I want to share some thoughts that I had recently about YouTube spam comments. We all know these early bots in the YouTube comment section, with those “misleading” profile pictures and obvious bot like comments. Those comments are often either random about any topic or copied from other users.

OK, why am I telling you that? Well, I think these bots are there to be recognized as bots. Their job is to be seen as a bot and be deleted and ignored. In that case everyone feels safe, thinking all bots are now deleted. But in reality there are more sophisticated bots under us. So the easy bots job is to get delete and basically mislead us, so we don’t think that any is left, because they are deleted.

What do you think? Sounds plausible, doesn’t it? Or do I have paranoia? :D

  • lattrommi@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Mailing lists for Spotify and Pro Tools, plus you get signed up for a ‘free’ with an asterisk lifetime subscription to sirius radio that can’t be cancelled.

    • SteevyT@beehaw.org
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      2 days ago

      You know, the truck I had at the time somehow never had it’s Sirius radio shut off. Although, I never got billed for it either…

      • lattrommi@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        The truck might have had one of their ‘lifetime’ subscriptions.

        Sirius sold lifetime subscriptions. Some people who purchased one were led to believe it was for the rest of their life. Sirius worded it to say it was the lifetime of the device. Their ‘lifetime’ service got cancelled on them after a merger with XM Radio, or they’d replace their vehicle which had a different but still a Sirius radio and could not transfer lifetime service.

        There was a class action lawsuit filed. The lawsuit was settled in 2021 (subs had been sold as far back as the early 2000’s) and made ‘lifetime’ refer to the subscriber, not the life of the radio. People with inactive subscriptions could cancel it and get $100. An active subscription could pay $35 (instead of $75) to move it to another radio, each time they wanted to move it. Except that settlement was dismissed in 2022 and it’s no longer possible.