upvote
That's a fake youtube channel that is somehow allowed to squat the SpaceX channel name. It's been going on for years, including the crypto scam. Baffling. Maybe a big middle finger from Google to Elon.
reply
It probably is AI generated.

My very first exposure to "AI spam" was trying to watch one of the Starship test launches, the second one if I remember correctly.

That was around the time that Elon bought Twitter, so he removed all publicity video streams from third-party platforms like YouTube and moved them to Twitter's streaming service.

I wanted to watch this on my big TV, so I was hunting through YouTube for the stream. I found the most likely looking one and watched as Elon got up on a stage, started waffling on about how this is the "future of humanity" and then with 40 seconds to go before the launch the (entirely realistic) AI voice was dubbed over and started offering "double your Bitcoin if you transfer to this account", with the obligatory QR code in the corner.

I was actually impressed by the audacity!

The really frustrating thing was that YouTube then promptly blocked all content even vaguely related to the launch! It was impossible to keyword search for anything that said "starship", "spacex", etc.

It was a scary preview of instant corporate censorship.

I'm sure the person (or bot!) at YouTube "meant well", but sheesh... they just erased the online presence of dozens of legitimate space-fan channels like NASA Space Flight. And NASA. And SpaceX's official channel too!

Ironically this meant that the only remaining matches were 100% scams.

reply
> Ironically this meant that the only remaining matches were 100% scams.

I am wondering if some of this is unmarked paid advertising. I can't imagine any other incentive for Youtube to effectively align its brand with Ick.

Ads, as one of the prophets said, are the Devil.

reply
The incredible thing to me is that I've reported one of these videos to YouTube and got an answer back via email saying "we checked the video and it's fine for us". This should be enough to sue Google on the basis that they made an active choice to keep it up.
reply
Ignorant eyeballs are also eyeballs. One might argue - sometimes even more profitable eyeballs.

Silicon Valley built this machine. Many tens of thousands of software engineers worked on this.

reply