Live data from Hacker News

Magic the Gathering content creator pleas YouTube to stop scammer bot deluge

youtube.com

1–10 of 71 posts

Re: Magic the Gathering content creator pleas YouTube to stop scammer bot deluge

#2
This is the "Tolarian Community College" (a play on words from the MtG card game).

Without having to watch the video, this Youtuber does a lot of reviews and content on the game. During the course of reviews, he gets a lot of free merchandise. To that end, he then gives it freely to his subscribers.

The problem: there's a deluge of bots that nearly-instantly post on comments and threads in Youtube that redirect unsuspecting users to scammer Telegram channels, Discords, and etc. The common scam is "pay for shipping and you get free stuff". (this youtuber pays for the shipping if sending free product)

To compound this, this is definitely an automated bot driven attack on not only current videos, but also all his historical videos. And Youtube/Google/Alphabet doesn't provide anywhere near the tools to counter these types of botstorms.

He pleas for anyone working at Youtube etc to get in touch and/or make tools available to disable these scammers.

Re: Magic the Gathering content creator pleas YouTube to stop scammer bot deluge

#3

This is the "Tolarian Community College" (a play on words from the MtG card game). Without having to watch the video, this Youtuber does a lot of reviews and content on the game. During the course of reviews, he gets a lot of free merchandise. To that end, he then gives it freely to his subscribers. The problem: there's a deluge of bots that nearly-instantly post on comments and threads in Youtube that redirect unsus…

Someone from YouTube creator team commented back but on the thread but it's pretty generic -- that they're working on new tools and they're just as frustrated.

It's a well done video explaining the problem and really the frustration of creators who are fighting these bots and haven't given up.

Re: Magic the Gathering content creator pleas YouTube to stop scammer bot deluge

#4
Maybe I'm a callous bastard, but I genuinely don't get how he feels personally responsible here. It's a YouTube problem, not a M:tG problem or a him problem.

He sounds genuinely distressed, and I feel for him, but I don't get why it causes him pain in this specific way. It's not your fault!

And for what it's worth, it's not really YouTube's "fault" either. Remember, they're victims here too. They didn't invite this, they didn't ask for this, and they're asking for ideas because they don't know themselves what to do.

Computers are sometimes likened to "magic" where we just cast a spell by writing code, and something technically beautiful happens, but where magic can interpret intent and act according to the caster's desire, computers can't, and there's no way to "Wrath of God" the spammers.

I hope this guy can find a way to live with this kind of thing, as I really don't see scammers getting wiped out in any conclusive sense, on YouTube or any platform. It sucks, it's unfair, but it's not realistically possible to deal with conclusively.

Re: Magic the Gathering content creator pleas YouTube to stop scammer bot deluge

#6
post #4

Maybe I'm a callous bastard, but I genuinely don't get how he feels personally responsible here. It's a YouTube problem, not a M:tG problem or a him problem. He sounds genuinely distressed, and I feel for him, but I don't get why it causes him pain in this specific way. It's not your fault! And for what it's worth, it's not really YouTube's "fault" either. Remember, they're victims here too. They didn't invite this,…

Maybe you are—people are taking advantage of his reputation and brand and harming his viewers.

If you insist on seeing it through a lens of self-interested sociopathy, he could loose his most ardent fans & contributors and suffer damage to his brand and/or reputation, via bad interactions with those scammers.

Re: Magic the Gathering content creator pleas YouTube to stop scammer bot deluge

#9
post #5

We could just get rid of comments on videos altogether. The benefit of squelching the mechanism scammers and trolls have available to them seems to greatly outweigh whatever is lost by just getting rid of comments.

In the same vein, let’s just stop using email.
Post reply on HN