Picture This: YouTube spam

Ian Lamont — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:39:46 -0400

Bogus DMCA notices aren't the only problem that YouTube has to deal with. Spam is an increasingly visible irritant on the video-sharing site. Today, one of the "most discussed" videos is "How Viagara is working." Despite being viewed just 2,555 times, it already has 1,051 comments and 1,069 ratings. This makes it the #9 "Top Rated" video and #11 "Most Discussed" video for today, which puts it on several highly trafficked pages and RSS lists on YouTube. A high comment:view ratio is one way to get on these coveted lists, which helps generate even more traffic and commentary.

The video won't be winning any awards for comedic brilliance, but the person who posted it -- "ojehemeka," who only joined yesterday -- could care less. It's all about money. He or she apparently scraped the video from Coolbuddy.com, slapped an advertisement and a link for an illicit international pill site on the YouTube description, and somehow convinced about two out of every five viewers to actually leave a comment.

Judging by the 99 related videos on YouTube -- mostly about Cialis and Viagara -- it's quite clear that pill merchants have taken over a small chunk of YouTube. Last month, The Standard pointed to several supposed tactics that spammers and scammers use to manipulate YouTube rankings for fun and profit. The source -- an Encyclopedia Dramatica article -- also described "comment flooding" techniques, using sock puppet accounts, but The Standard was unable to determine if that's what's going on with this video, as many comments appear to be from legitimate users.