I used to do videos on video spam on Youtube. But after one of my videos got a community strike for spam - while the spammer's channels were not taken down, I gave up on reporting on this on Youtube, and will hopefully get more traction off youtube. I'm doing this to point out the scope of the problem, and how much trash is on Youtube that they could have gotten off easily with better tools.

First case is a Spanish language lookbook video from the people behind the Streetstyle_channel on Instagram and StreetStyle on Youtube. I don't see this video on there at the moment, which could present a problem in reporting copyright infringement, unless they still have it somewhere on Youtube.

If you're here because your videos were stolen by the same spammer, keep reading, because I'll tell you how to deal with it.

The spammer uploaded the video and included their description, but substituted any links for his own monetized link (Aliexpress affiliate program). I used GetlinkInfo to reveal the redirects in the link, click here to see affiliate links redirect screengrab.

Here's the list of user ID's and user names and the number of videos currently reported by Youtube for each users that uploaded this video. Same spammer for each of these, with lots of other stolen videos monetized (probably) similarly, 45 cchannels!

How to report your stolen videos

Do NOT try to message spammers who upload your videos. It's a numbers game, and it's not personal. They usually have more than ten thousand videos and probably thousands of channels. To get a channel removed from Youtube, three successful copyright claims are needed. And that gets difficult if it demands three creators to file for each channel. I have seen that spammers keep using the same videos over and over, but stop once they figure out the creator is not lazy and will keep reporting. At some time the cost becomes too high, and they stop using those videos. So here's how you do it. Check Derral Eves excellent video on submitting a report. The layout keeps changing, so the first part goes like this instead of what he said:

How to find your videos that were stolen:

Search for aliexpress ebay haul and one or more keywords that describe your video, then sort by date if this happened very recently. There might be lots of videos to sort through to find yours. If the videos have been up for longer, it's possible you can find your videos by searching for your Instagram handle or anything else you've got in your descriptions. Go to google and videos and search there. To sort out your own videos, you can try including bit.ly or whatever redirect domain was used by the particular spammer who stole your video.

Youtube could remove all these easily, once one is reported

But Youtube could remove ALL these channels easily, by searching for that particular video like I did (vuitton aliexpress ebay) or by removing all channels where that particular bit.ly link appears in many videos.

How search results sorted by date look right now:



This is one of the channels that uploaded that video. Notice how many creators are found in those videos?