"Evolving Bots: The New Generation of Comment Bots and their Underlying Scam Campaigns in YouTube" published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Key Findings of the "Evolving Bots" Paper This study analyzed over 22 million comments
If you have spent any time on popular YouTube videos, you have likely seen them: generic, semi-relevant comments that end with a strange, shortened URL—often promising something like "I made $10k in a week, here's how" or "Click here for more views…" These are not random spam accounts. They are part of a sophisticated, automated ecosystem designed to hijack traffic, steal data, and manipulate YouTube’s algorithm. youtube comment bot link