Shameless cyber-begging

Thibault Gernaat

April 20, 2024

When I code, I sometimes like to listen to this video in the background. If the video is taken down, you can see a screenshot above. It is basically a playlist of multiple electronic songs. As far as I can tell, the visualization is basically a waste of bandwidth and the main goal is to make people click on the thumbnail.

Screenshot of the video “Programming / Coding / Hacking music vol.16 (CONNECTION LOST)” on YouTube

The video boasts 5 million views! This is basically copyright infringement at its best. It uses independently made electronic music. These artists are not part of a giant music label which scrapes YouTube and issues copyright strikes. These artists most likely don’t care or are not even aware of it.

The author of the video didn’t even mention any of the song in its description. The only way to know the song is to sieve through the top ~100 comments, and find this comment:

Screenshot of comment with the track list

I don’t even get angry at this anymore. Assholes, supported by big tech, have been screwing up small content creators and artists for years now. Nobody really cares, because everybody makes a fortune, except for the small guy getting killed. But who cares, all of these artists will get replaced by AI, as long as it is creative, because it hasn’t eaten its tail yet.

What’s revolting is this: while I was reading the description in order to find the songs, I saw that the thief was asking, in broken English, for money for Ukraine.

Screenshot of the video description

He doubled down by pinning his comment asking for bitcoins on some random bitcoin address. Smelling the scam yet?

Screenshot of the pinned comment

The SWIFT number seems to be legit. It seems to be the special account opened by the National Bank of Ukraine. But it doesn’t matter, don’t send money to some asshole on the internet. The European Union has a page listing how you can help Ukrainians, financially or not. Use that, and fuck that cyber-beggar.