[ti]SERIOUS[/ti] There is a Hacker/Bot on YouTube

This is the beginning of the robot revolution.

It's very possible it might, now that I think about it. Since YouTube is fixing up Danzmen's case, it may also be patched as well (if it is connected and if YouTube decides to care).

Yeah, there are tons of the bots because of how easily it spreads unless people are aware of it (which is why I made this post). Not very bad per se, but all the bots could be used for something sinister in the future when there's enough of them.

I don't really mind it. I've gotten 4 different bots comment on my videos. Of course this is good for the algorithm so I don't delete them. Also they're pretty funny how some of them are super try-hard. Obviously this could turn into something bad but I just like seeing the positives

It's been speculated that interacting with the bot comments may allow them to do nefarious things to your account. Better to just make a separate comment and pin it.

I seriously doubt that simply replying to a comment can possibly lead to anything, unless the hacker somehow has access to YouTube’s API, in which case they wouldn’t need to do all this in the first place. Even though there’s a bot controlling the account’s activity, it still only has the capabilities of a regular YouTube account. If you reply to one of my comments, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to gain access to your account. There should be nothing different just because the account is controlled by a bot, it’s still a normal account.

I watched that video, as well as the video that he linked to. There is evidence that people’s accounts are getting stolen, but there’s no evidence that it’s because they interact with his comments. I’m telling you, it is EXTREMELY improbable that someone figured out, using YouTube’s API, how to steal anybody’s accounts, but only if they interact with a specific comment, and not otherwise. It’s probably a filtration system to weed out gullible or non tech savvy people who won’t know any better, because he doesn’t have time to deal with thousands of potential victims who might fall for it at first, but back out later.

An insider threat is the ONLY way that I could maybe see it happening. I suppose it’s possible that the accounts are controlled by a rogue YouTube employee with access to the back end of YouTube’s system, who’s harvesting data about engagement with comments for research purposes, or perhaps just having a bit of malevolent fun by creating these accounts as a social thought experiment.

My guess as to what’s going on? It’s probably some dude in his basement who’s looking to make a quick buck by farming subscribers on all of those channels so he can sell those channels to upstart content creators who are looking for an artificial boost in popularity so the algorithm recommends their videos.