Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

So many scams

Apparently the internet, and particularly the social media element of the internet, is filled with misinformation and disinformation.

Throw a bit of AI halucination into the mix and I think it's safe to say that the signal to noise ratio online is deteriorating at a fairly rapid rate.

Life must be pretty hard for those who do not have the required levels of critical thinking and skepticism. How on earth do you tell the truth from deception?

User-generated content must always be a little suspect -- but what about content delivered from an official source?

What about content provided on the world's most popular VOD platform, YouTube? Surely if it's material seemingly endorsed by YT then it has to be trustworthy, right?

After all, YT has very strong policies in respect to "spam, deceptive practives & scams. Post a video that infringes these policies and you'll soon feel the wrath of the video giant. They'll quickly delete your video and possibly even your entire channel.

It's pretty clear therefore, that YT has no time for scammers... right?

Well maybe that's not totally true.

Apparently you can buy exemption from those policies.

Yes, if you pay YT enough money, you can publish videos that are clearly designed to scam people and commit fraud at a huge scale.

And YT doesn't care.

In fact, it doesn't care so much that it will even ignore complaints or reports of such scam videos -- allowing the offending material to stay online and continue to effectively steal money from the pockets of unsuspecting Net users.

I'm talking about advertising that promotes a scam -- and right now such ads are prolific with everything from shoddy monocular viewers through to flashlights with outrageously overstated capabilities, drones that don't come even close to the claims made for them and a shonky soldering gun that is pitched as a laser welding device.

I've pretty much given up on trying to get YT to demonstrate some ethics in this area -- none of my complaints and reports for these scams have been actioned. Likewise, I've heard from a significant number of people who've also complained and been ignored.

So here's my response to this indifference or even complicitness in these frauds. I'm going to try to educate the great unwashed through videos like this one:

Will it help?

Perhaps.

My hope is that perhaps a few people will be saved the pain and embarassment of being duped by scammers and their willing partner, YouTube.

YouTube is a train wreck and now it's a train wreck that actively supports those who would fleece you of your hard-earned cash.

So sad.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font