Lures for Money: Investigating Youtube Videos Promoting Money-Making Apps
Author: Noshaba Nasir (Noshaba is a former Research Associate at SIA LUMS and currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland Baltimore County)
Money-making mobile phones have accumulated massive downloads and users over the years and are very popular in countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Previous research work has shown the harms of these apps. These harms include violating user privacy or giving monetary incentives to the user for potentially malicious tasks such as installing malicious apps, sharing inappropriate content, or viewing videos to inflate the ratings of the videos. However, no work was done to look at how people come to know about these apps and are lured to install and use them. In our work we identified the role of Youtube videos in promoting these apps, then we studied the whole ecosystem of Youtube videos that promote these apps. We looked at the characteristics of these promoted apps and investigated the motivation of YouTubers who make these videos to promote money-making apps.
We started by collecting Youtube videos using common search terms related to money-making apps. Then we collected the apps that were promoted in these videos. In total, our dataset had 2.2K videos, belonging to 1.1K channels, that promote 1500 money-making apps promising real-world money to users. We analyzed the user engagement of the videos using views like/dislikes and comments. The popularity of apps was analyzed using rating comments and downloads. We also did a static analysis of the apps to look for the potential harm in the apps. To get insights into the motivation of the YouTubers who are generating the content to promote the apps we reached out to them and conducted interviews with four YouTubers.
Our findings showed that the content of the videos is very enticing. In many of the videos the Youtuber shows the payment proof, the thumbnail of the videos is also very catchy with promises of money making. These videos aggregated ≈90M views in total. We also found that the majority of the channels promoting these apps are from users in developing countries (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). The apps are also very popular and have accumulated 720M downloads. The static analysis of apps showed these apps to contain viruses and malicious content. The interviews with the Youtubers showed that although these channel owners spend some time testing the apps they promote, they themselves do not use these apps to earn money due to the low payouts. They instead make money through their YouTube channel, as well as through sponsorships from the app owners, thereby serving as advertising channels for these apps. In essence, they cash out the “earn easy money” idea by luring naive users to use harmful money-making apps.