What are “pirate obituaries”, or How to make money on YouTube from someone else’s grief

“Pirate obituaries” are being widely distributed on YouTube. These are videos in which a person reads information about a person’s death from newspaper advertisements or posts in special social network groups. This is done for the sake of monetization - the authors strive to get as many views as possible. They also ask for donations and place advertisements in the description of the videos.

Death announcement videos, or “pirate obituaries,” have been posted on YouTube for years. But lately there have been especially many of them. No one really tries hard when creating this kind of content. There is not always a person’s face in the frame - sometimes a voice just sounds against the background of a portrait in a mourning frame or a picture with a candle. However, sometimes the creators of the obituary still try and make a slide show with photographs of the deceased taken from social networks.

Very few users are subscribed to blogs publishing “pirate obituaries”. It is rare when their number reaches even 1.5-2 thousand. Despite this, some people still manage to meet the terms of the YouTube Partner Program. Such lucky people make money from advertising.

But the main source of income for such “bloggers” is manipulation of the feelings of viewers. Simply put, they seek pity and ask for money, posing as relatives or friends of the deceased. It seems that such figures cannot have a normal income. But this is not so, and among them there are quite successful people. For example, a Pakistani blogger with the nickname Quddos Taunsvi once admitted in an interview that “obituaries” bring him several thousand dollars every month.

In the description of the video, bloggers post advertisements for various products from Amazon. It also lists keywords to help you find the video. Usually it is something related to death and grief: "death", cause of death", "die", "RIP". This is just a low-quality mass product, focused on the number of views. The authors do not show the slightest regret and cynically alternate obituaries with funny videos from the lives of animals or pranks.

Of course, the relatives of the deceased, having come across a “pirate obituary”, are trying to get it removed. Sometimes it even goes to court. In 2019, a group of relatives and friends mentioned in the videos managed to sue bloggers from Canada who created a channel with obituaries. They exacted 20 million dollars (1.9 billion rubles) from them as compensation for moral damage.

But such a triumph of justice is extremely rare. The fact is that publishing “pirate obituaries” does not violate the law. After all, this is not the propaganda of pedophilia, which has been fought against for so long on Youtube. Proving fraud in this case is very difficult. Experts believe that with the development of neural networks there will be even more such videos. Artificial intelligence can independently generate videos and read text about the deceased.