A Sad And Scary Situation

UKHypnotist

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As I work the YouTube Support Community, I am noticing a phenomenon which is truly unsettling.

I'm finding more and more people who seem to have channels in the US, UK, India or other Partner Program Participant Countries; but upon deeper probing, the creator in question turns out to be resident in a non-YPP Participant Country.

I'm wondering something at this point in time. Is the world financial situation so terrible that YouTube is now considered an answer to poverty, to the point committing of Fraud at the international level in an effort to join the YouTube Partner Programme, thus risking their ability to remain YouTube Creators?

Even worse; don't those who do this realize that a channel stated to be in a participant country linked to an AdSense in a non-participant country will be a dead giveaway which will end with them being banned from both services, while falsifying the AdSense country will get them banned even faster when they cannot supply a physical address and banking info matching the stated country of residence?
 
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Andrewcu

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VPNs and offshore accounts (and addresses) I guess.

Committing fraud is a serious offense, but the risk of actual real life repercussions is very small. There are a lot of scammers around the world and YouTube is just another avenue which can reward big.
 

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VPNs and offshore accounts (and addresses) I guess.

Committing fraud is a serious offense, but the risk of actual real life repercussions is very small. There are a lot of scammers around the world and YouTube is just another avenue which can reward big.
The creators in question always claim to be "poor and in need of money" for various reasons. If they are truly so, there is no way they could afford to pay for either offshore banking accounts nor offshore addresses, as these don't come cheaply.

Just after I left the US, the Federal Government raised the bar on banking by revamping the US Patriot Act to state that without a US-based address, one could not hold a US based bank account. As I still had financial ties to the US at that point in time, I had to move my US banking address to the home of one of my daughters.

If the people in the non-YPP countries have no friend or familial ties to a YPP enabled country, the only place to go would be to someplace like the black market or the Dark Web. Also most banks want to see financial activity like a Utility Bill or County Tax receipt in the applicant's name as proof of address before opening an account; so I wonder what these people would do to satisfy that requirement?
 
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Crown

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Yep I see this all the time. I see it on blogs too. People with broken English claiming to be American or British in their bio and an "expert" in their field - basically trying to target British / US traffic to get more $$ - They always have an amazing-looking website but you can't take what they're saying seriously with such a terrible level of English. I don't think they realise how obvious it is to a native-speaker. They'd be better off communicating in their native language.
 
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UKHypnotist

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@Crown

When you have a chance my friend, AdSense has also now transformed its own Help Forum into one of the new "Support Communities"; go over and have a look. If @Crustacean, who was taking issue with my apparent abrasiveness with users, saw the forum there, he would be doubly appalled at the brusqueness you see in the AdSense Community at large. They don't pull punches at all; telling a user in a heartbeat that they definitely won't be approved and why. At the end of most of these answers, they actually tell the querent to "forget AdSense", as they haven't a chance of a monetized website running ads with their content type.

Quite a few of these querents definitely fit the description you have given.
 
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zerocache

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I'm wondering something at this point in time. Is the world financial situation so terrible that YouTube is now considered an answer to poverty, to the point committing of Fraud at the international level in an effort to join the YouTube Partner Programme, thus risking their ability to remain YouTube Creators?
It's that opportunity to make money, even if there's a bad somewhere in there to get it.

The ones that can abuse and game the system will. It's nothing new.
 

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It's that opportunity to make money, even if there's a bad somewhere in there to get it.

The ones that can abuse and game the system will. It's nothing new.
I don't think it's just the opportunity to make money; I think it's the opportunity to make money "with the minimum amount of effort". Unforutnately for them the new AdSense Content Quality Guidelines will put paid to their plans for the most part, and getting caught in their lying will do the rest.
 
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