r/SpaceXLounge • u/Jake6192 • May 28 '24
Fake livestreams Same as always
So sad but there are currently 300k people watching "IFT-4" streamed on YouTube. What they don't know is that it's a fake spacex channel (fairly well disguised I will give them that), and in reality they are watching IFT-1. If you get a minute, report @corp-spacex2 for impersonation on youtube. Maybe those 300k people are bots but still, sick and tired of these fake channels
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u/RobDickinson May 28 '24
Google are too busy trying to stop add blockers, once they have that sorted I am sure they will fix this
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u/TheSilentPearl May 30 '24
Stopping adblockers make them money. Stopping crypto scams loses them ad revenue
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u/Jeb-Kerman May 28 '24
yeah I think a lot are bots
sick and tired of these fake channels
same here, fuck scammers.
they probably are in russia or north korea and nobody can touch them but you would think youtube could do a better job at taking the streams down.
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u/TheSilentPearl May 30 '24
Can we be real here? How are you supposed to access youtube in North Korea?
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u/Jeb-Kerman May 30 '24
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u/TheSilentPearl May 30 '24
wha- how. They can't even access Youtube there
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May 30 '24
It's not the citizens accessing youtube, it's state sanctioned agencies that are given access to hack & scam.
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u/TheSilentPearl May 30 '24
Well then that's the government, and only the government.
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u/Jeb-Kerman May 30 '24 edited May 30 '24
yup, they have government run cyber scamming operations lol.
They mostly do ransomware stuff I think but it wouldn't surprise me if they were behind this
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u/trengilly May 29 '24
Yeah, I report fake SpaceX and Tesla YouTube channels all the time. Its really annoying
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u/TheElvenGirl Jun 01 '24
What is even more annoying: because I need to actually open the channel to get to the menu item that allows me to report the user for "Impersonation", Youtube thinks I'm interested in this crap, and these fakes start popping up in my recommendations, which is crazy.
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u/Dependent_Grocery268 May 28 '24
It was the first thing on my feed, I was even going to watch the liftoff before I reported it but the bitcoin scam cut in right at the 40 second hold.
Weird thing is it says the account had been active since 2016 and they had videos uploaded that I had watched in the past. Strange one
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May 29 '24
Weird thing is it says the account had been active since 2016 and they had videos uploaded that I had watched in the past.
The scammers buy existing compromised accounts (usually lax password security & no 2FA/MFA enabled) and just change the profile pic & channel art to make it look legit to people who are dumb enough to fall for such an easy scam.
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u/tribat May 29 '24
Yes they are always fairly old accounts with a few old videos posted several years ago that suddenly pop up with around 20k users (it’s always a strangely similar number of what I assume are bots watching). I report them, and YouTube takes them down, but doesn’t seem interested in putting any kind of defenses in place. It would seem trivial for a company with Google’s AI resources to quickly identify and take down these scammer channels in real time. It’s obvious YouTube doesn’t care enough to address it.
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u/zypofaeser May 29 '24
Just have one (1) guy, who watches any stream with more than 100k views from a relatively low profile channel. They should just watch a minute or so. You would be able to immediately identify it as a fake SpaceX stream. You could freeze the stream, or even just have a pop up that says "This stream is by a suspected fake user"
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u/Daneel_Trevize 🔥 Statically Firing May 29 '24
it’s always a strangely similar number
Could be an artifact of caching, if you recall when popular new vids used to stall at ~300views for hours at a time.
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u/TheSilentPearl May 29 '24
They may have just compromised those accounts since it's cheaper and old accounts usually don't have much security like you mentioned. I think that it's very possible that the fact that they disable live chat is a big sellout though.
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u/stephensmat May 29 '24
Man, I fell for that last time.
IFT-3, was scheduled to go up about 1am my time. My dad, who's every bit the space nut I am, only 30 years older than me, told me to wake him if it looked like they were going to make it to launch.
One hour before actual launch time, I see the fake livestreams saying we're at T-20, and I wake him up. SpaceX's official stream wasn't running yet, and I was trying to figure it out...
When we get to the countdown, suddenly the picture changes to an ad for bitcoin. SpaceX has it's actual launch hours later.
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u/GrinderGoodMk2Bad May 28 '24
It’s been going on for years. Reports don’t really help cause it will make another channel 5 minutes later. Reporting is a waste of time unfortunately. It’s up to youtube to do something.
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u/squintytoast May 29 '24
Reporting is a waste of time unfortunately.
100% disagree. though it is a never ending whack-a-mole, the fastest way for YT to deal with it is in fact by reports.
i've reported literally hundreds. i get a 'thanks for reporting" notice for all and a "we took down the reported" notice for 4 outta 5.
from what i've seen its generally better these days except for a couple days either side of any major event. (major being anything non-starlink launch)
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u/Inertpyro May 29 '24
This has been a thing for years. Fake streams bot views to make it seem legitimate, they scam for as long as they can before getting shut down, start a new channel, repeat. It’s also not unique to SpaceX. If you want to do something, report the channel and move on, but it’s honestly not worth your time.
Realistically YouTube has a billion bigger fish to fry and it will likely continue for years to come, it’s not worth their time playing cat and mouse with these streams.
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u/squintytoast May 29 '24
If you want to do something, report the channel and move on, but it’s honestly not worth your time.
100% disagree. reporting is the fastest way. its more likely nothing happens if people DONT report.
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u/Inertpyro May 29 '24
This has been a problem for easily 4 years now. It’s not going away unless you want to spend all your free time moderating YouTube play whack a mole. It’s not going to stop, and new channels will just be right there to take the place of any that get shut down.
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u/squintytoast May 29 '24
all very true.
i still think it IS worth one's time.
i've reported hundreds and spend about a half hour every two weeks.
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u/zingpc May 29 '24
Looked at the number of vertical tanks, six .... nope bye.
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u/xavierbrezniak May 29 '24
Google has billions of dollars and extremely powerful ways to handle your data but they can’t figure out how to automatically ban fake SpaceX streams. Absolute joke. I have seen people comment on SpaceX’s Instagram asking why the official SpaceX YouTube account was doing a crypto scam.
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u/fredmratz May 29 '24
I watched it for a few minutes while I looked up the current NET to see if I forgot the date. It was so weird because it had 2 different "live stream" of the same event at the same time and they weren't in sync.
No idea how many might have been bots after real people started watching.
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u/BeepBeepPlz May 29 '24
There were 99K viewers when I reported it to YouTube yesterday. I see these frequently and report them. That channel has been taken down. Misinformation and people will believe it because they watched it.
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u/th3bucch May 29 '24
Usually hacked channels, I've reported this one many times. For nothing apparently.
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u/linkerjpatrick May 29 '24
Saw it the other day with Tesla too. Thought I was watching Elon show new developments. Then half way in you could tell it was a fake Elon voice dubbed over video as “he” talked about crypto instead of Tesla and they put the QR code on the screen to buy crypto
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u/vibranium-501 May 29 '24
I watched a fake stream for like 20 minutes, until liftoff. That stream had only ~20 viewers.
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u/Nalincah Jun 26 '24
I just wanted to post about a similary livestream (Tesla, not SpaceX) but Reddit is always removing my post (Removed by the filters of reddit) :(
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u/majikmonkie May 29 '24
Nearly all of the viewers will be bots - doesn't look like a credible feed if there's only 23 people viewing, so they'll pad the numbers with fake accounts and bots.
The legit people that are tricked by this will figure it out eventually once Elon comes on talking about how they should buy some sort of crypto.