YouTubers paid to promote cheating in school?
The BBC has been investigating a questionable writing service, website EduBirdie.com, located in Ukraine, revealing that more than 1,400 videos are promoting the company on YouTube.
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As of May 5, 2018, BBC.com reported that more than 250 channels could be found advertising EduBirdie. In a statement given to BBC, YouTube said:
"YouTube creators may include paid endorsements as part of their content only if the product or service they are endorsing complies with our advertising policies. We do not allow ads for essay writing and so paid promotions of these services will be removed when we discover them. We will be working with creators going forward so they better understand that in video promotions must not promote dishonest activity."
That policy can be found here in YouTube's help section under Ad Policies, then under Restricted Products.
A company called Boosta, which has serval online essay writing services and runs EduBirdie, says that they cannot be held responsible for what the stars say on their channels. In a statement given to the BBC, they say, "We give influencers total freedom on how they prefer to present the EduBirdie platform to their audience in a way they feel would be most relevant to their viewers. We do admit that many tend to copy and paste each others’ shout-outs with a focus on 'get someone to do your homework for you', but this is their creative choice.”
Some creators on the YouTube, such as Adam Saleh, who had promoted the service, have taken down the videos before the company went through and did it themselves. The actual number of videos that YouTube themselves have taken down is unclear, however, the number is said to be in the hundreds.
EduBirdie is a website, which allows trained writers to write academic essays; these can be submitted as if the customer/student has written the essay. Services such as these are legal, however, YouTube as a company does not allow promotions of these services. Test-taking services, in which a person takes a test for another person, is also not allowed to be promoted on the site as noted in the guidelines.
Even though services like these are against the guidelines, some of the creators on the site were taken back by these actions. The owner of the channel Aldosworldtv, has lost 30 videos due to the YouTube purge. He took to social media to voice his opinions about the subject.
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