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What's up with all those spam bots lately in the youtube comment section? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For a few months now, these bot comments seem to be appearing more and more frequently. Always with a profile picture of a model making innuendos, accompanied by a generic comment praising the video and practically always adding some kind of emoji. Is this some new scam or is it just the current generation of spambots as per usual?

Not that I'm particularly interested in the YouTube comments, but I occasionally check them out and noticed this.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I think it's likely a combination of bots made to generate "engagement" and bots trying to establish themselves as actual users so it becomes harder to spot them pushing a scam later. Content creators may pay for bots to comment to help their videos get promoted, or an enterprising individual may make a bot army to comment on a specific video and try to then sell their engagement services when that video does better. YouTube also has an algorithm for banning/shadow banning accounts pushing scams, leaving "normal" comments may make it harder for YouTube's algorithm to spot these people.