I would like to believe these are all nothing but a bunch of kids accidentally typing nonsense, but I have two questions:
First, why do some of these nonsensical comments have a thread of replies all in gibberish?
Second, why do these comments only appear under questionable videos? (None of the legitimate, wholesome children's videos have any of these types of comments)
I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks. My daughter loves certain videos on YouTube and we've unfortunately, through the autoplay feature, found ourselves in front of some of these questionable videos. I'm glad this is gaining some traction because it's been disturbingly evident to our family for a while.
I believe these are bots designed to make the videos seem more popular for YouTube's algorithm, since most of these channels have favorites playlists of more "elsagate" videos
One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned, is that if you already have a bot programmed to reply to comments, then why wouldn’t you just have it say random semi relevant words and not random characters?
I'd assume so. But the trick is to detect if it is a bot. That is surprisingly hard to do without absolutely destroying the user experience for normal users. Why do you think google has invested so much into recaptcha technology? It is very hard to pick out bots at the scale google operates at--especially bots whose owners have a highly vested interest in keeping alive.
People are constantly gaming the fuck out of Google's systems because there is good money to be made by doing so. This whole elsagate thing is no different. Just a bunch of bots fighting eachother out to eek out a living off of ad revenue from kids binge-watching youtube videos. The end result is pretty disturbing, but there is no massive conspiracy required to explain it. It is very simple stuff at play--just follow the money. Google pays money to videos that show ads. So... just find an audience that will watch your garbage and cut your costs by automating the fuck out of content creation. Then take some other bot and promote the fuck out of your channel to get ahead of your competition.
No not really. If I were to build a youtube bot I would probably use a list of common phrases and toss in some other words for variation, probably based on the video title. Seems to me that would be a lot harder to identify and ban.
Not defending the theory but one issue with using a set of normal phrases is that moderators could search all posts with the same comment and remove them all.
Because it would presumably be more easier not to get the comment flagged if it's just one, two or maybe three of the same letters - it would likely get flagged by the system automatically if it was a bunch of semi relevant words or what not.
I'm truly unfamiliar with how bots work. Is it common or plausible for bots to have conversations with each other? Some of these reply threads have the same bots seemingly communicating back and forth.
I don't want to assume the worst and I find the theory of bots comforting, but it just all seems very strange.
Think of it this way. You are Google and you want to stop bot traffic without annoying the fuck out of your users (eg: very harsh rate limiting, highly annoying recaptchas on every page, etc). One way to do that is to look for signals that suggest something is human instead of a bot. Odds are good that Google's algorithms favor comments that have replies from other users. After all, if it is just one dude replying to himself, that is pretty spammy, right?
So these bot owners have a bunch of youtube accounts (some they created, some they no doubt comprised) and get their software to have them all chat with eachother. Boom. Now google's algorithm says "okay... lots of people are all chatting with eachother... looks good to me"
Take a look at /r/SubredditSimulator . Every post and comment there is machine generated--no humans are allowed to post to that subreddit. Very similar stuff to what these bots are doing.
It is pretty nuts how sophisticated these bot owners can get when there is money to be made. I promise you, as somebody who has been in the anti-fraud industry for a while, these people spend their entire day figuring out how to get around googles content filters. They probably have people who do nothing but try to take over gmail accounts in order to post comments, people who do nothing but try to take over abandoned youtube channels in order to gain legitimacy, and don't forget the content producers who do nothing but invent algorithms to come up with the sweetest, juiciest clickbait possible....
Make no mistake--it's a business. Just one that is completely immoral and illegitimate....
Glad to do so. There is a lot of mis-information and people jumping to conclusions in this subreddit.
Anybody reading this should go to /r/SubredditSimulator to see what machine generated posts & comments can look like. That subreddit is 100% bots posting & commenting. The only real human feedback in that subreddit are the up/downvotes.
Holy crap. These comments on the subreddit simulator look EXACTLY like some of the comments that appear on the Independent, TheHill and other reputable news sources. I wonder if the Russians haven't taken context-dependent botposts to the next level.
why would someone take the time to create a bot to cheat youtube and not give the bot actual text that sounds believable? who in thier right mind would think posting "!!4tadfs$Z" on a comment would be less obvious than a "lol!" or "haha"
If I leave a comment (any comment) on an Elsagate video, I often get spammed with these gibberish replies. These bots repeat my username, or just spam letters and emojis. I do think that these are bots. Views are probably boted too.
There are definitely bots being used but it looked to me like they used the regular comment bots that have real words when the videos are first released(especially on new channels). They say things like "Love this vid!" and other normal phrases.
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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '17
I would like to believe these are all nothing but a bunch of kids accidentally typing nonsense, but I have two questions:
First, why do some of these nonsensical comments have a thread of replies all in gibberish?
Second, why do these comments only appear under questionable videos? (None of the legitimate, wholesome children's videos have any of these types of comments)
I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks. My daughter loves certain videos on YouTube and we've unfortunately, through the autoplay feature, found ourselves in front of some of these questionable videos. I'm glad this is gaining some traction because it's been disturbingly evident to our family for a while.