BitBoy’s Troubles with YouTube, Ethereum Has a New “Safety Tip” Page

BitBoy's woes is ironically What Crypto aims to Resolve

The circus around BitBoy’s YouTube channel dominated crypto headlines last week.

Everyone knows YouTube has had its guns on cryptocurrencies for a while. The parent company announced strict measures at the height of ICOs and the scams that came with a bang in 2018. Those rules prevented crypto companies from advertising using their channels.

They said it was for the best of the community, preventing gunslinging—which they said ended up disastrously in the Wild-West that crypto is.

And it may have helped a lot—judging from the number of dead projects that couldn’t survive the chilly winter of 2018. Additionally, later reports indicated that most of them were vaporware, scams.

Rules have since been relaxed, with only a few regulated cryptocurrency exchanges allowed to advertise.

YouTube, however, remains a complex battling ground between the crypto community and the centralized megalith.

There are regular complaints of them haphazardly banning crypto-dedicated channels without notice. Many of those affected usually air their complaints on Twitter, claiming how YouTube “unfairly” destroyed their livelihood, yet they weren’t on a shilling mission.

Often, they receive sympathy.

So, it wasn’t something out of the ordinary when BitBoy took the same route to announce to the wider cryptosphere that YouTube had taken out his channel with over 1.1 million subscribers—phew.

Of course, this is BitBoy’s work spanning several years.

Yet, this news had mixed reception.

BitBoy, his critics maintain, is a “frustrating” shiller and allegedly a scammer (a harsh description). He, they add, is an expert clickbaiter, misleading and boxing newbies to unethically line his pockets.

Indeed, browsing this channel reveals that his live streams are well attended with interesting discourses on various, often peripheral, projects. These are unicorns, he would claim, and “must-buys” since they are hidden gems that can easily net 100X, a decent ROI.

He has, nonetheless, managed to build a big following.

BitBoy may have his weakness, but this is not to say his content is trash. They could be clickbait—true, shilling—yeah, him reportedly not walking what he preaches, but overall, his channel continues to introduce many newbies to gems, stirring their interest in cryptocurrencies.

This is one reason to cut him some slack.

Yet, from a different perspective, BitBoy isn’t violating any of YouTube community rules whenever he shills and promotes projects. Plus, YouTube is an arm of one of the largest data collecting companies in the world. BitBoy has millions of followers across the globe, some of whom invest in cryptocurrencies while others trade.

By this virtue alone, he has managed to be reinstated despite boos.

Away from BitBoy, isn’t it just funny how the cryptocurrency community is fixated on a centralized company doing what they can do without consulting anyone? YouTube rules are flexible. They can be changed to suit their money-minting interests at any point of time.

Yet, YouTube banning a dedicated crypto channel isn’t a laughing matter. Instead, it should be a trigger to promote decentralized options since crypto, after all, rides on the premise of decentralization. The over-reliance on centralized entities to promote a power diffusing, liberating solution only reinforces centralized corporations to “nip the bud” by restricting information dissemination. It is crypto’s Achilles’ heel.

As such, it won’t matter if you like BitBoy or not; instead, the primary concern here is censorship. As aforementioned, YouTube rules are evolving and flexible to mostly suit their interests. How, then, the near future will define “shilling” is what makes upcoming “influencers” split their hair. 

Think of the millions of BTC/ETH/all-round crypto channels that might be taken down, without initial strikes or warnings, for reportedly misleading viewers (potential investors) acting on their shilling? 

This crackdown, in my view, will only stop once YouTube perhaps breaks from Google and becomes an independent entity, dissolves its corporate structure—like ShapeShift—and releases its token, say, YouTube tokens to “decentralize.” Only then will rules change and “shilling” be legalized.

Only that YouTube won’t break away anytime in the near future.

So, for now, due diligence is the immediate shield to stand on firm ground and not sink. Towards that end, Ethereum, a few hours after BitBoy’s banning (and later unbanning), published a “Safety Tip” page. Under the Social Media and Community Platforms section, they note that YouTube scams are abundant (with a typo—any pun intended?) and come in various forms.

Obviously, developers are aware of scams, sometimes proliferated by the so-called influencers on YouTube.

Problem is, their hands are tied. Your duty, under these extra-ordinary circumstances, would be to play safe!