How bots use YT comments to find private info

[@HGModernism]

Just want to address some confusion in the comments: -- My theory is that the bots naively try this tactic on any channel regardless of if the KZbinr is small or well known, or uses their full real name, or has blocked words. It's all automated so they are likely crawling through channels just posting everywhere. That is the strength of bots after all... brute force -- While KZbinrs may have a set of personal "blocked words", KZbin also has filters that can remove comments for various reasons, so a removed comment could be from either process. KZbin also likely "fuzzes" the time the comment is made visible so you wouldn't be able to tell if the comment was blocked and then manually approved or just artificially delayed. -- If a comment has a word on the KZbinr's "blocked words" list, it isn't automatically deleted, it goes to a queue for the KZbinr to review and post if they decide it is not a problem. For example, if the KZbinr's name is Jessica so she has that in the block list, but someone makes a comment like "You sound like Jessica Alba", that comment can be approved

[@Tiareth]

Why you have that name in block list?

[@SwizzleDrizzl]

@@TiarethNone of your beeswax

[@Mad_Catter_]

I'ma add some false positives for them to enjoy.

[@vrushalikalyankar4662]

​@@Tiarethguess she doesn't like Jessica, lol

[@purdysanchez]

It's a pretty stupid feature in the first place to allow the banning of words.

[@deadhouse3889]

Leonardo Michaelangelo Donatello Raphael.

[@cutecats532]

Splinter

[@codedxxx]

April, Casey, Shredder.

[@bayareasportsfan04]

Shredder

[@BTR-whar]

Lol

[@user-rmftwz-yrjsoq]

Casey

[@MechMK1]

In security, this is known as an "oracle attack", where some process unknowingly gives "yes/no" answers about some hidden information.

[@TheDabEnthusiastGaming]

This shit is blowing my mind 🤯

[@Avery_Silva]

Does this have something to do with the Oracle company

[@Geraldo_Rivian]

I always thought this was like fb and ppl were tagging their frnds to let them check a video out😂

[@Dank_Engine]

@@TheDabEnthusiastGamingthat’s a clever name for a clever strategy

[@onyxcitadel9759]

Or.....................acle. lol

[@Bruhlk]

Harder Better Faster Stronger

[@zguyofficial6206]

Work it harder make it better

[@PIXELEMPlRE]

Work it harder

[@Flammmmmmmm]

Get this comment to the top PLEASE

[@JAYZ-47465]

Lmaoooo

[@Thissentenceisfalselosers]

Do it faster make it stronger

[@ActuallyNeptune]

FINALLY someone made a video about this!!! i noticed this happening since 2 months ago and i thought it was like someone spamming celebrities names but i tried to google them and nothing shows up. And as time went on, every time i watch a video i always go to the comment section and to "newer" to see if theyre on every video, turns out they are. Thank you so much for explaining :)

[@Physics-vb6nz]

yes, literally same. i however did not look into it but when i saw this on my homepage i was glad somebody noticed it too

[@reallynah]

i’ve been seeing weird account names like Mike-xp5a7agwb and the comment is always random or has nothing to do with the video…

[@satansbarman]

​@@reallynahyou mean like the other commenter here: Physics-vb6nz? 🤔

[@undefinederror40404]

​@@satansbarmanlmao oop-

[@Meilk27]

I've been seeing this for a couple years at least

[@ABPoolsTO]

Damn, a youtube channel that actually gave us useful information in a video with less than 3 minutes and no ads... wow... just... wow.

[@syckindahead]

Amazing

[@cosmicbricks3339]

@@syckindaheadfr

[@Lighthammer18]

Ikr. Jessica is really good.

[@highhonor9443]

Broken clocks are right 2 times a day.

[@brandonwilson4740]

How was it useful?

[@lemonlordminecraft]

Robot Android Cyborg Automaton Mechanism Computer

[@HGModernism]

Nice try, but even if I am secretly an android, that also means I can be very fast at auto-approving the comment to be shown.

[@Tester-sh1mn]

⁠@@HGModernismGood luck trying to solve Captchas though!

[@ilyayakymenko9774]

r/girlsarentreal

[@guaposneeze]

Robot Android Cyborg Automaton Mechanism Computer? Of the Newport Mechanism-Computers? That guy owes me money.

[@CephalonBread]

​@@HGModernismwould this make you a paranoid android?

[@aumpauskar4653]

This video is awesome ~3 mins in length, no beating around the bush, no midrolls, no sponsorships, kinda reminds me of the old KZbin tho

[@-smellerbee-]

Definitely. Interesting content and simple

[@GuardianOfUltima]

All those years ago

[@good1day726]

Good video

[@hyoroemongaming569]

because this isn’t your average Soul Game youtuber, this is actually a very helpful and informative video. Not made for the sole purpose of money.

[@AWSMcube]

Yup. Instant sub

[@nielskeller1734]

Ever seen the "the birth name of your mother is your disney princess name" style posts on facebook? They are exactly this - provocing you to put out private information so it can be gathered.

[@JasonValentineFL]

I never even really thought about that. But omg so many people participate in those.

[@tiov3001]

That’s so weird. I’d never put my mom’s last name (Goldenstien) on line.

[@Ronald98]

​@@tiov3001😂😂😂😂

[@gray_mara]

I was once booted and blocked from a Catholic devotions group for pointing this out.

[@crosslink1493]

I've seen those and wondered what they were about. Also the comments on YT posts that are very general responses, like "Thank you so much! Your content is always very useful and informative!".

[@CiRdy34]

having bots that brute-forcingly search for banned names to dox people on youtube is so dystopian to me. i still remember when the most annoying bot related issues were iPhone X scam comments back in 2017 and the "wanna be friends" comments like 4 years ago

[@ReblexianGuy82]

I remember the wanna be friends comments, I was 11 when I first saw one so I used to think they were real people

[@hyoroemongaming569]

Everything dystopia for you😂 bet you cant even plan to shop

[@AvatarAngelica]

So, do you want to be friends or no?

[@SwagSwagSenate]

Bro the wanna be friends ones are nostalgic tbh

[@Majorwindy]

Comments on shorts are now the home of absolute bot cancer

[@jakko_]

Meanwhile at KZbin: “Let’s remove this random useful feature for no reason!”

[@refillpan]

and let’s make ads even more invasive!

[@Jezza_C_WT]

And let's censor everybody!

[@studbilly]

"let's remove dislike counter for no reason!"

[@MistyKathrine]

@@Jezza_C_WT And then punish creators for the bots!

[@peace1290]

And let's kick the few people down who try to spread awareness of inappropriate things like corn being on our platform because they're talking about corn!

[@zelda_smile]

They're trying to find Obama's last name.

[@mark.fedorov]

The Nine Billion Last Names of Obama

[@DailyCriminalScum]

Yeah I still think it’s crazy that that dude managed to get president even though we don’t even know his last name

[@ekimeno3061]

@@DailyCriminalScum He's like Cher

[@amog8202]

Dear god...

[@vincentadultman6226]

​@@DailyCriminalScumcrazy indeed, almost as crazy as Biden's first name being Skibidi

[@BenSolo777]

Bop it, Twist it, Shake it, Move it, Spin it.

[@maciejgada740]

Do it.

[@AtomicF0x]

Hand it!

[@bizcocho888]

you ate with that one

[@BenSolo777]

@bizcocho888 lol, thanks bro.

[@worldlinezero4783]

Wow, that's really creepy. Hope lots of creators see this video.

[@michaeljones1686]

Probably not, this is quite a small channel

[@AzureScintillae]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@michaeljones1686while it is a small channel, it should be important to note that every other channels that prefer privacy are also at risk with this problem. Sharing and discussing this around the net helps spread awareness than leaving it be to the algorithm to recommend it to everyone

[@ordinaryrat]

...yes... have you seen your therapist recently?... #justwondering.. hahahahahaha nice little interjection there!!

[@lyricbot8513]

@@michaeljones1686 if only there was some mechanism by which we could share videos to other people :(

[@allahsnackbar9915]

@@michaeljones1686 i have absolutely zero reason to be recommended something like this, but here it is right in the middle of a page full of diesel engines and war weapons. best regards from moms sweet cookies on 3d floor 6th avenue, peace out, a-town *usher-yeah starts playing*

[@Maxzilla11778]

peter chris brian stewart lois megan

[@TheU.S.]

Bro I actually said that one time to someone a few hours ago lol

[@TheU.S.]

I said “Herbert Peter Lois Chris”

[@ehotreze]

meg its actually called megatron

[@KvasmoTube]

Giggity

[@shindoyhong3678]

it's megatron....🤖

[@LiraScarlet]

Recently D'Angelo released a video talking about how prevalent and malicious the bot problem is getting in youtube. He mentioned the "name spam" bots but yours is the first good theory about why they exist that I've seen. Great info and great channel, I just suscribed yesterday after watching the narwhal video.

[@suicideshy451]

Man I wonder if KZbin itself as the platform will do anything about this 😂

[@hastyscorpion]

​@@suicideshy451of course they are trying to... Its not like this is an easy problem to solve.

[@DEKKERACT]

My ass thought you meant the singer 😭

[@acid-bong]

​@@DEKKERACT my first association is Arch Enemy bassist Sharlee d'Angelo

[@digitramch]

my guy needs to release new music instead of analysis videos on youtube because the last one we got was a song for the soundtrack of Red Ded Redemption 2

[@ukrmessi]

I’ve seen many comments like those except sometimes they also include numbers, street names and I even found one that had the name of an elementary school, that’s just creepy af 💀

[@ShadowNinja452]

Wow. Bots are horrible, horrible cretins. Fuck ‘em.

[@annafantasia]

Further confirmation then!

[@Freddisred]

Watch closely now as YT team does nothing about it until something unforgivable and inevitable happens. This is alarming, thank you.

[@jevinday]

Lol seriously

[@jonahblock]

There’s nothing you can do, I looked at my email history and it looks like every half hour, someone is trying to guess and not into my email from different countries

[@xaf15001]

Don't worry. This only targets people who hides their identity, which is usually smaller creators on KZbin, so the KZbin staff won't fix it until a high profile high profit KZbinr directly complains about it, even if half of KZbin gets impacted by this.

[@TheGeladoo]

They won't do anything even when something unforgivable and inevitable happens

[@user-yv6xw7ns3o]

Or they won't do anything at that point either except sweep it under the rug and continue to avoid dealing with the problems in their money printer.

[@TheBanMan]

I was going to ignore this like a solid third of my recommendations, until I saw you covered this topic in under 3 minutes. No 20 minute PyroLive slop. Thank you ma'am

[@garbomode29]

honestly I think tiktok rly killed normal length youtube videos & it's so sad

[@marsship921]

​@@garbomode293 minutes is better than overextending this to 20 minutes. Nothing sad about it

[@aquelecientista4491]

same

[@Sam-Cain]

​@@garbomode29This take goes against the entire original comment. Long form content still exists, the problem is it's artificially elongated for the sake of ads. Tiktok didn't kill attention spans, youtubers never getting to the god damn point did.

[@Tr.-nf3kc]

I remember vaguely that YT at one point came with the rules on video duration, requiring longer videos. Can't remember what the threshold was, 10 or 15 minutes? They wanted to push creators to make longer videos to put more ads. I can't remember when I saw a 3 minutes long video😊. Does this also mean that they have scraped all rules regarding duration?

[@nicolask.3825]

Oh my God I just saw this yesterday when sorting some video's comments by "Newest". Just dozens and dozens of these "five names" comments. Unsettling.

[@shreddy_fazchair]

for real

[@jamesrosewell9081]

People have many enemies it seems

[@teachmehowtofreeze2849]

I see them everywhere

[@kv4648]

I saw rhem in a random short with a couple hundred views

[@Ryan-cb1ei]

Solution; don’t put any words in a blocked list. Kind of scares me that creators can censor whatever they want, when most don’t have the best of intentions 😬 Regardless, I don’t think it’s good to give someone that level of power over the discourse under their own videos, they will probably use it how they see fit.

[@WordofAdviceTV]

My channel got inundated with comments like that!! I thought someone was trying to sabotage my channel by decreasing view duration on my videos. Love to see that you made a really feasible guess as to what is going on. I added a bunch of names to my block list and then started reporting each comment as scam and hiding the user. After doing that about 50 times, I think they finally gave up.. Haven't seen these kinds of comments for about 2 weeks now.

[@literallyafrog367]

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way

[@Kamirasu]

(AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!)

[@doorstopperizsilly]

BAHHAHA HELP NOT THAT-

[@Slvt4Bread]

I just got fuckin My Immortal'd in a youtube comment section. Ouch.

[@CryptidBuddy]

What a story Mark

[@rice_frying_shrimp]

OH MY FUCK OH GOD THAT'S MY WHOLE ASS LEGAL NAME HOW DID YOU GET THAT

[@SOOKIE42069]

At least the solution is fairly easy and obvious: just add a bunch of random first and last names of all genders and ethnicities to fuzz up the results.

[@weeb3277]

But then she'll have to comb through the comments that get caught to unblock them. Another unexpected time sink that comes with social media account ownership. it will fuzz up the results, but it will also catch unwanted stuff.

[@BFY-yc7fw]

There are commercialized list that people use for this and similar types of things.

[@PlatinumAltaria]

@@weeb3277People tend not to suddenly say “STEVE” in the middle of a comment. How often do you use proper names in your comments?

[@SOOKIE42069]

@@PlatinumAltaria The only example I can even think of is channels like Danny Gonzalez where their identity is just the channel name anyway.

[@jzekaron]

​@@SOOKIE42069 If it's a really generic name it might also be used as a stand-in by someone avoiding another person's real name. For example, "I have a friend, who I'll call Luke from here on out, that did something crazy in XYZ".

[@AtomicShrimp]

This is a quite insightful view on these bot comments - and to further support your hypothesis, I have seen some that have place-type words in the comments - like 'Estate' or 'Street' - so they could be fishing for cases where people have their own address blocked to prevent casual or accidental doxxing. Time to add some false positives to my filters!

[@Microwave_floor]

Ok

[@-smellerbee-]

Wow names are bad enough. That's very scary and could lead to a horrible circumstance at least once if it worked

[@Ryan-cb1ei]

Oof, I don’t like this. I’ve seen creators who seem to have so many blocked words you can’t even post a long enough comment without eventually hitting one of those words, and this is very benign stuff as well. This is really ridiculous and creators shouldn’t be able to censor words they don’t like just because, it’s terrible for discourse. Just let YT filter out bad words.

[@MM-jf1me]

​@@Ryan-cb1ei Creators' comments sections reflect upon them -- I can't blame anyone who just blocks some words related to a debate that always turns nasty.

[@AtomicShrimp]

@@Ryan-cb1ei I don't have a problem with it. Most of the filter terms I have added are to deal with scammers trying to sell drugs or defraud scam victims in the comments. It would be great if it all just got filtered anyway, but it's a hard problem.

[@kadalo4544]

commenting so u get pushed more. This information is so wild, and i think its a solid theory, just brute forcing it with bots makes a lot of sense, creepy af too

[@jeiku5041]

"Hey KZbin can you fix your obvious security flaws?" "But people use Ad blockers and that makes me sad :(" Anyone remember when ads were banners on the bottom of a video and you found could just click X on them? I used to think they were annoying. Oh what a sweet summer child I was.

[@EgoTheSavage]

As block costs them money. Digital Media delivery isn’t free, bandwidth, storage, routing. No ads no KZbin

[@mega_gamer93]

what is youtube supposed to fix in this case?

[@jeiku5041]

@@mega_gamer93 Let's see, there's the scam bots in the comments section that are a security risk, there's the double standards that allow ads to have more freedom, there's the dumpster fire of KZbin Kids, their ongoing war with ad blockers despite some ads being shady (Which is why the government themselves use an ad blocker for security reasons) They act like this because they know there's no real competition in the video sharing platform world (Other than TikTok, which is mostly for short form content) so they know their creators won't be able to move to a site that 's less abusive to its users because they pay the best of the lot. Do I really need to go on?

[@jeiku5041]

@@EgoTheSavage KZbin is owned by a multi billion dollar company, I'm sure they'll survive without forcing ads in people's faces. Especially with how expensive Premium is, and how many people buy Premium to escape the ads. They think destroying ad blockers will make people pay for Premium, but it'll most likely just drive people away or have them find ad blocking alternatives.

[@IllIlIIlIllI]

@@mega_gamer93 When people mass-report spam, KZbin could just block the account for a year with an appeal process for content creators. A year without commenting for average commenters isn't bad. Or any of the other dozens of ways to fight spam bots

[@basictieuu4547]

Yanny Laurel Green Needle Brainstorm

[@fluffysheap]

The dress is blue and black

[@lemonize30]

@@fluffysheapobjectively

[@kiwi_2_official]

@@fluffysheap no its green and orange

[@leandrolahiteau8162]

Darude sandstorm

[@JohnnyDeppsTeeth]

Laurel laurel brainstorm brainstorm

[@audax117]

Watch very closely now as the KZbin team removes the entire comments section feature to hide the actual problem

[@Levittchen4G]

I would actually loose it if youtube removed comments

[@Cyfrik]

Given that Crunchroll did exactly that quite recently, it's not outside the realm of possibility that KZbin might do something similar.

[@teachmehowtofreeze2849]

If they do they are cooked

[@Riu-bw4bl]

I was thinking the same thing. That would put the nail in the coffin on KZbin for me

[@Statsy10]

There's an argument to be made that the world would be a better place without KZbin comments. In addition to some great things it's done for us, Social Media has made discourse a lot more toxic.

[@74Gee]

Yes I think that's exactly what's happening, I was approached as a programmer to write software that detects when a comment is deleted/blocked based on keywords (under the guise of youtube SERPS/SEO) but when I saw they're pretty much only posting names, I limited the number of named to two and they initially just posted a lot more comments per video, and then I limited comments per video to two threads and no consecutive comments they got quite annoyed with me. As I was hosting the project there wasn't much they could do about it and they didn't make the final payment - or get the source code. Another client approached me about a similar sounding project but I didn't accept it or get into the weeds of it. Essentially they're either a) attempting to confirm a youtuber blocks specific names (most likely), b) looking for specific people over a list of channels, c) covering their tracks from more targeted campaigns (if you post a load on one channel and not on others it's more likely to be seen as spam - so they post in a load of random places), or d) actually performing some kind of wide-net market research / deducing algorithmic traits to bypass content filters.

[@user-xm4hl5zx1l]

Thanks for all the advice J! I remember when we were in middle school in Xpujil, you were already warning people about privacy issues on the interweb. P.S. Your mom Gloria, maiden name Toarstotzka , does make excellent tomatillo pies!

[@HGModernism]

Ah yes! My bff xm4hl5zx1l! I could never forget your first car, a 1998 Toyota Corolla

[@PaulFisher]

Damn, this is bringing me back to when we all grew up on Larchmont St., playing with your pet, Buddy. We would all sing the My Social Security Number Is song, but it’s been so long I’ve forgotten the lyrics! Do you remember?

[@danwylie-sears1134]

I have fond memories of playing in high-school pep band with you and cheering for the Littleville fighting gophers.

[@isaactfa]

Sick Papers, Please reference.

[@Lizard_Ri]

Glory to arstotzka? It took me so long to see it XD

[@acollierastro]

Thanks for this video. I've been seeing those comments the past few months and I couldn't come up with an explanation for them. Also....I am just now realizing I should have not used my actual name. So there's that.

[@sumwon6973]

best science channel on youtube ^

[@weir-doe3205]

Hold up,I see you before😮! //---Mouth wide open

[@seeinred]

Oh hey there. Feels weird to see you in the wilds like that.

[@WayFinder42]

Idk there are a lot of creators who use their name. I dont see them all screaming in terror

[@error.418]

@@WayFinder42 Most don't publicly talk about stalking issues, some have, it happens to any sufficiently large channel owner

[@KazeN64]

I've been getting these comments too! But my real name is public on wikipedia. I don't see why there would be a need for this - or what they would gain from having my real name in the first place...

[@Weneedaplague]

They would gain infinite knowledge about the inner folds of time in space, inside sm64 of course.

[@Aviivix]

Might be casting a wide net on accounts with a certain sub count or higher? If they're just aggregating information then its probably easier to do that and wait for results to come in than to specifically target individuals. Could also be to target deadnames for trans people online - even if you have your name on Wikipedia you may not have a deadname on there if you were trans, so transvestigators may be using this to try and "discover" that X is trans and their deadname is Y. Also, loved your work on Chaos.

[@xythrr]

Hello Kaze

[@squirl_]

It's likely automated if your account hits some certain threshold of subscribers/activity

[@mariocamspam72]

is this kaze the manual

[@The_Dark_Master]

My blocklist being empty: 🗿

[@Papapsoso]

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but around 30% of the accounts are from 2015 and seemed to have been involved in a data leak judging by how they are all made in the same year and have little to no information on the accounts. The weird thing is, some of them seem to have the original profile pictures, usually of real people, but a weird majority of them are full body pictures of women with except for their heads out view. Also all of the 2015 accounts’ banners are of major cities like NY city, Bordeaux, etc. so I can assume they were altered too

[@Cigarette-y9c]

Yep you see very generic names of specifically American older women and some men. Accounts have got to be hijacked and all the data scrapped but some still have original videos like some homemade family videos at a barbeque 10+ years ago. Has to be a massive leak unless they realized generating American names and profile pictures is more trustworthy but the accounts ages are far too old for that to make sense. It's honestly super interesting.

[@Jakub680]

@@Cigarette-y9cgeneric English names.

[@fire.smok3]

Hm that is somehow creepy

[@g3tch00]

this is genuinely creepy as hell... im intrigued, i wonder what's this whole thing about.

[@Stevie-J]

If you inspect the accounts that comment on political videos you can easily see how fake the social media landscape has become. They will often have the same creation date like you mentioned, with no content and generic sounding names

[@mickvd4]

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie

[@PaulMDavidson]

You mean "Bart, Lisa, the other one".

[@cyrollan]

Santa's Little Helper

[@Berryyyyyjam]

Walter Jesse Gus Hank Skyler Hector

[@isaiahwalking]

Walt jr Hector Mike Huel Todd

[@joaopedrodosreis6127]

Kyler Jun Jacob Linda Clara

[@Felale]

(The comment containing Heisenberg was removed)

[@antcmo_2]

Toe Neck Nose Ear Finger

[@holidayinn4293]

It's always a string of six capitalized names. Add one more and you're good.

[@user-AboxthatDrools]

"If your SSN number is the amount of money you have, how rich would you be?" ahh

[@clayton8or]

still broke af yo

[@suchopsmimic399]

Obtuse, rubber goose, green moose, guava juice Giant snake, birthday cake, large fries, chocolate shake!

[@NotA-Real-Therapist]

Mm oddparents🧏‍♂️🗿

[@lacandela69]

W

[@seontonppa]

Why did I read juice as joose 😂

[@X.maistarr]

ODD PARENTS REFERENCE SPOTTED

[@Gravity_studioss]

This is MF DOOM

[@Wapsu]

They use these little bits of contextual information to brute force and break into accounts. Once they find your first and last name or some variation of that, it really narrows down the accounts that have been compromised already on the web through database leaks and treasure troves of information already in the hidden market. Your YT account might not be that important, but I'd wager a significant population have a lot of accounts connected to their gmail.

[@closed661]

Theres actually a website where u can see if your email has been involved in a database leak ( haveibeenpwned ) so theres that but other info may still be gathered without the leaks unfortunately

[@Jazzatic2011]

Well it doesn’t help that years ago youtube which is connected to google decided to have the google name show instead of the KZbin one. It is why, in my opinion, so many people have their names listed on some channels. Also my friend was panicked realizing it switched it to her name via google.

[@revemb4653]

@@closed661 how could you trust that website though? You are willingly giving you email to know if its been exposed online

[@Geraldo_Rivian]

All yt accounts are connected to gmail😢

[@Geraldo_Rivian]

Also doesn't help that paid antiviruses work as well as biden's memory

[@shoyahaaruni]

youtube asks you to pay for premium then lets this happen on their site

[@Newgodlove]

KZbin is still the wild West

[@TheJello]

How are they supposed to fix this? I don’t see any correlation between premium and this.

[@AB-sw4kb]

@@Newgodlove it's the worst version of the wild west

[@nexor7809]

@@TheJello they are asking people to pay so its on them to provide the best experience

[@rhayesvault]

I think they just meant that youtube makes a poor job keeping our infos safe. But they still ask our money anyways...? ​@@TheJello

[@mystic9446]

Hey sorry if im a month late but something SUPER INTERESTING that NO ONE has spoken about on the internet. That is the bots that post under financial videos such as "Graham Stephan" videos ( cant name any other off the top of my head) . They start speaking about how they have a large sum of money and dont have any idea how to invest it and the comment thread under it is 4-10 bot replies pointing you in a direction of a specific financial advisor. Its always a different financial advisor and name and they have a website linked to them alot of the time. I hope you see this im super CURIOUS!!! : D

[@some.guy.]

Dancing Walking Rearranging Furniture

[@tatteryt]

LMAOOO

[@gd-dare]

Babs Is Shopping I Let

[@BabsIsShopping]

babs is shopping

[@dogevoadoriii]

Who let the bird out of the cage

[@jubblez97]

The Bird Out Of The Cage

[@flightstatic4662]

i always assumed the bots were just trying to get in good standing with youtube by interacting with videos

[@Luminousreign]

Correct, and they are failing to do so and then getting auto deleted.

[@HoneyMike]

Kano, Liu Kang, Raiden, Johnny Cage, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Sonya

[@-Oddity]

Waxed Slightly Weathered Copper Cut Stairs

[@kategf1999]

Bruh i lose it

[@Ruby...X]

I CANT STOP LAUGHTING😭😭 I think the best gotta be miny maney moe

[@uwu-lw5rc]

Broo😭😭🐴😭

[@RobertAnderson-m7f]

@@uwu-lw5rc 🤣🤣🤣👽🤣🤣

[@wraith-cat]

@@uwu-lw5rc 🐴🐴????

[@atruepanda1782]

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

[@GalootWrangler]

My name too, how could you have known?

[@Sir_Wave]

His name is my name, too!

[@shibatrot]

Because whenever you go out, the people always shout 👀

[@tatteryt]

that's scary... his name just so happens to be my name too...

[@ChineseMustangs]

whenever we go out the people always shout

[@Anthony-reyes08]

Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist

[@JohnnySabu]

Tony Stark

[@zephyrias]

@@JohnnySabuBruce Wayne

[@DarkMatter2525]

Why are you doxxing me?!

[@brayanxd4547]

​@@DarkMatter2525i doubt any genius would actually waste their time mocking religion on a youtube channel

[@TheSunkenShipWreck]

​@@brayanxd4547 you must be fun at parties... Not haha

[@InstrumentManiac]

Thank you for making a video on this!!! I've been getting these weird af comments for a long time now and I had no idea what tf this was about 😂 good explanation!

[@FlyingScott]

I had already asked KZbin support what this new wave of bots was about, but with your hypothesis I might have to bug them again until they answer. This could seriously endanger people who value their privacy.

[@theRPGmaster]

And they probably won't do anything or even respond, as usual.

[@unguidedone]

is your comment satire? did you forget your using google and privacy does not exist.

[@princessthyemis]

Yeah!!! It's mega creepy!!!!

[@De7Sanchez]

If you put yourself out there on youtube or any form of social media, you clearly don't value your privacy much.

[@ChickenShred]

Nice job putting in the effort in actually trying to reach out to KZbin about this issue. Even if KZbin just ignores us, it’s nonetheless important to bring this issue up so more people are aware.

[@slayeuh]

Finally someone has a good theory for what these bot comments are for!!! They are literally on EVERY video I watch. I can finally sleep at night knowing their purpose.

[@Chreeeis]

I like taking jabs at KZbin as much as the next guy, but in this case it feels like people are really underestimating how beyond infested the internet is with this stuff. Open anything thats trending on social media and there will be more phishing accounts than bacteria crawling on your phone screen. It takes such a small amount of processing power to execute this kind of behavior from the users end, you can send out millions of these things and a 1 in 5 million chance of the desired effect would still be worth it. KZbin would make a bigger impact ordering its employees to step outside and kill every mosquito they can find with their bare hands than try to get rid of as many bots as they can. There will always be people looking for exploits. The best thing anyone can do is what this lady is already doing- inform people!!! Taking care of your devices, personal info, and staying updated is leagues better than what any company or security software can do. Congrats with the algorithm btw 🎉

[@abexuro]

That's very clever, well spotted. While I wouldn't want my full real name scraped like that, I wonder what they actually do with this information. Especially such common names as "Brian Lee"...

[@ouwyukha]

I love how you share your finding in neat 2:40 video, no bs included

[@icanbreathe9161]

The reason why I clicked and watched. If it was over 10 mins I wouldn’t have bothered

[@Zyskr..]

Mike Hawk Obama Joe Mama

[@peterfireflylund]

mmmmmmmmmmmm

[@muquilord]

HAWK TUAH!!!!

[@Daryavahush]

Hawk Tuah 😂😂😂😂😂 sigma tate button 🗿🍷 ----->

[@B-Man-69]

Mike Hunt Sugondese Nats

[@colonelcorn9500]

If you say "Hawk Tuah" your abortion failed

[@S.J.C._Entertainment]

I see these comments all the time, always assumed it was a bunch of Facebook boomers trying to tag their friends or something lol.

[@coldfact.]

😂😂😂 that was funny

[@Cyfrik]

Flashback to the Google+ days, when you could actually do that.

[@bugginonthewall]

@@CyfrikGoogle+, damn we are old lol. Most kids now don’t even know the Google+ song 😂

[@S.J.C._Entertainment]

@@Cyfrik Seems like it would be a cool feature, wouldn’t mind that sticking around unlike most of the other Google+ crap.

[@dmuth]

Note to self: add a bunch of random names to my block list to confuse the bots.

[@cyr0_gd]

my thought was they would spam these names and kids with same names will reply "ong that's my name" Just like those old Facebook posts that steal your birthdays and stuff by "make your rapper name" thingy

[@terrortalks3037]

Yeah, that was my thought too, that way they could spread a lot of Nets a lot of places

[@princessthyemis]

Ohhh shit I didn't even think of that!!! Ugh that's so creepy!

[@bonbonpony]

Anyone remembers the "Hey, did you know that if you write your password on the chat, it's gets automatically replaced with stars? Look: ✶✶✶✶✶" scheme? ;J

[@wallewonks]

Omg I never realised that those make your rapper name posts can be used to scrape birthdays… yikes!

[@thatgui88]

​@@wallewonks I thought that was obvious to see. This is why I don't even participate in those. Those quizzes are just scraping information out of you. EX... What is the first letter of your name.....last name....month....day......... Time..year.......Car model.......lvl of education..... Dangerous stuff for a website to know........

[@borstenpinsel]

Or maybe it's about testing the waters for these "jessica dingding helped me a lot with my investment" comment threads

[@ActionScripter]

That was my theory since a lot of the fake reply comments on those posts are by Firstname Lastname bots. I thought maybe they were posting names to try to establish some kind of history of those names being legitimate, but it didn't quite make sense how that would work.

[@_kaleido]

I think those threads are my least favorite type of bot comment lol, mostly because depending on the video subject you can read 2-3 comments in before you realize it’s just a bunch of bots

[@its_xen0nn]

if only likebots werent so cheap

[@CommaCam]

This actually sounds plausible to me. They wouldn't want to start one of those long threads with so many different accounts coordinating together on it if the key person's name wasn't going to be visible.

[@sketchup.ketchup]

Robin, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Starfire, Raven. Edit) Thanks :>

[@daftzilla]

Go!

[@ClydeYouTuber]

Thanks for bringing attention to this. I’ve been noticing these bots on my channel almost daily 💀

[@HowieRaps]

This kind of small "oddity" that most people never talk about/deal with is right up my alley. And I think that's pretty smart of you to piece it together like you did. I've currently been trying to figure out why some of my comments post and others don't. (It's become like 50/50 at this point)

[@Tr.-nf3kc]

They are probably shadowbanned or removed by Y@tube or waiting to be approved. Probably because of some words that you used and my guess is also that AI is doing quick analysis. It doesn't mean that the comments were inappropriate, but certain topics are heavily suppressed. I get that a lot cause I like history and geopolitical topics, among other things. If I write, for example, the name of a historical figure, which was short loud, evil, with mustache or write the word -name- of his favorite ideology, Y@tube decides to put me back into the shadows, meaning that the comment is there, but no one else can see it or they just remove it completely. It doesn't matter that the comment has nothing more than some basic historical facts, is respectful etc. Not only commentator are hit by this, but also creators with channels for history lovers. A few days ago one got pretty much frustrated after 5 attempts to make a video on WW2, with the type of content that can be seen at the official History channel. He finally manage to trick our AI guy by getting really creative to come up with alternative description for words that may trigger and alert AI guy and upset our tube overlords. It's ridiculous that viewers and creators avoid using the name of the mustache man, turning him literally to "He who must not be named". We are in Harry Potter world now. Try to figure out what might be triggers and become creative or just insert asterisks and symbols into the word, to get out of shadows where Y@ut*ube put you.

[@EvenTheDogAgrees]

@@Tr.-nf3kc Yeah, it's getting ridiculous at this point. I even had sessions where I tried multiple ways to help out a fellow astrophotographer with some technical issue through the comments, and every single one of them got deleted. Eventually I just gave up trying to share the information publicly in his comment section, so others could benefit as well, and just emailed him directly. KZbin is going down the drain.

[@Chilli_Tea]

The bot accounts have real names for usernames and the human accounts have garbage for the usernames. This is the current era of youtube

[@beeble2003]

Well, it's what you'd expect. It's too much effort for humans to make up another human-like name for online use, so we call ourselves "Chilli_Tea" or "beeble". But if you're a bot, it's easier to pick a human name by just mix-and-matching from a list of given names and surnames.

[@Snaily]

I always knew something like this would happen. I'm fine with people using the name Dylan for me because it made it easier to record videos with friends, but all personal details beyond that I've kept on a tight lockdown on since about 2015 when someone straight up commented on my channel asking if I was Dylan (X) from (Y) school. I realised that something like this would happen some day though, so I did what you advised and just added a bunch of random names, schools, towns, companies, etc to the list to prevent random details getting out. Friends called me crazy. Maybe I am given I only ever hit a peak of 151 subscribers before dumping this channel, but it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your personal information on the internet (see: NerdCubed having a fan recognise the carpet outside his flat from 4 frames that showed it, who decided it would be a great idea to show up at the front door of his flat. Not the building itself, _his front door_ )

[@taylor3950]

Showed up at his door?! Wild!

[@bonbonpony]

You can always spam your own comment section with random names yourself as a decoy ;) Then people would be none the wiser which of them is real in case someone tried to dox you.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@taylor3950 yeah, I remember that. Apparently it was someone who lived in the same building. Apparently they didn't realise how creepy it would be to be on the other end of that experience, and were apologetic when he told them to leave, but it's still a hell of a thing to do. Like... a note through the letterbox would be unnerving enough. But I could envisage using that to give a friendly warning that the carpet is identifiable through the letter (so, avoid showing it) and maybe a wee mention the viewer lives in the same building would probably be on the balance of things more useful than unsettling. But... just showing up and ringing the doorbell, like they did?!

[@abnorc8798]

This is clever, and kind of scary. Thanks for pointing this out! It seems like you can find security vulnerabilities in common software for as long as you keep on looking for them. In a more ideal world, KZbin would do something about this. I have a feeling that they won't find this to be overt enough of a problem to fix it though. Putting a whole bunch of names in there seems like a good workaround.

[@cds5506]

Smart. Also, creepy. Really creepy. Glad you're alert to it.

[@DrTrog]

I've seen these comments in a few of my KZbin friend's videos. Their theories were that these comments will be edited later with scams and whatnot after you ignore them. Then the creator will not get a notification that a new spam comment has been made .

[@52flyingbicycles]

I think I put blocked first and last names together as a single word, rather than separately. So instead of blocking “John” and “Smith” I blocked “John Smith”. That way people can talk about any John or Smith separately as long as they don’t put 2 and 2 together. Well, not “John Smith” specifically that’s just an example.

[@EmergencyTemporalShift]

John Smith?! It's been a lifetime, how have you been?

[@pierrotA]

It make finding the full name harder, but once you find it, you can be sure it's right.

[@jessveness]

@@pierrotA Well, you can totally add more names, as was said in the video

[@johnsmith2875]

Don’t block me :(

[@Ron-eg9kb]

Quandell Ladarius Gentry Dingle

[@TigasHyper]

If bots were called Ad Blockers I'm sure KZbin would do something to try stopping this epidemic from spreading...

[@notvixios]

This actually makes so much sense when I thought about it, thanks for sharing I hope YouTue can SOMEHOW do something about it

[@BraydenDorwart]

Oh hey didn't know u were here

[@kategf1999]

Yooo

[@MCArt25]

Why would they though?

[@leonidasofsparta5218]

What are you doing here dawg

[@kategf1999]

😂

[@ThomasTheThermonuclearBomb]

Woah, what's up Skye Palmer? Skye from your middle name Skylar, right? I saw you at work at 120 Eglington Business Centre Inc! I remember you because your blue Toyota Corolla had the licesnse plase BTAE917, 9/17 like your birthday. So cool to see you!

[@lemonize30]

No way hi thomas, or Tom The Bomb as you were known at Weed Eater High School. Roflmao :)

[@KESH-ds1wz]

Yooo Thomas from Toronto! How's it going???

[@yaloolah42]

I wish someone would do a deep dive on these weird chatbot comments. I remember like a year or two ago there were comments everywhere that were a strong of nonsensical words, but in the same format. Like, there would be adjectives and adverbs in the same places, and a specific comma, but altogether the phrase didn't make sense and didn't have anything to do with the video. And there were a LOT of them. I always wondered what the goal even was.

[@titaniummechanism3214]

Interesting. I was only familiar with those spam bots looking to lure people onto their profile to get them to a different site and squeeze some money out of them. They've gotten really good at hiding, reposting real users comments, voting their own stolen comments up with bot likes. And it seems to work. I often see people engaging with their comments, not realizing they're talking to a bot.

[@TorutheRedFox]

you were right, they're now posting addresses

[@qtpaulie]

huh?

[@qtpaulie]

huh?

[@76EATDX.]

@@qtpaulie huh?

[@76EATDX.]

@@qtpaulie huh?

[@cooltwittertag]

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

[@user-cp9id1mj8b]

Dead internet theory Dead internet theory Dead internet theory Dead internet theory Dead internet theory Dead internet theory

[@Fataltyler08]

I realized this shit was true about 4 years ago, it's something too many people forget or ignore online.

[@augustday9483]

99% bots trying to track down the last 1% of humans left on the Net so they can ruthlessly exploit them.

[@kyquits]

Two comments = dead internet

[@BFY-yc7fw]

It's definitely dead now.

[@ragcat3732]

Mighty weird names you’re looking for

[@sobekmania]

I was fortunate enough to post some videos that got quite popular, but I noticed these kinds of comments starting to pop up in the comments sections. I was a little confused, and I didn't interact with them because I knew they had to be bots. This video was quite helpful, so thanks.

[@donaldpetersen2382]

I reported one of these comments half a dozen times. YT doesn't give a shit

[@bonbonpony]

They don't give shit about much worse stuff, involving children. I mean, they do care to ban _you_ if you dare to raise awareness about it, but they never give a shit about the actual wrongdoers :q

[@jamesrosewell9081]

​@bonbonpony keep in mind you're dealing with a shitton of algorithms before it even graces the screen of a traumatized content moderator who's already overworked (many documentaries on this phenomenon)

[@theCodyReeder]

Oh joy. Thanks for this. I'll consider adding some noise to the block list and spread the word to my KZbin friends. I was originally here because I've been trying to figure out another suspected bot related pattern: They post random quotes, presumably to build up their reputation so they aren't deleted as quickly when they start scamming. Looks like you noticed it before me.

[@johannbauer2863]

:O didn't expect to find some other channel I know here. FIrst astro collier and now Cody's lab, this is the new best crossover (ik the meme is old)

[@lemonke8132]

I pray they never deduce your name theCodyReeder

[@ChrisWijtmans]

do you ever see CodySlab and EthoSlab upload at the same time though?

[@mordsven]

Honestly, something like this is a ticking time bomb. Hope KZbin could sort this bot problem...

[@ReinaLesbiana]

Marge, Lisa, Maggie, Homer, Bart.

[@tree_eats]

Give it a few years and the vast majority of comments will be nothing but bots spamming names and addresses, with crypto bots responding with inane "financial advice".

[@illpunchyouintheface9094]

Sounds like something a bot would say

[@TheRhedNova]

Eek. Thanks for the heads up - already had a bunch of dummy names in my content channel's blocked list but probably going to add more. Have had stalkers before, and god I hate the idea that they could be automating that behavior. Makes my skin crawl, glad you're bringing attention to this

[@TechMindsOfficial]

I have had so many of these types of comments appear on random videos over the past few weeks, if not months, and have wondered why. Normally I just hide the user from my channel, but your theory is very plausible. Thanks for the video!

[@MintyArisato]

I’ve noticed a lot of comments disappearing that use cuss words (and I don’t mean slurs, I mean just a plain old F word) so learning about a channel blocklist makes sense but also gives me a little chuckle like I’m back on the playground and can’t say “stupid”

[@JordanLittle-bb3yq]

'Young Brian Hall Susan Martin Jessica'. It just hits you in the feels, doesn't it?

[@itzrosegold]

this low-key seems like a video that pops up on ur fyp 15 years later

[@phoenixofthestars07]

and your kid comes to you like “this was a thing??” and you’re just like “…yeah, AI was pretty messed up back then”

[@mithcee]

​​@@phoenixofthestars07 Or they're like "That's the worst you had to deal with?? HAHAHAHAHAHA"

[@skzanarchist]

no fr

[@itzrosegold]

@@phoenixofthestars07 LMAO

[@lepaj6902]

It's amazing that we live in a time where for some reason people who have nothing interesting to do try to brute force someone's personal data using bots.

[@kulak403]

I feel like it's not too far out there to assume there's some kind of incentive, be it monetary or otherwise. Other than just boredom.

[@madeyoulookretard6205]

reverse engineering blocklist is interesting. well not at the expense of real people

[@kaiparker1756]

@@kulak403 Mhm, probably boredom, or for the challenge. I usually geolocate addresses. Not for any particular reason. I don’t do anything with the info because that’s just messed up. I just like the challenge and puzzle of it.

[@THE-X-Force]

It isn't boredom .. it's business.

[@Isaac-eq7xk]

@@kaiparker1756congratulations?

[@Wicked_Knight]

Not the first time i seen this talked about, but it is the first time someone got straight to the point without beating around the bush.

[@HueManatee]

FINALLY, thank you for figuring this out, or at least having a good hypothesis! But, what about those accounts that post odd, incoherent phrases? I haven't seen some in a while, but I remember their format being something like "Blabla bloobloo. Jongba, tingy toonga." (NOT WITH THOSE WORDS THO LOL, just random nouns and adjectives.)

[@HGModernism]

Those... um... those might be children. Or cats with autocorrect.

[@SeanCMonahan]

​@@HGModernismCould be probing the site-wide filter system to see if they can suss out how to evade it. I haven't seen the sort of comments HueManatee mentioned though.

[@HGModernism]

@@SeanCMonahan That's fair. I just remember kids video comment sections before they turned them off haha

[@DiThi]

That's probably for training AIs not to block and not to be blocked, so they can use them later to spam defeating anti spam bots.

[@ArtByKarenEHaley]

They would be like this Excellent time. Wandering frog, absolutely.

[@dereinedessennamendunichtk6941]

Wolfgang Amadeus Johann Sebastian Ludwig Johannes Franz Franz Richard

[@NatetheNintendofan]

Dude Doxxed Amadeus From Calamity Mod Skull

[@giorgio84]

Dubstep

[@crism8868]

We should start worrying when the bots start spamming Sarah Connor in the comments 🔫🤖

[@BrunoJaureguiMusic]

They're trynna find Victoria's secret

[@Tsukiko.97]

I’m pretty sure I came across a group of bots who all had videos that were 16 years old and about one minute long. They are littered all over financial and investing videos. It really threw me as to how genuinely real those channels looked.

[@und4287]

They probably found some logins in a data breach or something, I don't think they would have been fermenting bot accounts since 2008...

[@pepitocovid-91]

Kai Jay Cole Zane Lloyd Nya Master Wu Garmadon

[@Java_Protogen]

ninjago moment

[@basedSkeleton]

REAL

[@mariokujo384]

long before time had a name...

[@MyHorsePrinceGame]

yesssssss

[@Teeter_totter908]

My siblings were watching Ninjago when I read this

[@LloydSim]

It was very strange when I got one. Most of my comments for my youtube vids are set to "Strict" for the past several months as I've been on hiatus, and so several of these comments were held for review, and there were several accounts typing similar things, just random name strings too. Obvs, I removed/did not allow it but it was kind of creepy--I also had one comment where someone (I guess a bot) for some reason, found my old myspace's about me section that I've not read/seen with my own eyes for 17 years and that spooked me since it was definitely a throwback, but extremely creepy.

[@222o-u3t]

how did they find it? what was the comment? this is so interesting yet spooky…

[@kaitlyn__L]

It's always weird when old posts/bios get quoted back at you years and years later.

[@222o-u3t]

@@LloydSim Starting to think this never happened tbh 🤣

[@LIMA_36]

Funny thing is I saw the same stuff (aka name spam) happen on Vocaloid videos where there’s random comments saying vocaloids’ names. It’s highly unlikely THOSE comments have the same intentions as the ones in your video considering Vocaloids aren’t real people but I can’t help but wonder if it’s also related? Those comments are from years ago tho so I presume it’s just children who don’t know how to use KZbin lmfao

[@macmost]

I'm glad someone finally made a video about this to bring some attention to it. I've been getting these name salad comments for months on my channel, about 5-10 per day. I report each one as spam in hopes of getting those bot accounts shut down, or at least more likely to be sent to moderation for others. I don't think trying to figure out the creator's name is what is happening though. I just don't see a way that could be profitable for whomever is doing this. In my case, my name is well-known. I actually start every single video introducing myself. When I started out, I was writing books on the same subject so my name was out there anyway. But let's keep this going and try to figure it out. My current theory is for these bot accounts to simply gain a comment history so they can post real spam years later. But then text like "nice video" or "thank you" would make more sense.

[@XatxiFly]

Given how effortless this kind of operation might be to run once it's set up, even if there isn't an immediate specific purpose I could see some parties just wanting to gather as much personal data as possible wherever they happen to find it, for later use or selling as needed. Like casting a wide net in the scary abstract Big Data way rather than targeting individual creators for extortion or whatnot.

[@DanDavisHistory]

Had a bunch of these over the last few days on lots of videos. Had no idea why. Interesting theory, thank you

[@Fridge_Fiend]

Goku Vegeta Gohan Kakarot Piccolo

[@teachmehowtofreeze2849]

Kuzan Akainu Fujitora Kizaru Greenbull

[@allwinpaul747]

kakarot? Kakarot!? KAKAROTTT!!!

[@steve_ai]

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice