It’s April 8, 2024 and all anyone can talk about is today’s solar eclipse. News articles, social media posts, and viral photos and videos are spreading all over the internet.
Go over to YouTube and numerous solar eclipse live streams are racking up hundreds of thousands of concurrent views. However, some of the most popular livestreams aren’t what they seem.
A fake SpaceX solar eclipse YouTube livestream attempts to scam viewers.
Credit: Mashable screenshot
YouTube is being flooded with fake livestreams from imposter SpaceX channels featuring an AI-generated Elon Musk speech. The purpose of these fake livestreams? To steal cryptocurrency from unsuspecting targets.
Mashable first became aware of these streams thanks to a tip from the iOS developer and research group Mysk.
Here’s how the Musk eclipse crypto scam works
Each stream follows the same pattern. The stream plays a pre-recorded video of Elon Musk beside a SpaceX sign talking in front of a crowd on loop. However, the video features a fake AI-generated Musk voice telling viewers about a supposed cryptocurrency investment opportunity promising doubles on investments.
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Embedded over the video is a QR code which says “Eclipse of 2024 – Change your life” and a call-to-action to scan the code. The code takes users to a website where they can “invest” their crypto, whether it be Bitcoin or Ether or another popular cryptocurrency, right there on the site.
A scammer’s website impersonating SpaceX for their crypto scheme.
Credit: Mashable screenshot
Sometimes these live streams even feature a fake Elon Musk account posting in the live chat, informing the viewer of all the alleged investment they are receiving. The fake Musk spams links into the chat, supposedly showing users where they can invest too.
“2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of SpaceX” reads the title of one of the fake SpaceX livestreams. The stream at one point had over 210,000 concurrent views.
“Live: Solar Eclipse Spectacular 2024 of SpaceX” reads the title of another livestream, which has been attracting tens of thousands of views at any given time. At one point, that stream hit nearly 100,000 concurrent views.
Many of these streams have been live for hours and appear on YouTube channels that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Fake SpaceX and Elon Musk videos are nothing new on YouTube and their prevalence must mean that they are proving to be lucrative to scammers.
In fact, a few years ago, Steve Wozniak sued YouTube over the proliferation of similar videos featuring impersonations of the Apple co-founder in order to promote Bitcoin scams.
A fake SpaceX channel still shows some mentions of the old channel name before scammers took over.
Credit: Mashable screenshot
As previously mentioned, many of the channels these scammers use have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. However, those channels did not amass those subscriber numbers as fake SpaceX accounts.
The scammer changes the channel name to SpaceX in an attempt to appear as an official company account before going live with their fake scam livestream. However, because the name changes are so recent, clues still left on the page from YouTube show that the channel went by a completely different name prior to the switch.
Scammers have frequently used stolen channels or accounts purchased on social media black markets in order to pose at Musk and his space exploration company. Musk and SpaceX content tends to do well on YouTube, so these topics tend to attract scammers looking to target as large of an audience as possible.
As this article was being published, one of the livestreams was removed by YouTube, so it appears that the company is aware of the issue. However, many fake SpaceX solar eclipse livestreams remain.
It’s unclear just how many users have fallen for these streams, but it appears they have drawn in millions of viewers during the solar eclipse.