Snopes on Twixter - Fake Stimulus Checks
Of course the baseless conspiracy theory grifting community hates Snopes. Alex Jones and his allies and coattail riders deliberately go out of their way to whine about Snopes, Wikipedia, and similar sites. Projecting that they are the fake news while it’s really sites with a well deserved reputation for calling out bullshit when bullshit appears.
And bullshit appears in YouTube ads all the time. And it’s pretty obvious bullshit to a lot of people, the people immune to online scams know the classic red flags, mostly free money for doing nothing or next to nothing = scam.
In my daily travels I look at lots of YouTube accounts including some pretty small ones. The bigger ones you can count on an ad showing up daily. The smaller ones are hit or miss, sometimes a video with less than a hundred views will still get an ad attached. But when the content creator is conspiracist, you might not want to really think of it as an ad, it’s always something weird and of dubious practical value. I’ve seen the ad Snopes references. Quite a lot actually. You’re kidding yourself if you think Google and YouTube has got a team of people that checks out what ads are being offered to vet them for validity.
I’ve seen more than one version of it, with different actors relaying the story of the forgotten stimulus check. And right down to the same $8,700 figure. And for good measure since people don’t pay attention to contradictory information a $6,400 stimulus check was available. No big deal, you aren’t getting either so it matters naught which you respond to.
The problems these ads have is compounded by their placement within the different YouTube spheres. You never see them in a video of the top science oriented channels like Mark Rober, Veritasium or Kurzgesagt. Academically minded people laugh at the notion, allowing their Dunning Kruger Effect to dismiss the idea that it affects their lives because just since you’re smart enough to see through it, it doesn’t mean others are. The “you’re stupid enough to believe this you deserve to lose your money” attitude. Which I’m personally still guilty of. Meanwhile, ads for nonexistent free government money are placed on channels with content from angry doomsday preppers, tarot card readings, reiki practitioners, 2nd amendment auditors and gung ho MAGA supporters. A mixture of true believers and outright garbage dispensers. And regardless of the content creator’s stance whether they are actually believing their own material the followers are loaded with people nothing well in life. The kind of person that’s near impossible to convince to settle down and maintain a steady job. Which isn’t to say there are enough decent quality jobs available, but getting scammed isn’t going to help the finances.
And consider this. If the government puts out on there official website that it’s fake, do you really think an angry doomsday prepper is actually going to check and BELIEVE them? The chances are somewhere between zero and zero, and zero doesn’t count.
From my research these types of ads picked up in volume starting a couple of months ago. Be careful out there. Today it’s fake stimulus checks, who knows what it will be tomorrow.
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