They’re not just “casually” stealing comments. They steal a random comment from the video, then have a bunch of other bots give it a bunch of thumbs up so that it appears towards the top and accumulates more upvotes than most human comments make. 95% of the time it seems, the real comment has one or two upvotes and is buried so far you have to scroll multiple pages to reach it.
it also makes it a lot harder for skeptics taking a look at their account to reveal they’re a bot. When every actual post is a clear copy and paste but the history is mixed with comments that seem legitimate it takes more digging that’s just not worth doing
They’re not just “casually” stealing comments. They steal a random comment from the video, then have a bunch of other bots give it a bunch of thumbs up so that it appears towards the top and accumulates more upvotes than most human comments make. 95% of the time it seems, the real comment has one or two upvotes and is buried so far you have to scroll multiple pages to reach it.
it also makes it a lot harder for skeptics taking a look at their account to reveal they’re a bot. When every actual post is a clear copy and paste but the history is mixed with comments that seem legitimate it takes more digging that’s just not worth doing
The names and PFPs still give it away if you know about them.
I’ve also seen a comment where other bots argued with themselves in the replies and ended up recommending a scam.
That’s usually about this Indian (or Pakistani?) guy I think about investments. I’ve even seen that one on Reddit.
I don’t often invest in a 401k but when I do I use shady services recommended to me by bots.
They likely downvote the original comments with their bots to bury it.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but I’m not convinced downvoting comments has any effect on YouTube.