Youtube stars being paid to promote essay cheat service

ACADEMICS labelled “supersmart nerds” are being paid on Youtube to help students cheat by buying pre-written essays, an investigation has revealed.

Popular Youtube stars are making money from publicising the service on Ukraine-based channel Edubirdie, which is responsible for more than 1,400 videos with a total of more than 700million views. The videos contain adverts promoting the controversial practice, according to a BBC probe.

The service gives students from around the globe the option of buying essays as opposed to completing the work themselves. While the act of writing a piece of work is not illegal in itself, the penalties for students can be severe.

Sam Gyimah, Universities Minister for England, told the BBC: “It’s clearly wrong because it is enabling and normalising cheating, potentially on an industrial scale.”

Depending on the popularity of the channels endorsing the service, the people running them can make hundreds of pounds for each advert, according to the BBC. Among them have been stars such as Adam Saleh and British gamer JMX, who have four million and two and a half million subscribers respectively.

A 12-year-old girl who has 200,000 followers was also promoting the service, but all three took their videos which contained the adverts down after the BBC contacted them.

Youtube has said it would help creators understand they cannot promote dishonest behaviour, but Mr Gyimah said those involved should be “called out” for abusing their power as social influencers and said the video sharing platform “has a huge responsibility”.

He told the BBC: “This is something that is corrosive to education and I think Youtube has got to step up to the plate and exercise some responsibility here.”

Around 30 of the channels were in Britain and Ireland.

Shakira Martin, the President of the National Union of Students, said: “I think it’s totally disgusting the fact that these type of organisations are exploiting vulnerable young people through getting them to promote something that isn’t good; isn’t ethical.”

In a statement Edubirdie said: “We cannot be held responsible for what social influencers say on their channels.”