were having their videos deleted.

What about those youtube crypto channels that were under attack some months back?

Where's the freedom of speech?

This is a problem with centralization and decentralization. Centralization will lead to them doing what they want but decentralized platform have such limited content.

[jossiel]

They are lazy and incompetent because when it comes to property rights and even private disputes they're quick to give out strikes and delete channels. They also like to delete od block content they don't like like people talking about covid were having their videos deleted.

They are quick to detect contents that they don't like. Giving strikes, copyright, and even block a channel. It's their platform and those decisions can be done by them even without a proper forum of discussion for those channels that they've been blocking. Like those legitimate Youtube channels that are giving information about cryptocurrency.

But when it comes to the scam advertisements that will suck people's money, they don't take action. In channels, they don't earn but with advertisements, they earn and it's their customers. They keep on accepting scam ads without analyzing it even it's going to cost a lot of money from the possible victims.

[Darker45]

This is what social media has largely become into, a lair of scammers. Scams are getting very obvious and ubiquitous not just on Youtube but all over the world of social media that you can hardly trust them anymore. There are also those subtle ones which are carefully tailored into tutorial and how-to videos, those which seem to provide step-by-step assistance.

But it also makes me wonder how they thrived and even multiplied quite fast. It must be a combination of negligence on the part of the site and the viewers. It must also mean that somehow education is unfortunately lagging behind that scams are often getting the better of a lot of uninformed individuals before a caution has arrived. It seems information dissemination, warnings, and the like cannot keep up with the pace of scammers.

But it seems to me that until now these large sites are somehow apathetic to those scams.  

[hugeblack]

There is no clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, so why do these companies strive to pay more money in order to verify that the ads are free of fraud despite the fact that both the owner of the advertisement and the party who watches it pays YouTube?

It is sad to see that, but these companies do not aim to profit from maintaining the immediate limit of regulatory laws that will place them under penalties if they do not abide by them, so unless there is a law binding on them, they will not fight this type of scam seriously.

[GDragon]

There is no clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, so why do these companies strive to pay more money in order to verify that the ads are free of fraud despite the fact that both the owner of the advertisement and the party who watches it pays YouTube?

It is sad to see that, but these companies do not aim to profit from maintaining the immediate limit of regulatory laws that will place them under penalties if they do not abide by them, so unless there is a law binding on them, they will not fight this type of scam seriously.

You're right, as long as they are not gonna end up in trouble, they will continue to get money from these scam advertisements. They've been blocking some of the legit crypto youtubers but they can't block these scams that always pops out in any video I've watched. Maybe we are just hopeful that they will still have a bit of concern to their viewers cause they are the biggest streaming platform, or are they the biggest streaming platform cause they don't care when it comes to money. They may not know it but the scam advertisements they are showing are also one of the reasons why crypto in general is being seen as a scam by other people.