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Online content creators spend significant time and effort building their user base through a long, often arduous process, which requires finding the right niche'' to cater to. So, what incentive is there for an established content creator known for cat memes to completely reinvent their page channel and start promoting cryptocurrency services or cover electoral news events? And, if they do, do their existing subscribers not notice? We explore this problem of \textit{repurposed channels}, whereby a channel changes its identity and contents. We first characterize a market for second-hand'' social media accounts, which recorded sales exceeding USD~1M during our 6-month observation period. By observing YouTube channels (re)sold over these 6~months, we find that a substantial number (37%) are used to disseminate potentially harmful content, often without facing any penalty. Even more surprisingly, these channels seem to gain rather than lose subscribers. To estimate the prevalence of channel repurposing ``in the wild,'' we also collect two snapshots of 1.4M quasi-randomly sampled YouTube accounts. In a 3-month period, we estimate that $\sim$0.25% channels -- collectively holding $\sim$44M subscribers -- were repurposed. We confirm that these repurposed channels share several characteristics with sold channels -- mainly, the fact that they had a significantly high presence of potentially problematic content. Across repurposed channels, we find channels that became disinformation channels, as well as channels that link to web pages with financial scams. We reason that abusing the residual trust placed on these channels is advantageous to financially- and ideologically-motivated adversaries. This phenomenon is not exclusive to YouTube and we posit that the market for cultivating organic audiences is set to grow, particularly if it remains unchallenged by mitigations, technical or otherwise.

 

Reddit.

Dilemma highlights emerging problems as AI replaces human moderators, tech expert says

 

Extreme price swings in wholesale electricity markets and growing concerns around grid instability are opening up new markets for energy storage. Batteries are now a critical solution to drive value for both capital and consumers.

 

A string of hashtags has appeared on social media platforms using disinformation and promoting conspiracy theories about climate change. This analysis of interaction with these hashtags shows that they were mainly promoted by accounts linked to oil interests in Gulf countries. It also showed that this interaction coincided with international and regional events related to the climate issues, and was at odds with the stated positions of these countries, which claim to abide by international climate agreements.

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