this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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I don't think so really. Google accounts are pretty hard to bot. I think they're just idiots and children and with Poe's law you can't really tell the difference.
Not to google itself. They might use those bots to create fake engagement, like on reddit. We can never prove if google is doing it or not, but they would certainly benefit from doing so.
The conspiracies never end with you people..
Star people?
I knew it! Aliens!
I'm pretty sure "tap for segs and free bobux!!!!111!1!1!1!1!" Is a bot
Or a bad actor hoping to draw in vulnerable folks online for their scams, like children.
More than one YouTube channel has been attacked by folks pretending to be them in the comments of their videos, scamming their viewers out of money. And no matter how obvious the scam seems, it always seems to catch a few people.
I also know scams will often intentionally use poor grammar or misspell simple things, because they want to catch the kind of person who would overlook those things, like the very naive or the very old, because they're more likely to get money out of those groups.
Not saying botting on YouTube isn't a thing, I just don't think it's as prevalent as one might initially think.
If you do a quick search you can find sites selling google accounts in bulk at prices ranging from a few cents to a couple dollars a piece, depending on the account attributes. I guess SMS-verified accounts with a US phone number costing over a dollar might constitute "hard to bot", but spammers don't need one of those to comment on youtube.
That's usually from credential stuffing, which I guess you could consider botting, but what I was referring to was automatically creating accounts. Sorry for the miscommunication.