If you have ever been on the comment section of a video on YouTube that has a significant number of views, you might have noticed rather promiscuous messages from accounts that have pictures of scantily clad women as their display pictures. This is a plague that has been impacting all of YouTube for quite some time now, and with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that a YouTuber and researcher by the name of Zulie Rane seems to have finally gotten to the bottom of this mystery.
These comments are most definitely being left by annoying bots, but it is the purpose for them leaving these comments in the first place that seems a little difficult to understand. What possible benefit could they get from something like this? Well, when Rane did a bit of research, she found that all of the bots had some similarities to them. They all had around two or three subscribers, they all had similar pictures of women that were not fully clothed and none of them had any videos. Rather, they had playlists of videos, and this is where things get interesting.
If you were to look at these playlists they would look downright out of place. The names of these playlists are rather cryptic but taking one look at the thumbnails of the videos contained within the playlist will make it clear what’s going on here. The thumbnails involve various steamy scenarios, and this is basically what these bots are promoting.
But wait a minute, you might be saying, YouTube doesn’t allow pornographic content! Well, this is true, and that is what makes things even more interesting than might have been the case otherwise. You see if you click on one of the videos that have these dirty thumbnails, the actual content of the video would be quite different from what you had initially thought it would be.
It would show the thumbnail for a second or two, just long enough to justify it being the thumbnail in the first place without sending up an flares to YouTube’s ban hammer, and then the rest of the video would be something completely random such as ambient music or perhaps a comedy sketch. The channels that own these videos are definitely benefiting from these bots since the views they get from gullible YouTube viewers can add up quite a bit.
This therefore shows that the origin of these so called “sex bots” comes from YouTube channel owners that want to make a quick buck by gaming the system in some way, shape or form, and based on their view counts it does appear to be working at the very least to a certain extent.
These comments are most definitely being left by annoying bots, but it is the purpose for them leaving these comments in the first place that seems a little difficult to understand. What possible benefit could they get from something like this? Well, when Rane did a bit of research, she found that all of the bots had some similarities to them. They all had around two or three subscribers, they all had similar pictures of women that were not fully clothed and none of them had any videos. Rather, they had playlists of videos, and this is where things get interesting.
If you were to look at these playlists they would look downright out of place. The names of these playlists are rather cryptic but taking one look at the thumbnails of the videos contained within the playlist will make it clear what’s going on here. The thumbnails involve various steamy scenarios, and this is basically what these bots are promoting.
But wait a minute, you might be saying, YouTube doesn’t allow pornographic content! Well, this is true, and that is what makes things even more interesting than might have been the case otherwise. You see if you click on one of the videos that have these dirty thumbnails, the actual content of the video would be quite different from what you had initially thought it would be.
these are the sex comment bots for anyone wondering pic.twitter.com/5FcY7alWks
— Zulie Rane (@ZulieRane) January 21, 2021
It would show the thumbnail for a second or two, just long enough to justify it being the thumbnail in the first place without sending up an flares to YouTube’s ban hammer, and then the rest of the video would be something completely random such as ambient music or perhaps a comedy sketch. The channels that own these videos are definitely benefiting from these bots since the views they get from gullible YouTube viewers can add up quite a bit.
This therefore shows that the origin of these so called “sex bots” comes from YouTube channel owners that want to make a quick buck by gaming the system in some way, shape or form, and based on their view counts it does appear to be working at the very least to a certain extent.
At the end, the only question remains unanswered is why YouTube on its own is not taking any action on these accounts and bots? Our guesses are, maybe these practices fall into the grey area, or maybe its AI is not good enough to spot these types of behavior, or perhaps the video search engine doesn't much hate the idea of fake/fraudulent engagements, or perhaps these notorious activities are also producing a small chuck of ad revenue for it.
When a user complained about the "spammy bots" issue, YouTube simply said (with a pre-formulated message) that it's all 'You' users who need to handle this problem by blocking them and reporting it to the platform. We've hope and request that YouTube will soon form a better, large-scale strategy to get rid of this problem. Unfortunately, for now, it appears YouTube users have to live with these spam bots, just like they've learned the way to live with Corona.
