Why do fake Elon Musk livestreams keep popping up on YouTube?
Over the weekend, Engadget reported on a YouTube broadcast of Elon Musk speaking at what appears to be a Tesla conference. According to Engadget, the livestream had over 30,000 viewers at one point.
But there's a problem: It wasn't real. The fake live event is part of an ongoing cryptocurrency scam on YouTube.
See also: Elon Musk: Neuralink chips will replace phones
Elon Musk's fake YouTube livestreams continue to flourish
The scammers involved in this particular scheme appear to focus exclusively on YouTube to commit their scams.
The idea behind it is simple. Scammers broadcast a video of Elon Musk speaking at an event as a live broadcast. Often, these broadcasts include real video of Musk on repeat. The audio can be either a fake voice created by artificial intelligence that sounds like Musk, or real audio from a speech by Musk that is generic enough to be used for anything.
However, the on-screen graphics portray the event as a live speech by Musk on cryptocurrency. They often include links or QR codes to the scam, urging viewers to take advantage of this opportunity before the live broadcast ends.
There’s another crucial element to this scam. These live videos are often broadcast from hacked YouTube channels that users are already subscribed to. These hacked channels can have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, so there’s already a built-in audience that’s being notified by YouTube because a channel they’re subscribed to has just gone “live.” The scammer usually changes the name of the YouTube channel to look like an official account associated with Musk or Tesla.
See also: Elon Musk is working on 'Tesla Master Plan Part 4'
In this particular case over the weekend, the hacked channel had more than 10,000 subscribers and was verified by YouTube. The channel was renamed “Tesla” with the YouTube username “@elon.teslastream.”
Although Engadget tracked the live stream with up to 30,000 concurrent viewers at one point, it's unclear how many of those were real people. YouTube often promotes and recommends live streams based on the number of users watching them. It's possible that some of that viewing was from bots to trick YouTube's algorithm and promote the video to users' feeds.
Although Musk and Tesla are commonly used to promote these cryptocurrency scams via YouTube livestream, scammers modify their strategy from time to time.
Nearly four years ago, AppleSteve Wozniak filed a lawsuit against YouTube over Bitcoin using his image. It's clear that this has been going on for some time. Unfortunately, it looks like these fake YouTube livestreams will continue, at least for the foreseeable future.
Source of information: sea.mashable.com
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