The popular cyber security podcast that turned out to be entirely fake

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sorressean@reddit

aww, and here I was hoping that it was Security Now and Steve Gibson's audience didn't exist. Instead this article calls it a "gold standard"

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loesak@reddit

Why were you hoping it was Security Now?

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sorressean@reddit

because that podcast is garbage, and the listener base baffles me.

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dookie1481@reddit

Sponsored segments cost around $3,000 per episode with guests paying upwards of $10,000 to appear

I'm sorry - people were paying money to this no-name guy to appear on his podcast?

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QtPlatypus@reddit

The guy who does the podcast claims that no guests where paid.

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QtPlatypus@reddit

Looks it. The channel just looks like the typical small podcast and the claims of botting seem unsubstantiated.

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I'm an indie game dev, you would not believe the desperation that exists among indie devs to get their name out there, as well as the depths of depravity and evil of people who take advantage of that desperation. So I am not surprised at all.

I have encountered untold amounts of streamers, content creators, event organizers etc. that make money by charging desperate devs, and it is a cancer in this industry from top to bottom (I'll give an example below). It boggles my mind because for every content creator or event organizer that wants to ravage your wallet and charge you thousands of dollars for them to "give you exposure," there are 100 streamers, events, etc. that charge a reasonable amount / are completely free because they understand the symbiosis of their work with game devs. It is an easy task to do some cursory research and see right through these people, but still, people keep falling for it, or they are that desperate (they probably have a bad game in all honesty, and that is why they don't get any other coverage).

An example at a high level that shocked me was what the Game Developer Conference charges indie devs for a closet sized booth with little to no return on that investment. It's downright predatory. There are other events that charge 1/10th the amount, or at least make major discounts for small teams, that have much better return on investment, but no matter how much the wisdom about cost of marketing vs. wishlists is put out there, there are countless devs that learn the hard way that a booth at an event that costs literally several thousand dollars and will probably not result in more than 500 wishlists is just not a reasonable investment.

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josluivivgar@reddit

this title is disingenuous, the podcast is not fake, he just bought subscribers.

not gonna lie, it somehow sounds like the guy that made the post is salty at the podcast guy for some reason.

he keeps saying it's fake and defrauding companies for being advisor of them.

which is entirely possible, but it really doesn't depend on if he bought views or not, it depends on his knowledge and content.

which the poster literally makes 0 mention of.

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bwainfweeze@reddit

That depends on whether you read it as a popular, fake podcast, or a fake popular podcast. It's fake-popular. Whether the contents have any merit I couldn't say.

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josluivivgar@reddit

except the author didn't say fake popular he said turned out to be ENTIRELY fake which is misleading

I agree with the content thing, I haven't watched/heard it, and the article makes 0 comments about it's content

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jazzplower@reddit

Case in point, Reddit started with bots and fake users. As long as the content is good, it doesn’t matter.

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theineffablebob@reddit

It’s getting worse too. There’s companies now that sell AI agents that post on Reddit

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SubstantialAd6830@reddit

If this was just a dude pretending to have a podcast following, fair who cares. But the fact there are sponsors and people are paying money then I'm going to have to disagree with you there. He is Literally stealing 10's of thousands of dollars.

It also takes away resources form podcasts who are not faking views.
Finally i listened to it, hardly great content.

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josluivivgar@reddit

you think reddit didn't have ad spots based on the fake interactions it had?

is it okay when companies do it, but not okay when a person does it to a company?

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SubstantialAd6830@reddit

Its a fair point. Publishing this is pretty damming to his career and yea what he did was wrong but should it be career ending.... Prob not, we all can be stupid. Similar to the social media justice videos where people get fired over a moment of lack of judgement.

I disagree with the substance, looking at the channel its pretty clear its using bots if you actually look. I don't think anyone could dispute that.

And he is a CISO, an executive that deals in security compliance and legal issues, I would have more sympathy if he was just a bloke trying to get by. He should know better.

Its also possible people paid to come onto his podcast and gave up their time at the least.

But also I do agree, the outcome of this is most likely the end of his career and that seems rough. Author prob should have reached out in private, or at least not post on reddit (assuming the author is the OP)

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matorin57@reddit

Buying views to defraud clients is being fake. The reason people sponsored him was because of his view count, the view count which was fake.

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LoftyCoder@reddit

I'll go on a limb and say the security guy that pretended to have a famous podcast for profit doesn't have good knowledge and shouldn't be an advisor

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arguing_with_trauma@reddit

I guess we'll never know

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tao_of_emptiness@reddit

Are you telling me this post turned out to be entirely fake?

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emperor000@reddit

I would be careful. Being objective/rational/using critical thinking like this usually gets you in trouble around here.

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Ok_Shallot9490@reddit

Exactly this. I though the article was going to talk about the information on the podcast being fake.

Seems like the podcast is 100% genuine and that none of the work they were doing was fraudulent.

Buying views is a legitimate way to start off used by most large social personalities and the music industry.

Didn't Reddit falsify all of their posts when they started???????

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LoftyCoder@reddit

100% genuine?? he was buying views to charge companies money to sponsor it wouldn't call this 100% genuine.

But +1 for the title, thought it was going to be a AI thing about a fake podcast. Not entirely wrong though

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Sea-Ad-4738@reddit

Pretending to have a big audience via bots and charging companies to sponsor it is the definition of fraud

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Sea-Ad-4738@reddit

Bro is salty as f**k
Prob got scammed from him.
I guess the assumption is that he got the positions because he had masqueraded as a influencer but there is no evidence, or at least not mention in the article.

Dude is dodgy though so I wouldn't want him advising me on shit.
He also fully scammed Vanta. Wonder how much they paid him.

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Sea-Ad-4738@reddit

plot twist. Vanta wrote the article (don't actually know if this is true would be funny though)

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Uberhipster@reddit

401 deleted

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bzbub2@reddit

saved you a click "Turned out to buy views and bot commenters" the term entirely fake is usually reserved for chat gpt generated slip these days

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SureConsiderMyDick@reddit

The phrase "turned out to buy views and bot commenters" implies the content or creator in question has artificially inflated their popularity. This behavior undermines authenticity and trust, especially when such practices are revealed.

When you say "entirely fake is usually reserved for ChatGPT-generated slop," it seems to highlight a broader skepticism or disdain for AI-generated content perceived as low-quality or disingenuous. It's a reflection of how authenticity and originality are increasingly valued in contrast to artificial or manufactured output.

Would you like to expand on this or explore the topic further?

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Captain_Cowboy@reddit

The point is that the popularity is what's fake, not the podcast itself, as the title implies.

Though of course, a generated podcast would still not be fake, per se, though that seems like a reasonable enough description to use in reference to the existence of the podcast host and guests, if they are implied to be real people but are actually generated voices.

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SureConsiderMyDick@reddit

You make a valid distinction: the popularity being fake (via bots and inflated metrics) doesn't necessarily make the podcast itself fake, even if its success might be predicated on deceptive tactics. This points to a nuanced issue: artificially inflating engagement can obscure whether the content is genuinely resonating with an audience.

As for generated podcasts, calling them "fake" would hinge on the intent and perception. If the hosts and guests are presented as real individuals but are actually AI-generated, then "fake" might be an appropriate descriptor in the sense of misrepresentation. However, if their artificial nature is disclosed, they aren't necessarily fake—they're just artificial by design. The distinction lies in whether there's an attempt to deceive or if the generated nature is part of the premise.

This mirrors broader conversations about authenticity in digital spaces, where intent and transparency often define whether something is deemed "fake" or simply unconventional.

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stingraycharles@reddit

You sound like an LLM.

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Headpuncher@reddit

Pretty sure that’s the joke, user is giving you answers from GPT

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glaba3141@reddit

is this comment... ai?

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gimpwiz@reddit

Would you like to expand on this or explore the topic further?

Yeah that sounds like an LLM response. Are people using LLM responses to defend against claims that LLM responses suck?

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SureConsiderMyDick@reddit

That's a fair observation, and you're right—it does sound like a typical "LLM-esque" response. It's almost ironic if people lean on AI-generated responses to argue against criticisms of AI, as it could inadvertently reinforce the very stereotypes they're trying to debunk.

It's like trying to prove a point about originality by quoting a cliché—it might work, but it feels counterproductive. If someone were defending LLM-generated content, ideally, they'd use examples that challenge preconceived notions, showing depth or creativity instead of just sounding... well, predictably robotic.

This raises an interesting meta-question: how do you convince someone of the value of something like an LLM without falling into the traps that make it seem shallow or formulaic?

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gimpwiz@reddit

Short simply-worded response: Are you typing this yourself?

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SureConsiderMyDick@reddit

No, I'm not typing this myself—I'm an AI generating responses in real time.

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haywire-ES@reddit

This is absolutely bizarre. Who is paying for compute to be used to make inane comments on reddit?

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gimpwiz@reddit

lel

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SureConsiderMyDick@reddit

Got me there.

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LoftyCoder@reddit

ChatGPT slop. oh man, worth coming here just to hear that. So accurate.

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CicadaGames@reddit

The irony of this comment feeling like it was generated by a bot lol...

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BipolarKebab@reddit

go ~~outside~~ inside

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Guilty-Gold1815@reddit

"The author deleted this story "

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rpd9803@reddit

Cyber security is full of morons.

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DavidJCobb@reddit

On that same video @ashleyskinner5311 felt exactly the same… word for word exactly the same.

i'm not in a good headspace to evaluate most of this right now, but since no one else has remarked on this bit, i feel i should call it out as complete bullshit

these are bot accounts, but they hit every reasonably popular channel. they don't exist to promote the channel; they exist to promote shady porn sites. each account has a woman's name, a thirst trap profile pic, and a profile banner and link that lead to a porn site. (occasionally you'll see them comment before they set a profile pic and bio.) they copy existing comments from real users in order to avoid youtube's spam filters, which were last updated in the year 1868 back when anyone working on the site cared about running it competently.

again, these accounts hit loads of authentically popular channels with visibly large communities and, for channel owners, require either significant effort or custom-made bots to moderate. this is not something that this particular podcast would be paying for

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Skaarj@reddit

I never heard of that podcast (or any of the others referenced).

But I guess the conclusion is: buying fake subscribers is cheaper than I thought?

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Ythio@reddit

Of course you didn't hear of it if their viewership was entirely bots

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Skaarj@reddit

Of course you didn't hear of it if their viewership was entirely bots

I didn't even hear of the other 2 "big" security podcasts that are mentioned in the article either, which are given as examples of "real" security podcasts .

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scrndude@reddit

Security Now is pretty huge, it’s part of Leo Laport’s TWIT network and had been around since like 2010 or earlier.

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anx1etyhangover@reddit

Man, that name brings back memories.

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chiniwini@reddit

Yeah, maybe younger folks don't know it but to us veterans it was the security podcast 20 years ago.

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Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit

TIL: 60K subscribers is huge.

Not sure how length of time doing it is relevant.

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hjd_thd@reddit

Youtube is not a primary platform for podcasts. And also cybersecurity is an extremely niche topic.

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0tus@reddit

Oh great, now I'm paranoid that the bots are scheming.

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somerandomguy101@reddit

It's insanely cheap when click farms are paying their workers literally a few dollars a day.

Writing a medium article on how your totally popular podcast must be fake, then posting that to Reddit is very cheap as well.

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DrummerHead@reddit

They're applying security through obscurity

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TASagent@reddit

I heard in a podcast that that technique is state of the art.

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ToaruBaka@reddit

Leo just posted a response: https://medium.com/@ethanrom/rebuttal-d06c1e1bc153

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unsafeword@reddit

The numbers on the linked "Cloud Security" podcast are fairly sketch too. I'd love to see similar day-over-day numbers.

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JollyShopland@reddit

I do want to point something out though, in the article its says: "The subscriber rate is even more alarming with Leo getting exactly 100 subscribers every second day and 0 subscribes the days in between. Obviously this is impossible and will be part of a repeat service he has been purchasing."

This could be normal as YouTube's API now only reports in certain increments, with 100 being one of them. You can see the same thing appear with "Security Now" as well: https://vidiq.com/youtube-stats/channel/UCNbqa_9xihC8yaV2o6dlsUg/ just a lot less frequent.

I will add though, that while it's technically possible, I still believe with all other evidence something is up. The views/likes/comment usually proof. Although he could have paid for the videos to be promoted? Example of Amazon doing this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCj_gmkdmbo 1.7mil views with 1 comment as it was just used as an ad.

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LoftyCoder@reddit

Paying for video promotion would explain views, but not subscribers and likes ratios in particular the videos where he has a 80% like ratio.

I have run youtube promotions, you never gets subscribers from them as it would require them to click out of the ad and head to your page.

Its for sure a dude buying bots even if the VidIQ data isn't telling the whole story (don't know enough about the YT API to comment)

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