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hrunttoday at 12:53 PM9 repliesview on HN

I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comments responding to that. All obvious bot accounts.

It's obvious on the channels, because these reply sets usually don't contain a lot of replies to comments (if there are any comment replies, it's almost always from the channel owner). It's so obvious, in fact, that I'm surprised YouTube hasn't done something to address it.


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pinkmuffineretoday at 1:12 PM

Oh I love these comment threads! I like to add another reply saying something like “oh my goodness, I used Elizabeth Ferguson for my investing too!! She went to my college, so I thought I could trust her. But then I found out she was cheating on me with my wife! We got a divorce and i lost half my assets in the separation. Elizabeth Ferguson probably is enjoying them now :(. Just one experience, but buyer beware!”

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lopistoday at 1:33 PM

It's been well know to happen on reddit too for many years. Whole posts and comment threads copied verbatim with new accounts. Nowadays with AI you can make it way more dynamic.

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Barbingtoday at 2:33 PM

Most elaborate scam (illegally run by SF entrepreneur?)

https://claimyr.com/government-services/irs/I-filed-my-2021-...

bachmeiertoday at 4:06 PM

If only Google had access to an AI service. That sounds like a snarky comment, but given how easy it would be for Google to use AI to zap those, I can only think there's something preventing them from using it.

weird-eye-issuetoday at 1:55 PM

Yes and what they do is use actual registered investment advisors names and set up scam websites for them. This way it's more legitimate because if you research that person you will find that they are actually registered in official databases.

sebakubisztoday at 2:12 PM

Have you seen the same chain pattern outside finance yet? Wonder whether investment scams are the most conspicuous because the payout per convert is high or whether it's seeded the widest on YouTube specifically.

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Ralfptoday at 1:24 PM

I’ve been seeing this kind of spam on forums all the way back in 2004. I wonder if it was a feature in Xrumer or whatever they used to post spam back then.

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Forgeties79today at 12:58 PM

They also talk like people in a national ad.

“Wow! Seems like it’s so easy to change over with savings like that!”

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SV_BubbleTimetoday at 2:25 PM

I’m putting together an AI presentation internally for my company, can anyone point to examples of this exact behavior? I’d like to use it as a reference.

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