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Developer Builds Tool That Scrapes YouTube Comments, Uses AI to Predict Where Users Live

The developer claims the tool is for cops, but anyone can sign up and use it for targeted harassment.
Developer Builds Tool That Scrapes YouTube Comments, Uses AI to Predict Where Users Live
Photo by Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

If you’ve left a comment on a YouTube video, a new website claims it might be able to find every comment you’ve ever left on any video you’ve ever watched. Then an AI can build a profile of the commenter and guess where you live, what languages you speak, and what your politics might be.

The service is called YouTube-Tools and is just the latest in a suite of web-based tools that started life as a site to investigate League of Legends usernames. Now it uses a modified large language model created by the company Mistral to generate a background report on YouTube commenters based on their conversations. Its developer claims it's meant to be used by the cops, but anyone can sign up. It costs about $20 a month to use and all you need to get started is a credit card and an email address.

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