Growing up in the 90's I was taught the internet is not a real place, everyone is fake, and never give anyone your personal info. Good to know that's still true.
At a minimum it allows people to say horrible things that they wouldn’t dare saying in real life for fear of legitimate social consequences... like the racists; so it definitely encourages an element fakeness even if technically the profile is not fake.
Erick, wouldn’t your impression suggest that people are not being fake, but indeed too genuine, if they are are stating things on the net they would never otherwise say if suppressed by ‘real world’ forces? Humans seem to have a lot of dark things within them, and anonymity (or I guess psudoanonmity) allows a lot of that stuff to be expressed (for better or worse).
More like real and unreal at the same time. At least I have been taught to never trust anyone in the internet unless you can confirm it is trustworthy. Even then as we see today, the once trustworthy news and journalism sites often lie to your face.
Yeah we treated the internet differently. On one hand we knew it wasn't safe and was full of strangers, but simultaneously we treated people like human beings. I had a YT channel back in 2009 and people were WAAAAY nicer to me as a whole. We acted like people on TH-cam were the same as those in real life
it's actually insane because they all interact with each other. Content farms post rage bait or steal content. It goes big then the bots in the comments reply with stolen comments....it's all so vacant and empty. literally dead internet theory
Romance scams are awful. Not only do they scam someone out of their money, they also break their heart in the process, and victims are often too embarrassed to do anything. It's as low as you can get as a scammer.
Yeah i'm sorry about this one, but if you actually fall for this, then either you're head brain isn't developed, or you're just plain stupid. These accounts often don't even look slightly real, like at all.
I feel for many of these guys getting scammed. It's a horrible industry that ruins trust between people. But to be fair, many of these men are the ones who also make women and young girls feel uncomfortable online. If you're a girl with a profile, there is an onslaught of strange men who start messaging you out of nowhere and want to be your boyfriend or beg for nudes or just send explicit disgusting messages. Every social media is being treated as a dating app if you don't hide your profile. What I'm saying, if you reach out to strangers online just bcs they have a hot photo, don't expect them to be real or to have a real connection to you. I wish this behaviour wasn't a part of our culture.
Yeah but to be fair I've talked to many of these so called scammers and they're not even that convincing. I had one sending me poems. I pretended to love them and asked oh hey you wrote this? For me? That's your first red flag if they're just pulling poems off the Internet. And they come up with the craziest stories and they always ask for money too fast. I get desperation but you have to be smart about everything. I've never had any success by Internet dating. I don't know many men that do. Everything is a scam.
@@kanishkjaiswal5088 It's not really important to know for average chap how easy it is to get them. Interesting maybe, but not objectionally important. The only important thing here is to understand that it is possible and prevalent, and furthermore the only important conclusion to draw from that is that you should not trust anything in Internet without appropriate level of vetting. And that, my friend, should already be obvious. I'm not saying this video is bad. There was some new information for me too, such as how easy it is to get a bot account or something related. However, OP was not talking about personal interest and subjective importance of the subject.
@@anteshell "...I've come across lately" is subjective experience (not *objective*) meaning he hasn't come across many important pieces of journalism. Quite frankly, the average person does not know that Twitter is populated by millions of bot accounts and remains in the dark about the ability and ease with which one can buy their services. Just because you and I know these things doesn't mean a normal person does. Even a subscriber to this channel could be clueless simply by not having seen the relevant videos.
The rule in our home as our kids have grown up and began to be granted access to cell phones, etc. had been that they don’t add anyone as a contact unless they have actually shared a meal with that person IRL. It appears that we will all have to adopt that rule in the very near future.
I told my daughter the same thing. If you never meet this person face to face. And had a conversation with them. They are NOT your friend. That and we comb through her phone daily
@@latenightgaming5057 Consider also telling her to not share her private information online such as her name, address and even her face/body (Unless it's with a friend privately)
That's how I go about my life as a grown man. If I sit still for a minute and think about how these people all have lives and shit I'll literally go insane. I treat people like NPCs or background characters unless I know them personally. Only way I can handle being outdoors. Also let's me keep a cool head in the face of alot of shit.
When the guy you used to listen to for video game reviews evolved into a legitimate gum shoe hard nosed journalist 😂😂😂 life is strange and interesting, keep up the good work ! You'll always have a fan in me !
This might be slightly unrelated to the video itself but looking at how methodical this is makes me wonder what kind of studies you did prior to being a TH-camr. The way you lay things out follows the scientfic method pretty well in terms of being replicable and testable (in theory of course), as well as identifying limitiations and error points. The major difference between science and you is that your investigations always lead to interesting findings lol. I just wanted to let you know I find that pretty cool - good video UE.
Thanks. You guys just never see the dead ends where I spend 600 dollars on a project and find out im that my entire idea was botched. I keep those to myself lmao.
This was an awesome video. I could go on and on about how bad bots killed my Instagram account. Had a sponsor, after I signed with them, purchase 15,000 followers, without me knowing and I slicked only to see my engagement dwindling to nothing and now the account is just junk. Good work, keep exposing this shit.
I remember the youtuber that got his house firebombed some time ago... Stay safe bro. The people that have power will not give it up easily. This obviously isn't ran by just the average crime syndicate. This is huge. Anybody can see it, there's an incentive for Twitter to shut you up, whether they're in on it or not.
I’ve been enjoying your videos for some time now, and this upload felt like a clear indicator you’ve hit a new benchmark as a creator. Not necessarily because of the visuals, research, or topic specificity- but with your script and the level to which you laced your narration with emotions you would most like the audience to feel.
Not necessarily. Tesla was in a far worse state a few years ago and now it's one of the most successful companies. He may or may not succeed with Twitter, but he certainly enjoys a challenge.
@@Miranox2 Tesla makes some of the least reliable cars on the market. They are literal death traps. Even Elon admitted the stock value of Tesla is overhyped. He's nothing but a insecure space Karen who was born into money, like Trump, the orange Karen.
@@Miranox2 Its a huge bubble. If you meassure the "success" of a company by their marked share, than tesla is in a bad state, because lately they are dumping prices like hell (to keep the production numbers up...) Teslas marked share is around 2% in the us (late 2022) and yet the value of teslas stocks is (was) higher than the stocks of every other car company in the us combined. (Teslas marked share of EV cars is much bigger, around 40%) From promises about autonomous cars in 2014 to still no such cars in early 2023...but advertising shit like the tesla bot or hyperloop-system...layed off half the staff of twitter to tell the remaining staff to just work harder, turning twitter into twitter blue and its still bot-infested like hell...meanwhile a lot of major advertisers pulled out. His power comes from the retards who believe him, like every other shady influencer, thats what he is good at.
This is all so dystopian, I had my twitter stolen a week ago and I've been trying to get it back. The responses from the "twitter team" (bots ofc) are laughable: "your account has another email address now, you'll have to send a request from that email, sorry". This platform is just a breeding ground for bots, and just like this they'll end up killing it
Was your email address also stolen or it's that easy to change email of account on twitter? also how did it happen? like you clicked some phishing link?
@@Akaki1999 It's crazy easy, it scares me how it even looks rigged against the user and pro-thief. IDK what happened, my email wasn't stolen, neither did any other password, and I also don't recall clicking on any suspicious link or anything. Only thing that could have been "my fault" was not using twitter often enough, thus giving them chances to decrypt my password (?), still, your guess is as good as mine
a couple years ago. found myself in an argument with someone on twitter. me and this guy were going back and forth for probably two or three days. in an instant my follower count started going fckn BANANAS. over the course of two days it went up TEN THOUSAND followers. at the time it made NO sense to me. but after the count stopped that same guy came back at me on some 'what are buying FOLLOWERS????' and 'look at YOU buying FOLLOWERS!!!!!' the dude came at me for WEEKS over it. it took me a LONG time to realize this dude (out of anger maybe?) BOUGHT followers for ME to i guess show others that i wasnt who i was trying to be?? it was the WEIRDEST fckn thing. and were talking like 2017-18... even THEN i didnt get why anyone would WANT TEN THOUSAND fake followers. it made NO sense to me. i went from 60 something followers built over a year (that i wasnt trying to build) to over TEN THOUSAND in two days. and each day after id lose maybe 10-20 of those who 'followed'. it was WEIRD.
Ops. We get different treatment but since 2017 an avalanche of bizzarre impossible events started going down, all intersecting via our internet use. We had to start challenging & researching things since then with a solid method. We are targets. Maybe it's a proving ground lab to explore all the controls of interest. But without needing such answers exactly, we can proceed among the confines anyway. Info and insight tend to come along in time... Mostly. I've also been correct with my working theories through all this. Whatever the research shows, if it does. It's wild. We're now at the edge where research gets harder to access, also I knew was coming, just not exactly how or what particular tech. What a life.
Thank you for helping expose this gargantuan problem. Edit after watching the whole thing. Yes these platforms actively enable this because it makes them look good and valuable with all that activity. TH-cam won't ban hacked accounts streaming crypto scam livestreams they could detect with a simple IF,THEN statement and have a human do the actual banning. A reckoning is coming for "small" but real content creators. ✊
God bless friend. I've been around these parts for many, many years (since you covered gaming 😜) You're doing incredible work documenting the madness not many even see. Muchlove
The AI generated photos look very fake with the unnaturally smooth skin. We're just used to this now because most real women post selfies with beauty filters that probably use AI themselves.
The more technology develops, the more I want to go larp my ancestors in an isolated mountain village. But like... With running water and electricity. Because I'm a softie.
*looks at bot account requirements* *looks at my Twitter* I swear I'm not a bot. Another awesome video! You're doing what I wish I had the skills to do. Love your content and keep up the great work.
Same with my LinkedIn. New, no profile picture, one post, though the name and follower count criteria is not suspicious. I don't even have accounts with Twitter, IG, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, or any other service like that.
@@Ignisami difference is, whatever they move to wouldn't have nearly the influence Twitter currently does and in the case of bots specifically, there is very little chance it would be nearly as dependent or tolerant of bots as Twitter is currently
@@lolcup there aren't many that are on the same level as Twitter I think TikTok is the only other one that even comes close Facebook is so far off in its own little corner, it has very little influence on society as a whole, so I'd put it at a neutral at worst TH-cam has more good than bad, so the death of it would be a net negative for society
It's pretty easy to make a few real friends IRL and in places like Discord if you have any hobbies. Once you find one or two established friend groups it's straightforward to find other social connections. There's also apps like Tinder and Bumble. Social Media may be fake but the world is literally full of people so plenty of folks to make real friendships with
The fakeness is why I left social media completely, I got fed up of bots randomly messaging me or friend requesting me and could see where this was headed. I'm glad I've been proven right and that I made sure my son didn't go on social media either. I just hope the general public wakes up to this before it's too late.
face masks, experimental treatments, and an eagerness.. let alone willingness.. to sacrifice countrymen, neighbours, and family members alike, for not automatically following the herd, by being even a tiny bit skeptical about what was being presented to us, is a clear indication of just how lost in the system the vast majority of folk are, and how easy to manipulate they are. I am in no doubt, that those people who constantly parroted the ever changing, contradictory, and deeply flawed narrative, of duplicitous politicians, state sponsored media 'preachers',and those financially invested in such, aren't just lost in the system, they are.. even unknowing.. a persistent threat to free thinkers, because if we can be condemned by a braying crowd, on the flawed, and flimsy testimony of idiot savants, what will they be driven to do, on the back of ai derived narratives?
I stopped tweeting years ago and now if I bother, read only. I don't interact with anything, except banning Elon every time he unbans himself from my feed.
@@joncarter3761 You are correct. That is just one part of the social media. The uploading and watching videos for other people to share and watch is the other part of the social media aspect. I really don't understand how people like you don't realize that TH-cam is literally a social media website.
The ads I started seeing this week on twitter are really annoying. They used to appear on my main feed only, but now the ads are in the comments. It also went from ads by reputable companies to dubious stuff like on Facebook.
@@tylerboothman4496 Yes, every 3 comments or so. They even pop up and then vanish when you have an ad blocker running, so you have the tweets randomly compress and you have to scroll back to see what moved.
Maxim magazine did a back cover of Aki from the movie, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within. Was voted in the 100 hottest women in Maxim that same year. This was in 2001 and the person was not real, although the CGI would not pass today, it was really well made enough to fool someone using a small phone screen.
Anything and everything can pass for real on a small phone screen even today. UE says it’s still fairly easy to spot a fake AI generated photo/person but do most people know how to tell if it’s not a real person? I don’t think so. The thought that a photo might not even be of a real person doesn’t even cross their mind.
I always wondered how Taylor Swift gets so many trending topics everyday, my friends called me a conspiracy theorists for saying that the trending list might be manufactured.
On Twitter I often notice that there's a lot of bot or fed accounts that usually have 10K+ followers and 10K+ following and they usually go into political Tweets to reply which usually brings real people with the opposite political views into the replies. They mostly have the same emojis and same hashtags in their bios and handles as well. Never seen any TH-camr or Twitter user cover this as it can really have an impact of what people see online. The AI generated faces are very easy to tell, but there's the majority of them that look like a real profile until you see the bio and the followers/following in which they all look alike
Subscribed after your crypto rant. Too many TH-camrs contribute to the sensationalism around crypto, AI, crap like that. I can definitely see you run a well-informed channel.
Thank you for this experiment. I've also done similar activities, I did not purchase accounts although I've started multiple and botted them for testing. Created multiple brands people are convinced are real entities with staff even if its just me and I've helped boost several small businesses in their advertising who couldn't afford traditional options. Their customers are none the wiser either. I hope people pay attention and start getting very skeptical of what they see. I don't exactly want to give people a tutorial on these methods, but I would recommend looking at the services that can be bought, just so people can protect themselves.
This video gave me the exact type of catching up I needed to find out where the state of bots on social media was a year ago... I can only assume it is more of the same now as I am finally getting to watch it. Going to look for those follow-up videos next
This is quite interesting, I am not particularly active on social media aside from TH-cam so I am relatively unaffected by this, however it is crazy to think that you can be easily impersonated on social media to great success of the impersonator
Thanks! I enjoy your investigations.The bots and trolls on Twitter are really annoying, but if you're discerning about who you follow it can be a pretty engaging.
I guess I use Twitter and other social media differently than most. On Facebook, every person I follow I know in real life. On Twitter, I can't verify that, but I tend to follow Japanese manga-ka, folks I've "known" for years due to my involvement in anime/manga, or personalities that I know aren't fake because they have a large, video presence on TH-cam where their is proof the accounts aren't faked.
"The year is 2029, the machines will convince us they are conscious and have an agenda worthy of our respect. They'll embody human qualities, they'll claim to be human, and we'll believe them."
I don't see any difference between convincing me of consciousness and consciousness. I'm already getting close to believing the latest language models are conscious.
I ALMOST did that... but figured it would be blending too many topics that will happen soon and we will see how many people are fooled (kino corner did that already and it was a really well done video) This one was botnet... ill do the AI identity thing again soon.
Another great video! I've been a subscriber since you were Upper Echelon Gaming, but your investigative content is so much better. As a computer security professional, I must say, your content is some of the best of TH-cam! Keep up the good work!
I got banned from Twitter forever, after operating my account for months without incident and even paying $11 per month for the blue badge, for one single breach of the community guidelines, by just cussing someone out. That in mind, it is sad to realize that even Facebook is preferable at this point, because at least you get a second and a third chance before you are banned forever. The fact that I was a paying customer and got banned in favor of a completely anonymous / fake account, without a name or profile picture, let alone any sort of membership, comes on top of all this.
My mom had a Twitter account that she never posted on, but used to occasionally look at things and people. She was perma banned for apparently no reason, and Twitter said basically "we won't tell you why, but it's permanent"
I nearly went insane 6 or 7 years ago when I started seeing bot accounts everywhere online but nobody listened to me. I think I was ahead of the curve, thank you for confirming my suspicions.
Won't be long before the only human to human conversations will be in person in the real world. Hell, give it enough time and even that scenario won't guarantee it...
@@hungrymusicwolf Brother, i work with AI and ofc it is good! i think it's the best thing we have ever created. But my comment was against UE's pessimistic "AI is evil" stance. Another way to say this would be: Don't hate the game, hate the player.
@Hev No, be more afraid of the hairless apes that spread the fake 'fear' that "oh AI is gonna steal our art and take our souls!" Nah bruh.. they have no idea how ai works in the first place. i'm guessing UE also thinks AI is here to steal art. Nothing can be farther than the truth.
@@nefwaenre I have to slightly disagree. I think AI has the potential to be one of the greatest societal changes ever, but as history has proven rarely if ever do such changes go without hiccups. AI has in the most optimistic estimate immense possibilities for abuse, and in the worst case can combined with advances in robotics replace humans for a mad dictator. Now it isn't likely to be either extreme, but chances are it will be a bit of both. Let me just say, those changes will be catastrophic on a societal level even if we only have the good side. We'll need extreme caution to guide us through these changes. Which is why I have to agree with UE's pessimism. We need to treat AI like the invention of mass produced nukes capable of being created by the average smartphone.
“Hipster crypto investor vast network of bot accounts.” Joking aside very enlightening video. Appreciate your dedication to warning and informing on these problems.
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Is Upper Echelon even real?
@@artnull13 no I'm running a bot net that powers the AI which creates and uploads the videos 🙂
I mean I sometimes bulk delete my history on social media...
You might as well call this thumbnail title "terminator meets the matrix"
To get more than 10% likes without flashing a cracking set of knockers once or twice shows your fans appreciate your words.
Growing up in the 90's I was taught the internet is not a real place, everyone is fake, and never give anyone your personal info. Good to know that's still true.
Same, I scrubbed all my info from the public net. Now if people google me and see no results I seem kinda sus lol.
At a minimum it allows people to say horrible things that they wouldn’t dare saying in real life for fear of legitimate social consequences... like the racists; so it definitely encourages an element fakeness even if technically the profile is not fake.
Erick, wouldn’t your impression suggest that people are not being fake, but indeed too genuine, if they are are stating things on the net they would never otherwise say if suppressed by ‘real world’ forces? Humans seem to have a lot of dark things within them, and anonymity (or I guess psudoanonmity) allows a lot of that stuff to be expressed (for better or worse).
More like real and unreal at the same time. At least I have been taught to never trust anyone in the internet unless you can confirm it is trustworthy. Even then as we see today, the once trustworthy news and journalism sites often lie to your face.
Yeah we treated the internet differently. On one hand we knew it wasn't safe and was full of strangers, but simultaneously we treated people like human beings. I had a YT channel back in 2009 and people were WAAAAY nicer to me as a whole. We acted like people on TH-cam were the same as those in real life
3 years ago when I tried telling everyone Twitter was 90% bots, everyone laughed. This is the best timeline.
I agree its still going now im so sick of bots
it's actually insane because they all interact with each other. Content farms post rage bait or steal content. It goes big then the bots in the comments reply with stolen comments....it's all so vacant and empty. literally dead internet theory
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy you turned out to be right about Twitter, but everything else confirms we’re still in the worst timeline
Not much, but a small token of my appreciation for the work you do.
Typical Bot move.. You're still not a Reeaal Boy!
Salute
He don't need it, he's rich from ads he placed sur la video
He doesn't get rich form TH-cam
From what he said in his videos he seems to already be rich and does TH-cam as a hobby
@@BangChief_AllIsOne Not sure what a “typical bot move” means, but thank you for helping the algorithm. 😉😂
Romance scams are awful. Not only do they scam someone out of their money, they also break their heart in the process, and victims are often too embarrassed to do anything. It's as low as you can get as a scammer.
I completely agree, but I do wonder if at least some of the men who messaged the fake account are also bots.
people stupid enough to fall for that deserve it
Yeah i'm sorry about this one, but if you actually fall for this, then either you're head brain isn't developed, or you're just plain stupid. These accounts often don't even look slightly real, like at all.
I feel for many of these guys getting scammed. It's a horrible industry that ruins trust between people.
But to be fair, many of these men are the ones who also make women and young girls feel uncomfortable online. If you're a girl with a profile, there is an onslaught of strange men who start messaging you out of nowhere and want to be your boyfriend or beg for nudes or just send explicit disgusting messages. Every social media is being treated as a dating app if you don't hide your profile.
What I'm saying, if you reach out to strangers online just bcs they have a hot photo, don't expect them to be real or to have a real connection to you. I wish this behaviour wasn't a part of our culture.
Yeah but to be fair I've talked to many of these so called scammers and they're not even that convincing.
I had one sending me poems.
I pretended to love them and asked oh hey you wrote this? For me?
That's your first red flag if they're just pulling poems off the Internet.
And they come up with the craziest stories and they always ask for money too fast. I get desperation but you have to be smart about everything.
I've never had any success by Internet dating. I don't know many men that do.
Everything is a scam.
One of the most important pieces of journalism I’ve come across recently. Thanks Echelon.
You guys should look into the "global population" theory, that the entire world is actually less than 1 billion population total
"Internet is full of bots."
Yeah, that is quite important piece of journalism. /s
@@anteshell But it is? I knew that internet has lots of bots. But didnt have an idea of how easy it is to get them.
@@kanishkjaiswal5088 It's not really important to know for average chap how easy it is to get them. Interesting maybe, but not objectionally important. The only important thing here is to understand that it is possible and prevalent, and furthermore the only important conclusion to draw from that is that you should not trust anything in Internet without appropriate level of vetting. And that, my friend, should already be obvious.
I'm not saying this video is bad. There was some new information for me too, such as how easy it is to get a bot account or something related. However, OP was not talking about personal interest and subjective importance of the subject.
@@anteshell "...I've come across lately" is subjective experience (not *objective*) meaning he hasn't come across many important pieces of journalism. Quite frankly, the average person does not know that Twitter is populated by millions of bot accounts and remains in the dark about the ability and ease with which one can buy their services. Just because you and I know these things doesn't mean a normal person does. Even a subscriber to this channel could be clueless simply by not having seen the relevant videos.
You are a better journalist than mainstream media. Thank you
I'm so glad UE uses his intellect, determination and resources to do good.
He could have just as easily used what he knows for self gain
The rule in our home as our kids have grown up and began to be granted access to cell phones, etc. had been that they don’t add anyone as a contact unless they have actually shared a meal with that person IRL. It appears that we will all have to adopt that rule in the very near future.
I told my daughter the same thing. If you never meet this person face to face. And had a conversation with them. They are NOT your friend. That and we comb through her phone daily
@@latenightgaming5057 Consider also telling her to not share her private information online such as her name, address and even her face/body (Unless it's with a friend privately)
@@latenightgaming5057 🚁 parent 🚁
@Takahashi oh we do sir. I also sit around and listen when she's talking with "friends". And thanks for the advice friend
That is a good rule to follow.
i love how the "attitude" i had as kid ,so i could get over my shyness is now reality.
everyone is a bot/ai/npc, what a time to be alive
You guys should look into the "global population" theory, that the entire world is actually less than 1 billion population total
I'm not a bot
That's how I go about my life as a grown man.
If I sit still for a minute and think about how these people all have lives and shit I'll literally go insane.
I treat people like NPCs or background characters unless I know them personally.
Only way I can handle being outdoors.
Also let's me keep a cool head in the face of alot of shit.
@@armouredjester1622 sounds like something a bot would say
@@armouredjester1622 prove it
When the guy you used to listen to for video game reviews evolved into a legitimate gum shoe hard nosed journalist 😂😂😂 life is strange and interesting, keep up the good work ! You'll always have a fan in me !
This might be slightly unrelated to the video itself but looking at how methodical this is makes me wonder what kind of studies you did prior to being a TH-camr. The way you lay things out follows the scientfic method pretty well in terms of being replicable and testable (in theory of course), as well as identifying limitiations and error points. The major difference between science and you is that your investigations always lead to interesting findings lol. I just wanted to let you know I find that pretty cool - good video UE.
Thanks. You guys just never see the dead ends where I spend 600 dollars on a project and find out im that my entire idea was botched. I keep those to myself lmao.
@@UpperEchelon until you make a video about video ideas that didn't work.
@@adama7752 I like this lol
@@ArDeeMee that's what a robot would say
@@UpperEchelon I'd watch an episode where you lumped all your dead ends together.
Dead internet was never just a theory.
This was an awesome video.
I could go on and on about how bad bots killed my Instagram account. Had a sponsor, after I signed with them, purchase 15,000 followers, without me knowing and I slicked only to see my engagement dwindling to nothing and now the account is just junk.
Good work, keep exposing this shit.
Yea, if I see high followers and low engagement, I think fack or bought issues.
@@henryrpuff6915 that is what I had followers telling me. I was a dumb fuck for it.
Keep trying tho
I remember the youtuber that got his house firebombed some time ago... Stay safe bro.
The people that have power will not give it up easily. This obviously isn't ran by just the average crime syndicate. This is huge.
Anybody can see it, there's an incentive for Twitter to shut you up, whether they're in on it or not.
That's real journalism
I’ve been enjoying your videos for some time now, and this upload felt like a clear indicator you’ve hit a new benchmark as a creator. Not necessarily because of the visuals, research, or topic specificity- but with your script and the level to which you laced your narration with emotions you would most like the audience to feel.
To say Ellon has buyers remorse would be a massive understatement
And yet he fucked it up even more. Noticed how most of these botted accounts are "verified"? Lol the blue check means literally nothing now.
Not necessarily. Tesla was in a far worse state a few years ago and now it's one of the most successful companies. He may or may not succeed with Twitter, but he certainly enjoys a challenge.
@@Miranox2 Tesla makes some of the least reliable cars on the market. They are literal death traps. Even Elon admitted the stock value of Tesla is overhyped. He's nothing but a insecure space Karen who was born into money, like Trump, the orange Karen.
@@Miranox2 Its a huge bubble. If you meassure the "success" of a company by their marked share, than tesla is in a bad state, because lately they are dumping prices like hell (to keep the production numbers up...)
Teslas marked share is around 2% in the us (late 2022) and yet the value of teslas stocks is (was) higher than the stocks of every other car company in the us combined. (Teslas marked share of EV cars is much bigger, around 40%)
From promises about autonomous cars in 2014 to still no such cars in early 2023...but advertising shit like the tesla bot or hyperloop-system...layed off half the staff of twitter to tell the remaining staff to just work harder, turning twitter into twitter blue and its still bot-infested like hell...meanwhile a lot of major advertisers pulled out.
His power comes from the retards who believe him, like every other shady influencer, thats what he is good at.
He fixed the political bias and only that so far, but the rot is more than just political bias.
Love your work UE, keep at it and stay safe
This is all so dystopian, I had my twitter stolen a week ago and I've been trying to get it back. The responses from the "twitter team" (bots ofc) are laughable: "your account has another email address now, you'll have to send a request from that email, sorry". This platform is just a breeding ground for bots, and just like this they'll end up killing it
Was your email address also stolen or it's that easy to change email of account on twitter? also how did it happen? like you clicked some phishing link?
@@Akaki1999 It's crazy easy, it scares me how it even looks rigged against the user and pro-thief. IDK what happened, my email wasn't stolen, neither did any other password, and I also don't recall clicking on any suspicious link or anything. Only thing that could have been "my fault" was not using twitter often enough, thus giving them chances to decrypt my password (?), still, your guess is as good as mine
a couple years ago. found myself in an argument with someone on twitter. me and this guy were going back and forth for probably two or three days. in an instant my follower count started going fckn BANANAS. over the course of two days it went up TEN THOUSAND followers. at the time it made NO sense to me. but after the count stopped that same guy came back at me on some 'what are buying FOLLOWERS????' and 'look at YOU buying FOLLOWERS!!!!!' the dude came at me for WEEKS over it. it took me a LONG time to realize this dude (out of anger maybe?) BOUGHT followers for ME to i guess show others that i wasnt who i was trying to be?? it was the WEIRDEST fckn thing. and were talking like 2017-18... even THEN i didnt get why anyone would WANT TEN THOUSAND fake followers. it made NO sense to me. i went from 60 something followers built over a year (that i wasnt trying to build) to over TEN THOUSAND in two days. and each day after id lose maybe 10-20 of those who 'followed'. it was WEIRD.
Ops. We get different treatment but since 2017 an avalanche of bizzarre impossible events started going down, all intersecting via our internet use. We had to start challenging & researching things since then with a solid method.
We are targets.
Maybe it's a proving ground lab to explore all the controls of interest. But without needing such answers exactly, we can proceed among the confines anyway. Info and insight tend to come along in time...
Mostly. I've also been correct with my working theories through all this. Whatever the research shows, if it does. It's wild.
We're now at the edge where research gets harder to access, also I knew was coming, just not exactly how or what particular tech.
What a life.
Thank you for helping expose this gargantuan problem.
Edit after watching the whole thing. Yes these platforms actively enable this because it makes them look good and valuable with all that activity. TH-cam won't ban hacked accounts streaming crypto scam livestreams they could detect with a simple IF,THEN statement and have a human do the actual banning.
A reckoning is coming for "small" but real content creators. ✊
It's also a valuable tool to boost whatever opinion or viewpoint they want to portray as "popular"
This guy is the most articulate person I've ever heard. He sounds like the dude from Audit the Audit
Good stuff!
God bless friend. I've been around these parts for many, many years (since you covered gaming 😜) You're doing incredible work documenting the madness not many even see.
Muchlove
The AI generated photos look very fake with the unnaturally smooth skin. We're just used to this now because most real women post selfies with beauty filters that probably use AI themselves.
The more technology develops, the more I want to go larp my ancestors in an isolated mountain village. But like... With running water and electricity. Because I'm a softie.
So pre-internet era.
Weak larper. Only caveman technology or get out.
Neo Luddism.
This was so interesting yet, scary at the same time. Glad I removed all social media years ago! Really awesome video mate 👍🏼
*looks at bot account requirements*
*looks at my Twitter*
I swear I'm not a bot.
Another awesome video! You're doing what I wish I had the skills to do. Love your content and keep up the great work.
Right? I got locked out of my instagram account for "suspicious activity" for months even though I'm not a bot.
Sounds like something a bot would say 🤔😉
Same with my LinkedIn. New, no profile picture, one post, though the name and follower count criteria is not suspicious. I don't even have accounts with Twitter, IG, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, or any other service like that.
Adding this to the list of reasons why Twitter being deleted would be a net benefit for society
They'd just move to whatever platform(s) take its place.
Same could be said for majority of social media
@@Ignisami difference is, whatever they move to wouldn't have nearly the influence Twitter currently does
and in the case of bots specifically, there is very little chance it would be nearly as dependent or tolerant of bots as Twitter is currently
@@lolcup there aren't many that are on the same level as Twitter
I think TikTok is the only other one that even comes close
Facebook is so far off in its own little corner, it has very little influence on society as a whole, so I'd put it at a neutral at worst
TH-cam has more good than bad, so the death of it would be a net negative for society
As long as they all die with it, not just Twitter.
Great investigation as always.
Being a hermit and trusting nobody seems like a better prospect every day.
It's lonely. Build some small community....
It's pretty easy to make a few real friends IRL and in places like Discord if you have any hobbies. Once you find one or two established friend groups it's straightforward to find other social connections. There's also apps like Tinder and Bumble.
Social Media may be fake but the world is literally full of people so plenty of folks to make real friendships with
This is top tier journalism. Thank you friend!
The fakeness is why I left social media completely, I got fed up of bots randomly messaging me or friend requesting me and could see where this was headed. I'm glad I've been proven right and that I made sure my son didn't go on social media either. I just hope the general public wakes up to this before it's too late.
face masks, experimental treatments, and an eagerness.. let alone willingness.. to sacrifice countrymen, neighbours, and family members alike, for not automatically following the herd, by being even a tiny bit skeptical about what was being presented to us, is a clear indication of just how lost in the system the vast majority of folk are, and how easy to manipulate they are.
I am in no doubt, that those people who constantly parroted the ever changing, contradictory, and deeply flawed narrative, of duplicitous politicians, state sponsored media 'preachers',and those financially invested in such, aren't just lost in the system, they are.. even unknowing.. a persistent threat to free thinkers, because if we can be condemned by a braying crowd, on the flawed, and flimsy testimony of idiot savants, what will they be driven to do, on the back of ai derived narratives?
TH-cam is social media. You did not leave social media completely...
I stopped tweeting years ago and now if I bother, read only. I don't interact with anything, except banning Elon every time he unbans himself from my feed.
@@RanEncounter a comment section doesn't make something social media.
@@joncarter3761 You are correct. That is just one part of the social media. The uploading and watching videos for other people to share and watch is the other part of the social media aspect.
I really don't understand how people like you don't realize that TH-cam is literally a social media website.
Fantastic reporting UE! Appreciate you man!
The ads I started seeing this week on twitter are really annoying. They used to appear on my main feed only, but now the ads are in the comments. It also went from ads by reputable companies to dubious stuff like on Facebook.
Twitter has ads in the comment sections? 😆
@@tylerboothman4496 Yes, every 3 comments or so. They even pop up and then vanish when you have an ad blocker running, so you have the tweets randomly compress and you have to scroll back to see what moved.
Very underrated work mate.
I respect how much you spent on this. Both time and money
Your journalism is consistently top-notch. Thanks for the work you do exposing scams and corruption online
God. Elon inherited one musky deal.
Maxim magazine did a back cover of Aki from the movie, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within. Was voted in the 100 hottest women in Maxim that same year. This was in 2001 and the person was not real, although the CGI would not pass today, it was really well made enough to fool someone using a small phone screen.
Anything and everything can pass for real on a small phone screen even today. UE says it’s still fairly easy to spot a fake AI generated photo/person but do most people know how to tell if it’s not a real person? I don’t think so. The thought that a photo might not even be of a real person doesn’t even cross their mind.
I always wondered how Taylor Swift gets so many trending topics everyday, my friends called me a conspiracy theorists for saying that the trending list might be manufactured.
This channel and it's creator really grew into legitimate journalism which there is not enough of today.
On Twitter I often notice that there's a lot of bot or fed accounts that usually have 10K+ followers and 10K+ following and they usually go into political Tweets to reply which usually brings real people with the opposite political views into the replies. They mostly have the same emojis and same hashtags in their bios and handles as well. Never seen any TH-camr or Twitter user cover this as it can really have an impact of what people see online. The AI generated faces are very easy to tell, but there's the majority of them that look like a real profile until you see the bio and the followers/following in which they all look alike
I think you've hit the nail on the head as far as truthfulness. To me it means ALL SOCIAL MEDIA IS USELESS. ALL SHOULD BE DELETED.
Subscribed after your crypto rant. Too many TH-camrs contribute to the sensationalism around crypto, AI, crap like that. I can definitely see you run a well-informed channel.
Thank you for this experiment. I've also done similar activities, I did not purchase accounts although I've started multiple and botted them for testing. Created multiple brands people are convinced are real entities with staff even if its just me and I've helped boost several small businesses in their advertising who couldn't afford traditional options. Their customers are none the wiser either. I hope people pay attention and start getting very skeptical of what they see. I don't exactly want to give people a tutorial on these methods, but I would recommend looking at the services that can be bought, just so people can protect themselves.
This video gave me the exact type of catching up I needed to find out where the state of bots on social media was a year ago... I can only assume it is more of the same now as I am finally getting to watch it. Going to look for those follow-up videos next
Thanks, it is worth the time to watch.
You've become my favourite journalist at this point, all your work is top notch, keep it up!
This is quite interesting, I am not particularly active on social media aside from TH-cam so I am relatively unaffected by this, however it is crazy to think that you can be easily impersonated on social media to great success of the impersonator
Great work mate. Using your sponsor's link to support your work mate.
👏👏👏
Best video I have watched on YT in a long time. Excellently constructed and interesting.
Always coming through with great videos and content👍
Love your videos man, keep pushing out it this great journalism and experimentation content.
Great stuff UE, you keep upping the bar with every video!
I love your drag name.
Your work keeps getting better, keep er going!
This is top-notch journalism. Great video
Thanks! I enjoy your investigations.The bots and trolls on Twitter are really annoying, but if you're discerning about who you follow it can be a pretty engaging.
Absolutely good content. Should have 5 million views by now. But a day will come
I guess I use Twitter and other social media differently than most. On Facebook, every person I follow I know in real life. On Twitter, I can't verify that, but I tend to follow Japanese manga-ka, folks I've "known" for years due to my involvement in anime/manga, or personalities that I know aren't fake because they have a large, video presence on TH-cam where their is proof the accounts aren't faked.
Great video as always. Keep digging!
Ohhhh how deep this rabbithole goes...take me to the depths!!!
"The year is 2029, the machines will convince us they are conscious and have an agenda worthy of our respect. They'll embody human qualities, they'll claim to be human, and we'll believe them."
What is that from?
I don't see any difference between convincing me of consciousness and consciousness. I'm already getting close to believing the latest language models are conscious.
This is how 90% of all dating app profiles are made.
We're really reaching the point where nothing you see online is real.
I've recently noticed this sort of activity on an account that used to belong to a friend, history wiped, 99% retweet activity.
Ted Kaczynski is right. Industrial society has a dark future.
Incredible work 👏 props to the time this took you
Amazing research and experiment
It would be nice if this video was done with your voice made by AI
I ALMOST did that... but figured it would be blending too many topics
that will happen soon and we will see how many people are fooled (kino corner did that already and it was a really well done video)
This one was botnet... ill do the AI identity thing again soon.
I hope this gets more attention.
Fascinating. Thank you for a very interesting investigation!
this is hitting mad different with "right behind you" on the background
Seeing you document this dystopia as it happens is awesone.
great video! Like to see more on this rabbit hole!
Another great video! I've been a subscriber since you were Upper Echelon Gaming, but your investigative content is so much better. As a computer security professional, I must say, your content is some of the best of TH-cam! Keep up the good work!
Great video man.
Im glad you pointed this out
Seems like the "Dead internet theory" is less and less a hypothesis the more time passes by, huh...
too many entities want it to be aa real thing.
Love the content, keep up the great work sir
I added this to my watch later and after I saw it...... I was horrified i waited 15 hours after Echelon posting to find out
I got banned from Twitter forever, after operating my account for months without incident and even paying $11 per month for the blue badge, for one single breach of the community guidelines, by just cussing someone out. That in mind, it is sad to realize that even Facebook is preferable at this point, because at least you get a second and a third chance before you are banned forever. The fact that I was a paying customer and got banned in favor of a completely anonymous / fake account, without a name or profile picture, let alone any sort of membership, comes on top of all this.
$ = € (Euros)
shouldnt have paid, your own fault buddy...
My mom had a Twitter account that she never posted on, but used to occasionally look at things and people. She was perma banned for apparently no reason, and Twitter said basically "we won't tell you why, but it's permanent"
lmao, imagine paying in the first place
and by the way, paying money doesn't excuse you from breaking the guidelines, so hold this L real quick
@@razumikhim i know right?
100 years ago, we had toddlers smoking cigarettes. Today we have toddlers on tablets. Have we truly advanced?
I nearly went insane 6 or 7 years ago when I started seeing bot accounts everywhere online but nobody listened to me. I think I was ahead of the curve, thank you for confirming my suspicions.
Annnnnnnd humans suck glad i checked again.
“Sponsored by”
…Double tap double tap double tap
Won't be long before the only human to human conversations will be in person in the real world. Hell, give it enough time and even that scenario won't guarantee it...
Great work!
Definitely keep going.
I LOVE these longer videos.
Don't be afraid of the AI. Be afraid of the person *using* that AI.
"Both, both is good."
Mitnick was here.
@@hungrymusicwolf Brother, i work with AI and ofc it is good! i think it's the best thing we have ever created. But my comment was against UE's pessimistic "AI is evil" stance. Another way to say this would be: Don't hate the game, hate the player.
@Hev No, be more afraid of the hairless apes that spread the fake 'fear' that "oh AI is gonna steal our art and take our souls!"
Nah bruh.. they have no idea how ai works in the first place. i'm guessing UE also thinks AI is here to steal art. Nothing can be farther than the truth.
@@nefwaenre I have to slightly disagree. I think AI has the potential to be one of the greatest societal changes ever, but as history has proven rarely if ever do such changes go without hiccups.
AI has in the most optimistic estimate immense possibilities for abuse, and in the worst case can combined with advances in robotics replace humans for a mad dictator.
Now it isn't likely to be either extreme, but chances are it will be a bit of both. Let me just say, those changes will be catastrophic on a societal level even if we only have the good side.
We'll need extreme caution to guide us through these changes. Which is why I have to agree with UE's pessimism. We need to treat AI like the invention of mass produced nukes capable of being created by the average smartphone.
Good video!
Thank you for this, sir.
thanks for the hard work man ... sickening, as you said .... great video!
As someone in the computer sphere, I am terrified at the prospect of big govt using this tech.
They are. Especially cops.
I was half expecting a notation at the end saying the whole video was created using various AI's to prove the point even more
Bots everywhere, bots following you and bots following bots.
That's twitter.
very informative! thanks.
“Hipster crypto investor vast network of bot accounts.” Joking aside very enlightening video. Appreciate your dedication to warning and informing on these problems.
This makes me think Elon's purchase is one of the worst deals ever 😂