Youtube and fake live stream SCAMS
YouTube loves to censor content that doesn't fall in line with their ideology and will demonetise or even in some cases DELETE anything that doesn't fit with their narrative, however, since forever scams have been prevalent on the site and not a lot has been done to combat this problem. Earlier today I was recommended a Livestream claiming to be Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad poor Dad author). It had over 100,000 viewers at the time of me viewing and had been streaming for well over 2 hours, it was a double bitcoin scam. It is important to note the majority of these viewers were most likely view bots and thus artificial yet many real viewers were watching too.
What is a double bitcoin scam?
In simple terms, a double bitcoin scam will claim to you that if you send a certain amount of bitcoin (usually between 0.1-10) to a specific bitcoin/ethereum address you will receive double your amount back as part of a giveaway. Unfortunately, if you were to fall for this scam there is no way to get your BTC back. I checked the address of this particular scam and over 11BTC ($85,000) has already been scammed in a few days! Although this type of scam is widely known people are still falling for it.
What can we do to combat this?
Sadly not a lot can really be done, the only thing we can do is dislike, report it by using the flag icon (shown below), spread awareness of such scams on social media or directly to the support team. YouTube themselves have to find a way to fix the view bot issue and shut down fake live streams as soon as possible as it is not only in the crypto space but also gaming and many other categories. I do understand it is a huge issue and not a quick fix but I personally believe they should be working harder on fixing such issues.
How to identify these scams
The main way to find out if a live stream is a scam is if they are trying to direct you to a different website and are claiming to be holding a huge giveaway with thousands of dollars to be claimed. They will almost always impersonate an influential celebrity (in this case Robert Kiyosaki) to seem real and trustworthy if they ever claim to give you double the amount of coins you send to their address this is ALWAYS a scam however well made the site and YouTube channel is you should avoid sending anything.
Final thoughts
It is disappointing to see live streams such as these allowed to stream for hours without being shut down, I do however understand it is a big problem that doesn't have a simple solution and will hopefully be fixed by the YouTube devs, for now, though many people will continue to be scammed and the scammers will get away risk-free. What do you feel needs to be done to combat these scams and is YouTube doing a good job preventing such scams or do you agree that something more needs to be done? I will be posting more scams to watch out for and key signs on how to spot them.
Thank you for reading, this was my first ever post on Publish0x and my first blog ever for that matter, I will only improve and the content I produce will get better! :)
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