History Youtube has a James Somerton problem

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thanks for all the comments, I'm glad this video has been received so positively. I hope it generates more interest in fact checking and proper research. I have added here a description of some errors in my video, as well as an excellent and detailed observation made by a commenter. ____________________ Corvinuswargaming1444: your video speaks to a larger problem with how the public perceives how historical research is done. History KZbin makes this even worse, as the medium is further removed from secondary books and articles it ought to be created from. The public is unaware that most history comes from someone, somewhere engaging with the primary sources in whatever form they take. All too often I see an assumption that history just exists and is out there independent of the work of scholars to uncover it. I thought for a while I could make videos about subjects I research while doing my PhD, but I have come to see that making good videos is in itself time consuming. In my case, there is simply no way for me to do the full time work of translating sources, getting manuscripts and archival documents, looking at the literature, and then spending hours assembling that into a slick video. History KZbin is shockingly ignorant from what I have seen of this process, or worse thinks that the time consuming but rewarding process of doing primary research is something that can be done as a hobby while pursuing another career. I would prefer if history KZbinrs pivoted to interviewing scholars rather than dubiously sourced essays. That is not to say scholars are infallible, obviously, but there is more accountability and genuine expertise. ____________________ Errata: 1. Yes, I mispronounced ChatGPT as "ChatGTP". I didn't finish the audio until nearly 1am after a long day at work, so I wasn't very conscious at the time. 2. Yes, Dr Sarah Eaton's image at 10:49 gives the impression she thinks copying open sourced code without attribution is not plagiarism. I think it might be an issue of her not knowing exactly what "open source" means. She might mean it's code which has been generated through the collaborative efforts of public individuals who have all contributed to it over time and it consequently isn't the product of any one individual. I find many people have this kind of definition of "open source". However the formal article she wrote, to which she links in the article I cited here, provides a much more robust explanation of plagiarism with regard to computer code, saying "plagiarism can include misrepresenting various kinds of work as one’s own, including data, computer code", placing the emphasis where it should be, on the misrepresentation of authorship. 3. Was Internet Historian identified as a serial plagiarist? I said he was, and a commenter down below objected to that since only one video was called out for plagiarism. I explained my reasoning thus, but I'm willing to take the hit on this: * "I'm counting instances of plagiarism rather than individual works. When someone plagiarizes a dozen parts of someone else's work, that's a dozen cases of plagiarism." In future I'll be making videos on how to identify different types of sources, understanding the hierarchy of sources, the importance of validating sources used by someone else, and what to do when someone confronts you with a huge wall of sources which you have no hope of checking in any reasonable amount of time.

[@kriegenjoyer6913]

I'm sad man, i loved James, having a gay Creator to look up to is amazing but god damn he's a pos

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@kriegenjoyer6913 it's very sad, but hopefully now more gay creators will be sought out and noticed as a fortunate byproduct.

[@jackmackenzie6721]

@@kriegenjoyer6913Check out Matt Baum, he’s brilliant.

[@AimeeColeman]

@LuchoLavalle Having an obvious and repeated mistake like "ChatGTP" for people to comment on is exactly the way you conform with the algorithm 😂

[@veritasetcaritas]

@LuchoLavalle that is extremely generous, thank you. You can contact me through my Discord server, or through the email address in my main channel description. discord.gg/bCrPHAgG3N

[@familyguyfreemoviedownload8314]

i like how “james somerton” is universally understood as a synonym for plagiarism now. what a legacy to leave

[@java4653]

Note which of those now discussing the hBomb shift their approach or themselves pretend they did some thinking & scholarship, as in this video's title.

[@Skelath]

Don't think he's going to have a very merry christmas.

[@VoltaDoMar]

One four hour video, and a ripple effect that will change the platform

[@Zeitgeist6]

@@VoltaDoMar I doubt it, because humankind is flawed in general.

[@hannonbendall5536]

I think it was just good clickbate

[@sookendestroy1]

We recently learned TIK History hadn't been plagiarizing but rather citing sources and then declaring the exact opposite of the sources to push their own ideology as historically objectively correct

[@AtlantiansGaming]

He regularly cites sources with different views than his own. Just because you cite someone who disagrees with you doesn’t mean much. Can you give a specific example?

[@PoolNoodleGundam]

​​​@@AtlantiansGaming you misunderstand. He doesn't just 'cite sources that disagree with him', he cites sources that contradict him and claims they back up his insane claims. He is citing materials that say "x", but stating they say "y". Fredda just did a video on how and where he does this.

[@lucasrodillo6739]

I stopped watching TIK about two years ago because he kept pushing his weird ideology into topics I actually understood and could see his failings, revealing a glaring flaw. It was good, as it pushed me away from the "History = WWII" mindset

[@andreavoigtlander1087]

Just because he has a different opinion then you doesnt mean hes wrong.

[@steelemimbs877]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3y6nIVmlKyaiKssi=G_puwlzYFJrmMsIp For those that are curious, the Fedda video in question.

[@mojavefry2617]

As a person who is an actual historian, I always have had grievances with the history side of KZbin and how often things that had been debunked years ago keep getting circulated around due to plagiarism and poor research.

[@wilson1799]

Yeah, I am a historian and do not watch history KZbin. The amount of KZbin “historians” that still think Bushido was real, for example, makes me very sad lol

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@wilson1799 and you know who is still peddling that myth? Mark Felton, who markets himself as a historian. That reminds me, I really need to get back to that series I was making on it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/r6a1iGSwoKqEptk

[@meeomelovescookiesandhisto459]

Same (still in grad school but in the ranks of history youtube I'm qualified enough I guess), I've basically stopped engaging with history youtube. Friends who watch history content keep trying to talk to me about stuff that I'm then having to debunk, which is so frustrating. I'd much rather have friends tell me about 'legitimate' research phrased for a non-historian audience, and then be able to get excited with them about it or learn something myself. It's sad because there is a lot to criticize about academia (one of my profs is being investigated for plagiarism right now, whoops) and I'm passionate about pop science/science comms. I've even thought about trying to translate my research into videos myself. But youtube as a platform just doesn't seem to work well, and I'm already not making money in my academic career so putting in a ton of work for no views seems like a really bad idea when I don't want youtube to be my main gig. Sorry for this long reply, your comment resonated with me emotionally. Hope your work goes well!

[@jasonports8517]

I’d love to see more academic research translated to popular media, I do think it poses some extra challenges but should be done. What field do you research?

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@meeomelovescookiesandhisto459 thanks for such a heartfelt reply! I know how you feel. Even in my minor position I have people contacting me regularly with requests to "debunk this". There's so much misinformation and disinformation out there it can seem overwhelming. I do sympathize in particular with your comments on KZbin as a platform. I think only TikTok is worse. I also really agree with your comments on academia. I tire of people trying to tell me "academia is just a popularity contest" or "peer review is permanently broken". I have been in academia, and despite all its numerous flaws it works incredibly well for what it is, especially internationally and across language barriers. Taking a global perspective, international academia is one of the most amazing achievements in human history.

[@EmperorTigerstar]

Almost got a heart attack at 06:17 but I'm relieved I'm a recommended channel. XD

[@veritasetcaritas]

Nah you're good mate!

[@premodernist_history]

lol I wasn't watching closely and didn't notice that was a video of yours. That's funny.

[@LadyTylerBioRodriguez]

Your a great content maker, always passionate.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@LadyTylerBioRodriguez he's a champ.

[@thenamesianna]

Lol

[@greedtheron8362]

As bad as plagiarism is, ToddintheShadow's video on James Somerton is so much worse. He calls out the only time the channel doesn't seem to be plagiarizing is when it's making stuff up, saying unverifiable facts, or straight up lying. Even got some of the behind-the-scenes discord talk about how some of the sources were 'just kinda based off vibes'. I'll take a hundred low effort plagiarists before a single person that just doesn't care what the truth is, or is willingly wanting to twist it for their agenda.

[@Northex23]

It is pretty funny that James' only original content is misogyny

[@vexaris1890]

And a possible n@zi fetish. @@Northex23

[@CatFish107]

​@Northex23 well, there also seem to be a few lines thirsting for nazis, and a shameful distaste of snuggling a hunk under a warm coat.

[@Gloomdrake]

⁠​⁠@@CatFish107a distaste made even weirder by the fact that, no those Soviet hunks WEREN’T hiding their bulk under warm coats, they were flaunting

[@ChucksSEADnDEAD]

​@HadadatPerez He argued that the origin of American interest in fitness culture was because of buff German soldiers they saw in WW2. Which doesn't make sense since American fitness culture began prior to WW2 and combat can consume as much as 4000 kcal a day meaning that it's impossible to retain muscle while in the field.

[@Zarastro54]

It really speaks to Hbomb’s quality and diligence that he can maintain such a massive following and influence _despite_ his low video turnout. He really is an exception that proved the rule with how long he spends on each massive video. But the work shows with how ironclad his research and argumentation is that it can’t really be challenged and thusly has sent shockwaves through the community.

[@doug9779]

i wouldn't say 8 million views (and counting) on hbomb's video is low at all

[@ironmilutin]

​@@doug9779 pretty sure the op meant video turn out as the amount od videos released every year. Hbomb makes like 1 video per year, if we're lucky.

[@TylerRamos-h2o]

@@ironmilutinfor real his last video before this came out in November of last year

[@constantreader1422]

​@@TylerRamos-h2onot on pateron! there was also a good myst video too

[@romxxii]

the biggest Breadtubers -- him, Contrapoints, Lindsay Ellis, Philosophy Tube -- tend to follow similarly infrequent upload schedules. They live off of Patreon in between videos.

[@-tera-3345]

I think how a creator reacts to being called out as having gotten something wrong can say a lot. An example I particularly like is the time a Miniminuteman video was reacted to by THE leading researcher in the field it was about, and he did a reaction to that reaction video. He was absolutely gleeful over having things he'd misinterpreted corrected, and having additional context he'd been unaware of added. Being "the correct one" wasn't important to him; showing the correct information was.

[@veritasetcaritas]

That's academic integrity.

[@GrumpyOldFart2]

I saw that video! I had recently “discovered” Miniminuteman, and find his videos fascinating (and the debunking ones funny).Imagine being a relatively new, young person in a field and talking about a thing, and then having one of THE experts in said field correcting you. It’d be like SQUEEEEE!! SO AND SO ACTUALLY WATCHED MY VIDEO!! SQUEEEEE!!

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@GrumpyOldFart2 that's the sign of someone with intellectual honesty, and genuinely interested in their topic.

[@sabrinafletcher7884]

i ADORE miniminuteman. i'm also from new england and his same age, and i feel such hometown pride for him lol. he's such a wonderful scientific communicator, and he demonstrates truly inspiring humility and emotional intelligence in his videos.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@sabrinafletcher7884 I love his videos, they're so informative.

[@iammrbeat]

Great job with this. I have cited my sources for several years. My early content was purely curriculum-based as it was stuff I taught in the classroom. While I am one of the few Historytubers with a Masters degree in History, that doesn't mean I am not guilty of lazy practices from time to time. I strive to continue improving with how I cite sources, and I often have other Historytubers look over my scripts. What generally helps me is that I often only introduce the viewer to content. Rarely do I dive that deep. I often find myself urging the viewer to explore more on their own. After all, if a viewer is blindly trusting everything I say, that is horrifying.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you so much Mr Beat, a comment like this from you means a lot to me! I know your you also consult with other subject knowledge specialists to ensure you're filling your own knowledge gaps, which is admirable.

[@salamantics]

A pleasure to see you again Mr. beat! Keep up the good work!!

[@arislanbekkosnazarov9644]

One of the bastions of History YT

[@bigsky1047]

this is a good callout. it feels weird that plagiarism is only now being taken seriously on the wider level. people like to watch plagiarism vids but never investigate the stuff themselves. it always felt weird how fast some of these channels could put out content, but people often rationalize that as the channel's team having scripts written up for the creator. looking back at a lot of these cases it was much more obvious than people previously thought.

[@glacierwolf2155]

The sad truth is that plagiarism was an open secret for the longest time because no one really cited the words that they were saying and the person saying those words looked professional enough to let it slide.

[@bigsky1047]

@@glacierwolf2155 yeah same way its a crime of convenience for plagiarists, its convenient to have that same person deliver to you a well produced product. So you dont have to go out and read what they plagiarized for the vid in the first place.

[@mad8598]

It drives me nuts when people excuse (insert their fave KZbinr here) for sloppy or literally zero source citation with “it’s not an academic paper, it’s entertainment”.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@mad8598 that is a real gripe of mine.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@glacierwolf2155 a British accent with good cadence covers a multitude of crimes.

[@garryd7748]

I think things have changed forever over the past week, at least for me. I’ve unsubscribed from channels that I’m uncomfortable with, and actively seeking out channels with integrity. Hopefully creators like yourself and the others you recommend will see an uptick.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! I think it has been quite a week for many people. I feel the most sympathy for those duped by Somerton.

[@Tortle-Man]

Who have you unsubscribed from? I want to know who to avoid.

[@SammyLammy1D]

For me, this year has really been an eye-opener. It started with illuminaughty, a KZbin channel I have followed for a long time. Then it was a few other smaller KZbinrs and a few that plat the sims that I unsubscribed to. I never really subscribed to James because I always got somewhat of an ick from him, but I did watch quite a few of his videos. I think that I will make some changes in how I consume content next year. I will be better at fact checking and look up the sources.

[@charlesk22]

Me too sadly😢. This year was a breaking point as I got fed up with many channels, I gladly am finding smaller channels as well as great foreign channels that aren't antagonistic to me or make me feel uncomfortable.

[@GundamPharmacist]

Aw man, first this year being Illuminaughti, now Internet Historian, OSP and Extra Credits? Man, I've often used these folks as stuff to listen to while doing something else, assuming they cited their sources. Damnit...

[@theconqueringram5295]

Disappointing. When I was a student I almost had a panic attack once since I wasn't sure if I properly cited my sources. There are heavy penalties for plagiarism in school, but these guys seem to get away with it. Let's hope that stops now.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Viewers need to put pressure on content creators to raise their standards.

[@shantoakter3124]

they aren't in school .

[@l4cunaz]

i literally woke up in a cold sweat last night when i realised i was missing a reference in my bibliography though i cited it in-text and resubmitted it even though it was past the deadline. so ridiculous how students can face major consequences like expulsion for accidental mistakes and these creators don’t even feel bad about plagiarising until they’re caught

[@SammyLammy1D]

Yeah, I feel you. I had one of those moments last Friday. I was writing an essay and used a quote from someone. It was just that I read the information in Swedish, and my text was in German. So I was so scared that I did it wrong, since it was not a quote but a free translation of his words. If I get caught with plagiarism, I can be kicked out from not only my university, but I can be banned from most universities in the EU. Maybe even outside of EU, if those universities do a background check and find out. Now, I haven't ever plagiarised intentionally, but I have forgotten an end quote 😅

[@theconqueringram5295]

Oh, I totally agree! Especially viewers who were taught how to properly source!@@veritasetcaritas

[@premodernist_history]

Plagiarism isn't a KZbin problem. It's a society problem. People in general don't care. Most hardly understand what plagiarism even is, let alone why it's bad. If Historytubers become more careful about citing sources and not stealing content, that'll happen because they hold themselves to that, not because the viewers expect it of them. But there's no incentive for the creators to do that.

[@0sm1um76]

Glad to see you here. The last thing I wanted to hear this week was my favorite time travel guide wasn't original.

[@premodernist_history]

@@0sm1um76 I stole it from a video that was posted in 2038. But that's okay. They probably stole it from me first.

[@Jabberwocky112]

Besides academia, people just don’t care. There’s very little concrete consequences for it. Coworkers steal ideas from each other all the time and it’s unpunished.

[@cmbeadle2228]

Mark Felton is the most concerning one, because (unless he has fabricated his credentials) he has a doctorate, has worked in academia, been on mainstream television and is a fellow of the royal historical society. He isn't some amateur with at best undergraduate education in history, like a lot of History youtubers but somebody with a reputation that would be trashed if he was known to plagiarize. Like, that is downright stupid if he plagiarised because academic institutions would not be happy to be connected with that kind of thing - that's the sort of scandal that causes people to have their theseses looked at again/blacklisted from future employment.

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

It's all to do with the money. A well-researched, accurate and credible book that other historians will read brings in a lot less income than a quickly-made, poorly-researched KZbin video. So Mark Felton will pump out video after video full of factual inaccuracies, fabricated events and poorly-researched ideas that he got from other places on the Internet (e.g. Reddit or other forums) because it's the quickest way to make money. I'm of the view that he uses his doctorate to further the views on implied reputation and his use of his doctorate is bad faith on his part, to drive views to videos that have nowhere near the level of rigour that somebody with such a qualification should be publishing - in whatever format. On the other hand, people without academic credentials, e.g. Drachinifel continue to make excellent, well-researched, properly-sourced videos. Make of that what you will.

[@alanpennie]

​@@mediocrefunkybeat Just so. We should judge by the quality of KZbin content, not by academic credentials that the creator may be abusing.

[@kenon6968]

@@alanpennie Look at which topic in WW2 he particularly favours to cover, for the algorhythm, and the comment sections therein. These people do not give a toss about history, unless it's "just asking questions" about a certain world historical event that starts with H.

[@doctorlolchicken7478]

I don’t see where the flaw is in his videos. His reputation is books covering obscure parts of WW2 history, and that’s what he covers. He’s been commended for discovering lost WW2 artifacts and he’s always asking people whether they have a photo of X, and he credits them for it. He even goes on location and interviews people. So, for someone plagiarizing he’s putting a lot of effort in. Oh and he has sources in the blurb under the video.

[@SeamusCameron]

@@mediocrefunkybeat - Had a small panic attack when you brought up Drachinifel, until I realized it was a positive connotation.

[@TahtahmesDiary]

Realizing I wasn’t just an idiot who couldn’t pump out videos like this simply because I wasn’t cheating too is…a revelation. Let’s just say that 😅

[@kenon6968]

Naive me assumed they just were paying people really poorly on Fiverr to churn out scripts

[@cherrypopscile3385]

I love that until like a week ago I didn't know who James Somerton was, and now his name is literally just a slur to use against people. That's funny, and I love it

[@WeyounSix]

One history youtuber I can ALWAYS recommend for their accuracy is Cambrian Chronicles. Their sources are essentially the point of their entire videos, and have some of the most real self-researched topics I have ever seen in a digestible way. The only real caveat is that he exclusively makes videos on Welsh/Briton history, so just keep that in mind.

[@kenon6968]

it's a crazy good channel

[@wirelessbluestone5983]

Ngl he’s kinda fallen down the tracking Wikipedia footnotes videos. I wish he’d splice some lighter welsh history in between.

[@WeyounSix]

@@wirelessbluestone5983 I disagree, his second to last video actually exposed a source by diving deep and finding out that a supposed welsh figure named Anton Du was actually Mark Antony in reference

[@juniperrodley9843]

@@wirelessbluestone5983 IDK I've found those entertaining and informative. I'm sure he'll get some lighter stuff uploaded soon enough either way :)

[@jeangrondin921]

I personally stopped watching Extra Credit after one of their ex-employee called them out on their terrible treatment of their workforce, which is incidentally around the same time they made a video defending games being priced 70 € because "good graphics cost a lot of money :(" without mentionning the ludicrous profits of the AAA game industry and the poor working conditions and low pay in this sector.

[@board-qu9iu]

that video also makes no logic sense b/c there is very little benefit in increasing the price of a game to 70 due to competition, it's why prices have been consistent like with other mediums

[@rhythmandblues_alibi]

Yeah that video in particular turned me off their channel. So utterly tone-deaf.

[@ellytheskelly]

In case you didn't know, Dan Floyd, the creator of the series that left, has his own series about animation called New Frame Plus!

[@RisingSunfish]

@@ellytheskelly Yeah, I followed Dan off that ship back when the initial split happened so I was not aware of the plagiarism accusations later on… still kinda bummed about the implosion honestly, they were a really inspiring channel for me.

[@HamSaladtv]

As far as I am aware, the current team are good and chill, but I could not be informed.

[@xenon9030]

Honestly, its dissapointing how low the bar on KZbin content even for qualified historians like Mark Felton and Garrett Ryan (Toldinstone) is.

[@TheGrifCannon00]

I dunno man, Felton just reads Wikipedia articles into a microphone.

[@smallcat848]

from what i've heard Mark Felton can do good work, as shown with his books. The thing is he sees youtube as a place more to make money more than a place for quality. He's found an audience that consistently makes money and his concern with his youtube channel is mainly just keep that audience there and keep the money rolling. He can be better and he is when it's not his channel, but that would almost certainly mean loosing a big chunk of his audience.

[@dismurrart6648]

It made me pull back from history content tbh because I don't have the time to fact check everything and I had too many instances where I found something I liked and then realized they were history channel tier tripe. If the only ethical way I can consume something is doing 10 hours of reading to be able to safely watch the videos, I just won't watch. That all makes me really sad because I love history

[@celtic69]

Mark Felton needs to churn out as much low effort content as possible to be able to afford his Tory party donations

[@Trekki200]

Felton has lately just been making Hitler conspiracy videos. He has just as much academic rigor as Ancient Aliens 😂

[@jonathanaarhus224]

I think that one of the "tells" that a video might be plagiarized is if the delivery of the video is monotone and weirdly lifeless. A lot of people have noted that James Somerton's videos often seemed "off" even before the full extent of the plagiarism was called out. This was probably because he didn't know what he was talking about, didn't care about it, and was only doing it for the money. He was just rote reading.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Very good point.

[@JohnSmith1066-l5n]

Also if they pronounce words incorrectly. They only ever read that word and have obviously never used it much before so why choose it in your script?

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@JohnSmith1066-l5n that is a very good point.

[@Gloomdrake]

@@JohnSmith1066-l5nor, as Hbomberguy pointed out, they’ll try to change the wording of the plagiarized work to make it less obvious, but without understanding what they stole, which is how you get sentences like “a good amount of less detail” or “has been long controversial”

[@falconeshield]

The Johnny Somali of queer history. :(

[@truckwarrior5944]

Hostory KZbin was actually one of the first things I was thinking of, when I saw the hbomberguys Video. Some time ago I was trying to learn a lot more about East Germany and I looked for KZbin-Videos that i could just listen to while driving. The amount of videos that are just translated documentaries that I know because we have them on TV every year here in Germany, was staggering. Especially since some of the creators then went on to discribe how much effort they put into the research, while in reality they just translated something from German TV.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I honestly think history KZbin has been getting away with far too much for far too long. It really is amazing how many channels out there are just recycling publicly available material with no real synthesis or analysis.

[@turtlepenguinXkizuna]

I think blaming viewers for not doing a ton of source-checking and -analysing homework on every youtube video they watch shows a pretty significant misunderstanding of why most people watch youtube at all, even history youtube. most of us watch a video or two while doing something else as a bit of light entertainment, much as one does with other kinds of television. trusting what we see is a trait carried over from traditional television and similar media; as such, i suspect it’s going to take far more internal effort among communicators and creator groups to encourage moderation of inappropriate content if that’s the improvement you want to see.

[@TurinTurambar200]

The entire point however is that unless the audience demands better and votes with their eyeballs, there is no incentive for content creators to be better. Income generated from our viewership is the primary incentive for the majority of these videos while the internal motivation of exploring a topic they care about is secondary.

[@turtlepenguinXkizuna]

@@TurinTurambar200 I’d say that the audience is better able to vote with their eyeballs by creators sharing call-out content and getting THAT spread around better, more than expecting people to look up every source quoted and analyse it for accuracy. I - a parent with small children - wouldn’t have had the time to find out that x or y creators were “bad” were it not for these videos that I watch while washing dishes or folding laundry. This way, the people who have the time and energy to do the research will, and those who don’t, don’t need to be expected to. It does still need to be a community effort (e.g. people doing better at sharing call-out content), but again I reiterate that if you expect every person to do homework on every video they watch, that’s a losing battle from the outset!

[@heck3143]

He mentions that issue at about 10:20

[@Pompeius_Strabo]

I'm a fan of the quote “If you copy from one book, that’s plagiarism; if you copy from many books, that’s research.” History is a field that relies on engagement with secondary sources in order to improve itself and achieve a consensus on any given topic. In my opinion, many history youtubers could directly lift their entire scripts from academic sources (they would probably be the more accurate for it) if they would just properly cite their sources. I think the best practice I've seen used for citations is on Atun-Shei's channel, when he has specific footnotes displayed in the video when quoting sources. However, I'm open to being incorrect in my opinion.

[@babs_babs]

that quote is still lacking for me. have you seen the hbomberguy video? james somerton quotes from many book, and it’s still very clearly plagiarism

[@Pompeius_Strabo]

@@babs_babs I’ve seen the video. Isn’t the problem more that he passes off others work as his own either without any citation or without indicating any of the quotes at all. In my mind if he had properly cited his work there would be no problem, then people would have been able to tell he was lifting his research directly from very specific works. It would show that none of his work is exactly rigorously researched since he heavily relies on only a couple sources.

[@elliott614]

What if those many books are all citing a single source

[@babs_babs]

@@Pompeius_Strabo no the issue wasn’t just poor citation. it was copying and pasting the work of other people word for word, not asking for their permission to do so, and him making bank off the backs of other people.

[@Pompeius_Strabo]

@@elliott614 Different academics can have different interpretations of the same primary sources. They can emphasize different aspects of a text and can even just argue semantics over what the original author actually meant. They can also have different opinions on whether a source is credible or not.

[@Halucygeno]

What annoys me so much is that if you've ever been in an academic environment like university, citations should be second nature to you. Any even remotely serious academic knows that when they're making claims about something, they need to provide sources. So to me, this seems less like academics leaving their ivory tower to make history more accessible to the masses, and more like clueless grifters seeing young students as a profitable target demographic.

[@ArchaeologyTube]

Thank you for shout out in here! A great and thoughtful discussion of this topic specific to historical youtube. There tends to be a big overlap between the channels that are lazily plagiarizing and the channels that share misinformation or improper context. Those channels become the largest (because of churning out so much content) and then unwittingly become the source material for terrible people on the internet making terrible claims about history and politics. It's a vicious cycle. I don't know if better citation ethics will completely fix that problem, but a raised awareness in consumers of this content is good because with time they'll come to expect more rigor. And these channels are never going to provide rigor.

[@ToastieBRRRN]

Just found your channel mate. Happy to see another straight-laced Historytuber who values integrity/accuracy over fancy effects. I feel like I've just realised, that there has been a shift, in the last 7 years since I've been watching these sorts of history channels. Appreciate you spreading awareness.

[@drakehashimoto685]

As long as the information is relatively accurate from any channel, "fancy effects" or not doesn't matter.

[@Lolibeth]

I know several channels made by people who are historians (sort of), but don't cite their sources. Not everyone with a history degree is the same quality. I've also known academic historians to regurgitate things that aren't correct. Not everyone with a history degree has the same specialty.

[@ycleptprof.5249]

Recommending Fredda is badass. I love both of your channels!

[@veritasetcaritas]

I love Fredda, already saw his latest video twice!

[@rinnachi]

i wanna toss a recommendation on the channel Cambrian Chronicles here. he recently did a fascinating video specifically on discovering misinfo himself and going on a really intensive and wild stint of research over it: he discusses how he recognized the misinformation and how he approached his own research in correcting it. it’s very insightful even beyond the specific topic of welsh history, and works to illuminate how easily myths can be spread as fact, and how incestuous lazy citations can turn out.

[@vibespidersstudios8895]

What I didn’t like is internet historian using a license bought stock image and used it as their own identity.

[@smallcat848]

iirc when he made the channel when that image was a very popular meme

[@salamantics]

@@smallcat848I don’t know much about IH but if he sells merchandise with that logo that’s pretty bad

[@smallcat848]

@@salamantics i d on't think he does aside from 1 sticker traced from the image with the words "add thyme" put on it

[@wrjtung3456]

What was the picture

[@vibespidersstudios8895]

@@wrjtung3456 it’s hide the pain Harold he has his own account as his real name is András Arató but he sold a lot of licensed images that people can just buy online and use his likeness because they payed the image. It is lot of legal stuff but that is kinda how stock images work the moment you pay for it because the creator owns the rights to use the image for their video. In my opinion that shouldn’t traced his face and make it seem like it is their original character. It just puts in bad faith of the person who put their image on stock. In a sense they should’ve hired someone to make them a character for their content farm channel but we know content farms channels want to make bank and not put the real work and pay real artists to write articles or essays for a video. I understand as myself posting essays videos recently all by myself. I can say that it is hard to keep up a schedule and having the confidence people are going to watch my videos. Which is why people who do it creatively gets buried while content farms found the way to make money fast by piggy backing real content creator who just posts with a random schedule. Sorry about the rant, I talk too much🫣

[@Syzygy_Bliss]

Let me make citation easy for you. You have a script right? Write it in word, and use the Zotero plugin to automatically upload and format your in text citations and bibliography. If you ever use a source, it’ll keep track of that source for you so you can go back to it if you need (useful anyways), and Zotero makes the curation of your sources basically effortless. Then, upload your script (with cited sources) under your video. This also helps community closed captioning and translation. And lastly, don’t steal from others. You can tell who is stealing by who doesn’t upload the script because scripts can easily be analyzed by plagiarism detectors, while speech in a video needs to be transcribed before analysis.

[@martinsorenson1055]

This is great advice but I think it needs to be a "step" in KZbin's directions on how to make a video. I am assuming there are directions.

[@historyofsloths]

As a historian (20th c. American history) I just straight up hate what KZbin has done to history, not in the sense of making it accessible or enjoyable, in that regard, many channels have the production and narrative structure to tell a compelling story, but in all the ways you've laid out here. History KZbinrs are often lazy, make up shit whole cloth, or lift the work that actual historians are doing and typically do a really poor job at retelling it with any accuracy. I hope this James Somerton thing actually creates some kind of change here on KZbin, but I fear that with the rise of AI we're going to continue to see more backsliding and laziness.

[@charliekelly7024]

I enjoy how Atun-Shei cites his sources, its very much like you would on a research paper. Topic is brought up, number corresponding to the source used is on screen which is then linked in the description. In one of his videos there's like 24 different sources.

[@veritasetcaritas]

He's great like that.

[@simonyessimon]

its wonderful how big of an impact the hbomberguy video has had on youtube in just one week

[@alanpennie]

He's doing The Lord's Work.

[@Ingu.z]

I think KZbin ought to make like a CC track for citation as well, since I know a few channels that don't plagiarize afaik, but struggle finding a good way to integrate citations into a video. If there could be hyperlinks or doi's on a CC track people can click on it would functionally be similar to the reference system on Wikipedia, which might improve transparency across the platform in general. I love Fishtory (aquarium related history) but I can also see what he means with citations not really being integrated into the platform making it harder for someone that has to edit videos on his phone.

[@veritasetcaritas]

KZbin could certainly provide creators with much better tools to optimize this process.

[@Ingu.z]

@@veritasetcaritas Yes and if respectable channels start using it, then smaller ones might feel the pressure to also use it, which hopefully would make fact checking and plagiarize checking quite a bit easier even for people without academic degrees

[@MCArt25]

KZbin doesn't give a shit about integrity or even the basic functionality of core features, for KZbin their videos are a vehicle to shove ads down your throat and nothing else.

[@mad8598]

I’m scared Simon Whistler is one of The Bad Ones, he puts out so much content on his zillion channels, none of them ever cite any research sources, it’s a massive business to make money not a small project done out of love, and with his team of writers and editors having to produce so many scripts so quickly it would be so tempting to cut corners and turn a blind eye to it. There’s never any sources cited.

[@otsoko66]

Whistler really is one of the worst ones -- one example, a couple of years ago he put out a video about Canadian politics in which he called Prime Minister P.E. Trudeau (father of the current PM) a 'Marxist' -- which was just bat-s#!t crazy. PE Trudeau was the leader of the Liberal Party, which was not even the left-wing national party at the time (that was / still is the N.D.P. There are also tiny actual Marxist parties to the left of the NDP) No sources were cited, just the insane (ultra right-wing) claim. His channels are slap-dash and badly researched -- he just makes stuff up, but has a posh British accent which makes him sound authoritative, especially to Americans.

[@moigoi4957]

This was immediately my concern as well. Whistler had his many writers do the writing and research and there’s no way to check what they say. They’re good brainless noise, but my confidence in the facts and story must be low because of the lack of citations. They could very easily fix this, but after all this time they don’t. Most content creators give more time to their Patreon supporters than their sources

[@DelDel__]

This guy is sus as fuck, he has tons of KZbin channels and churns out content after content. I think his overly dramatic, if not clickbait-y, titles and thumbnails should say enough. He feels like a straight up content mill.

[@ryn2844]

I always assumed several companies hired that guy to be the face of their KZbin channels, and all he had to do was read scripts with his nice British accent. That was the only explanation that made sense to me. I stopped watching anything with his face on it years and years ago.

[@gregork9418]

Whistler isn't a content creator. He's a mouth for hire and if ANY of the shit he's paid to carelessly drop from his facehole mirrors what he personally believes he also seems to be quite proud of being a scummy person.

[@SeamusCameron]

Really relieved to see Mr. Beat, Sean Munger, and Andrewism in the recommended list. Sean Munger's videos on the JFK assassination and the Iran Contra Affair were recommended to me a few months back and I've been hooked ever since. I look forward to seeing what the other listed creators are up to as well!

[@kenon6968]

his geographic histories are great

[@tenanaciouz]

Are you kidding me? Sean mugger is awful, he doesn't plagiarize but what he does he far worse he openly and unashamedly inserts his own political beliefs into videos he makes. He even openly fucking admits it with the excuse of "history has been intensity political since the time of the Romans" so no mugger is his own brand of shit bag who can't just tell history he feels the need to guide the watcher to HIS point of view which is unfuckingforgivable

[@veritasetcaritas]

Sean Munger's videos on JFK are masterful.

[@Telecritter78]

One thing: the perception that led to the dismissal of a peer-review group as being low effort/reward (and the reason that even relatively careful KZbinrs weren’t more rigorous in their citations previously) may be changing partly due to a lot of audiences now looking for channels they *can* trust in the wake of the Hbomb. We’re in a brief moment where citation is positively incentivized. I think, like Hbomb did, one of the best things creators concerned with accuracy and citation can do is push their audience to sub to channels that are responsible to push out the ones that aren’t. (And bring up that peer-review idea again. I would caution about having a static group of members, though, that could be very abusable. Maybe a quorum?)

[@hexzyle]

I was worried about the content I watch when you said that there are issues with some african-centric channels but when you recommend Andrewism I breathed a sigh of relief and a cheer haha Adding that Rowan Ellis video to my watchlist

[@veritasetcaritas]

Andrewism is great. Very grounded and down to earth.

[@chef-kiss]

Extra Credits does an extra episode where they discuss sources. Pretty unfair. But yeah Mark felton is especially oooof and Oversimplified is literally the wikipedia page

[@malegria9641]

Yeah, this video for me is kind of concerning itself, especially when you go to the website and realize that almost all of the sources used for the claims in this videos are from Reddit.

[@chef-kiss]

I mean askhistorians is a very good subreddit that I like. I just don't think Extra Credits really deserves the hate. I also disagree with the video in general but oh well@@malegria9641

[@Pablo360able]

That's barely better than the Illuminaughti pastebin.

[@Naturewalkingthrough]

You probably went over it already but I think plagiarism is widespread because there is no consequences like there is when you are caught say in school or work. All of the incidents are done in a low risk and high reward industry where if you are successful you can make huge profits. One thing I noticed is that most plagiarized work is never caught because most are taken from relatively unknown sources. One such from the top of my head was the obscure horror movie channel which his work was stolen by a bigger channel. In internet historian’s case they are “too big to fail” as even when the evidence is obvious their fanbase will defend them.

[@Corvinuswargaming1444]

your video speaks to a larger problem with how the public perceives how historical research is done. History KZbin makes this even worse, as the medium is further removed from secondary books and articles it ought to be created from. The public is unaware that most history comes from someone, somewhere engaging with the primary sources in whatever form they take. All too often I see an assumption that history just exists and is out there independent of the work of scholars to uncover it. I thought for a while I could make videos about subjects I research while doing my PhD, but I have come to see that making good videos is in itself time consuming. In my case, there is simply no way for me to do the full time work of translating sources, getting manuscripts and archival documents, looking at the literature, and then spending hours assembling that into a slick video. History KZbin is shockingly ignorant from what I have seen of this process, or worse thinks that the time consuming but rewarding process of doing primary research is something that can be done as a hobby while pursuing another career. I would prefer if history KZbinrs pivoted to interviewing scholars rather than dubiously sourced essays. That is not to say scholars are infallible, obviously, but there is more accountability and genuine expertise.

[@veritasetcaritas]

This is such a good observation, thank you. I have added it to the pinned comment below the video. I can fully agree with you that making good videos in itself is highly time consuming. My video presentation is absolutely bare bones in terms of quality for that very reason; most of my time is spent on research, and I just do not have the additional hours it would take for them to have a more professional and polished appearance.

[@Corvinuswargaming1444]

@veritasetcaritas I totally understand. The KZbin audience, unfortunately, cares more about slick presentation. There is also an issue with how the general KZbin audience largely relates to history, usually as a series of isolated fun facts or context free anecdotes. These little anecdotes then become the public knowledge of a topic I.e. "did you know [society X] did [Y]?!" Making a narrative out of a single anecdote from a video. I thought KZbin could be a platform for historians who are in precarious academic employment or have been forced to pursue a different career to communicate their work. Increasingly I do not think that is practical or even ideal.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@Corvinuswargaming1444very good words. I do think there's a possibility for some real historians to do good work here and make a living from it; I am thinking of Mr Beat and Sean Munger in particular. But they are absolutely the exceptions.

[@FTZPLTC]

Something I found interesting with regard to hbomberguy's video is that the plagiarists that he focuses on... are also pretty terrible people in other ways. There's a video by Todd In The Shadows that I'd recommend as kind of a companion piece, which shows that Somerton wasn't just a plagiarist. He was also making some really weird claims that were based on no research or evidence at all. He's also been involved in some pretty flagrant Kickstarter scams and seems weirdly invested in pointing out how buff and hunky Nazis were, so there's a lot going on there. Point being, I think people are much more ready to call out plagiarism if the person involved isn't just phoning it in and being a bit lazy - because most of us can relate to that. We know that KZbin is many people's job rather than necessarily a passion project. Maybe it shouldn't be like that. But it's when it appears to be part of a larger flaw in the person that people can get excised about it. I think it's also significant that the videos in question were high-production-value affairs, so they had the *appearance* of effort... but only in so far as it could be faked by throwing money at it. I do wonder if the problem for History KZbin in particular is that... maybe the market is oversaturated? It seems like there's a lot of people chasing basically the same few dollars, which might not be so bad if they were collaborating rather than each making their own channel and their own videos. The need people have to make their videos "stand out", or to produce so many of them, stems partly from the fact that there's far too much competitive for relatively few views. As you say, the barrier to entry is very low, and there's probably no way to raise it without shutting out people who actually *are* prepared to put the work in.

[@RisingSunfish]

I feel like this opens up a niche for historians to make response content dissecting specific examples of bad citation practice in their field, and then sort of use that as a Trojan horse for well-sourced information to course-correct the original videos.

[@FTZPLTC]

@@RisingSunfish - Honestly, yeah, debunking videos have taken off everywhere else so it wouldn't surprise me.

[@Tom_Bee_]

Damn, you're good at this. I hope your integrity brings in a large viewership and you are compensated for your time and effort, one way or another. Maybe patreon or some such ...

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@TesseractionUK]

As someone who is interested in history but hadn't really peered into the History KZbin space, I'm glad you made this video that could be seen as piggybacking off of hbomb's video but honestly I think you had a valid reason to tag it in. Thanks for giving me a starting off point for getting into this genre of video essay content!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@thecaveofthedead]

Thanks for this. I really appreciate that hbomberguy's video has led to more scrutiny. I've particularly noticed the problem with African history - which I'm particularly interested in. It's very unfortunate that the past and present of distortion of African history has led to significant support for a reactive distortion in the other direction rather than a unanimous support for _accurate_ retellings. From what I've seen, even youtubers who are trying to give an accurate African history are under enormous pressure from these conspiracy theorists.

[@Laezar1]

The point about not realizing how much effort it takes to make video is very true, at least for me, because I really struggle with working for long period of time on any project (ADHD go brrr) so it's really hard for me to tell what's a reasonable amount of work. Especially since people on youtube often have team behind them that they barely mention so it's hard to tell what workload one individual actually has at a glance. But also knowing that the most egregious channel that pumped out tons of content in a short span weren't doing the work properly kinda helps feeling better about it lol

[@veritasetcaritas]

To give you an example, yesterday I recorded audio for a video. It took 80 minutes to record the audio. I then spent 195 minutes editing the audio, removing errors, cleaning up the quality, and deleting unnecessary pauses. That's already 4.5 hours just spent on audio.

[@neoqwerty]

I really appreciate the pace at which you put out videos, partly because that "slow but steady" pace means you've taken the time to research, partly because it means you aren't burning yourself out on it, and partly because it gives _me_ time to get around to your videos without getting info overload and backlogging. (Also shout out to you shouting out Rowan Ellis, one of the best youtubers I've ended up discovering that teaches me things.) I also prefer the potato basics of your video editing, it keeps me focused on your words instead of the screen graphics, so what you see as a weakness might be more neutral/beneficial, at least to some people with focus issues.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thanks so much!

[@60508]

Many of us aren't even watching the video when listening. Interesting video though, one of only two (Elliot Sang being the other) who have talked about addressing the systemic issues. Good to see Andrewism shout out! One of the most inspiring channels about. I really think the creator communities need to come up with some kind of kite mark solution, because I don't think most viewers are massively invested or surprised when people on the internet turn out to be frauds, they're just here to be vaguely entertained.

[@colonelweird]

One topic I haven't seen discussed on this issue is the way youtube's structure is what created this problem. For youtube, everything on the site is simply undifferentiated content. There is no walled-off section called "History Videos." Instead it's all mixed together with every other kind of video. I think that's one reason why viewers tolerate poor citation practices: we've never seen any attempt at defining a standard or explaining why there should be one until recently. Doing so first requires an understanding that different kinds of videos are based on different kinds of composition practices. A movie review, a discussion of internet drama, a cute kitten video, and a video of a university lecture all have different standards for creating and viewing, but the website doesn't provide any guidance for viewers and presumably not for creators - except on issues of concern to the giant corporation that runs things. And those issues rarely include truthfulness, originality, or verifiability. Basically I'm saying, the reason these problems persist is because youtube wants it that way. Our role (as viewers and creators) should be to resist what the capitalists want us to do, as much as we can. I don't believe in moral purity, but I do think we should strive for moral integrity. The practices you discuss here are one way to do that on youtube. They are also a form of resistance to youtube's unjust power over us.

[@veritasetcaritas]

This is a great point. I've found it very hard to differentiate myself on KZbin for exactly this reason; KZbin just lumps me in with whatever it feels like.

[@AmeshaSpentaArmaiti]

Gonna be honest, i didn't think it was possible to plagiarize history, since i always thought about it as sharing facts, but this video got me to question everything.

[@HistoryandHeadlines]

One of the things I like about having a website in addition to my KZbin channel is that I am able to update the articles that my videos are based on for corrections and where I can include a list of book references at the end of the article as well as internal links within the article to specific web sources. In my video descriptions, I list any image and music credits as well as a link to the original article on my site that the video is adapted from where anyone could see whatever sources my dad or I used in writing the original articles. I do wonder, though, how many read my video's descriptions, let alone click on the links to the original articles on my site.

[@veritasetcaritas]

This is excellent practice. I know what you mean about wondering who reads it. I've seen many comments on videos I've made which prove people haven't even read the video description, let alone the links I've added or my list of sources.

[@HistoryandHeadlines]

@@veritasetcaritas Thanks!

[@haxxorized2]

I generally find how these channels handle disagreement and controversy (within the fields they cite) to be an excellent mechanism to spot the plagiarists. Capturing principled and meaningful disagreement - in a way that does justice to both sides of a debate while framing it accurately, is >hard

[@heck3143]

Finding your channel and seeing you recommend Andrewism made me realize something. After years and yeats and years of anarchism being pushed to the wayside infantilized and treated as a dead ideology, the movement is back. This many channels based around anarchism gaining traction and forming an ecosystem. Thank you.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! You might be interested in my secondary channel, which focuses on anarchism and related topics. www.youtube.com/@AcademicAnarchist

[@heck3143]

@veritasetcaritas You are 1000% correct! Very interested. Thanks!

[@MazHem]

I'm glad that you're calling out some of these black history channels also tbh, like I'm mixed race and want to know more about black history, but I've seen some of the worst shit being passed around by all types of people because no-one knows black history or does any research. Like there was a very simple one a while ago where a black woman was saying "oh the real history of orchestras is all of the instruments were made by west africans" and like, I looked it up, and no, all of the precursors to the majority of modern instruments were made by Iranians/Persians. Why bother to spend all that time putting pictures in a fake thing to cover up the achievements of the persians!

[@veritasetcaritas]

This is what I find most wild, the worst Afrocentrists will feel entirely entitled to throwing any other non-white people under the bus to advance their aims.

[@Hair8Metal8Karen]

Some recommendations who cite their sources: The Welsh Viking, Kaz Rowe, Nicole Rudolph, Bernadette Banner, Not Your Mama's History, and Abby Cox. They're not perfect, but they show primary resources in their videos and link to the source.

[@Lady.Friday]

I watch kaz, Bernadette and Abby, they are very good I second your recommendation

[@Cathowl]

Yeesh, and here I thought Extra History's problem was the way they went from interesting informative videos with some good gags in the art, to history-flavored comedy sketches. That's why I stopped watching them. I didn't know about their citation problems until now... I know that's not the central point of this video but that's the one thing that's hitting me the most right now.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I didn't know about them until they were already large, but their comedy schtick turned me off.

[@clev7989]

Absolutely fantasitc video! I especially enjoyed the consideration for the motives of the audience. I myself am not a historian of any sort, but rather an artist, and I realized through watching this that sources have always mattered to me, but the culture around youtube had quickly eroded my ability to care, especially since I wasn't educated on the matter in school. It wasnt that youtube was just entertainment, I knew it was more, rather it was that if a youtuber whose message I enjoyed ended up being bunk, how could I trust myself to accurately assess any reality at all? Then, through the help of this video, I remembered something major: I hadn't made ANY art depicting something historic in years, primarily because I knew I didn't have concrete sources. I knew instinctively that making art of a historic moment without the context to depict it accurately or with a description that would explain why it mattered and what happened would make me feel awful. So then, why, if these people cared about accuracy, would they tell something they haven't researched? Why wouldn't it make them feel awful? The answer seems simple now, because they were being dsihonest, lazy, or desperate for cash at the expense of diligence. If thats the case, how could I trust their ability to send a good message? All it would take was a video or two disproving them, and that would give ammo to people with problematic ideologies. Going back to the bit about understanding the audience's motives, especially those coming from marginalized communities, it made me realize how easy it is to be 1. Critical of messages that are positive but built on lies, and 2. Not a garbage person who attacks the marginalized folks that benefit from them. Before I had only been exposed to one or the other. Thank you very much, this has been eye opening.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@jeremypnet]

11:52 this is slightly tangential to this video, but Dr Eaton is wrong about computer code. It being open source is not a reason not to give credit to the authors. In fact, many, if not most open source licences *require* you to give credit as a condition of use.

[@onlyAerik]

good video. One thing I've noticed the last several years is that 99.99% of the time you hear the video says "Link will be in the description" -- _it_ _never_ _is._ in fact, the more often they say that, the more often their description is just the same boilerplate copypasta for every single video. Everybody seems to actively hate citing sources or providing helpful links they talk about.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I always look when they say that, and you're right, even if something is there it's often to a list of generic sources with no clue as to how they were used.

[@squishmcmuffin]

i was shocked to see that someone has kept tabs on the african history and afrocentrism. it's a subject of interest but i did notice how bad some of them are.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I strongly recommend Andrewism. He has a very balanced perspective on Afrocentrism, and I don't mean he just throws it out as silly or over-exaggerated. He really does assess its strengths and weaknesses fairly, and critiques its excesses.

[@stephenwalker2924]

"...money doesn't talk, it swears." - Bob Dylan Favourite quote. True then. True now.

[@dayalasingh5853]

I quite enjoyed this video. As a Sikh anarchist it's always interesting to meet other religious (leftist) anarchists, definitely gonna check out more of your videos.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@TheKarlton93]

Yesterday I was watching a random army history video and decided to look at the Wikipedia page of the same topic, I then ended up reading the exact same block of text that the narrator was reading. Ever since hbomberguy pointed out the problem, its been hard not to notice plagiarism

[@WeyounSix]

Dude!! The best thing you did here was call out the issues within marginalized history groups on youtube, while giving great alternate examples that are doing the right thing! This brings me a whole new level of respect to history youtube I didn't know existed, and I will be subscribing. It's one thing to call out the factual inaccuracy issues in videos made by marginalized groups, like the way metatron does, but without a smug sense of superiority, and you have actual good alternative examples. Bravo.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@WeyounSix]

@@veritasetcaritas It is such a breath of fresh air to see somebody criticize the issues without any sense of smugness or contempt. Showing alternative examples of channels that do it right while not belittling anyone is the right way to go. I think a large problem with some youtubers when they try to correct issues they act self-righteous about it. Even if they are in the right, not acting like you are some kind of authority in your attitude but instead are a guiding hand is a great attitude to have. Thank you

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@WeyounSix thanks so much! I encourage my viewers to fact check my own videos, and sometimes they call me out with their concerns, as they should.

[@welpppppppppppppp]

a big thing i need to come from this whole debacle is for people to realize citation management can be made easier!!! i will scream about zotero at every opportunity since i already teach people how to use it as part of my job but it's a fantastic program and largely FREEE (they do offer some cloud storage upgrades now if you want all your library to be synced). it will not only be a repository for your sources, automatically format them, but also allows custom tagging and offers to snapshot web content that might not remain static. there's literally no excuse to be like "oh sources? i forgor"

[@veritasetcaritas]

Zotero was a total game changer for me when I discovered it years ago. It's an essential part of my process. It even notifies you when papers in your collection have been retracted.

[@tommylakindasorta3068]

Thank you for being an example of the right way to do things and advocating for integrity. It's especially important right now, when so many people are choosing a false reality because the real one is too painful or inconvenient.

[@scobeymeister1]

I just found one today that, considering what the Hbomberguy video covered, looks absolutely full of red flags that I only spotted becauae the narrator pronounced "Apicius" kinda weird. They don't hide it in a mess of sources on pastebin but they do absolutely just read wikipedia without making it obvious that's what they're doing. Feels just as dishonest and slimy even when it isn't somebody I already took seriously. Really makes me appreciate the ones who are doing the research but man does it erode that sense of trust I had in community. New here but the grace with which you're covering the situation is a comforting sign that people are taking this seriously. Cheers, dude

[@veritasetcaritas]

Poor pronunciations like that, accompanied by a lack of sources, are often a sign something is wrong. I do my best to learn the correct pronunciation of the non-English words I use, and I sometimes get them wrong, but you can see I am trying to get them right. That isn't the case with the "flat read" of a word which is so obviously mispronounced without the reader even realizing.

[@zondervonstrek]

I remember liking the channel "Voices of the Past" Until I realized he was making everything up. When asked for sources on outrageous claims he would respond with something along the lines of "it was translated by me personally from an obscure text no one else has ever translated so you could never find it."

[@veritasetcaritas]

That sounds very unusual, so I will chase that up, thank you.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Can you give me an example? He cites primary sources in his videos, and names his translators, so I would be interested to see some exceptions.

[@zondervonstrek]

@@veritasetcaritas I would have to look back since it has been a while. But there was a specific video on the "Black Samurai" where he put out some claims I had never heard before and he repeatedly made the "I translated this so you could never find it" claim in the comments when called out for making these claims. That video did have a source but the info did not seem to really line up with the source. There were also videos about Rome where made claims about the Legions that were based in rumor and have no real historical fact or documentation to support them.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@zondervonstrek thank you, I will look that up because I know there's a lot of historical mythology about the "black samurai".

[@zondervonstrek]

@@veritasetcaritas Many of his ideas about Rome were also incorrect. I remember him mis construing points of research I had read in very inaccurate ways.

[@wolfi9933]

As someone who is into Slavic philology and early medieval Slavic history/archaeology my internal BS alert went wild when i clicked on a video made by Overly Sarcastic Productions which featured the "Kolovrat". Never watched anything else by them.

[@capitanrex5465]

I really like the video! I'd like to comment two things: 1. About fans supporting bad practices: I guess a huge amount of subscribers are not aware that the information they're receiving is wrong. Because, as it has happened in the past, people just want to learn about history, and assumed that the guy they're listening to have done a "deep and proffesional" research. 2. After discovering your channel I now have many doubts about other channels I thought to be reliable. What's your oppinion about The Great War KZbin channel? They often make citations and I think they're fairly neutral

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you for your comments! The Great War has a team of actual professionals, and they're owned by the company Real Time History, so if they're not making accurate videos I'd be very surprised. There might be excusable shortcuts and simplifications, but I doubt they would be unreliable.

[@capitanrex5465]

@@veritasetcaritas thank you for tour answer!! Keep up with the great job and I hope you're getting more attention on KZbin next year. You deserved It!

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@capitanrex5465 thank you so much!

[@blahblah3927]

Thanks for talking about the broader, sytematic issue - it's interesting to see obvious plagiarism pointed out, but deeper discussion is more useful and needed.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thanks!

[@khazermashkes2316]

Thank you for making this! I have a cognitive condition that makes it difficult for me to do research myself, so the recommendations here are especially helpful for me.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you, I am so glad!

[@pisceanbeauty2503]

It’s not surprising that plagiarism is common on KZbin. The bar for entry is nearly at the ground. There are no academic or professional requirements for participation, nor required standards when presenting historical, scientific, or journalistic information. Entertainment value and sensationalism is what is most incentivized on the platform. I’d assume the majority of history KZbin channels, especially those that put out a large amount of content very quickly, plagiarize or misinform in some capacity. Real scholarship takes years. Writing even a 10 minute script that takes into account cited research and critical analysis takes at least a week in the best case scenario. This is also common in the True Crime community where it’s very clear people are just reading a few articles collated together into a narrative. The only way this will be fixed on a larger scale is via some form of standards and regulations. You can have dedicated channels “taking down” bad faith creators, but there will always be more creators than people dedicated to researching their methods if there is no real incentive against plagiarism. We’ve also seen too many examples of “righteous” KZbinrs who themselves have been (whether fairly or not) exposed for some alleged bad behavior, so I don’t think self-policing is a sustainable method of dealing with this.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yeah I saw the True Crime community blew up earlier over plagiarism, which didn't surprise me at all given how many channels must be recycling Wikipedia articles. I really hope something can be done to lift the standard for history KZbin. But the incentives aren't really there.

[@greenkoopa]

​@veritasetcaritas my God the "bodycam" genre shows the same 6 videos over and over

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@greenkoopa that's a whole genre now?!

[@greenkoopa]

@@veritasetcaritas oh yeah, and 80% are from Wisconsin

[@lightspaceman5064]

hbomberguy lives up to his name by being the Oppenheimer of youtube plagiarism. I have never seen more people describe a video upload as having "fallout" and "aftermath".

[@historylover9999]

I've never really worried about this. Because majority of the history KZbinrs I watch historians with PhDs and years of academic research. But even some of them will lose their integrity in my eyes when they go into documentaries that are completely bias or inaccurate.

[@kwarra-an]

I find it shocking and absolutely unacceptable that anyone purporting to be an authority on history would fail to provide proper citations. Really shows the abysmal state of the genre on KZbin.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Especially when they're making thousands of dollars a month and have an entire team of people.

[@heck3143]

I wanted to be a history youtuber for a while but i just didnt understand how people could make so many videos so quickly. Now i get it and i feel better about myself.

[@veritasetcaritas]

You should. When I started my channel I was daunted by the sheer amount of time it took to produce a well researched video of only five minutes. It soon becomes clear that those channels with a very large output are cutting corners somewhere, even when they have large production teams.

[@twenty-fifth420]

I am going to go on a rant about this. There is a growing number of ‘video essayists’ who do not cite their sources. One in particular, who I think had the most telling reaction, hides his sources on a patreon paywall. This is a red flag to me for two reasons. 1. I genuinely believe fact checking knowledge from a cursory glance at a source list is the bare minimum 2. What you cite tells me a lot about your biases/fallacies going into it. If you hide them by a paywall, what this tells me is that you are not confident in your research in the ‘marketplace of ideas’, at best. At worse, you are maliciously offering a bare minimum of a few sources, and gatekeeping it by creating an information bubble that is hard to scrutinize. Anyway, I bring this up, because this youtuber does that and his response to being called out for it was interesting. He basically said “You have the internet, google them yourself. You have no problem paying for subscriptions and you get mad by me having to make a living for my work.” Which is was another red flag, and I don’t think I need to explain that one. It was bad. Plagiarism is one thing, but being a Essay channel that discusses the undereported sociological and historical consequences of black people in the western world……that left a bad taste in my mouth. Look I get it, you got to promote your patreon somehow. If you must, it is your living. We all need to make it in our increasingly unequal capitalist, globalist society. But hiding your sources? That was a Sabine level move. Out of spite, I am still thinking of making a webscrapper to scrape the data from his patreon to see what his ‘sources’ were. I expect one of two scenarios. 1. Pop History/Yellow Journalist Sources that play fast and loose with facts. 2. Genuine articles with proper citations, but maybe only a few sources. Even more out of spite, I kind of wanna start a channel just because of this higher goal of me. Citing sources, especially in a video like you did is amazing. Keep up the great work! May the force be with you. 📚

[@moethemoon]

Can I have the name of the channel? I’ve seen people complain about sources behind a paywall but never seen it myself.

[@richardarriaga6271]

Which channel?

[@twenty-fifth420]

Lil Billiam. He is a political video essayist. @@moethemoon Also, for the future, it is not that uncommon tbh. Especially among video essayists. In fact, I Would probably say video essayists are usually one of the last channels to cite their sources and go all in on 'vibes'.

[@christianknuchel]

The graph at 10:49, due to what is probably just unfortunate wording, suggests that it's okay to omit crediting open source projects. For a video that criticizes the practice of merely doing the bare minimum required to avoid harm instead of ideals like academic integrity, that's not really an appropriate notion to put out there. In the end, there's a simple notion that should be the guiding principle in everything: Credit where credit is due. Even if it's not legally required.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I think it might be an issue of her not knowing exactly what "open source" means. She might mean it's code which has been generated through the collaborative efforts of public individuals who have all contributed to it over time and it consequently isn't the product of any one individual. I find many people have this kind of definition of "open source". However the formal article she wrote, to which she links in the article I cited here, provides a much more robust explanation of plagiarism with regard to computer code, saying "plagiarism can include misrepresenting various kinds of work as one’s own, including data, computer code", placing the emphasis where it should be, on the misrepresentation of authorship.

[@TahtahmesDiary]

Rowan Ellis has a number of videos that hit 400k+ or around there…as one of her subscribers I would never have considered her as someone lacking in views or subscribers considering her channel only uploads around 11x a year on average. Naturally simpler videos uploaded at a higher rate with less required thinking will get more views because they are easier for a wider audience to digest while she is a lot more niche with topics.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I just found it odd that a video like that, three years old, had less than half the number of views as she has subscribers. That means not even half of her subscribers have seen it. I still think she's under-subscribed, and that video is under-viewed given her quality of content.

[@StickWithTrigger]

History with hilbert also has videos where he’s literally reading word for word from Wikipedia it’s insane

[@billyrandell]

Great stuff. Part of your explanation of the economic incentives of why someone might do this reminds me of why I'm on the left side of things. How much better would our discourse be if most our public speakers didn't often rely on their vidoes to provide Maslow's basics for them?

[@veritasetcaritas]

Agreed!

[@melrakan]

I just left a comment about this and it seems you had been making a video about this all along! Thanks for the upload. This is a really important topic to cover!

[@PapaBenjaminW]

Veritas' report card for YT history channels in 2023: "See me after class."

[@lenapawlek7295]

Really appreciate your discussion on the practice across the community, and recommended some much more legitimate youtubers

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@Sandstimes]

I do hope all of this inspires people to credit their sources and do their research better. I've only done very surface level research into (mostly fashion) history and my god i didn't realize how hard it was to dig through the sheer amount of garbage and irrelevant stuff. The less people contributing to that the better lol

[@BLACKM3SA]

There's literally no excuse for any one who grew up in the United States to have bad citation, you literally are taught how to do it in middle and high school. It's now even easier now that you can vomit a source into gpt and get a fully cited source. Lazy.

[@RFLCPTR]

You are taught how to do it in literally any proper education system around the world.

[@EddyScbr]

Man, I'd love to see an opposite version of the "r/badhistory tier list" video. Just came across your channel through this video and saw that one - thankfully, I haven't been following most of those channels (I think I only followed Overly Sarcastic Productions, and with the knowledge that everything should be taken with a grain of salt due to how superficial the videos were), but would definitely like to see some S- and A-tier channels to check out, particularly when it comes to Egypt, which is a personal fascination of mine. Anyway, though, good call-out here and some solid recommendations in the description already, hopefully this becomes a trend in improving KZbin essayists in general, including "History KZbin".

[@atypicalprogrammer5777]

It is so easy for viewers to respond by "defending" their "team", I have followed Kraut for a while (I am politically quite close to Kraut's current brand of liberalism), and I only clicked on Fredda's Kraut video, to verify that it was only some kind of politically motivated attack and perhaps dislike to defend my "team". I somehow ended up subscribing to Fredda instead.

[@auggiedoggiesmommy1734]

Imagine how many old blogs are full of plagiarism. Someone on Twitter/x told me that plagiarism is only wrong in academia. 😕

[@veritasetcaritas]

I think the original blogopshere was lucky it died before it was scrutinized too closely.

[@whateverthisis389]

I love how we all still agree Whatifalthist is stupid

[@GrannyGamer1]

Been wanting to resume KZbin after nearly ten years, I think. This helped me focus on how to use discipline, transparency, ethics to be most useful. Thanks

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@handsfortoothpicks]

I love how "James Somerton" is now a reference for plagiarism

[@martinsorenson1055]

One of the reasons why it took so long for people to become aware of this problem, I believe, is that KZbin wasn't meant to be academic. It was meant to be "look at my cat!" and from there was supposed to grow into home-made narrative videos, you know, like with a story. I don't think the originators of KZbin expected it to explode into lists (easy to make since they were just personal opinions, mostly) and then ultimately history lessons.

[@topiuusi-seppa5277]

Hearing that content creators are now asking for help with citations and sources is the part that concerns me most 😅 I've seen some pretty damn bad work during my university studies but I always thought it was a laziness issue, not skill issue. If people are afraid of being hbombed and start asking how to something I was taught to do at least in some way back in grade school instead of just doing what they knew they should do but just didn't bother to it's quite a revelation about what kind of people are "educating" the masses on the internet 😅 Maybe democratizing mass communication wasn't such a great idea after all.

[@RisingSunfish]

I figure they just want to be extra careful. My classes were very rigorous about citations but I’ll admit to being somewhat confused regarding where the line was between what needed citation and what was “common knowledge,” especially in fields like history and science. If a creator is already busy and wants to ramp up their citation game, it’s extra work, so outsourcing that is little different than say, hiring an editor.

[@veritasetcaritas]

At least they're asking!

[@topiuusi-seppa5277]

@@veritasetcaritas very good point. That is definitely a big step to the right direction, even if I do wish they'd have done it before starting to educate others. Then again maybe plagiarism became such a big problem because those who know the right ways to do things don't want too big audience because they're afraid of someone finding the smallest mistake, and those who don't know, don't know to be worried even when doing everything entirely wrong. Even when there's no malicious intentions.

[@IanHsieh]

This case is awefully similar to few weeks ago when a Chinese KZbinr was found to have plagiarize contents from other KZbinrs. And the audience defending him is basically saying the same thing like "Oh it's just a KZbin video" or "I dont care I just want some entertainment" or "He is doing the good job form translating those dull and alienating contenting into entertainment."

[@KiranKingston]

I think the reason why hbomberguy has more traction with a response about better self-regulation and citation standards is his audience, a lot of dramatube and other content creators. I'm not on that social blade or whatever that tracks analytics, but Somerton lost over 25k subscriptions, which was a little more than 10% of his subscriptions. Whether or not Hbomberguy is aware or not, he gave his content creator audience members something to make content over; the dissection and deconstruction of other creators' works (or "works" for the disingenuous ones). Your colleagues were probably more concerned about that than what many of them had to do for their papers and academic journals. People dunk on youtube's professionalism all the time, so I'd say historytube is more like the public history field to rest of the history dept.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Good points.

[@KnowingBetter]

Why would you put a KZbin video player overlay on the entire video? That has to be the strangest aesthetic choice I've ever seen.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Since the topic is history KZbinrs, I thought it was relevant. I've enjoyed your channel over the years, by the way.

[@newwavex8665]

Calling AVGN a, " serial plagiarist", is a bit of a misnomer. His career has mostly not been about that.