If Spam Could Kill...

An article, “Spam Hits Video Sites, Misleading Web Viewers”, that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week (March 15th) addressed the issue of video spamming. Ever since the rise of YouTube, video spamming has started to spread.

What video spammers will do, is they will upload an almost blank file of footage with an advertisement at the end, and label the video with tags and descriptions that don’t match the video, but rather match what people might search for. Keith Richman, chief executive of the video site break.com, says, “Like advertisers, the spammers recognize there are a lot of people congregating and it’s a great way to reach them”.

Looking back through media, it seems that everything eventually gets spammed. The most commonly hear of spam is email spam. When downloading music, mislabeled mp3s could contain unwanted advertisements. One could even go as far to say that radio is “spammed” with an excess of commercials, and repetitive content.

Is YouTube and other video hosting websites taking the same path as radio? Though not quite the same thing as traditional advertisements, this spam could eventually lead to the deterioration of video websites. Maybe Google’s buying YouTube wasn’t the greatest idea after all. This generation moves quickly, and if YouTube becomes a hassle to use, it will drop it, and quickly pick up on another media trend.