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

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.

Time to rethink monetization

[Vermonter]

I am amazed the internet still values "views" and "clicks". Until advertisers stop placing value on such stupid metrics, this is going to be a problem. They should be focusing on actual sales and paying people based on that.

If you had a car dealership where instead of commission for sales, the sales people were paid based on how many people came in to look at cars, you bet there would be rampant fraud there as well.

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.

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.

Re:It ACTUALLY does not happen

[DNS-and-BIND]

If those that demand no Voter Identification were concerned for the poor, they'd facilitate the acquisition of ID, not seek ways to avoid it. After all, what's the best job you ever had where you didn't need to identify yourself?

Only ONE party disapproves of measures to make our elections secure, and also your president lied to you. Voter ID is NOT a function of America's "racist past". EVERY COUNTRY THAT'S not a dictatorship has some form of assuring that the person voting is entitled to. EVERY COUNTRY.

NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti-voter-ID protest march

Indian citizens have voter ID and they are buttfuck poor, much poorer than the worst of the American poor.

California liberals allege voter fraud, demand voter ID. Democrats think voter identification laws are important for their party elections, but think they're not important when it comes to our elections.

Maxine Waters, an advocate against voter ID, requires an ID to attend her town hall meeting.

Hillary Clinton's Book Tour. Valid Photo ID Required. Suppressing minority turnout, or is this one of those things that's OK when Democrats do it but wrong when anyone else does it?

Re:This would never happen to voting

[mi]

What kind of idiot would try to manipulate an election by getting humans to vote one by one when the results can be manipulated by the thousand?

You don't need "thousands". Al Franken got into Senate with (officially) 312 votes — and this allowed the passing of Obamacare.

Earlier, Bush won Florida with a similarly sub-thousand majority — also dramatically affecting the entire nation's life... A few is enough.

Re:Fraud

[Darinbob]

I'd be happy if Youtube just stopped paying for views. The quality of the videos would go up and we'd have fewer people making their careers from posting fluff and begging for subscriptions.

Re:This would never happen to voting

[mi]

I guess you are trying to make some racist point

Am I really? Would you care to speculate, which point that might be?

instead of picking on black people like always

Did you know, strawmen are racist?

americans really are that stupid

Now, curiously, here is an actual racist statement, but that's off-topic, of course.