Freethinker has fallen to the dark side (not a joke)

[SeanBrockest]

Just 2 days ago i loved freethinker and all his channels. today i have to expose him as a spammer, and coverup artist. I hope you take this seriously. This is the kind of shit i expect from creationist channels. we cant allow it in our community.

A couple of days ago i got a friend invite to Freethinkers channel. I'd been subscribed for a long time so i didn't think much of it. When i went to the channel, i found it full of "thanks for the invite comments". i didn't say anything then, as i had a lot of respect for him, and thought he might be just inviting people who comment, which is cool.

Next day i got another invite to one of his channels i'd never commented on, then a third. Every single channel of his is filled with "Thanks for the friend invite" comments. He's running a spam bot.

I posted a comment on 2 of his channels warning him to stop spamming. Within minutes my comments were gone, and i've been blocked from every single one of his channels, even ones i hadn't yet been spammed with.

Although i hate to do this, I'd like to ask that you help me expose this bullshit.

If you don't believe me, go to one of his channels and say something about friend invite spam, see how fast you get blocked.

Sean

 

[Aught3]

Link? I don't know this person.

 

[SeanBrockest]

Sorry, forgot to add the links

A lot of youtubers owe their success to this guy, so i expect some mixed feelings on my allegations, but i am quite serious

"¢ http://www.youtube.com/SagansCosmos
"¢ http://www.youtube.com/Best0fScience
"¢ http://www.youtube.com/FFreeThinker

Oddly enough, i still love his channels, and the thing i'm most angry about is that by blocking me, he's deleted my subscriptions, so now i wont be notified when he posts a new video.

Ffreethinker has done a lot of good for people, and i dont think he's entirely a bad guy, but what he's doing right now isn't right.

 

[AndromedasWake]

On investigating the channel comments, I'm not convinced they're generated robotically, and appear to be genuine from real channels. The issue is simply that he's sending a lot of invites, and may be using software to do it. I don't really see the problem with it though, if having a lot of youtube friends is important to him. I accept all friend invites but I've only ever sent a few, because I don't see much value in the friends system. Apparently it allows you to quickly share videos with these people, but I've tried and it only sends to 100 at a time - so it'd still take me ages to do it semi-manually to groups of 100!

Honestly, I don't have much trouble with FFreeThinker sending auto-invites, it's not like falsely buffing your subscriber count or anything. FFreeThinker doesn't make any videos, and doesn't take credit for any videos he posts, so I doubt he's in it for views. Sure he gets a lot of views, but it's meaningless if not on his own content. He's done a lot of youtubers a good service (although I confess he supports quite a few that I don't agree with).

 

[SeanBrockest]

agreed, but he's also banning people (i doubt i'm the only one) for pointing out that he's using an invite bot. That's where my problem lies, and the reason this post is in the "Fighting Censorship" forum.

 

[AndromedasWake]

Well, obviously I don't agree with that sort of behaviour. The only people I've ever blocked are just complete randoms who spam me their videos. If this has happened to a lot of people, I'd suggest getting them together to mirror a video on the subject politely asking FFreeThinker to explain, or better yet cease his blocking.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

I would be extremely careful engaging in this sort of thing.
Firstly it seems extremely unusual for a user who never cared about the LOR creates an account and the very first thing he does is to throw accusations like that, especially because FFreeThinker is a non issue in this boards. Secondly I never noticed him spam, or leaving absurd amounts of comments (if he leaves any comments at all), and your claims come a bit unsubstantiated. I'm not saying that you don't have legitimate concerns or that this isn't in fact happening, but you can understand why I personally don't feel inclined into taking this seriously.
Besides I don't really care that much about FFreeThinker to be honest, I don't know who he is, he never made any content of its own that I am aware of, and if he is being annoying you can simply block him and you can get all of his content somewhere else. This does not constitute an impediment on your free speech, and having said that this is more like a easy fixable Youtube issue rather than an important topic which may require the contribution of the LOR users.

 

[SeanBrockest]

Firstly it seems extremely unusual for a user who never cared about the LOR creates an account and the very first thing he does is to throw accusations like that

Because i made my account today, I never cared before today? I've just had nothing to contribute, which made me a reader, something i didn't need an account for

Secondly I never noticed him spam

Well if YOU never noticed it, i guess it doesn't matter.

and your claims come a bit unsubstantiated.

What kind of evidence would you like?

but you can understand why I personally don't feel inclined into taking this seriously. Besides I don't really care that much about FFreeThinker to be honest

Then why question my honor and integrity if your going to summarize with "i really don't care". I didn't ask for you to run over and demand an apology for me or anything, I'm just reporting that the kind of tactics we would expect from creationists and those who restrict free speech are being adopted by "respected" members of the youtube community.

 

[Eidolon]

From what I understand, FFreethinker is simply a promoter of other users who produce videos taking on various subjects. He/she simply mirrors videos from other users and allows them to be seen by a wider audience that the original poster may not have gained for whatever reason. Basically, FFreethinker's actions are simply good advertising for various users and if he is using a bot to add friends, its just a way to further promote videos without having to engage in alot of clicky work.

Im subscribed to FFreethinker, and I have had the chance to watch alot of really good videos that I would normally have never found. Granted, he picks and chooses the videos he thinks are relevant or important so you are seeing what his personal bias is recommending, but all in all, most of what he mirrors is of good quality, and while I may not agree or like some of the videos he promotes, I don't have to watch them. If I see a video that I really like and want to learn more, he always provides links to the original producer and I can then subscribe to them and watch the rest of the videos in their repertoire.

So, even if he is using a bot to promote, its not aggressive, and its giving lesser known users much needed views and promotion. Bots are just a way to avoid tendon strain by having to add everyone manually.