Posted in r/youtube by u/Jakob_G • 579 points and 146 comments

Hey Reddit,

i recently noticed that there are way more scam ads on YouTube. And i am not talking about those ads of people selling you get rich quick courses, which i get to see way too often as well, i am talking about deep fake Elon Musk saying that he has built an AI powered trading bot that will allow you to make 1 million dollars in 6 months risk free and to be honest i can’t tell that it is deep fake, it looks very real. Here is the link to the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWGb0BLYBOs

https://preview.redd.it/z7zagtomju5c1.png?width=1942&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ed808fbf9800784a6bb1698fac2317d8e5f2a85

or here another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE77YkmsbDc&t=75s

​

I am from Austria so i get to see the German version of these scams as well. Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iyuyx5thgI

or this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRY5dxnZ4E

The first one i have seen so many times it gets ridiculous. Its about a famous German figure supposedly being sued by the central bank because he found an infinite money glitch.

​

And because these scam ads are getting so annoying i started reporting them every time i see one, because i do understand that there are probably millions of advertisers on YouTube and sometimes these scams don’t get detected right away. So i also reported that Fake Elon Musk Ad, but the next day i get shown the exact same ad again, then i open my email inbox finding a YouTube email about my report stating “We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies”. The same goes for all four ads listed above, all reported, all apparently not against policy.

So one of these two is true:

1 - Elon Musk has actually found a way to make everyone rich with ai.

2 - YouTube simply doesn’t care about people getting scammed as long as they make money.

As much as i would like the first one to be true, these YouTube Ads are not cheap to run, with one of them running for more than a month with 364K views. So the fact that the scammers are able to afford these ads means that people keep falling for these scams, and YouTube doesn’t seem to care at all.

And i don’t want to use an adblocker because i want the people i watch to get paid for their work, but i don’t want them to be paid with the money from the victims of these scams.

Is this a regional problem in Austria or do you see these scams too?

    • Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social
      2·
      11 months ago

      Are real alternatives out there?

      I wanted to create content in the fediverse for the fediverse, but after giving it a though uploading videos on youtube was the best option

      I looked at peertube but:
      -Most instances have limits
      -I’d need to research who is using that instance because
      -if it’s filled with tankies or other types of undesirable people some fediverse users will ask to be defederated from that troublesome instance and I’d get punished even if I did nothing wrong

      In the end upload a video on youtube was the option that gives less headaches

      • admiralteal@kbin.social
        3·
        11 months ago

        Nebula, but even then most of the best content is still only on YouTube.

        It really tells the story about how much worse all the other platforms are particularly for creators.

        The best thing a creator can do is upload their stuff to multiple platforms, to reduce the public’s dependence on just one.

      • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        11 months ago

        There always have been competitors, e.g. Dailymotion or the Chinese bilibili, but not sure if that’s much better. (The Chinese one probably not.)

  • skip0110@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    US. I see the same scams on clients without Adblock. Only way they care is if it becomes a PR problem for them.

  • HarkMahlberg@kbin.social
    1·
    11 months ago

    Does Youtube have a separate stream of ads for smart TV’s? I never ever see the kind of scam ads people talk about on the TV app, and I run an adblocker on my browser so I don’t see anything on the desktop.

    • runefehay@kbin.social
      2·
      11 months ago

      From what I understand, YouTube chooses ads based on your location, demographics, and your watch history. Well, this isn’t exactly right, because yt auctions the ad space on the fly, so it is a complex decision based on all those factors.