Especially since the removal of the dislike button on YouTube, which has allowed all kinds of scam artists to prosper, viewers have been stumbling on these channels as one would stumble on manure in a field.

Their titles, always scandalous; their captions, always containing false quotes from celebrities, designed to attract immediate clicks. Their subscriber counts – in the hundreds of thousands (although some may well be bots). Their comment sections, counting thousands of reactions per piece of dung, with hardly anyone bothering to notice the initial claim they had clicked on was not substantiated with any evidence.

As you can imagine, none engage in spreading fake positive stories; these channels are specifically designed to increase online hatred of an existing target and potentially incite online bullying on other platforms.

This is their strategy:

  1. Select a current target of public outrage/hatred.
  2. Invent a story, such as a statement given by someone else about the target; this will typically be an accusation or harsh criticism.
  3. Use words which indicate certainty, such as, “does”, “says”, “reveals”, “rages against”, “calls out” etc.
  4. Use words such as “new evidence”, “proof” etc, without even attempting to manufacture any.
  5. Add a thumbnail with fake quotes over the photos of real people (usually unflattering or edited ones). Add effects such as fake tears to make them look ridiculous.
  6. Create a video that has nothing to do with the title, perhaps sneaking a rumour on the subject, using footage, Tweets etc that in no way prove what the title claims.
  7. Sit back and watch mad engagement, as well as the ad money rolling in.
  8. (Presumably) laugh at the hundreds/thousands of idiots reacting to your fake story as if it were real.

If they covered small issues it wouldn’t necessarily be such a problem – the reality is their sewage seeps into serious topics such as court cases, with lie after lie being seen by thousands of viewers. Selecting for these channels to never be recommended to you again is useless; the still appear in search results, one after another. They’re a bit like a strep infection or verrucas that refuse to go away.

Here are a few examples:

1.Film Streak

Let’s focus on that disclaimer for a second – perhaps added recently, after being named in at least one mainstream publication as click-bait and misleading:

“Exaggerated” doesn’t cut it: it’s fake. If anything, it’s rumours of a serious nature they are starting, with no shame whatsoever. And guess how many people do their own research before believing this rubbish? Zero. They comment under every fake story as if it were true. Even those who realise it’s nonsense still take the opportunity to scribble down yet another hate message; that’s what they were there for.

The following is particularly egregious – claiming that evidence of domestic violence someone showed in two court cases had actually been caused by them drinking and falling.

When noticing a groundswell around one subject, these vultures are more than happy to start new dedicated channels where believers can congregate and speculate together, as well as emit hatred, like buzzing wasps.

2.This Happened

This channel should literally be called Never Happened, and unlike the one above, it doesn’t have a disclaimer of any kind. Apart from the bots they probably use to inflate subscriber numbers, their rubbish goes out a few times daily to hundreds of thousands of headline-readers.

3.Pop Juice

More of the same below. These channels are identical in how they operate; their thumbnails, fake titles and fake quotes are indistinguishable. So is the amount of vitriol viewers go there to spew, thereby rewarding con artists. One might compare these smear merchants to crack dealers at a street corner; hatred is one hell of a drug.

One might argue tabloids have been around for decades – and whereas that’s true, there was some intention and a moderate cost for accessing one. You still had to buy it. And when you did, you knew exactly what it was.

The internet gives viewers access to free content, rewarding channels for merely getting their attention. No one oversees this content, so much so that one channel is free to upload several fake, scandalous videos on one person in a single day, then continue for weeks in the same fashion. This in turn leads to cyber-bullying, as the idiots following them go on other platforms spewing the nonsense they had just “learned” on YouTube, with others taking action (messaging the person or attacking them directly in some other way). This is a whole new level of exploiting and demonising people.

The worst thing is that those they target are always already under fire – already receiving tons of negativity, hatred, ill-wishes from strangers online. It’s like putting gasoline on a bonfire/ witch burning stake.