Did I inadvertently do something illegal?

S

SophieZ

Member
As a try-out, I bought 20 likes for one of my video's. I read many times that isn't illegal. Soon, 80(!) likes were delivered, but I saw no increase in views. So, I found out I had made a stupid mistake, the likes were delivered by a bot. Now I am scared I inadvertently did something illegal. :eek: Can youtube punish me? What can be the consequenses? If the likes are only taken away, I would be relieved.
 
you're fine. don't do it again. Not illegal but it's against youtube TOS. 80 fake likes on youtube is small potatoes. the only thing youtube would do is delete the likes and views from those account. at most they would delete your channel. The reason you didn't get any views is because those bots were designed to click the video click like and leave. You have to watch a good amount of the video to count as a view so because they are leaving within seconds, it doesn't count.

Getting 80 likes you didn't pay for is probably because the company hit go on their computer script and by the time they hit stop it already ran 80 times. Doesn't really cost them anything so they don't care if they give you extra fake like.

I'm not a lawyer though.


Just so you know, fake views and likes don't actually help your channel. They hurt it more. Fake like negatively impact your watch time, and fake views shows youtube that people who watch your content don't want to subscribe, comment, or like. Fake subs, don't actually watch your videos when it shows up in their feed so it tells youtube that you are not making good content that your subs want to watch. You're 100% better off just asking your friends and family to watch your content.

this video from 2014 explains it better than i can. Its about facebook fake likes but youtube actually copied a lot of algorithm themes from facebook so it still applies

 
And be careful about hiring "PR firms", "publicity firms", "publicists", etc. through websites like Fiverr, Freelancer, etc. to raise the profile of your channel. I did for my now-dominant online poker tournament play channel over a year ago. What I wanted was them promoting my channel to poker magazines and websites. I had EXPLICITLY stated in my gig posting this is what I wanted. But what I got was a TON of fake likes, views, and subs and then these PR "specialists" pointing out this "success" to get me to hire them again. And, yes, they were fake. On the video I wanted them to promote the most (where I won an online tournament), it got a TON of views but not a SINGLE comment from any of them. Likes and subs, yes, but not a single comment. And when I asked them to send me links to the articles they got poker magazines and websites to do on my poker channel, they sent me links to spam comments they had posted to articles done by those magazines and websites. Clearly bot-generated spam comments.

The only thing genuine I got out of all of this was a real social media manager. She set up accounts with a TON of social media outlets and then simply reposted my new videos to them. That's real ... but not of much value.

My recommendation to you SophieZ is reach out to YouTube channels who are making the same content as you do and have roughly the same number of subscribers. Ask to do a collaboration with them. Collaboration is the one PROVEN way to grow one's channel.
 
Nicekid76 said:
you're fine. don't do it again. Not illegal but it's against youtube TOS. 80 fake likes on youtube is small potatoes. the only thing youtube would do is delete the likes and views from those account. at most they would delete your channel.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for your answer, and your clear explanation. Deleting all the likes and views of my channel, or my channel itself, isn't exactly reassuring, but I understand you are talking about big amounts of bot likes, views or subscribers. No, I won't do this again, I got a real scare.
 
Last edited:
Jack Decker said:
My recommendation to you SophieZ is reach out to YouTube channels who are making the same content as you do and have roughly the same number of subscribers. Ask to do a collaboration with them. Collaboration is the one PROVEN way to grow one's channel.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for your reaction and your warning. I am very sorry to read about your bad experience. And your tip is a good one. I will look for such channels!
 
SophieZ said:
Thank you so much for your answer, and your clear explanation. Deleting all the likes and views of my channel, or my channel itself, isn't exactly reassuring, but I understand you are talking about big amounts of bot likes, views or subscribers. No, I won't do this again, I got a real scare.
Click to expand...
just to be clear, they would delete the fake views and likes you payed for, not all your real views and likes on your channel
 
Yeah, their are channels purchasing thousands of fake subs and views, so buying under 100 likes is the equivalent of stealing a 50 cent stick of gum from a fancy department store. Is it bad? Yeah, but it's unlikely anybody will notice. The big thing is, like other people mentioned, it doesn't do much for your channel. It may make one or two videos look more appealing, but unless you plan on buying it for every video, the effect doesn't carry over the way you'd think it would, and if you do end up doing it for every video, you're far more likely to get caught. It's tempting, but just remember that it's fake, and isn't really going to prove to be helpful in the long run.
 
I can understand you, I started my channel in August 2020 and within now 5 month I already reach 2200hours but only 260subs.
I just generate the content my viewers are expecting and want to watch, unfortunately not many of them like to subscribe.
But lets see, hopefully in the next 3 month my channel will earn its reputation and the will start to subscribe too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top