“Shorts has become a haven for adult dating scammers, dubious product promotion and stolen TikTok videos,” said Satnam Narang, Tenable’s online scam expert who led the investigation.
As an example, an analysis of 50 fraudulent channels (with stolen or illicit content) from YouTube Shorts found that the scammers achieved at least 3.2 billion views on around 40,000 videos.
The victims in the case of stolen content are the creators of the videos, who stop charging for advertising every time their creations are viewed in Shorts, while a third party pockets that money without their permission.
In addition, the popularity of this content stolen from TikTok (short videos of viral challenges, for example, or of dances or tips) triggers the number of subscriptions of fraudulent accounts, which in turn increases their listing on the portal and makes them more attractive to advertisers.
Narang highlighted the specific case of a YouTube Shorts user who has received over 78 million views on his channel, but if you look at a breakdown of his actual content, most of those views are from stolen creations on TikTok.
Videos without the watermark
“Many of the videos I found did not have the TikTok watermarks that are commonly seen on downloaded videos, meaning they were downloaded using specialized software,” the researcher said.
Some of the stolen videos, especially those of a more suggestive or sexual nature, link to adult dating websites, and scammers pocket between two and four dollars each time a user signs up to them, even with a fake email address.
Another use that scammers in Shorts make of stolen TikTok videos is to use them to promote the sale of products of dubious quality or effectiveness, which sometimes do not even correspond to what the buyer ends up receiving and which are usually priced above those of the market.
Gymnastics tights and shakes
Among others, Tenable’s investigation found the case of a stolen video of women doing gymnastics that was used in YouTube Shorts to promote the sale of sports tights, and another of a sports challenge that was used by scammers to sell an alleged fitness program. weight loss with smoothies.
Aware of the problem of the lack of content, in May of last year, YouTube (owned by Google) announced the creation of a fund endowed with 100 million dollars to pay creators of influential content in Shorts.
Shorts allows you to record and edit videos of up to 60 seconds with background music, and before its launch in the United States it was running for several months in test mode in India.
For the musical background, YouTube has agreements for the use of music from the main record companies in the United States, such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, among others.