10.23.12
Gaming YouTube (continued)
Google, YouTube and the social networks have enabled a digital culture of manufactured bootlicking where cheating flourishes. When numbers of likes, views, reads and inbound links are the only measures of worth, where the person at the top — in the first page of results — is the only winner, it is the way things turn out.
A week ago or so I wrote about Mr. Mega Grilled Ham & Cheese, a YouTube user who rips the videos of others and uses them as test fodder for various pumping schemes on the system.
All of the videos on Mr. Ham & Cheese’s accounts were rigged, from manipulation of likes and views done by scripting to the posting of comments which generally point to make money fast Internet advertising come-ons. And while the videos are rather obviously gamed to a trained eye, apparently none of Google/YouTube’s algorithms for detecting abuse of this nature worked.
I discovered Mr. Mega Ham & Cheese upon when noticing a duplicate of “GE & Jeff (Taxavoidination)” on the network and it’s transparently falsified view count generated by automation run through Facebook profiles (probably dummy accounts, also violating FB’s terms of service).
If you observe this manner of numbers boosting long enough you get a feel for what is being used to do it.
In the case of Mr. Grilled Ham & Cheese, it’s something called the addmefastbot. It’s made specifically to game likes, views and followers. It’s sold on the back of the blackmarket for such things.
Some threads, showing apparently rather young people, eager to push up video views on YouTube, as well as other places, with automated addmefast scripting, are here, here and here.
You can use Google to find some random fat nerd describing use of a similar social network numbers rigging bot front end, called YouLikeHits.
If readers look closely they’ll notice many of the rigging bots were originally made by agencies which pretend legitimacy. That is, they operate sharing networks where users are encouraged to run up views and likes of other enrolled users’ pages in quid pro quo logrolling.
Invariably, such operations design scripting front ends for their users. These users then turn around and hack the front ends to enable free and faster automated numbers rigging free of the sham of running up someone else’s properties in return.