A YouTuber was shocked that an account impersonating him had more followers. It highlights a big problem with social media.

• A tech influencer was shocked when he saw a fake account using his content was more popular than him.
• Carter Smith said he'd noticed the account some time ago, and wanted to check in on it.
• He saw the account impersonating him had around 20,000 more YouTube subscribers.

A YouTuber was shocked when he saw that a fake account stealing his content was more popular than him.

Carter Smith, 18, grew a following with his content about PC building. He said in a recent TikTok that he'd noticed the account on YouTube some time ago, and wanted to check in on it to see how it was doing.

"Remember that YouTube account that was stealing all of my videos?" he said in the video, posted on December 30, 2023. "I thought this morning, 'Hey, I wonder how that account is doing nowadays?'"

Smith brought up the YouTube channel, called@carterpcs, and saw it had more than 250,000 subscribers.

Smith's real YouTube channel, @actuallycarterpcs, had around 20,000 fewer at the time.

"He has a plaque with my name on it," Smith said, referring to the badges YouTube hands out to creators when they hit certain subscriber milestones like 250,000, 500,000, and one million.

"He's making like, at least 3 grand, 4 grand a month off me. I'm putting food on his table."

Smith said to make matters worse, he had contacted the owner of the fake account and told them he would sue them. But they didn't seem to care and stopped replying to him.

"He won," Smith said. "He's better than me, man."

YouTube did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Smith's situation is one that many content creators go through if they have a considerable following.

Fake accounts spring up constantly, re-uploading popular viral videos, and reaping the rewards.

Nicole Ashley, for example, who has over a million followers, posted a TikTok last month saying fans had been receiving messages from multiple fake accounts, asking for money, and telling them to join a "Telegram group."

Ashley said she would never message fans out of nowhere, and wouldn't beg them to buy things from her.

"Please help me report these accounts for fraud and scam you guys, thank you," she said.

Sometimes platforms act quickly and take down accounts that have been reported. But other times fake accounts can remain live for a long time, with creators getting more and more frustrated with a lack of action.

Some creators also find themselves the victims of cruel trolling when people steal their content.

A plus-size influencer called Mary, who goes by the name BoBerryVIP on her social media, was targeted in May last year by an impersonator who re-posted her videos with inflammatory captions, MailOnline reported.

In one, she was walking down a plane aisle. In the original video, Mary was simply giving tips on how to make traveling easier while plus-size. But in the re-upload, the caption was more divisive.

"Honestly it's discrimination that they can't build wider aisles in airplanes 2023," the copycat wrote.

By the time Mary addressed the video, it was too late — some news outlets including The Sun and New York Post ran with the fake video, writing articles about her, and including several comments from viewers about her size.