Channel spamming copied thumbnails & descriptions through Alt accounts using playlists

markkaz said:
There is some really shady stuff going on but I will have to check out that situation later.
Click to expand...

Thanks. We hope you do. And that you may know of someway that some action can be taken. This is affecting so many legitimate channels and most probably do not even know that their content has been stolen and botted in this way.

It is not just our channel being affected.

We've reported the 'end' channel - Rainbow Kids. But there are lots more of these - this is just one example.
We've reported the Alt channels and the playlists.
We've emailed YouTube support and help.
We've requested they remove playlists from search results generally until a full solution is found.
 
markkaz said:
Please post a link to their channel so that I look at the right one.
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I'm not allowed to post links. :(
But some of the offending 'Alt' channels that are nothing but 1000+ playlists each driving traffic to what appear to be 'innocent' channels are:

Sarah Sorensen @ UCkgpcwfLQrU2Y0Pp8dMEPCQ
Aimee Wiles @ UCXwisvgicGopfnlI3pQiEbg
Leoma Lance @ UCHiXBCEDes_14pcR-x85v2w
Mr Nani3 @ UCQzbKtTOAo6EADJ9dyfP3yQ

and so on... There would be hundreds of them.

It's not so much the particular channels, but the strategy that YouTube need to deal with and resolve - They'd be bot created and easily replicatable anyways.
It would be having massive impacts throughout the whole site. A google search reveals others complaining of similar issues (i.e. people using playlists to game the system) months ago. Yet here they are still using this strategy.
How much traffic and revenue have legitimate channels lost because of this would be huge.

Thank you :)
 
Someone must be stealing your videos or you must of upload it more than once. I am confuse I am the situation but YouTube sometimes takes longer to respond
 
I took a look at this Rainbow Kids channel and on the surface, without looking for stolen content, I see no TOS violations
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfMkdvdcbeCGtqAfkq2Y3lA/videos

However, I did see how the following accounts are making playlists and sandwiching Rainbow Kids videos
Aimee Wiles
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXwisvgicGopfnlI3pQiEbg
Leoma Lance
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHiXBCEDes_14pcR-x85v2w

Sarah Sorensen was mentioned earlier but I don't see anything wrong going on.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgpcwfLQrU2Y0Pp8dMEPCQ

The following account appears to employ the same technique to benefit the McQueen Cartuns channel.

Mr Nani3
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQzbKtTOAo6EADJ9dyfP3yQ
McQueen Cartuns
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-TxJ3OspDnacdRjAZAAvxQ

While the main channel is getting views, we don't know if they are the result of being in those playlists.

I do agree that YouTube should look at Playlist titles and have a terms of service for those as well. Clearly, this playlist title is done with a SEO-targeted format yet the videos don't belong with that title. 01.jpg
 
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markkaz said:
I took a look at this Rainbow Kids channel and on the surface, without looking for stolen content, I see no TOS violations


However, I did see how the following accounts are making playlists and sandwiching Rainbow Kids videos
Aimee Wiles

Leoma Lance


Sarah Sorensen was mentioned earlier but I don't see anything wrong going on.


The following account appears to employ the same technique to benefit the McQueen Cartuns channel.

Mr Nani3

McQueen Cartuns


While the main channel is getting views, we don't know if they are the result of being in those playlists.

I do agree that YouTube should look at Playlist titles and have a terms of service for those as well. Clearly, this playlist title is done with a SEO-targeted format yet the videos don't belong with that title. View attachment 36003
Click to expand...

Thanks for looking into it and understanding the issue.
The response from YouTube help was a generic 'this is what a playlist is' and 'this is how search rankings are influenced' - they didn't even read our complaint or understand the strategy we were trying to point out to them.

The example you've posted shows the strategy and 'recipe' being employed perfectly. A clear example of trying to game the system.

Create an alternate channel (or 1000's of alt channels).
Create Playlists under this alt channel (1000+ playlists).
Steal other peoples video title and name your playlist/s that - as the 1st hook.
Steal other peoples thumbnail to use as the playlist thumbnail - as the 2nd hook - this doesn't have to match the title at all - just a popular videos thumbnail.
Make sure the 1st video in the playlist is not from the 'target end channel', but is a very very popular video from someone else - as the 3rd hook.
Now make all or most of the rest of the videos in the playlist the ones from the spammer/scammers 'target end channel' i.e McQueen Cartuns or Rainbow Kids.
Watch the views grow and grow.

We first noticed this 2 weeks ago and at the time Rainbow Kids had 50 subs and 40k views. Now it has 100 subs and 85k views - we definitely think the scammy tactic is working for them - we just hope they get caught before they get paid. We are sure they will in time as more and more people use the same strategy - it will grow like a cancer pretty quickly - it is clearly trying to game the system which we thought was against the TOS.

:(
 
I sent an email to Creator Support earlier today and they have already responded.

They stated that they have "reported this to the Policy team that will determine the appropriate action here."
 
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