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Comment by bitpush | Hacker News Reader

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Here's an unrelated post by the video game content collective Second Wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpVnx4_yqTo

Here's a post from another youtuber about a recent video getting restricted: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxcapSFGmm6m59kSEn62RGOZsmUEK...

I wrote up notes here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45180555 but this wasn't coordinated. As I mentioned in the first paragraph of the post, I was following a thread on Bluesky where Adrian and Jeff were chatting. I posted the article there. I didn't know Jeff had posted on Hacker News about this already, and I didn't know he would post my piece. I definitely would have done another editing pass if I had known!

Two articles is "astro-turfing" and "coordinated"? We're going to need some stronger evidence than that.

The part that is confusing is Jeff himself posting this. There is only but one explanation - to increase the visibility of the issue.

Jeff is known for his rPi experiments, so the question is why this seemingly random blog post.

How did Jeff even get to know about this post? Unless the author sent it over to him?

Soo many questions. Mostly because the author of this blog post isn't a YouTuber (AFAICT)

> How did Jeff even get to know about this post? Unless the author sent it over to him?

Google search alerts are a thing (https://www.google.com/alerts). I'd expect a public figure, however niche their following is, would set them up to track the conversation about them.

And once you see a post about you show up in Google Alerts, is the next step you do post that on HN?

Uh, there have been dozens of videos of senior YouTube creators who have independently voiced alarm about this within the past few days. It's now been long enough since the algorithm change that statistical time series analyses can detect it. It is no coincidence or surprise that there should be several concerns raised here today. Many livelihoods depend on this. It's pretty serious for certain "celebrities".

Not to be rude, but this is one of several accusations of astroturfing I've seen on HN lately. They have all been so clearly off the mark that it makes me wonder if there was some event that triggered users here to be so paranoid?

> senior YouTube creators who have independently voiced alarm

Pretty sure they are all in a discord channel together.

Do you really think that Friendly Jordies, Jeff Geerling, Second Wind, Red Letter Media, Brodie Robertson, Game Grumps, Vinesauce, Dead Meat, Dark Viper, and Linus Tech Tips, for example, are in the same Discord channel (Friendly Jordies is an Aussie political channel for goodness sake, he couldn't care less about tech), and are part of a conspiracy to fabricate viewership data... to get sympathy? To draw attention to their channels? And as part of this plan, they astroturfed multiple social networks with this fake data for the last week?

Pretty sure YouTube made an algorithm change and it's causing problems. Again.

I didnt say any of that. You dont need to put words into my mouth to "win an argument".

I think it is reasonable to assume that most popular YTers are in a discord/telegram/whatsapp/text chain together. This is their community, so it makes sense to have a quick line of comms between them.

Just like how HN is a place for .. hackers to socialize, it is conceivable there's a $place where they meet and discuss inside-baseball stuff.

Okay, I am happy to hear that is not what you were implying; a bit extreme, but that's how I read your comments in light of the reality, taking the skepticism to its apparent conclusion. I genuinely did not intend to provide a straw man or to argue and apologize for doing so; I'm just not sure what else you were implying.

We know that large groups of YouTubers, particularly the "elite" ones, are in chats with each other, this is true. But the sheer variety of them talking about this from across different spaces on YouTube and different tiers makes it seem unlikely to me they are all in the same exclusive social space. I think we operate with different priors though.

This article specifically mentions and links to Geerling’s piece.

Another yter mailed out to his Patreons saying his views were down. Within the last week. Ze Frank.

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