The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views (nytimes.com) 137
An anonymous reader shares a report: Martin Vassilev makes a good living selling fake views on YouTube videos. Working from home in Ottawa, he has sold about 15 million views so far this year, putting him on track to bring in more than $200,000, records show. Mr. Vassilev, 32, does not provide the views himself. His website, 500Views.com, connects customers with services that offer views, likes and dislikes generated by computers, not humans. When a supplier cannot fulfill an order, Mr. Vassilev -- like a modern switchboard operator -- quickly connects with another. "I can deliver an unlimited amount of views to a video," Mr. Vassilev said in an interview. "They've tried to stop it for so many years, but they can't stop it. There's always a way around."
[...] Just as other social media companies have been plagued by impostor accounts and artificial influence campaigns, YouTube has struggled with fake views for years. The fake-view ecosystem of which Mr. Vassilev is a part can undermine YouTube's credibility by manipulating the digital currency that signals value to users. While YouTube says fake views represent just a tiny fraction of the total, they still have a significant effect by misleading consumers and advertisers.
[...] Just as other social media companies have been plagued by impostor accounts and artificial influence campaigns, YouTube has struggled with fake views for years. The fake-view ecosystem of which Mr. Vassilev is a part can undermine YouTube's credibility by manipulating the digital currency that signals value to users. While YouTube says fake views represent just a tiny fraction of the total, they still have a significant effect by misleading consumers and advertisers.
Fraud (Score:2)
How does Google get away with activities that would be called fraud in any other marketplace ?
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Google is a victim of better-looking numbers. How do they cope?!
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Well if a person gets enough view they monetize the channel. That means these ads are being played unnoticed and will need to pay the channel owner for the impressions.
However the people selling such ads will not see sales align with the advertising. Thus not go to Google.
Long term Google is better off treating their customers (the advertisers) well. Vs the quick scam.
It is google interest to stop these get rich quick people.
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be happy if Youtube just stopped paying for views. The quality of the videos would go up and we'd have fewer people making their careers from posting fluff and begging for subscriptions.
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How is it fraud on Google's part? Google is arguably a victim here -- they are using the truth, to the best of their knowledge.
No. Google is fully aware that there are viewbots. They choose to not do anything about it because they sell ad-space and more clicks means they can charge more for ads.
Admittedly my only source is anecdotal from a person who used to work with ads at Google and were told to not filter out the viewbots.
It is pretty clear that there is a profitable market for faking views so we know that Google isn't filtering out the bots.
Considering how much resources Google is putting into analyzing user behavior when it c
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Also, think about it from the advertiser's side - If you pay to have your ad run 1,000,000 times, but find out that 10% of those were fake, you're going to demand a 10% discount so you aren't throwing money away advertizing to bots.
I think ignoring bots could have worked in Google's favor at first, but as the people paying to run ads catch on it ceases to work in Google's favor and starts to cost them money.
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Google will invest in the solution when ad revenues drop. Until then, what's their motive? One could even argue that a fake hyped video brings in marginal legit views that wouldn't have been there regardless.
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Bad phrasing: Credibility of youtube content vs credibility of youtube stats
Ancient, obvious strategy. (Score:2, Interesting)
Fake views are a thing since before YouTube or even Googke even existed. I remember guys at every big dotcom bubble era company setting up bots at their home computers in 1999.
Then ad companies started to demand beacons and track IP adresses. After which botnet services sprung up. Often owned by those very employees. (One was by a "friend" of mine, and used all CounterStrike servers, since he had a super-popular CS mod.)
I am not the least bit surprised that YT views are as fake all all reviews on all shoppi
Duh. (Score:1)
While YouTube says fake views represent just a tiny fraction of the total,
Sure, because they can only count detected fake views. Which brings us back to the original claim of the fake view seller, namely that there is always a way around detection.
This would never happen to voting (Score:2, Insightful)
This would never happen to elections. There is absolutely no need to burden the voters with having to prove their identity and eligibility, and anyone telling you otherwise is a hateful racist.
It ACTUALLY does not happen (Score:3, Insightful)
When checked the occurrence of true voter willful fraud is incredibly minimal, a few voters out of millions *at most* (most story you hear about people registered at two places are people having moved on but
Re:It ACTUALLY does not happen (Score:4, Informative)
If those that demand no Voter Identification were concerned for the poor, they'd facilitate the acquisition of ID, not seek ways to avoid it. After all, what's the best job you ever had where you didn't need to identify yourself?
Only ONE party disapproves of measures to make our elections secure, and also your president lied to you. Voter ID is NOT a function of America's "racist past". EVERY COUNTRY THAT'S not a dictatorship has some form of assuring that the person voting is entitled to. EVERY COUNTRY.
NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti-voter-ID protest march [hermancain.com]
Indian citizens have voter ID and they are buttfuck poor, much poorer than the worst of the American poor [i.redd.it].
California liberals allege voter fraud, demand voter ID. [townhall.com] Democrats think voter identification laws are important for their party elections, but think they're not important when it comes to our elections.
Maxine Waters, an advocate against voter ID, requires an ID to attend her town hall meeting. [theamericanmirror.com]
Hillary Clinton's Book Tour. Valid Photo ID Required. [kxan.com] Suppressing minority turnout, or is this one of those things that's OK when Democrats do it but wrong when anyone else does it?
Re: It ACTUALLY does not happen (Score:1)
If those that demand no Voter Identification were concerned for the poor, they'd facilitate the acquisition of ID,
So it turns out they have done so, or don't you know about the reach-out efforts to get ID for people like VoteRiders or Operation ID? Or perhaps you don't know how places like New York City, California, or Massachusetts are creating ID systems for people to use?
Not to mention the lawsuits against states like Pennsylvania which mysteriously failed to comply with its own stated policies. You knkw, when the federal judge documented how incompetent the Commonwealth was.
Which forced them to instruct all the
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When checked
Yep, sure. YouTube would've liked you to believe the same thing.
Presenting identification is not difficult. Or are you going to claim, alcohol and tobacco-sellers are all racists?
Yep, "assholes". Or — just as I said — "hateful racists".
What "hoops"?
How would you know? It has never be
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No, I didn't, coward.
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I take it back.
I am unaware of this ever having been properly investigated. See? The rest of my argument stays, whereas yours falls apart if you rephrase it like this.
Which is why you have to cite evidence — or rephrase it... Still waiting.
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https://i.imgur.com/TYcqpRZ.jp... [imgur.com]
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You're saying that the poor are too stupid to get their voter-ID card, and the "depressed minorities via disenfranchisement" are too incompetent to get a voter-ID card. Good old bigotry and racism of low expectations.
So is Canada a racist country because you MUST present ID in order to vote? Or is this issue only racist because it directly correlates to the US, thus any form of security of elections is automatically racist, because again those people are too stupid, or too poor to get voter ID.
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You are the first person in this thread to call them such hurtful names.
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You are the first person in this thread to call them such hurtful names.
There's no hurtful names. The author is promoting the idea that these supposed people are too stupid, or too ignorant to be able to get some form of identification. This is also the mantra of the left, when they argue against it.
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Because voter fraud does happen. It's not an accident that places like Chicago are have such a reputation for voter fraud that late night talk show hosts make jokes about it.
It becomes even more important in an age where elections are coming down to fractions of a percent and the change of 1 vote in a 1000 can change the election small numbers of fraudulent votes can make a difference.
Check the Wikipedia article on close elections. There are instances where a difference of 1 or 2 votes made a difference. Ma
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When getting a voter ID card in the US does not entail hours taken out of a day and travel that is extremely burdensome to someone without access to a car, then I'll start listening to your argument.
You know how long it took me to get my 2nd ID card? It was called an "age of majority" card 6 minutes, plus 11 days waiting in the mail. If you can walk down to the liquor store to get boozed up, you can walk the extra block to the post office and get one.
It ACTUALLY HAS happened! (Score:1)
Voter fraud actually does happen.
In the recent elections, 6500 [wmur.com] voters in NH were "non-resident" voters, using same-day registration.
(In NH you can register on the day of voting, and you don't need to be a resident - only that you are in the process of moving. Basically you "pinky swear" that you will be a NH resident real soon, and they let you vote.)
Of the 6540 people who voted as non-resident, only about 1000 of these actually moved to NH.
The difference between the Republican and Democratic senate electio
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From the wikipedia link:
"He made the allegations based on a report by the New Hampshire House of Representatives saying that of the 6,540 voters who had registered to vote on Election Day, only 1,014 of those voters had obtained a New Hampshire drivers license by August 30 of the following year. The Washington Post was able to quickly contact 3 such voters who said that they were college students and kept the drivers license from their home state.[97]"
Not sure the "with a statistical certainty" stands up in
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Canada does not have the same history of institutionalized racism that we had in the South. Many US states used various election rules as an attempt to restrict voting by minorities - this is basic grade school history. Such as requirements to have paid a poll tax (except if your grandfather voted), literacy tests, and so forth. The states pushing hardest for voter ID laws just happen to those that also engaged in disenfranchisement of minorities during segregation. To many people, any election move by
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Canada does not have the same history of institutionalized racism that we had in the South. Many US states used various election rules as an attempt to restrict voting by minorities - this is basic grade school history.
No? I guess you never heard of the part here in Canada, where we genocided natives harder then the US. Allowed the Catholics to put them through reeducation camps, and forcibly sterilized many of them to keep their population under control.
And yet...those natives still have ID which they can vote with. Your fundamental ignorance of another country is palpable.
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What's happened in the past is voter ID laws are passed, then offices that issue voter IDs (typically the DMV) are shut down in districts that lean democratic. So they'll close half the DMVs in the city - drive wait times through the roof. Shockingly people who are working class or lower struggle to spend 6 hours waiting in line for a voter ID. Meanwhile suburban DMVs, where the population leans republican, you can get your IDs in 15 minutes.
So no, it's not about poor people being stupid, it's about republi
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Proof.
You can maintain anything is true, but people don't have to believe your unfounded assertions just because you make them.
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Wow, you really don't know what "racist" means. This explains why you are so permanently confused.
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Wow, you really don't know what "racist" means. This explains why you are so permanently confused.
This coming from the person who thinks that a fbi.gov link is malware is kinda funny. Then again, I seem to remember you're a bit on the slow side and think that racism can only mean "privilege+power"
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Malware? What? I see it took you a good one reply to simply start inventing shit about me and attacking it. The only logical move for you here is to start your hallucinations before I even reply and preemptively defend against attacks you invented.
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You need to offer the same proof of identity and eligibility In order to work legally, as would be required to participate in elections. You've just debunked yourself, coward.
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Yes, all of those prove identity. The eligibility can be confirmed trivially from the I-9 form. If having to obtained this documentation for work is acceptable, why is it such an outrage to demand the same for voting?
It is not, of course — you only foam at the mouth, because you suspect (as I do), that your party benefits from the fraud.
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No, most jobs only require a social security number. Sometimes they require a social security card. They may ask for a driver's license for jobs that require driving. You may need a picture ID for some jobs that require an extra measure of security. But in general, it is rare to require a picture ID to get a job. For proof of identification there are other methods that may be used.
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The above is a demonstrable [uscis.gov] falsehood:
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For proof of identification there are other methods that may be used.
GP is correct, other forms o
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Social Security number is generally required because that is needed for tax purposes. It's not supposed to be used for identification.
The SS card itself may not always be required. Not sure about today though, but in the past I did not have a physical card and still got employed.
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Social Security number is generally required because that is needed for tax purposes. It's not supposed to be used for identification.
In this instance it's not being used for identification purposes, it's being used to establish the eligibility to work. source [uscis.gov]
The SS card itself may not always be required.
If you mean that there other acceptable documents, yes, you are correct. If you mean that I, as an employer, don't need the to see the physical document? By signing the form I am attesting that I have physically inspected the card. And I'm personally liable if I sign it without the card being there. I assume there are employers that are willing to take that risk, but as a contr
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Yes, you need to fill out that form but you don't need a picture ID. A driver's license certainly makes it simpler but there are other ways to reasonably prove your identity.
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You are the first to use the word "picture" in this lengthy thread. Fight your strawmen of your own making yourself.
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The comparison in this thread was with voter ID cards, and the suggestion that since you need an ID to get a job therefore it's no big deal to have the same for voting. I'm just pointing out that they're not the same thing.
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It's apparently not so easy to investigate voter fraud, at least at the federal level. All it does is generate lawsuits... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
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I guess you are trying to make some racist point, but perhaps instead of picking on black people like always, you americans could switch back to paper ballots like many other countries use (canada) which are pretty damn secure and verifiable.
It's the computers in your system that are the problem. Personally i believe that americans really are that stupid to legitimately elect trump and the russians probably didn't have to hack much, as americans are more than happy to make poor choices without any outside i
Re:This would never happen to voting (Score:4)
Am I really? Would you care to speculate, which point that might be?
Did you know, strawmen are racist?
Now, curiously, here is an actual racist statement, but that's off-topic, of course.
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Re:This would never happen to voting (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need "thousands". Al Franken got into Senate with (officially) 312 votes — and this allowed the passing of Obamacare.
Earlier, Bush won Florida with a similarly sub-thousand majority — also dramatically affecting the entire nation's life... A few is enough [chicagotribune.com].
Google and Youtube are broken (Score:4, Insightful)
Google's performance has gone down over the years. It used to bring up better results but now it's mostly from the same sites and it's 99% the same as bing or any other search engine. Forum threads, blog posts don't come up often and it's mostly results from corporate websites.
Youtube also has another weird problem. It's recommendation has gotten absolutely click baitey only. It used to suggest really interesting videos but now all it suggests are click baits from a handful of content creators.
Google and Youtube ranking has been gamed way too much now, and Google in turn have really neutered their algorithms.
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Google search doesn't even return relevant results anymore but more results that may look like what you ask. Soon just expect that an AI will generate the results on the fly SCIgen [mit.edu] style.
Now they even remove keywords from your query to get more irrelevant matches from higher scored sites.
Also the +"" or intext: tags are basically ignored and worse if you insist they start throwing captchas at you.
Unfortunately you will be one of those few people who notice, may be poining it out a couple more will also real
You are the cause (Score:2)
Youtube also has another weird problem. It's recommendation has gotten absolutely click baitey only. It used to suggest really interesting videos but now all it suggests are click baits from a handful of content creators.
And the main culprit for that is your own human brain.
Youtube mostly uses machine learning nowadays for its recommendation system.
Automatic systems designed to increase the time spent online watching, so that Google can earn more money.
The AI powering Youtube autonomously learn that showing you video A instead of Video B (given that you've watched X, Y, Z) is more likely to keep you around.
And due to how human brains work, it *happens* that video A is going to be click baitey because that's what works the b
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Youtube also has another weird problem. It's recommendation has gotten absolutely click baitey only. It used to suggest really interesting videos but now all it suggests are click baits from a handful of content creators.
And the main culprit for that is your own human brain.
Youtube mostly uses machine learning nowadays for its recommendation system. Automatic systems designed to increase the time spent online watching, so that Google can earn more money. The AI powering Youtube autonomously learn that showing you video A instead of Video B (given that you've watched X, Y, Z) is more likely to keep you around.
And due to how human brains work, it *happens* that video A is going to be click baitey because that's what works the best at attracting humans attention.
The AI is simply independently rediscovering and learning on its own what has been studied since a long time regarding, e.g. , content on the TV that attracts attention (answer : emotions, specially violent ones).
I wish that was true.
No matter how many times I ask it not to show me the "top 10 of blah blah blah", it keeps showing up.
Youtube's algorithm is compromised. Why does stupid stuff like "top 10 actors who did cartwheels in movies" (something I made up) show up? I don't care. I even actively say I'm not interested and a few weeks later there are more of the same.
It used to recommend music that I might like from the music videos I'd watched previously. Those are gone too. A lot of them were live shows a
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Click on the Hamburger menu, select "Not Interested," click on "Tell Me Why," select an appropriate reason "Don't Like," or the last reason which is available 10-20% of the time, which are videos recommended due to some other Watched Video|Topic|Subscribed Channel.
Do the same with a small section of your viewed History - it's not that difficult to fix if you bother.
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Hardly surprising, since it appears that bookmarks and direct URLs are a thing of the past, and with things like Awesome Bar being rammed down our throats. Type in almost any noun and the first thing that shows up is a link to the Wikipedia article, which is probably where most people wanted to go in the first place.
Time to rethink monetization (Score:5, Interesting)
I am amazed the internet still values "views" and "clicks". Until advertisers stop placing value on such stupid metrics, this is going to be a problem. They should be focusing on actual sales and paying people based on that.
If you had a car dealership where instead of commission for sales, the sales people were paid based on how many people came in to look at cars, you bet there would be rampant fraud there as well.
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It seems like an insolvable problem to me, because the trust issue goes both ways.
As a view/click provider, I have no way of knowing what your actual sales are. For large public companies, we can work something out with two teams of lawyers. But for a small fish, this does not make sense unless there is some "trustworthy enough" neutral third party standing between us like Amazon/Ebay.
The way it is now, you do not even bid for placement. You bid for views or clicks, and placement on webpages is decided
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Nonsense, websites can see where traffic is coming from. If I click on an ad on youtube, the advertiser knows I just came from youtube. That website can then see if you buy anything. Yes, the user can mess this up by rejecting cookies or whatever the website uses, but the majority of users aren't going to do that.
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How does YouTube know exactly what was purchased on a vendor website, if the vendor chooses to cheat?
A lot of adverts aren't there to make sales (Score:2)
interesting (Score:1)
Well, the dynamics of this space are interesting - you have the normal human eye balls that consume the media and are recorded as "views", "likes", "+1s", etc. These stats drive the ads - their ranking, prices, shows as well as various charges/payments made against/to clients. All known, expected and documented. (all of that driven by Google's internal infrastructure)
Now enter 3rd-party software running on hundreds (thousands?) of hosts, programmatically doing what was initially deemed to be "for human ey
Car reviews are flooded with auto generated videos (Score:4, Insightful)
Trying to look at new cars reviews on youtube is a PITA, a large portion are text readers reading off a the same blog. Same goes for reviews on appliances, when I tried to search on air conditioners. I report them, they never go away, youtube is slacking hard allowing this crap to ruin youtube reviews. And the fake views are promoting these fake videos.
Its a circle of fakeness.
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Because people can't read anymore, they have to watch a 20 minute video instead.
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....Its a circle of fakeness.
It's -- technically -- a circle-jerk of fakeness
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Russel Crow (Score:1)
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Or is this the argument for liberal content?
I tend to avoid politics on You Tube because I will get flagged as Slightly Left thus get crazy left videos, or slightly right and get Right Wing Nuts.
However on both sides of the view points the argument goes like this.
Try to pretend that their view is moderate.
Bring up their strongest points first. Give some credence to the opposing side good point (Not the strongest but about 2/3 from the top)
Compare your strongest points to to the weakest points of the opposin
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