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My theory about the easy to spot bots in YouTube comments (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by thingsiplay@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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I want to share some thoughts that I had recently about YouTube spam comments. We all know these early bots in the YouTube comment section, with those "misleading" profile pictures and obvious bot like comments. Those comments are often either random about any topic or copied from other users.

OK, why am I telling you that? Well, I think these bots are there to be recognized as bots. Their job is to be seen as a bot and be deleted and ignored. In that case everyone feels safe, thinking all bots are now deleted. But in reality there are more sophisticated bots under us. So the easy bots job is to get delete and basically mislead us, so we don't think that any is left, because they are deleted.

What do you think? Sounds plausible, doesn't it? Or do I have paranoia? :D

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[–] IncognitoMosquito@beehaw.org 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Obvious scams are obvious on purpose, but not for the reason you're suggesting. They don't want to waste actual manpower on anyone smart enough to recognize a scam. So they make the scam obvious, and they know that anyone that does respond to it is in that small percentage of clueless or gullible people that the scam might actually succeed on. They're not trying to play 4D chess, they're trying to find the people that can only play 1D checkers.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 5 points 2 weeks ago

Oh, I finally get this argumentation! I've read it before couple of times (also in the comment section of this topic here), but it didn't make sense. But now it clicked. I can definitely see why they keep it simple and straightforward now. And yes, it makes more sense than my theory.