A Scambaiter No More

 I'm not going to name any names, because I don't want to give them any acknowledgement other than what I'm going to write here in my little corner of the Internet, but I want to get something off my chest in regards to a YouTuber I have followed for over five years.

Every now and again, his content covers a topic I passionately follow: scambaiting. The notion behind such a thing is for YouTubers to hassle and disrupt scammers from their 'jobs' as a way to, well disrupt them from their jobs but to also educate the YouTuber's audience.

That's my opinion on the concept, anyway.

This YouTuber posted a new video a couple of days ago and shared his email exchanges with a scammer trying to get Steam cards from their potential victims. Somewhere along the line, the scambaiter lost access to his email account, reconnected contact with the scammer and more or less retrieved the thread of correspondence with the scammer.

The scambaiter ended up rewarding the scammer with a gift card.

I don't give a damn whether it was seen as a 'thank you'. That's unethical. Sure, there is no written code to scambaiting, but he went against the entire notion of scambaiting by giving the con artist what they wanted.

The YouTuber gave some excuse for doing so, even tried to humanise the person in a way. Nah, I'm not going to accept an alleged scambaiter rewarding a scammer in any way. 

If his audience thinks that's okay, I don't want to be part of his audience. And I no longer am. I've unsubscribed from the channel and asked YouTube not to recommend any of his video's again.

Scambaiting should ALWAYS be about the victim and, most importantly, potential victims. When you cross a line by rewarding the scammer, you're no longer a baiter.

You're part of the problem.