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So a #bcni16 followup moment in #contentfraud in the land of Games Journalism: Red Dead Redemption facebook.com/topic/Red-Dead-Redemption/112674202079648?source=whfrt&position=1&trqid=6342429351310026402
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This looks like someone is talking about a Red Dead Redemption trailer. It says "teaser" and the top link is from a site called Gaming Vid.
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Great example of actual clickbait, b/c the link goes to a page of a video (ripped from YouTube with the watermark still on it) of Twitter
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But you better believe that by wrapping the YouTube video in their own preroll they are getting major moolah today. #contentfraud
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Yeah, despite the clearly visible YouTube watermark, that isn't a YouTube player - gamingvid.com/videogallery/fans-go-crazy-for-red-dead-redemption-2-teaser-coming-straight-from-rockstar-games/
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The real #contentfraud kicker is the site has a YouTube link on the left there, to look legitimate, but it links to youtube.com/gamingvidcom
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Which haha doesn't exist.
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Here's another video, this one ripped from gameranx gamingvid.com/videogallery/how-different-is-overwatch-from-team-fortress-2/. Watermark still visible, "gamingvid" copyright applied.
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And another ripped from the very distinct and well known Honest Trailers folks at smosh. gamingvid.com/videogallery/overwatch-honest-game-trailers/
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Now this company that does nothing but rip off of YouTube & run their own pre-roll against it owns the top and 4th position on a FB trend
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But these tactics are fundamentally unbeatable. You could try and figure out their host, or a person to sue and shut them down that way.
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But you may find neither, and even if you do, an operation like can be rebooted on another URL with the same theme in a different location.
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And it gets to Trending because a whole network of fraudulent pages shared the link to that site. Some get caught webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EdqPXGTBjfcJ:https://www.facebook.com/gamingmems/posts/1337044826339125+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
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But hey, you start it right back up, or keep a version in another language Facebook isn't so good at checking - de-de.facebook.com/gamingmems
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Of course you need more than one page, though some may remove the link later - facebook.com/VideogamemesNet/posts/1170621489681257 & facebook.com/BlackMesaCake/posts/714473895369275
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You'll notice all three pages also link to one step up in the #contentfraud ladder a content farm called FragHero. Why is it a content farm?
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Easy, every article on the site page-breaks at 250 words, presumed requirement to be indexed by Google. Then another page for more ad $$$s !
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I'd bet that half of its authors aren't even real people, same as with jezebel.com/the-team-of-men-behind-rachel-brewson-the-fake-woman-w-1787270300 #contentfraud
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If you're not making money off of ripped videos running preroll, you'll be glomming on to trends w/affiliate links- facebook.com/932966940133812/posts/1047421828688322
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On & on it goes, basically a multi-headed monster of #contentfraud that can keep spawning up new iterations for every site you shut down.
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Just roll another WordPress site, enhance with Yoast, dump with W3TotalCache use codecanyon.net/item/video-blogster-pro-import-youtube-dailymotion-hulu-mixcloud-soundcloud-spotify-vimeo/9497256?_ga=1.136699190.785240395.1476715443 and themeforest.net/item/snaptube-premium-video-wordpress-theme/8026657
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Makes it so simple when "re-monetizing" someone else's content is just a click of a button. #contentfraud
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Only way to force these sites to shut down is to radically redesign the ecosystem. You have to shut down networks supporting them w/ads.
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But many advertising networks really don't care. Some, like RevContent, are practically ad arbitrage machines for #contentfraud.
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Another flavor of video content fraud: nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-kids-paw-patrol.html
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Another reason why fake news is such a bad term, because the economics that enable fake news also enable different types of content fraud.
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What's being reported on in regards to YouTube Kids isn't new, it's what occurs in this ecosystem Chronotope/791728581735047168
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If you build an economic model that is designed to exploit children on one side and monitize shock value videos on the other side...
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... Then combining shock value videos with children's videos isn't a surprise, it's an algorithm-gaming inevitability.
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The problem on YouTube isn't a few nasty videos, it's the underlying model that pushes their creation.
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More new coverage of YouTube Kids here: medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2
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The lack of authorship as a factor is inherent to the nature of most UGC platforms & search, and is a big concern medium.com/@aramzs/authorship-value-and-the-medias-lost-profits-dabe7d1726c8
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"It’s not about trolls, but about a kind of violence inherent in the combination of digital systems & capitalist incentives" - jamesbridle
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Even if there wasn't disturbing videos in the mix, a system optimizing for the exploitation of literal babies is inherently bad.
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We've known this since 2015! m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7313542
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Easy enough to find whole networks of awful #contentfraud sites by searching for badly escaped javascript ad code - google.com/search?q=__kx_ad_slots&oq=__kx_ad_slots&aqs=chrome..69i57.600j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
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The entire media ecosystem is being destroyed by ad networks like Kixer - kixer.com/ - who claims to work w/TMZ, PayPal, IGN
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But are also supporting entire networks of #contentfraud publishers who are destroying real media's profits.
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If you work at nbc, ZDNET, Marvel, RottenTomatoes you're either funding your own demise or sending your readers to some awful places.
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But hey, RevContent apparently provides a much more favorite split, ( reddit.com/r/adops/comments/3si671/revcontent_vs_taboola_vs_outbrain/ ) so what's the chances they'll get dropped?
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This dives into the fundamental flaw of programmatic advertising - it's too easy to implement fraudulently & too easy to rip off advertisers
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All you need is WordPress, a server, 4 plugins and 1 theme and you too could start fraudulently serving ads against stolen video content.
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Legitimate media is never going to be able to stay ahead of fraudsters as long as the media ecosystem works the way it currently does.