The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views (nytimes.com)

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.

Comments

Re:Setup?

[ArylAkamov]

It really wouldn't be surprising at this point.

This would never happen to voting

[mi]

"They've tried to stop it for so many years, but they can't stop it. There's always a way around."

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.

Google and Youtube are broken

[m00sh]

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.

Car reviews are flooded with auto generated videos

[BrookHarty]

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.

Re:Setup?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, because there is no such thing as view/click generator sites that are used by everyone to hype up their content.

Yep, and no respectable news publication would ever put someone on their editorial board after knowing they posted racist crap like "#CancelBlackMen".

It ACTUALLY does not happen

[aepervius]

See there is a difference to say in a cynic ton pretending to do sarcasm "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." and the ACTUALITY of it happening.

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 forgot to de-register at the old place , and there is no fraud, they only vote once) . But some people pretend it happens very often and want to impose verification which are very difficult to pass for poor (as in no money) voters. See such assholes long saw the correlation between those mostly poor demographic and a certain political arty, so what is the great thing about pretend-voter-fraud laws for them is that it kicks out those voters and so enable to skew to vote toward THEIR party. e.g. exclude homeless or people working 2*40 jobs the one because they have no address, the other because they have no time left to pass through hoops. Disenfranchise enough people and you can skew election.

here is the thing though : voter fraud is incredibly rare and negligible. You want to pretend otherwise ? Then advance evidence, like peer review or verifiable study. Go ahead. All those which exists out there all shows voter fraud to be extremely negligible.