Particularly since the Depp v Heard trial, the explosion of mindless clickbait channels on YouTube has become more obvious. Amber Heard was, of course, not the first target in recent years, a similar phenomenon arising around Meghan Markle and Jada Pinkett Smith. All three women have been the subject of hundreds upon hundreds of defamatory videos making absurd accusations against them, taken by viewers as actual news or commentary, given the engagement they create.

Recently, Bot Sentinel published another report on this type of content and its sole purpose of harassing and defaming specific individuals. Christopher Bouzy, who was interviewed by Rolling Stone, pointed out he had reported such content directly, using YouTube’s reporting tool, to no avail. It was only when mainstream publication Rolling Stone reached out to the company for comment that some of the blatantly hateful content was removed.

Channels spreading misinformation, however, were not seen by YouTube as a problem. With regards to one in particular, Just In, formerly Film Streak, the company stated it was not breaking its community guidelines, despite those guidelines including the following:

At one point, Just In, a channel based in Cyprus, was uploading 30 videos a day based solely on defaming Amber Heard with the most insane claims, as well as her legal team, family and friends. Have a look at their videos from the past 24 hours (the last, uploaded just 2 minutes ago, at the time of writing):

To further substantiate that this happens every single day, here are the ones from yesterday as well:

If their intention of misinforming and inciting hatred was not clear enough, a work offer on Upwork, presumably posted by the channel owner, surfaced online. The channel was looking for so-called researchers to come up with 10 salacious, negative titles about Amber each day, for 8 dollars per hour. Why titles only? Well, it may be because the content of the videos is usually unrelated to the title, making each video 100% clickbait.

Some of these titles included Amber having rented a baby as a publicity stunt (claiming her daughter wasn’t real) and Amber’s lawyers being headed to prison. Every single day they churn out in excess of 10 fake stories. Viewers don’t even pause to think it’s not humanly possible to obtain that amount of daily information on one single person.

From Newsweek:

After being contacted by the media, Upwork deleted this offer, which is no more than an invitation to partake in a relentless smear and harassment campaign against an individual.

Thankfully, BotSentinel have announced they were just getting started with YouTube, in terms of pointing out how the platform encourages and profits from harassment and hate speech. Without this type of work, observers on the sidelines, like this blog, would just be shouting into the void in perpetuity.