I have seen that, if the ending of the video has a space, sponsor or smth that just makes people yeet out of it, the view count will fail, killing the trend, that's why DF is such a big channel
Haha, think your content is probably niche enough that there's not a lot of competition. That is to say, I know no other creators with your style of videos.
Honestly you are the only clay model maker I follow because your commentary makes the video much more interesting. The others I've clicked on who just sculpt silently I end up just skipping to the end to see their "glamour shots"
this is doubly terrifying because it means that large corporations can do this to reviewers who review their product poorly; or who review their competition positively; effectively resulting in erasing the reviewer from the algorithm and thus the bad press.
Honestly he seemed in favor of the unbalanced "make shorts while it is a new feature" hack & despite me seeing the video a year later, it explain why a random short video of mine shot up in views so randomly I was puzzled for ages. My cat is cute but 1,700 views cute? On tiktok my views jump higher in general compared to UA-cam anyway so people may just like short form stuff.
I tried advertising my channel about 2 years ago on adsense, absolute nuke to my channel, have not grown since. Literally have been stuck just under 17k subs, worst decision I ever made.
Yeah, same. I think it's a manipulateitce function to try to get you to spend yet more money because you just spent aome and they know you are willing to now. ...Like what Tinder does.
That is very terrifying. This would let brands silence any videos that don't agree with them by spending their marketing budget on mistargeted ads. Hopefully @UA-cam can figure out a way to stop it!
@friendlyjordies Considering how much people have gone after him. This is basically the new false copyright strike. Only more efficient with less lawyers fees.
Another use case for this exploit that I find even more terrifying is that it can also be used by companies against UA-camrs. A company could pay to suppress a youtube video that reviews their product negatively, so that anyone who searches your product sees only positive reviews. Suddenly, that 100£ isn't actually costing you anything since you are influencing your prospective buyers into actually buying your product by removing anything negative about it. That is truly frightening!
I thought about that, too. It’s already bad enough that huge companies suppress creators legally through the systems in place. Now they can suppress them with even less money and avoid the legal system entirely. Freaking scary.
imagine raid-shadow legend instead of paying more money to creators to promote the game, instead pays that money to remove all vidoes that arent supported by them.
It's mind blowing that they added that checkbox, and then somebody went like "Wait, should everyone have that checkbox?" and then they said "Nah, screw the smaller channels."
As RTGame and Spiffing Brit have shown, the best way to improve UA-cam is to show how badly broken and horrible the platform is, and how easily it is broken. Thank you for doing your part!
Wait what? Do you have litterally any idea how to program the algorithim to example recover like it does in this case? You litterally have 0 idea what goes into developing the platform of youtube. How can you act like you can give an opinion on its overall quality? Its like a person being shown the first diamond they have ever seen and who knows nothing about what goes into creating / finding them, saying that the diamond is garbage. You have never seen any other youtube-like platforms and you have no idea what goes into creating them and making them good. And you are ALSO taking one example of a fault and assuming its all horrible. If your friend says something to you that hurts your feelings by accident 1 time, do you block them and cut them completely off and call them a horrible person? Thats what you are doing here, youtube has an addicental fault and you are saying the entire thing is horrible and should be killed. Im sorry but you need to stop making general conclutions from specific examples. Seperate whats good from whats bad.
I love how you subtly point out that youtube knows about the issue and has taken steps to protect larger channels. Almost like this feature is intended for larger channels to spend money to make sure they never have competitors.
What can you do? Even if UA-cam do genocide they have absolute monopoly on video sharing website. Not only that, they are owned by the largest tech company on earth. We need anti trust regulation on google. They are too big
Or, yknow, the larger channels kick up a bigger fuss and get addressed and it wasn't like they had been protected from this before that, it was put in after it happened on a case by case basis, because the original thing is a feature intended to deal with clickbait. It isn't always an evil duck. Sometimes it's just unintended systems interacting. In this case, stopping people advertising channels they don't own...?
Not really a "new" secret exploit, but long story short, I covered this extensively about 5 years ago because this happened to me, and eventually I got it elevated to the right people at UA-cam. A video of mine was promoted which allowed them to change the title of the ad to promote pirating the game I was covering in the video. Of course, people dipped because that wasn't the case and the video tanked. Thus, this ordeal is how that checkbox for larger creators got implemented - through repeatedly knocking on creator support's door. (The checkbox that prevents their videos from being used unless that Adwords account is linked.) However, I was not aware it did not include all creators... Which is depressing to see that the same issue still exists for those starting out.
UA-cam doesn't really care as long as it makes money. Once the userbase is large enough you are bound to have channels that earn them a lot of money and get protected. Also just think about how much money legacy content earns the company for ad revenue on repeat views. I agree it is distressing as it is favouring anti competative practice. But then again how many video platforms really compete with UA-cam? Twitch and TikTok are the main ones, then who else isn't a minnow? I am sure they are all for anti-competition.
@@ee3737 I think you might be the one that needs to google... They used one comma and one semicolon, and they were put in specific places to emphasise a separate clause. Here is a version of that sentence with slightly different words: "...ads on their video showcasing a product, which had fake links to the products; this effectively made the legit video link to a scam" See how the middle part and the end part are new clauses? meow simply shortened that, without being overly specific about each new clause. Grammar is not a set of rigid rules; it evolves based on how it is used, especially in colloquial use online. Also, what a weird thing to stop and type, can't believe you would take time out of your day to have a rant about grammar to someone on the interne- Oh, wait a minute...
I believe that this is an adequate explanation of that one time UA-cam tried to show me a 30 minute preroll podcast before a 6 minute video. Very enlightening. Thank you.
@@LilacMonarch I agree it sounds absurd. It happened only once and it was skippable, but it made me reconsider ad blockers. Before that, I didn't use them because "video machine needs to make money somehow". But then one ad became two ads, and then the midroll ads would cut into the middle of spoken sentences, and then less and less ads would be skippable, and then one day this happened and I was just done with it.
Maybe 6-7 years ago or so I got a whole movie as a preroll add, near 2 hours if I remember right. Was a Sony production, a horror film that largely took place in a single unfinished basement. Ended up watching most of it to be honest. Was an ok film
@@PosterityIslesNews About a year ago I was cycling to shop. Just about 4min trip and I got maybe 6min video selected and then ad started playing. 28 minute unskippable video ad. I had to close the youtube player on my phone to get rid of it to listen to the video I wanted.
At this point I'm convinced "someone at youtube" means a janitor, a security guard, or the ceo themself. Whenever a problem surfaces, unless about 5 million people spam the company, they don't respond and just direct you to one of the many bot assisted complaint or appeal processes
Very glad that Spiff chose to share this info with UA-cam instead of using this knowledge to destroy his enemies and conquer the platform. As fun as that would’ve been to watch, small creators really need a win in there column these days.
Small creators these days dont have anything except maybe in few cases actually amazing content to drive them up. Glad i stopped making content before all this shit show. Too much work for no return really. Didnt even get to minimum 25$ sum before youtube cut the monetization from channels under 1000 subs.. Now days even if you have thousands of subs and bank actually decent money from content... yeah no.. now its the MSM that get served and you get shanked on this platform...Look elsewhere for platforms or dont bother here for the money, that ship sailed long time ago.
If he knows about it, the chances are that it's being used in action by a bunch of people already. As with security flaws, the best thing you can do is warn the owners and then publicise it.
maybe he share this AFTER destroying his enemies?? I mean, you don't see any Epic Meal Time videos anymore, and you know damn well that those bastards used to talk bullocks about tea !
A better way than removing the ability to advertise someone elses video, is for you to set the target audience in your video and if people decide to advertise it, it is automatically with your set target audience. That way people can still support you without destroying the video
or (and idk how difficult this would be to code) but maybe ads should just not count in the algorithm or have a separate viewer count etc. because even if I "like" an ad, im still skipping it like 99.9% of the time to watch the video I selected. doesn't necessarily say anything about how good or bad the ad in itself is. (hope that made sense)
I was thinking that the creator would get the option to either accept or decline if someone wants to run an ad campaign, and also be able to see/edit the demographic it's set to get pushed to.
@@amunak_ there should be this option, like for example if someone wants to run a ad campaign for *Never gonna give you up* that should be completely fine but there should be control over how it is implemented ( yes you just got rickrolled)
What would make even MORE sense (and I don't know how this could be done but it would be the most correct option) is to make the algorithm more intelligent when evaluating this stuff. The issue here is that the video was being advertised to a target audience that wouldn't like it? then... why not have the yt algorithm take note of that, not as "this video is spam don't recommend it anymore" but as "this is not the target audience for this video, recommend it to someone else"? or even "this ad seems to be badly or too broadly targeted, I can't get any good information from this, proceed as normal"? Of course it would help if the creator could also specify the ACTUAL target audience for reference, no good reason to not have that as well.
Based on the way UA-cam's been handling things recently, I wouldn't be surprised if UA-cam just straight up bans Spiff, and doesn't do anything about the exploit.
@Makuru_DD nah. They're a private entity who does not employ them. They reserve the right to deny service to anyone for any reason and need explain nothing.
You know what... this actually happened to me because I boofed the ad campaign on one of my videos and accidentally made it waaaay too broad of an audience. To think that idiotic mistake could be weaponized!
I had an experience with this a while back. I had a fan who commented on every video asking me to review a certain game. I finally did and while the video exploded initially in views, the avg view duration was horrid. It was strange for sure and based on some of their later comments, i suspect that they had run an ad campaign to "boost" the views of the vid in an attempt to convince me to become a content creator for that game specifically. I saw the analytics tho and knew something was up
UA-cams solution will probably be to promote Premium more to people so they avoid ads completely, rather than just fix the problem. Though I do have to admit, whilst I hate paying for premium, I love having no ads on my tv when watching youtube late at night.
So to harm youtubers I dislike, I should open every single one of their videos and immediately close them without interacting whatsoever. Good to know!
I love this mix of helpfulness (in having a possible solution) and terrible irresponsibility (in letting the *fine* folks of the internet know about this - but I do believe this will result in a faster fix). UA-cam is perfectly balanced with no exploits
You can also get redditors banned by paying a site to upvote their comments with bot accounts. Probably works on other sites too, the internet is broken.
I think it would be a better idea to simply not have the video be affected in the algorithm when it's run as an ad. This would likely help both creators (as doing this exploit would just mean free adverting) and advertisers (because their content won't be lost in the infinite pit of people skipping their ads)
Maybe it could also bin the different sources of views, so that the algorithm could be more resilient against bad recommendation strategies. So if a new recommendation strategy tanked the metrics, then that recommendation strategy could be weighted less, or fixed, or used less for that video. Maybe this is sometimes why updates to the algorithm can sometimes be very bad for certain videos...
Funny you should mention that, the Egyptain Priests back in the days of Pharoah were basically doing JUST THAT. Somehow sorcerers find a "hole" in reality and they exploit the heck out of it. Demonic summoning seems to be a favorite with modern sorcerers. It's also as dangerous as hell too.
Wow this is terrifying. If this goes unchecked, it will effectively create a class system where the top UA-camrs stay on the top while others will be squashed.
What I'd like to see is: 1. the option to opt out for everyone, as suggested; and 2. for ad requests (and changes to them) to be withheld and sent to the video owner for screening, much like potentially inappropriate comments. That way, they can ensure the ads will be shown to relevant audiences, or opt out on a case-by-case basis.
Only the negative ones, I would argue. Positive ad interactions should still count, though maybe weighted against the bad ones. In the end, what matters is that the outcomes of ad campaigns should never disadvantage a video in the recommender system. Especially since that lets people run them with the peace of mind that it can't hurt, which is good for UA-cam's bottom line.
@@Zyghqwyv That would be down to what information were shown to the video owner, and it would be on them to screen it properly before approving it. It would still be significantly better than no screening at all.
I do genuinely hope the new CEO will be more on top of fixing things like this than the old one was. That would renew my confidence in the platform and I might start making videos again.
The amount of respect I have for The Spiffing Brit for taking the hit to make us aware of this is outstanding! Also Yorkshire Gold is an amazing beverage.
another prospective effect is for people who will not watch adverts that "sponsored" tag is an immediate pass, which would tank your impressions to views ratio
I've known this as a smaller creator for a long time. I knew it because of how I used to do it to my own channel and learnt over time. Advertising always killed my video but I didn't catch on for a bit. Once I did I knew it was a problem but never thought to make a video over it. Then again if I did someone would probably pay to tank my channel then steal the video idea. Thanks for figuring this out man I actually forgot this was a thing for quite awhile. I remember ages ago one of my vids was being promoted without me running a campaign but that was a one-off event, on a vid that wasn't even good. So I just left it and moved on
I love how Google has prided themselves for getting the community involved in fixing bugs and exploits, yet the way you put it makes it seem like they don't really work on these things across the board.
The illusion of community engagement is common. Grassroots astroturfing. The game was always to turn an amazing search engine into a data collection machine and advertising platform. Whomever generates the most profits for them will always be the most important. I still use UA-cam but I don't use the search engine because it sucks. Pay to win has made it substantially worse than it was but not when quarterlies are concerned.
@@phineasfaber5159 I agree with the search engine stuff, I've been using Bing since the big announcement, and tbh Bing is only a small bit better, it lacks where Google has all of it's other applications
The real question is, who out there figured it out and _has_ been using it for evil? Because this is both very available to be discovered and powerful enough to be worth abusing.
The good thing is that this is easily solvable. Like you said, give the video creator the options to either 1) just not run the ad, or 2) change the target demographics for the ad. Also, make sure that the person paying for the ad actually has to pay for it, regardless of whether the creator later decides to not run it. Problem solved.
Spiff, please make a video highlighting the issue with copystrikes using fake "original song" claims. I've seen channels literally disappear because they've been unable to appeal
This could be even more evil if you could get a wrong demographic to subscribe to the channel. Then, they won't click on new videos, they won't get recommended and you'll kill their channels. It's basically what happened after MrBeast shoutouted 5 random channels on some video and made people subscribe, and all of those channels got crushed by that
It only took me like five minutes before I realized how freaking awful and terrifying the ability to advertise others’ content is. This is crazy and I’m glad Spiff suggested a way to fix it, like creators being able to opt out of others advertising them. It makes too much sense NOT to implement it. God I hope UA-cam fixes this. Too many livelihoods are on the line and any person with a lot of money can already legally strong arm those without money; now they can do it for near nothing through the algorithm. I’m mortified.
Thanks for explaining this. I’m sure this must have happened to me, one of my videos took off for a week or two. I remember looking at the research tab and the viewer searches were all about Tesla. I thought that was odd and didn’t know why ppl were finding my videos through Tesla searches… now I know
Spiff, it seems that there is also the problem in that some delayed recovery a month later may in fact not even come close to balancing the books. If the target video was very topical at the time this strategy could easily kill it for long enough to render it irrelevant for the period where the majority of potential viewers actually cared enough to have been actively searching for it. A video about a new media release like the game example you used would be a prime example of where this would be disproportionately more valuable, there is a limited window of time to earn optimal revenue for your work between the embargo dropping and when the next big shiny enters the chat and runs away with the attention of most of the audience that were searching for the game your video was about during that limited period of time when it was the newest and hottest topic among the audience that you know actually might have found that game interesting the first place.
This is wild. It does make sense that rapid changes in viewership data with large magnitudes would cause the algorithm to respond in kind. The fact that YT only protects larger channels from this exploit is f-ed up to say the least.
I'm not a content creator, but if I'd been thinking about starting, this video would stop me . . . Spiff, you are a godsend, i love your video's and i sincerely hope that youtube comes to their senses and fixes this. Otherwise anyone trying to get started would absolutely get demolished by bigger creators
And here I thought it was my lackluster content that was preventing views! Now I know its some nefarious scheme to keep me down. Thanks Spiff! Jokes aside, this is one of those "how did we miss that" kind of oversights.
I love your content and a variety of many other kinds of videos! This, however, is frankly terrifying! Thank you, Mr Spiffing Brit for bringing this issue to attention, and @UA-cam fix this ASAP.
from the Livestream: What you have seen here today is part of a fantastic perfectly balanced series on youtube where I go from game to game and break them with wacky exploits to gain things like unlimited gold. If you enjoyed this then be sure to check out more. The style is similar to RT game and callmekevin in parts. A large influence on this series has come from Valefisk and The Killian Experience.
If UA-cam doesn't fix his, I just realized you made it so it's super easy to tank channels who exist only to cause harm. This could actually be amazing... I may need to use this new found knowledge for evil one day.
@@yzrippin People who make videos "pranking" people in ways that cause actual harm to the person would be a good start. Also, those food wasting mukbang channels. These are some good examples.
Hope this gets fixed, but wonderful job spiff! We can always rely on you to perfectly balance anything and everything! Hopefully my comment can help add momentum for this vid.
I think this is probably my favourite video of the year so far, gloriously busted op adverts, the actual fear, nightmare terror that this instils is legendary.
I own a UA-cam ad agency. This was a huge problem a few years back, but we thought that it had been fixed. Ad Views, even with great targeting, are almost always way below organic, so it would tank any video no matter what audience you choose. So, UA-cam's, in a sense, punishing channels/businesses that want to give them money. I'll share this with some of my UA-cam guru buddies and see if we can get in touch with someone about this
This has been an issue for years. In my experience, it was peoples' fan-videos being used to promote rip-offs of the games they were playing. There was absolutely nothing the video creators could do about their videos being used to promote rip-offs. (The game in question was Line Rider. Look up: "Line Rider videos are being used as Line Driver ads without permission." The dev' made a post about it on Reddit) This is even more malicious (And probably more illegal) than what Spiff is talking about. Because it is damaging the original game, while also making a profit (Apparently in the thousands of dollars) by redirecting people to the rip-off game. But they get away with it because UA-cam is a broken system. The worst part is this tactic could potentially be used to redirect large numbers of people to malware (Which the Google/Apple App Stores are absolutely infested with)
Thankfully, this doesn't hurt time sensitive content creation. At the time they launch their video, if you pay expecting them to tank in impressions, they'll just benefit from the extra advertising instead of losing the small window of opportunity they aim at with their videos.
*Dear New UA-cam CEO... Sorry.*
I have seen that, if the ending of the video has a space, sponsor or smth that just makes people yeet out of it, the view count will fail, killing the trend, that's why DF is such a big channel
@NMRIH is a great Source mod - blessed by Cory's lip bro tell me how u are everywhere I will legit give you 20 pounds
LOL Sorry. But we are not Sorry?
they dun it to them selves !
@NMRIH is a great Source mod - blessed by Cory's lip Yorkshire Tea with honey, and biscuits,or scones .
LMAO just be ME, Spiff! Videos, Dead, channel, micro size, subscribers, too few and insane.
This is terrific, now I can tell myself that it's not that my videos are terrible, it's just that someone is sabotaging me!
If you want, I can be the sacrifice that supposedly does it so you have someone to blame, just make a scary creature in my memory~
Smart
Haha, think your content is probably niche enough that there's not a lot of competition. That is to say, I know no other creators with your style of videos.
Btw I didn’t expect to see you north of the border, but I love your channel and are already subbed lol.
Honestly you are the only clay model maker I follow because your commentary makes the video much more interesting. The others I've clicked on who just sculpt silently I end up just skipping to the end to see their "glamour shots"
How could anyone suppress Daisy, the most loveable Mario character of them all I certainly love
He's a monster
Rules of the internet, homie. There is porn of everything. And there is a hater for everything.
That stream really broke his brain.
Dan your not playing her anymore. Be truthful to the people
Dear God, that stream really did give you like 5 lobotomies
this is doubly terrifying because it means that large corporations can do this to reviewers who review their product poorly; or who review their competition positively; effectively resulting in erasing the reviewer from the algorithm and thus the bad press.
I hadn't even thought of that. Shit! That's bad!
I bet they have been doing it already
Authoritarian government style.
Large corporations are not the problem
They don’t give a f
It’s all free marketing
This is a feature not a bug
Thanks for exposing this, Spiff. To spread the word I've paid out on an ad campaign showing this video to as wide an audience as possible!
Amazing. It would be even more hilarious if your dastardly plan backfired and made UA-cam actually fix the problem!
Fantastic I shall join you. This needs to be viewed by every active UA-cam account today.
Don't forget to market it to no creators at all!
Just for the record, spiff blocked such an ad right
The point of this video is that he cannot do such a thing.
That is actually terrifying...thanks, Spiff! Always the best at breaking things!
Sometimes I scare myself with my own brilliance :D
The march of technology, more terrifying every day!
E
You misspelled hilarious
@@thespiffingbrit INFINITE POWER. PERFECTLY BALENCED
You know a exploit is bad and disgusting when Spiffing Brit himself hates it
Don't see the issue personally, it looks both fair and balanced.
@@zachdew9gaming985 Perfectly balanced in every way?
Pretty much any of them he makes a video of are,
Because if he really wants to leverage it for himself indefinitely, he wouldn't expose it.
@@zachdew9gaming985 hahahahaha
Honestly he seemed in favor of the unbalanced "make shorts while it is a new feature" hack & despite me seeing the video a year later, it explain why a random short video of mine shot up in views so randomly I was puzzled for ages. My cat is cute but 1,700 views cute? On tiktok my views jump higher in general compared to UA-cam anyway so people may just like short form stuff.
I tried advertising my channel about 2 years ago on adsense, absolute nuke to my channel, have not grown since. Literally have been stuck just under 17k subs, worst decision I ever made.
Yeah, same. I think it's a manipulateitce function to try to get you to spend yet more money because you just spent aome and they know you are willing to now.
...Like what Tinder does.
That is very terrifying. This would let brands silence any videos that don't agree with them by spending their marketing budget on mistargeted ads. Hopefully @UA-cam can figure out a way to stop it!
I think it already is being done because I get random ads that make no sense to me sometimes.
@@bowxfire5275 yep been that way for quite awhile.
E
@friendlyjordies Considering how much people have gone after him. This is basically the new false copyright strike. Only more efficient with less lawyers fees.
@@bowxfire5275 same
Another use case for this exploit that I find even more terrifying is that it can also be used by companies against UA-camrs. A company could pay to suppress a youtube video that reviews their product negatively, so that anyone who searches your product sees only positive reviews. Suddenly, that 100£ isn't actually costing you anything since you are influencing your prospective buyers into actually buying your product by removing anything negative about it. That is truly frightening!
Even 1000 is okay for that
@@schwingedeshaehers Some brands would gladly spend hundreds of thousands or even a couple million to shut down any kind of criticism.
I thought about that, too. It’s already bad enough that huge companies suppress creators legally through the systems in place. Now they can suppress them with even less money and avoid the legal system entirely. Freaking scary.
imagine raid-shadow legend instead of paying more money to creators to promote the game, instead pays that money to remove all vidoes that arent supported by them.
an goverments for example business basics gets really low imporessions bc he makes content abpoujt china. and i think this could be the case there
Hey guys in this video we will teach you how to sacrifice a youtube video to the tea gods
ok
Chaos god of TEA!
The Tea Gods have chosen to smite thee with the power of Yorkshire Tea.
ChaoTEAc neutral gods you mean 😂
E
It's mind blowing that they added that checkbox, and then somebody went like "Wait, should everyone have that checkbox?" and then they said "Nah, screw the smaller channels."
This is exactly it; pay-to-win by killing competition.
Truly, youtube is an American company.
bcs it means that more ads and therefore more ad revenue
As RTGame and Spiffing Brit have shown, the best way to improve UA-cam is to show how badly broken and horrible the platform is, and how easily it is broken. Thank you for doing your part!
man, the platform is really youtubed right now isnt it?
youtube sucks
@@LavaCreeperPeople fr, we need a new platform
this is such a youtube moment
Wait what?
Do you have litterally any idea how to program the algorithim to example recover like it does in this case?
You litterally have 0 idea what goes into developing the platform of youtube. How can you act like you can give an opinion on its overall quality? Its like a person being shown the first diamond they have ever seen and who knows nothing about what goes into creating / finding them, saying that the diamond is garbage. You have never seen any other youtube-like platforms and you have no idea what goes into creating them and making them good.
And you are ALSO taking one example of a fault and assuming its all horrible. If your friend says something to you that hurts your feelings by accident 1 time, do you block them and cut them completely off and call them a horrible person?
Thats what you are doing here, youtube has an addicental fault and you are saying the entire thing is horrible and should be killed.
Im sorry but you need to stop making general conclutions from specific examples. Seperate whats good from whats bad.
I love how you subtly point out that youtube knows about the issue and has taken steps to protect larger channels. Almost like this feature is intended for larger channels to spend money to make sure they never have competitors.
I wonder if Amazon did this to Crowfall?
Watch *"UA-cam has a BIG problem that no one is talking about."*
It talks about a very similar problem and is one of the reasons why youtube sucks now
If water runs off it's back and it quacks, gotta be a duck.
What can you do? Even if UA-cam do genocide they have absolute monopoly on video sharing website. Not only that, they are owned by the largest tech company on earth. We need anti trust regulation on google. They are too big
Or, yknow, the larger channels kick up a bigger fuss and get addressed and it wasn't like they had been protected from this before that, it was put in after it happened on a case by case basis, because the original thing is a feature intended to deal with clickbait.
It isn't always an evil duck. Sometimes it's just unintended systems interacting. In this case, stopping people advertising channels they don't own...?
In this video, Spiff will break UA-cam again. Probably.
XD
I'm surprised Astral Spiff hasn't tried that
Hopefully
I can't wait.
Can't break what's already broken.
I started to notice fake ads around when the dislike button was hidden. Annoying repulsive chaos. They don’t even bother to have a fake product.
UA-cam: "So people are going to PAY us to sabotage each other? And this will take off?"
UA-cam: "We looked into ourselves and found no problems."
Not really a "new" secret exploit, but long story short, I covered this extensively about 5 years ago because this happened to me, and eventually I got it elevated to the right people at UA-cam. A video of mine was promoted which allowed them to change the title of the ad to promote pirating the game I was covering in the video. Of course, people dipped because that wasn't the case and the video tanked. Thus, this ordeal is how that checkbox for larger creators got implemented - through repeatedly knocking on creator support's door. (The checkbox that prevents their videos from being used unless that Adwords account is linked.) However, I was not aware it did not include all creators... Which is depressing to see that the same issue still exists for those starting out.
....is this like a alternate account of spiff brit or something
UA-cam doesn't really care as long as it makes money. Once the userbase is large enough you are bound to have channels that earn them a lot of money and get protected. Also just think about how much money legacy content earns the company for ad revenue on repeat views.
I agree it is distressing as it is favouring anti competative practice. But then again how many video platforms really compete with UA-cam? Twitch and TikTok are the main ones, then who else isn't a minnow? I am sure they are all for anti-competition.
spiff did it with style tho
@@tools.shoe.country.quickly google how to use commas. Typically you use them with words like "and" or "but". Seems like you just shove them wherever
@@ee3737 I think you might be the one that needs to google... They used one comma and one semicolon, and they were put in specific places to emphasise a separate clause. Here is a version of that sentence with slightly different words:
"...ads on their video showcasing a product, which had fake links to the products; this effectively made the legit video link to a scam"
See how the middle part and the end part are new clauses? meow simply shortened that, without being overly specific about each new clause. Grammar is not a set of rigid rules; it evolves based on how it is used, especially in colloquial use online.
Also, what a weird thing to stop and type, can't believe you would take time out of your day to have a rant about grammar to someone on the interne- Oh, wait a minute...
I believe that this is an adequate explanation of that one time UA-cam tried to show me a 30 minute preroll podcast before a 6 minute video. Very enlightening. Thank you.
That sounds absurd but I don't doubt it. UA-cam ads have gone off the rails. At this point the site is unusable without adblock
@@LilacMonarch you can use basically anything as an ad as long as its skippable, I once got a 5 hour video
@@LilacMonarch I agree it sounds absurd. It happened only once and it was skippable, but it made me reconsider ad blockers. Before that, I didn't use them because "video machine needs to make money somehow". But then one ad became two ads, and then the midroll ads would cut into the middle of spoken sentences, and then less and less ads would be skippable, and then one day this happened and I was just done with it.
Maybe 6-7 years ago or so I got a whole movie as a preroll add, near 2 hours if I remember right. Was a Sony production, a horror film that largely took place in a single unfinished basement. Ended up watching most of it to be honest. Was an ok film
@@PosterityIslesNews About a year ago I was cycling to shop. Just about 4min trip and I got maybe 6min video selected and then ad started playing. 28 minute unskippable video ad. I had to close the youtube player on my phone to get rid of it to listen to the video I wanted.
Spiff: Abuses UA-cam
UA-cam: Kills Spiff’s channel.
This is very broken, I love learning how to kill a youtube video.
Thanks Spiff!
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@@EEEEEEEE E?
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@@EEEEEEEE E
I got 1000$ to kill this video as a experiment
All we can do is hope that Spiffing never turns evil, for we would have no defense against that.
Plus side if he did go evil then you know he would eliminate all the evil competition.
@@kazuma_koon having one supervillan is better than having a hundred crappy villans!
I mean, he's British. He's already evil, he's just convinced you that he's not through the power of Yorkshire Tea!
He stopped drinking Yorkshire Gold for good. Now he does it for evil.
At this point I'm convinced "someone at youtube" means a janitor, a security guard, or the ceo themself. Whenever a problem surfaces, unless about 5 million people spam the company, they don't respond and just direct you to one of the many bot assisted complaint or appeal processes
“But it’s not exactly a good idea for a fair and open platform like UA-cam” UA-cam is the opposite of fair and open.
This seems like a genuine problem, somebody should run an ad campaign of this video to spread awareness!
Let's hope they don't run the ad campaign with irrelevant target audiences
Make sure to target the widest audience possible to really get the word out there!
i think pensioners in looking for knitting videos would find this verry intereting lets advertise to them
Sounds like a good plan, tuning the demographic to CEOs of large media corporations aged about 50 and with the first name Neal.
I think people watching makeup tutorials would love this.
Very glad that Spiff chose to share this info with UA-cam instead of using this knowledge to destroy his enemies and conquer the platform. As fun as that would’ve been to watch, small creators really need a win in there column these days.
Small creators these days dont have anything except maybe in few cases actually amazing content to drive them up. Glad i stopped making content before all this shit show. Too much work for no return really. Didnt even get to minimum 25$ sum before youtube cut the monetization from channels under 1000 subs.. Now days even if you have thousands of subs and bank actually decent money from content... yeah no.. now its the MSM that get served and you get shanked on this platform...Look elsewhere for platforms or dont bother here for the money, that ship sailed long time ago.
If he knows about it, the chances are that it's being used in action by a bunch of people already. As with security flaws, the best thing you can do is warn the owners and then publicise it.
Their*
@@bencollier3758 I bet this gets used politically all the time.
maybe he share this AFTER destroying his enemies?? I mean, you don't see any Epic Meal Time videos anymore, and you know damn well that those bastards used to talk bullocks about tea !
A better way than removing the ability to advertise someone elses video, is for you to set the target audience in your video and if people decide to advertise it, it is automatically with your set target audience. That way people can still support you without destroying the video
or (and idk how difficult this would be to code) but maybe ads should just not count in the algorithm or have a separate viewer count etc. because even if I "like" an ad, im still skipping it like 99.9% of the time to watch the video I selected. doesn't necessarily say anything about how good or bad the ad in itself is. (hope that made sense)
I was thinking that the creator would get the option to either accept or decline if someone wants to run an ad campaign, and also be able to see/edit the demographic it's set to get pushed to.
@@LaraOlina there shouldn't be an option to advertise other people's videos in the first place.
@@amunak_ there should be this option, like for example if someone wants to run a ad campaign for *Never gonna give you up* that should be completely fine but there should be control over how it is implemented ( yes you just got rickrolled)
What would make even MORE sense (and I don't know how this could be done but it would be the most correct option) is to make the algorithm more intelligent when evaluating this stuff. The issue here is that the video was being advertised to a target audience that wouldn't like it? then... why not have the yt algorithm take note of that, not as "this video is spam don't recommend it anymore" but as "this is not the target audience for this video, recommend it to someone else"? or even "this ad seems to be badly or too broadly targeted, I can't get any good information from this, proceed as normal"? Of course it would help if the creator could also specify the ACTUAL target audience for reference, no good reason to not have that as well.
I tried a number of things in my channel with ads... and I was overly broad in my campaigns. This explains ... a LOT.
I bet this is true for tons of people
Hey UA-cam, this might be horrifically broken. And morally dubious at best. I would revisit this factor of the algorithm as soon as possible
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Problem is, advertisers are the ones paying the money.
@@DonVigaDeFierro Usually not advertisers for channels I think?
@trumpisthemessiah7017 nice pfp bro
Based on the way UA-cam's been handling things recently, I wouldn't be surprised if UA-cam just straight up bans Spiff, and doesn't do anything about the exploit.
If they do, they would be killing the one force trying to make their company more profitable and more viable.
He'll rise from the ashes if they do.
You could probably do a lawsuit against google for it, if ya had the money.
@Makuru_DD nah. They're a private entity who does not employ them. They reserve the right to deny service to anyone for any reason and need explain nothing.
@@sasukedemon888888888 at least in Germany there would probably be laws against that and if not, a union of UA-cam that will, will be formed.
You know what... this actually happened to me because I boofed the ad campaign on one of my videos and accidentally made it waaaay too broad of an audience. To think that idiotic mistake could be weaponized!
I had an experience with this a while back. I had a fan who commented on every video asking me to review a certain game. I finally did and while the video exploded initially in views, the avg view duration was horrid. It was strange for sure and based on some of their later comments, i suspect that they had run an ad campaign to "boost" the views of the vid in an attempt to convince me to become a content creator for that game specifically. I saw the analytics tho and knew something was up
This is why you don’t do the request of just one fan.
Hopefully someone at youtube takes this seriously and actually comes up with a solution. If not, this has the potential to destroy the platform
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I hope it stays like this
Lmao, as if.
ha someone at youtube actuly fix something that is broken thats ritch
UA-cams solution will probably be to promote Premium more to people so they avoid ads completely, rather than just fix the problem. Though I do have to admit, whilst I hate paying for premium, I love having no ads on my tv when watching youtube late at night.
Spiffing Brit is effectively an AI researcher at this point, redteaming the UA-cam algorithm for us all
He's f'kin brilliant. It reminds me of the market manipulation he's done in several games and on the Hat Trade Emporium (steam 🙂 )
Spiffing Brit: Invents the nuclear weapon of YT
Also Spiffing Brit: Gives it to everyone to ensure MAD
Also gives it to UA-cam, so they can (*hopefully*) fix it.
Or they can just laugh at the facts at 4:00, that's fine too...
YT would probably be happy to see people going the MAD route. Balances out while a ton of ad campaigns get paid for.
@@DanyF02
I agree: It's all about the money, and some people really don't care who they hurt in order to get it...
So to harm youtubers I dislike, I should open every single one of their videos and immediately close them without interacting whatsoever. Good to know!
This is downright terrifying. No one should have that sort of power.
No one man should have all that power
Well then, when Spiffingbrit says "this is a power I shouldn't have" that is a definitely a powerful statement.
I love this mix of helpfulness (in having a possible solution) and terrible irresponsibility (in letting the *fine* folks of the internet know about this - but I do believe this will result in a faster fix). UA-cam is perfectly balanced with no exploits
You can also get redditors banned by paying a site to upvote their comments with bot accounts. Probably works on other sites too, the internet is broken.
I'm guessing its because he tried contacting UA-cam but they don't give a shit, so he made it public to force their hand.
gonna leave a comment to boost this video in the algorythm.
Thanks youtube for showing me this 11 months too late.
As always youtube is very broken / perfectly balanced
The Spiffing Brit is a real life version of Neo from the Matrix. He just SEES the code and knows what it all means. Thank God he's on our side.
we have to use this to delete the next youtube rewind
I think it would be a better idea to simply not have the video be affected in the algorithm when it's run as an ad. This would likely help both creators (as doing this exploit would just mean free adverting) and advertisers (because their content won't be lost in the infinite pit of people skipping their ads)
Maybe it could also bin the different sources of views, so that the algorithm could be more resilient against bad recommendation strategies. So if a new recommendation strategy tanked the metrics, then that recommendation strategy could be weighted less, or fixed, or used less for that video. Maybe this is sometimes why updates to the algorithm can sometimes be very bad for certain videos...
I never knew so many things were so perfectly balanced before Spiff.
lol
I'm confident Spiff will one day find an exploit in the universe allowing him to effectively manipulate reality or something
he probably already has and is just keeping it quiet so he can enjoy his infinite tea exploit before it gets patched
He has, it is called drinking Yorkshire Tea Gold.
Funny you should mention that, the Egyptain Priests back in the days of Pharoah were basically doing JUST THAT. Somehow sorcerers find a "hole" in reality and they exploit the heck out of it. Demonic summoning seems to be a favorite with modern sorcerers. It's also as dangerous as hell too.
UA-cam is perfectly balanced as all things should be - Sun Tzu
Man, it'd be so great to send this video as an ad to the elderly.
You are the lock picking lawyer of exploits. Truly amazing what you can figure out when it comes to breaking a system of rules.
Spiff is basically a playtester for the real world.
I remember the first YT exploit video about the polls, everybody from all communities on YT were spamming polls everywhere. History repeats, I guess.
I never thought I would see the day where spiff would find a exploit that scares him
Once again breaking the internet for all of us on the internet.
Thank you good sir.
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Wow this is terrifying. If this goes unchecked, it will effectively create a class system where the top UA-camrs stay on the top while others will be squashed.
Twitch?
@@Vanished584 yeah pretty much
What I'd like to see is: 1. the option to opt out for everyone, as suggested; and 2. for ad requests (and changes to them) to be withheld and sent to the video owner for screening, much like potentially inappropriate comments. That way, they can ensure the ads will be shown to relevant audiences, or opt out on a case-by-case basis.
Or, disregard ad impressions during recommendation evaluation
Only the negative ones, I would argue. Positive ad interactions should still count, though maybe weighted against the bad ones.
In the end, what matters is that the outcomes of ad campaigns should never disadvantage a video in the recommender system. Especially since that lets people run them with the peace of mind that it can't hurt, which is good for UA-cam's bottom line.
"Hey bro, I bought you ads for your video, If you accept them you get free adverising"
Chances are buddy wont notice the ads are for 65+ singles
@@Zyghqwyv That would be down to what information were shown to the video owner, and it would be on them to screen it properly before approving it. It would still be significantly better than no screening at all.
I do genuinely hope the new CEO will be more on top of fixing things like this than the old one was. That would renew my confidence in the platform and I might start making videos again.
When The Spiffing Brit uploads, my heart is full of joy.
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I’m gonna be honest. This is the one Spiffing Brit video that does not make me happy. I don’t rely on UA-cam for income and even I am terrified.
@@marcusorta714 based
i know you are not a bot , but i wanted to make a joke:
the british vesion of "his\her videos MAKE mah DAY!!111"
The amount of respect I have for The Spiffing Brit for taking the hit to make us aware of this is outstanding! Also Yorkshire Gold is an amazing beverage.
I am a Lipton and Earl Grey peon.
Solid tea leaves still tho.
@@py_a_thon oohh absolutely, I love a nice cup of earl grey!
@@meadowc3449 Lipton iced tea cold.
Earl Grey, hot. 😁
@@py_a_thon took the words out of my mouth lmao
Always a pleasure and a comfort to see Spiff using his unlimited powers for good.
God help us if this man ever turns to the Dark Side
the world of skyrim probably feels he has turned to the dark side many MANY times over
Sounds entertaining tbh
That's the trick, he is a retired lord of Darkness. Apparently absolute power gets absolutely boring after a while.
another prospective effect is for people who will not watch adverts that "sponsored" tag is an immediate pass, which would tank your impressions to views ratio
I feel that you can be hired by UA-cam and become the chief algorithmic analyzer, simply because of how you're able to find these weird exploits.
Describing UA-cam as a fair and open platform is laughable love your content spiff.
Thanks for telling us everything about this Spiff. I do like how you seem to be going onto trying to fix problems as well
I've known this as a smaller creator for a long time. I knew it because of how I used to do it to my own channel and learnt over time. Advertising always killed my video but I didn't catch on for a bit. Once I did I knew it was a problem but never thought to make a video over it. Then again if I did someone would probably pay to tank my channel then steal the video idea. Thanks for figuring this out man I actually forgot this was a thing for quite awhile.
I remember ages ago one of my vids was being promoted without me running a campaign but that was a one-off event, on a vid that wasn't even good. So I just left it and moved on
Now I finally understand what balance means! Thanks, Spiff! Very educational indeed!
I love how Google has prided themselves for getting the community involved in fixing bugs and exploits, yet the way you put it makes it seem like they don't really work on these things across the board.
The illusion of community engagement is common. Grassroots astroturfing. The game was always to turn an amazing search engine into a data collection machine and advertising platform. Whomever generates the most profits for them will always be the most important. I still use UA-cam but I don't use the search engine because it sucks. Pay to win has made it substantially worse than it was but not when quarterlies are concerned.
@@phineasfaber5159 I agree with the search engine stuff, I've been using Bing since the big announcement, and tbh Bing is only a small bit better, it lacks where Google has all of it's other applications
Can we all just take a moment to think about what would happen if spiff used his powers for evil?
After the first coffin he'd die
The real question is, who out there figured it out and _has_ been using it for evil? Because this is both very available to be discovered and powerful enough to be worth abusing.
Since this JUST came up in my recommendations, 4 months later... I have to wonder if this actually got dealt with???
Going from exploiting games for fun to exploiting other people's income. So glad Spiff are doing these videos! This is just CRAZY!
Thanks a lot, you and RT are making great impact on the whole platform.
Loved that you featured RT's most honest video. His finest work.
The good thing is that this is easily solvable. Like you said, give the video creator the options to either 1) just not run the ad, or 2) change the target demographics for the ad. Also, make sure that the person paying for the ad actually has to pay for it, regardless of whether the creator later decides to not run it. Problem solved.
UA-cam truly is broken. Killing a video is a sad thing, but I do it often on my other channel.
Spiff, please make a video highlighting the issue with copystrikes using fake "original song" claims. I've seen channels literally disappear because they've been unable to appeal
This could be even more evil if you could get a wrong demographic to subscribe to the channel. Then, they won't click on new videos, they won't get recommended and you'll kill their channels.
It's basically what happened after MrBeast shoutouted 5 random channels on some video and made people subscribe, and all of those channels got crushed by that
1:33 aged poorly
I loved the part where spiff said "It's exploiting time" and exploited all over Google.
People: "FEAR THE AI! IT'S GONNA KILL US ALL!"
Spiff: "Watch me manipulate the AI like Pavlov's Dog."
It only took me like five minutes before I realized how freaking awful and terrifying the ability to advertise others’ content is.
This is crazy and I’m glad Spiff suggested a way to fix it, like creators being able to opt out of others advertising them. It makes too much sense NOT to implement it.
God I hope UA-cam fixes this. Too many livelihoods are on the line and any person with a lot of money can already legally strong arm those without money; now they can do it for near nothing through the algorithm.
I’m mortified.
It should be an opt in, not an opt out.
Watch *"UA-cam has a BIG problem that no one is talking about."*
It talks about a very similar problem and is one of the reasons why youtube sucks now
@@LavaCreeperPeople There are probably dozens of videos with that title, you should say who made it
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 ok
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 taki udon
Thanks for explaining this. I’m sure this must have happened to me, one of my videos took off for a week or two. I remember looking at the research tab and the viewer searches were all about Tesla. I thought that was odd and didn’t know why ppl were finding my videos through Tesla searches… now I know
Spiff, it seems that there is also the problem in that some delayed recovery a month later may in fact not even come close to balancing the books. If the target video was very topical at the time this strategy could easily kill it for long enough to render it irrelevant for the period where the majority of potential viewers actually cared enough to have been actively searching for it. A video about a new media release like the game example you used would be a prime example of where this would be disproportionately more valuable, there is a limited window of time to earn optimal revenue for your work between the embargo dropping and when the next big shiny enters the chat and runs away with the attention of most of the audience that were searching for the game your video was about during that limited period of time when it was the newest and hottest topic among the audience that you know actually might have found that game interesting the first place.
This is wild. It does make sense that rapid changes in viewership data with large magnitudes would cause the algorithm to respond in kind. The fact that YT only protects larger channels from this exploit is f-ed up to say the least.
I'm not a content creator, but if I'd been thinking about starting, this video would stop me . . . Spiff, you are a godsend, i love your video's and i sincerely hope that youtube comes to their senses and fixes this. Otherwise anyone trying to get started would absolutely get demolished by bigger creators
I am, and this is definitely the reason most of my videos tank.
Spiffing Brit chaining exploits into exploits into exploits
At this point, UA-cam should have it set where they get a notification any time they're mentioned in the title of a Spiffing Brit video.
And here I thought it was my lackluster content that was preventing views! Now I know its some nefarious scheme to keep me down. Thanks Spiff!
Jokes aside, this is one of those "how did we miss that" kind of oversights.
I love your content and a variety of many other kinds of videos! This, however, is frankly terrifying! Thank you, Mr Spiffing Brit for bringing this issue to attention, and @UA-cam fix this ASAP.
1:30 he predicted it, r.i.p
from the Livestream:
What you have seen here today is part of a fantastic perfectly balanced series on youtube where I go from game to game and break them with wacky exploits to gain things like unlimited gold. If you enjoyed this then be sure to check out more. The style is similar to RT game and callmekevin in parts. A large influence on this series has come from Valefisk and The Killian Experience.
lol
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Ad Consent needs to become a thing. for both viewers AND content providers.
This is wild. You basically just taught me to never spend on advertising for my videos. You saved me a lot of money, actually. Thanks man.
If UA-cam doesn't fix his, I just realized you made it so it's super easy to tank channels who exist only to cause harm. This could actually be amazing... I may need to use this new found knowledge for evil one day.
@@shadowdemonaer what UA-cam channel exists only to create harm?
@@yzrippin stuff like the turtle debarnacling videos. (They glue them on and the scraping causes intense pain)
Ads that are targeted to the right audience might work, though i'd bet its still bad. Not as bad as improperly targeted ads though.
@@yzrippin People who make videos "pranking" people in ways that cause actual harm to the person would be a good start. Also, those food wasting mukbang channels. These are some good examples.
Fair points on the adverts but realstically who has $200/$400 to just throw at them?
Hope this gets fixed, but wonderful job spiff! We can always rely on you to perfectly balance anything and everything! Hopefully my comment can help add momentum for this vid.
I think this is probably my favourite video of the year so far, gloriously busted op adverts, the actual fear, nightmare terror that this instils is legendary.
I own a UA-cam ad agency. This was a huge problem a few years back, but we thought that it had been fixed. Ad Views, even with great targeting, are almost always way below organic, so it would tank any video no matter what audience you choose. So, UA-cam's, in a sense, punishing channels/businesses that want to give them money.
I'll share this with some of my UA-cam guru buddies and see if we can get in touch with someone about this
This has been an issue for years. In my experience, it was peoples' fan-videos being used to promote rip-offs of the games they were playing. There was absolutely nothing the video creators could do about their videos being used to promote rip-offs. (The game in question was Line Rider. Look up: "Line Rider videos are being used as Line Driver ads without permission." The dev' made a post about it on Reddit) This is even more malicious (And probably more illegal) than what Spiff is talking about. Because it is damaging the original game, while also making a profit (Apparently in the thousands of dollars) by redirecting people to the rip-off game. But they get away with it because UA-cam is a broken system. The worst part is this tactic could potentially be used to redirect large numbers of people to malware (Which the Google/Apple App Stores are absolutely infested with)
"a fair and open platform"
Bro how can you say that and not break out into laughter.
Spif. Keep breaking games and bringing awareness to actual issues in our lives.
Yes, keep doing the things we love… or we will take out ads targeting woodworking and finance bros.
Thankfully, this doesn't hurt time sensitive content creation. At the time they launch their video, if you pay expecting them to tank in impressions, they'll just benefit from the extra advertising instead of losing the small window of opportunity they aim at with their videos.
Truly this is a video. UA-cam be praised.
in a twisted sort of way, it's kinda reassuring to us commoners that the "perfect job" isn't actually perfect