YouTube "Full Movies" Accounts

Question

While searching for clips from movies (e.g. songs, lines, etc.), I often see some results that have the following similarities:

• An extremely long length (up to hour(s)), similar to a feature-length film
• The content is a single frame from the film in question (but completely static), or possibly several such frames played like a slideshow.
• A dedicated account with a related name containing few if any other movies
• Video ratings are usually disabled.
• The description wants you to go to some sketchy URL and sign up for some account.

For example, try searching for "monsters university". One result is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cg_eV_J1BM, which is entirely typical. Here's another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ0B178fwTI. This is hardly unique. I spot-checked a few other films (I picked some random ones I remember seeing): "Tangled", "Pacific Rim", "The Shawshank Redemption", "Spirited Away", and "A Beautiful Mind". In each case, I simply searched on the name of the film. Every single one produced at least one result of this ilk.

I'm definitely not going to actually try any of these; they set off all the warning bells. But, I'm not really sure what the purpose of them is. I'm not sure where else to ask about this; googling, e.g., "YouTube Free Accounts Full Movies" kindof tends to give the wrong hits.

They are obviously some kind of advertisement for that site (which might be a scam as well). I skimmed YouTube's terms of service and the community guidelines, and I didn't see anything precluding this sort of behavior.

So . . . is there anything that can be done about this sort of thing? Flag for moderator attention? Would there be a justification to remove it? What is all this cruft?

Answer 1

You should flag these videos and the accounts. What they're doing is definitely spamming.

Everyone hates spam. Don’t create misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails in order to increase views. It's not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

They stay up because other users just close the tab, or go back, instead of flagging the account and getting them removed from the listings.

The videos are there to draw you in.

The links themselves are bait-and-switches that can take you anywhere from filling out surveys, get rich quick scams, pornography or anything really. Those obfuscated URLs they supposedly host the real videos on are deliberately done so for those who inadvertently or desperately follow through to them.