Spam at Youtube
I’ve seen the first instance of spam at Youtube. I have an account there, with comments pre-moderated. I got an e-mail that someone had commented on a video and checked it out.
It was from krystalt355, who’d registered her account the day before, and was trying to promote something:
Rate girls online at collegeboobies dot com
The site is hosted in Boca Raton in Florida, spam capital in the US. Note that the spam is not geared towards Google. This is an attempt at reaching the people who view the videos on Youtube, not to get a search engine boost. And the site itself appears to have been online since 2004.
Whois:
OMI
OM I (omitraffic@gmail.com)
6628015828
Fax: none
POBox224
Oxford, MS 38655
US
ns1.sirbooty.com
ns2.sirbooty.com
Creation date: 20 Apr 2004 14:55:39
Expiration date: 20 Apr 2008 14:55:39
I also noticed that Youtube has a button you can press in order to mark something as spam. And it’s possible for me as a logged in user to mark someone else’s comment as spam. But it appears as though the spam still persists, it’s just hidden for me as a user. If I check the same page in a browser that isn’t logged in, the spam is still there.
I found the same spam on metacafe.com (multiple comments on the same video), as well as some other spam with a similar MO.
October 7th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I’ve done that exact same thing. Eventually someone at YouTube goes through those spam -taggedmessages and gets rid of them entirely. But I don’t know how long that takes.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
If you’re logged on and it’s a video you uploaded from that account, you should also get a “remove” link as well (next to the mark as spam one). I’ve been making heavy use of it these last new months.
Also, messages you tag as spam are hidden for all logged-in users (not sure if it’s just the beta page interface).
October 16th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Spam on YouTube is nothing new
I report any spammy or inappropriate comments I see, but I don’t know whether YouTube really act on reports (haven’t checked back to see if comments disappeared or not).