YouTube’s Science Scam Crisis

[@kylehill]

Hello to all the people potentially from Ridddle. As you will see, I left a comment on their "rebuttal" video apologizing for any missteps. However, I still believe their response video grossly misunderstood my points, and contained numerous fallacies. I stand by what I actually said with my mouth in this video. That being said, I'd like to put this behind me -- drama is NOT what I care about.

[@samuelloomis9714]

I'd like to know what happened to today's stream. I was a little late getting to it, so halfway through watching it just vanished. Edit: It's back. :)

[@damienmcgirl3577]

Good on you Kyle. I'm honestly shocked about how well you were under that emotional stress. I hope you have a good day :)

[@DRMadeIt]

I disagree and think your apology was halfhearted. An apology doesn’t include a but or a defense of yourself. You blatantly called them out as a scam channel and accused them of posting your video.

[@damienmcgirl3577]

@@DRMadeIt He accused them of stealing the likeness of the thumbnail and name of video, which they did, word for word. I will say normally I would agree with you, but in this case Kyle doubled down on his accusations about the clickbait thumbnails to make it clear that he was not apologizing for that. Kyle was making it clear that he was apologizing for his fans leaving hateful messages, reporting without viewing the content (something he made clear to do), and for negatively impacting the people behind the channel for implying that they might be machine learning algorithms

[@buttmonkey522]

Rough my dog has better manners than this guy

[@ziqi92]

Developing a sixth sense for scams and spam is a crucial skill in modern society.

[@sihamhamda47]

It's not even the 6th sense, it expands and enhances to 999th sense because those scammers are always finding the different way to trick us every time we try to avoid those

[@nacl2246]

Always take everything with a grain of salt is a lesson that i learned today. And trust issue are actually beneficial

[@aprildawnsunshine4326]

Yeah but then real companies (internet provider starting with x comes to mind) act like spammers and you can't tell anymore between the scams and legit businesses. Happening with banking too, just look at all the people scammed by fake fraud alert calls. You literally can't tell the difference between a real one and a scammer, and I have experienced this personally and then got threatened by the bank with being kicked out because I'm "too much of a risk" not that I'm bitter about that or anything 😤

[@joeg5414]

I've been seeing a lot of these type of videos and always just ignored them. It's such obvious BS. Just the titles make it pretty clear. I feel bad for people falling for it. I imagine it's mostly younger kids who don't know better yet.

[@thedivineofsin]

@@joeg5414honestly I don’t think it’s good bad. It nurtures their interest in science. There are many channels that do this, but not enough of them.

[@kreatuslucina]

All the companies making life hack spam have followed the flow. Life hacks became a joke so they shifted to grinding out spam science for more views.

[@theterminaldave]

That sucks. I just bought a hot glue gun and a 15 pack of bic lighters, what am I supposed to do with all this stuff now?

[@Call-me-Al]

​@@theterminaldave a flame "piano"?

[@hefoxed]

They at least made their own footage :x

[@sir.grumpypawson6598]

pseudo science in most cases

[@soogymoogi]

This stuff would at least be entertaining if they did it Troom Troom style. "Blondie wanted to discover the philosopher's stone, so she had her friend Redhead pee in a cup. Gross! She boils the pee down, and... Wow! Blondie discovered a new element!"

[@JackieOwl94]

Anything that says “You won’t believe what happens next” or “What ___ don’t want you to know” immediately puts my BS detector on high alert.

[@crumpling2426]

DOCTORS HATE HIM

[@uktruecrime]

who don't say.

[@zyxw2000]

"This has terrified scientists" and "This was recently unearthed" and "What you learned in school was wrong" "They've lied to you."

[@dashippo]

"Scientists are stumped" "Science can't explain this"...the morals/ethics are nowhere to be found for the channels that spread this nonsense.

[@JamesRussell69420]

It's insane to me how many people lack comprehension skills to the point they wouldn't notice this We need to go to some dystopian meritocracy where if you're too relarded to avoid AI videos you get a big stamp on your forehead and aren't allowed to get car loans and shit So sick of the critical mass of fucking idiots ruining my content

[@Dombledore11]

I recently got into astronomy as a hobby and the amount of misinformation in the astronomy KZbin space is astounding and so disappointing to see

[@NuclearLabRat]

It’s probably because some people will read a little bit about subject and suddenly believe they’re experts. They overestimate their understanding. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

[@Desmond-Dark]

I'd argue it's not the astronomy YT space. It's all spaces. That thought should keep people on their toes.

[@fimbulsummer]

I found this when I started looking for videos about the geomagnetic storms recently. Space science stuff is not something I’ve previously watched much of, so I didn’t know which were the good channels and the ones filled with nonsense about aliens building the pyramids.

[@StopBanningMaStuff]

Just remember, the word NASA is ancient hebrew for "to deceive"....

[@martelly55]

@@StopBanningMaStuff Not true

[@p4m80r34]

This is why youtube should have never removed the dislike counter, the dislike counter was best indicator to the quality of a video. These channels would not have existed if people saw the actual dislikes

[@parveshkhatri1027]

But they get a lot of likes

[@jgunther3398]

dislikes were removed so they could flourish. they don't earn less than better videos and they potentially outnumber them

[@zvxcvxcz]

@@Lucas_Simoni Nah, they had many more likes than dislikes... they get spread around very dumb circles and often cater to a bias of that circle. These ones a bit less so, but other than science there are others with religious or bigoted themes. You and I don't click dislike on them because we wouldn't click to watch the video in the first place, but there are plenty of braindead people out there that watch these videos and agree with what they're saying. It's really sad, but that's humanity.

[@Nogardtist]

not exactly the dislike ratio half was used to combat misleading to manipulative content the rest of the half is for drama lets say racist disney remakes cash grabs to cancelling a independent creator due to groomer allegations

[@DankMemes-xq2xm]

Not sure about that. Riddle was around long before the dislike button was removed and their channel has always been hugely popular.

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

KZbin is complicit in this. Disabling the like/dislike ratio makes that abundantly clear. As long as it grabs people's attention and is neutral or at least in accordance with tech bro political sensibilities, it's as good of a cash cow to Google as it is to the creators of the channels.

[@radimvybiral105]

angry upvote :)

[@unclerobert7532]

Amen

[@woodificould]

100%

[@patrickbateman9196]

Who remembers the good old Star days?

[@ckatheman]

Disabling the "dislike" was done entirely for political reasons.

[@oxymoron02]

"KZbin has a problem" KZbin has a TON of problems in recent years.

[@cyjanek7818]

"recent years"

[@biggybro4124]

Oh shoot, they got it down to one?!

[@F4Wildcat]

Ah common its not that bad, here let me open the youtube problem closet and *gets buried under an avalanche of problems

[@Dan_Kanerva]

"recent years" means : since 2016 when they introduced the family friendly tos

[@MrPaxio]

the incorrect health advice with dudes standing in grocery aisles on shorts is getting out of control too. they'll claim vitamin C is bad, that canola oil is bad, etc and many people thank them in the comments, when they just took advice from what is essentially teaktoak.

[@iamhugry]

I love it when KZbin scammers saying a new solar system is found with aliens and Technology YET NOBODY speaks about it....almost as if...it's fake

[@serega_lifer]

True. I remember seeing a thumbnail saying something like " Neil Degrasse Tyson warns everyone about the biggest asteroid coming to us" or something like that. Yea, sure. And no other legit space themed channel talks about it, not even startalk. Cool story bro🤓. It starts to get tiring, hiding all these bs channels from my feed, yet they keep coming and coming

[@frtzkng]

@@serega_lifer How long until these A"I" generators jumble up their own titles and you're presented with something like "Black hole warns JWST about Neil deGrasse Tyson's giant asteroid using Elon Musk". Always finding their way into our feeds because KZbin's idea of promoting small creators is to sprinkle in random videos with like 3 views into everyone's feed regardless of any context

[@Irisspring9339]

The worst part is you probably just end up reporting it to an AI...

[@colinkhalid1]

sadly true

[@jgunther3398]

Report it? Do you think they don't know their own business and it isn't exactly the way they want it?

[@Oriana_leung]

😭

[@Melecie]

perhaps unfortunately, this is (if i am right, i have never worked on developing ais myself, most of my AI knowledge is from carykh pre-covid) just part of how some AIs, usually generative ones work: it's actually made up of two AIs, one making content and another guessing if the content is real or made up, which is then passed back to the first ai to serve as whether what they did is good or bad. at least i hope youtube's reporting ai has nothing to do with (or incompatible with) content generation systems

[@simonmultiverse6349]

I have my personal list of channels which I like, and another list which I have banned from ever appearing. The channel may try to tell me something which is clearly false, or may try to show me a picture which is clearly falsely constructed. (example 1: a Mars rover on top of a large rock which it could not possibly have climbed because the rock has vertical sides; example 2: a Mars rover which is described as having travelled a long way, although there are no tracks leading up to the rover.) You can tell I know a fair amount about what I'm looking at, for the subjects I'm interested in.

[@correlolelo]

The saddest part is that this stuff is only gonna get worse. KZbin just doesn't care as long as it rakes in money. Our social bottomline has become the monetary bottomline and if that doesn't change these things are just gonna spread to every facet of our lives.

[@MrYago-xd7um]

Technology Connections got a million views in a day just for brake lights, enjoy that little bit of hope in humanity.

[@scush]

i wish kyle would have touched on this a bit more. the problem _is_ incentive structures here. youtube will only start caring if it begins to hurt the google brand, there’s no telling when or if that’s gonna happen, tho.

[@JamesMadisonsSpiritAnimal]

Are you suggesting KZbin should become an expense to google (since it's already not profitable due to how much it costs to already police and regulate the near endless content on it as is) and then go bankrupt and we not have KZbin in a year instead? What's your solution exactly?

[@JamesMadisonsSpiritAnimal]

​@@scush do you realize the the amount of content policing it does already renders KZbin non profitable as it is now? It's weird to me that people that use KZbin so much don't even understand it's financial situation and what the actual real cost is to monitoring, policing, and reviewing the millions of videos uploaded every day...

[@2639theboss]

​@@JamesMadisonsSpiritAnimal KZbins content is managed 99% of the time managed by algorithms. There is no additional expense. And, there are numerous highly profitable channels which have been demonitized either by youtubes algorithm, or, been demonitized by false copyright claims youtube has no interest in addressing. So no. Profit is not the issue.

[@KoongYe]

My biggest fear of AI is the floodgate of AI generated media that will consume every corner of human experience, where people are constantly fed with stimulating media like cattle in a barn. And I sincerely think we are seeing the birth-phase of that.

[@PaladinofRealm]

Let's look how this comment ages, I think you're right.

[@Sarah-yd9gt]

If we could teach AI not to lie and to value academic integrity, AI could generate entire courses worth of information for students to study in an interactive curriculum. However, AI is not reliable at all to stick to the truth.

[@rugbybeef]

AI ingesting, training, regurgitating mediocre content, and amplifying every inaccuracy exponentially. It is the beginning of the events that will lead to the Butlerian Jihad (á la Dune & Frank Herbert) Which of the following would you most prefer? A: A puppy, B: A pretty flower from your sweetie, or C: A large properly formatted data file? 𝘊𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦!

[@oliverlukac384]

I was thinking about this. Tiktok can easily suck us in one day feeding us a never ending feed based on our dopamine receptors, which they tracked. Huge risk

[@rugbybeef]

​@@Sarah-yd9gt Lol, if we could teach academics and students to value not to lie and value academic integrity we wouldn't have to wonder why AI keeps being inflicted on us with no thought to the morality. Tech companies: Free guns, free guns here... The terms of service absolve us of any personal liability for your actions. We have no issue with that because we were engineering students and had no philosophical, civic, or ethics classes. That's where we learned to make cool guns like these while you can enjoy a more relaxed hunting experience via AI. And because you can only use a device for the purpose and use case I designed for it and my ulterior undisclosed use case, building this better gun is all I bothered to learn before dropping out of college. Don't let that worry you though the terms of service also forbid anyone from doing anything bad or criminal buried so deep in the text that if printed they would be on page 23. And since you glanced at that while letting the pages leaf in front of you, you are informed. Okay ready to get your gun? Just confirm you read and understood everything on all 27 pages of that document you were handed 8 seconds ago. Oop can only confirm by telling me what that is a picture of on the last page before saying "I accept." That's a guy walking across the street? If you say so... I'll let the guys know in the autonomous driving department know. Here's your gun, and 25 trial bullets and a hand grenade to sample. Come back daily and we'll give you 25 more bullets or you can buy them in our merch store because that gun doesn't fit any bullets not sold in our merch store. Thanks from everybody on the team! We are committed to AI breakthroughs and massive bong hits because AI-mHigh.

[@asinglefrenchfry]

It’s not just science videos, AI content slop is absolutely everywhere right now

[@ikhaatgers]

And the people, or should I say sheeple, all love and devour it like hot buns. Horrible.

[@HamGabriel]

yea they are purposely ruiing the internet to bring in some other shit it feels.

[@kopuz.co.uk.]

i get a lot of ai generated news and war videos recommended to me, im starting to hate this site

[@f3reg169]

and it's getting worse

[@austing7254]

​@ikhaatgers What's sort of ironic about that statement is the conspiracy theorists that love to call everyone else "sheeple" are the ones that fall for and spread that kind of crap the most.

[@dolomedestenebrosus9564]

"trap doors of attention to pits of nonsense" is a good way of putting it. I'm glad someone's talking about this and I hope this video really takes off and something can be done to fight this. This type of thing disturbs me a lot.

[@iluvyunie]

well yeah but is he not also making this exact crap in this very video? i.e. "HERE'S WHY SCIENCE IS DOOMED" clickbait title, everyone is dumb but me, I'm da real1 His videos are actually quite high quality I must admit but he's starting to fall into this finger pointing trap instead of just producing quality videos

[@MonkeyJedi99]

I thought it was bad when this kind of bad science "infotainment" started to takeover formerly good science venues like the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel, the History Channel... But at least I was able to cancel cable and get away from those. Now this crap has followed me to KZbin. At least I can still use the "don't watch it" tool... for now.

[@janeydoe7417]

​@@iluvyunie what are you talking about? Are you making schitt up? There is a problem with pseudoscience, pop science and scams on KZbin. The hell? This nonsense is usually in entertainment, but now the celibrity-pop culture-ization of science is making idiotic audiences think they are edycated when they are not. Now whether AI is behind these, idk, but the point is moneymakers are using the popularization of science to spout bullschitt for clicks and ultimately ad revenue. Some are straight up propaganda and sensationalism.

[@dolomedestenebrosus9564]

@@iluvyunie n...no? Did you even watch this video and listen to what he's talking about?

[@HoneyBadgerLikesYou]

@@iluvyunie even IF you were right about this assessment, he remarks in this very video that there’s a difference between a genuine creator needing to game the algorithm and an AI-powered content farm of monetised braindeath. You can’t compare Kyle to these channels at all.

[@rossbabcock3790]

I'm a retired electrical engineer. I am continually stunned at the schlock that passes as science! We need a 'YT Bunkbusters' group. I'm waiting for the 'cold fusion in a beer mug' gag to return!

[@MizzzFizzz]

That is an awesome idea, I'd love to see miss information being used as an educational tool. Explaining why it is false in the first place can be a good way to help explain and understand it.

[@apeacebone6499]

How To Cook That by Ann Reardon has done occasional debunking videos of clickbait cooking and DIY videos for a couple years now. I was thinking while watching this, it sounds like a very similar mechanism: a lot of content farm channels recycling stolen and/or faked content, with a ton of subs/views but very little other engagement. It infuriates me to see them go without any consequences while legitimate creators are demonetized over nothing.

[@Spielername]

A channel tried to scam me via comment section. This guy changed his name tag and picture to the channel I was commenting on and told me I won a prize and asked me to contact him via WhatsApp. I clicked on the name tag and then on the real channel behind it, and it was a completely different channel. I reported his Nigerian arse to KZbin (at least i guess he is Nigerian because of the two videos of his wedding party he posted years ago on his channel) but they just answered that there is no proof that he actually tried to😊 scam me. KZbin does shyte if you report someone. So don't hope that there will be a crackdown on those channels too soon. As long as KZbin makes money with this kind of content.... you know what I mean.

[@Spielername]

​​@WizZz FizZz Do you know how much misinformation is spread via this platform? You wouldn't even know where to start + they would probably copy strike you before you put the first video online.

[@richardmiller9883]

I've had that pop up in my feed within the last month.

[@MechMK1]

The disclaimer "Our channel is based on facts, rumor and fiction" had me in tears.

[@caan_69420]

The euphemism of "trust me bro"

[@kingofnara]

Covered all possibilities 😂

[@johncao6516]

Came to comment just that and you beat me to it

[@itismethatguy]

I know right i was surprised Kyle didnt comment on that

[@RamadaArtist]

@@caan_69420 nah, more like: the euphemism that "trust me bro" stands for.

[@Kruton1122]

I just had to show my mom this video because she got herself worked up and crying over one about the world ending and parallel universes because of the cern collider. Thank you for this.

[@NT-sx2bd]

Pleaee give her a hug and tell her it'll all be okay

[@officialshinky]

tell her to watch steins gate

[@tmkay_]

​@@officialshinkydo you want to give the poor woman a heart attack

[@Kruton1122]

@OnyxtheFolf oh I’m aware and I’m definitely not nearby x3 She just got freaked out

[@dogsbecute]

@@Kruton1122 lmao my mom is the same way. good work brother

[@xisumavoid]

Thanks for bringing attention to this! I worry that there is a split viewership where people watching that content are unaware of the quality videos science communicators like yourself make. I never watch those videos but occasionally I get "trickbaited" as you put it. As soon as I hear that robotic voice I click away. What's concerning is how fast AI is improving paired with this activity you are bringing attention to. Its going to feel more and more like authentic content with time. That amount of people its fooling and misleading will increase if not dealt with!

[@countingwithjerold]

We need real ones 😳

[@CODENAMEDERPY]

These channels have also overrun the shorts section. If you watch any short that has to do with science, a never-ending torrent of these channels' nonsense will fill your youtube shorts recommendations. I no longer watch youtube shorts due to that.

[@christianbarrett3040]

The crossover I wasn't expecting.

[@Blaineworld]

omg xisuma hi !!

[@Fireheart318]

Didn’t expect to see you here!

[@drewz116]

I'm so glad this is finally being talked about, especially by someone with more than a million subs. I hope more in the community also bring attention to this issue

[@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD]

And do what? Keep nameless, faceless people and organizations from making money? Tabloids aren't banned on KZbin.

[@b005t3r]

I doubt KZbin is ever gonna change anything about it.

[@Insanerobert44]

To be honest, there are tons of pseudo-science and idiotic conspiracies like flath earthers on KZbin since - possibly it's first launch as a platform - that, for me, they just look like changing the thematic just to syphon more views, likes and subscribes. Plus the plenty of quick cash-grab-themed channels that got oversaturated on KZbin.

[@rektexcalibur5254]

This comment is for the algorithm

[@kylehill]

*Thanks for watching.* Who knows if this will help, bit I'll do what I can.

[@chimkinNuggz]

Thank u for making this vid. Ive seen science videos like these channels recommened to me all the time 😒

[@Stickmanght]

Thanks for calling out this BS that is polluting our collective efforts to learn, and educate.

[@historicaltidbits]

I'm confident it helps.

[@chronosschiron]

man you are like me i however go right at them its cause they use flashy thumb nails and if you look at them they are all ina kinda group of people that are and have been faking

[@chronosschiron]

they steal old shows put in stuff thats now wrong add there own politics and misinformation and its put up wiht a thumbnail and it is very offensive to see people tought string theory when years ago now its been proven false

[@SyntaxScout]

We need a list of those scam channels to have it handy so we can take action or simply avoid them.

[@Stonehawk]

Thank you for creating this, and I want to PERSONALLY ensure that you are properly compensated for my watch as well as the watchings of several others. Fuck KZbin's pissbaby sensitivity.

[@paulmccartney2327]

Nice wasted money crіngelord

[@paulmccartney2327]

Go back to furaffinity ffs

[@paulmccartney2327]

Please log off the internet

[@sirblue5586]

​@@paulmccartney2327I don't remember this from "Live and Let die"

[@Texasbluesalley]

Thank you for documenting this. How the world’s biggest e-mail company who’s been catching spam for over a decade, cannot detect this stuff by now is really sad.

[@scottabc72]

Google has a strong financial incentive to not catch it

[@Nonameron]

​@@scottabc72 That being? As far as I know, saturating the recommendations with AI content will simply make people watch less videos and thus spend less time on KZbin.

[@lastwymsi]

​@@Nonameron You think it would drive people away, but it doesnt. People watch it while glazed over. People let the algorhythm auto play. Its not about older generations who will leave it, its about harnessing gen Z and below who grew up getting farmed by the Algo.

[@scottabc72]

@@Nonameron That would be nice if it were true but its not. KZbin has always benefited from having massive amounts of content which it can sell relatively cheaply to advertisers. More to the point this trash science content is usually pretty 'good' in its presentation and as this video pointed out, has features such as Elon Musk, ancient astronauts etc... that the algorithms know do get views. Cheap abundant content that gets views for the advertisers is what really matters.

[@jackdixon6681]

I think you're looking at things wrongly. Even when platforms *do* catch these things, it just means that the producers adjust. Look at the way people figured out that swearing leads to demonetisation, so everyone now says Frick. Or unalive instead of dead. Or copyrighted clips being mirrored to avoid claims. Or 10:01 length videos to get midroll ads. Anything google does to catch scam science videos would be at best a temporary measure

[@UnkleKlumsy1353]

This is not even the first time I've seen a KZbinr try to expose these click farm channels. It is the first time in regards to "science themed" topics

[@Chris-hx3om]

Thunderf00t said exactly this would happen MONTHS ago...

[@PeetHobby]

I always mark those channels as 'not interested,' so they won't get recommended anymore. That's the best thing you can do. Don't give them thumbs down, because KZbin will see that as active interaction and push the video up instead of down. Never interact with channels you don't like; just put them on the 'not interested' list by clicking on the three dots next to the title of the recommended video, then select 'Not interested' from the drop-down list, and choose to manage the recommendations for that video.

[@roycleveland7718]

Thank you, i didnt realize that dislikes only push it out to the public more :\

[@scottprather5645]

Yeah that's exactly what I do so that's good advice

[@ProximaCentauri55]

No,just click "don't show channel"

[@raidkoast]

The only downside to this I can see is if these channels count as "Science" tagged. This you're telling KZbin in a roundabout way that you're not interested in science channels. Now I'd like to see a system where channel that use AI to a large extent or completely have to tag as such and for us to be able to report a channel as an AI channel and for this to be reviewed by a human.

[@Kallinenjp]

One thing that has always bothered me is KZbin's continued efforts to make it difficult or impossible to do anything about content you dislike. You can't block channels, dislikes have become essentially meaningless, and "the algorithm" has effectively made it impossible to curate content you actually want to see short of subscription to particular channels. Half the time I can find videos faster using Google search for a topic rather than the search bar and even that is going down the drain.

[@tropicalvikingcreations]

You can actually block channels still, they've just moved it and added a bunch of extra steps and crap to dissuade you from blocking or mass reporting a channel. Think it's in the 3 dot icon when you go the actual channel page or about section. (Not the pop up on mobile, that doesn't work for that)

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

Stuff like the Flat earth movement tok off after KZbin change the algorithm so it's only engagement that counts. So stupid vids with lots of negative comments and dislikes is counted the same as good videos with positive comments and likes. The scary thing is that youtube and other platforms can change the real world.

[@Norsilca]

I've always found the search box to be worse than Google, for many years now

[@scrubjay93]

Recently the KZbin algorithm flooded my recommends with videos on a topic AFTER I had selected the "not interested" option on a video. It was like the algorithm deliberately working opposite to the intended function. Not the first time it has happened.

[@ilyarepin9490]

This is an even bigger issue in shorts. Despite my best efforts to curate my feed towards the educational, pseudoscience and conspiracy content gets fed into the feed by default and counted as a view. Despite me literally watching anti-conspiracy content in the first place. The watch-time based algorithm just doesn't work in ultra short form content.

[@stevemcgroob4446]

I wanted to remain cautiously optimistic about AI but the ugly side of exploitation seems to be happening sooner than hoped.

[@Dan_Kanerva]

i hope some mad lad gives AI sentience before humans corrupt it all

[@Wampa842]

Capitalism's just great, isn't it?

[@supersleepygrumpybear]

It's crypto all over again

[@themalaphage673]

@@Dan_Kanerva Rushing to give something we don't fully understand yet sentience is moronic.

[@xalener]

exploitation doesn't wait. Thinking it's something one can wait to prepare for is not only foolish, but makes one just as culpable as the perpetrators.

[@dflosounds]

I've said it before and will say it again: if there will be an AI-apocalypse, it will not look like Terminator. It will be a slow and painful societal downfall due to mass-misinformation. Personally I'd opt for the Terminator scenario.

[@concernednewfie]

Speak for yourself, I for one support our future AI overlords

[@cat_supernova2242]

@@concernednewfie im leaving this planet before that happens. i have a set plan of what and how im gonna do it. and im not telling. EDIT: my plans hath expanded.

[@daymal2717]

​@@concernednewfiethey will surely treat us better than the guys in charge now!

[@concernednewfie]

@@daymal2717 When our future AI/Alien/Lizardman/Trans-dimensional overlords arrive, they will start scanning KZbin comments for who is loyal. I for one support our future non human leaders.

[@TI.T.O]

​@@daymal2717 what about minorities or homosexuals? Would A.I discriminate? As we already do now?

[@xedalpha1]

Easiest way to tell is when the bots start mispronuncing basic words. That and titles are usually like 'scientists finally solve the mystery of X. What they discovered is terrifying'

[@jeffspaulding43]

I've been feeling this for weeks if not months. it's good to have a sanity check pointing it out.

[@willlive6845]

The amount of hour long random science videos with electronic voices is insane, they are nice to fall asleep to sometimes.

[@NightRogue77]

Bruuuuhhhhhh I literally feel more grounded and connected to reality now and there’s a SLIVER of hyperbole there, MAYBE lol. It’s a form of gaslighting man no BS - cause man to autistic peeps eg that can pick up on this shit real easy, well GOOD LUCK getting anyone passing by in comments to stop by and fist bump you Kyle my gd HERO today

[@NightRogue77]

My hypothesis - they are building fake profiles. This isn’t just in science but us smarter smarty pants gonna see more science than anything else; seems like your typical social media profile building BS - so build the subs and content, then sell the channel.

[@Sky_C]

@@willlive6845 no same tho, astrumspace and destinyspace were my go to's for falling asleep, but I'm gonna change this shit now

[@Alias_Anybody]

I've actually seen that happening with history channels.

[@GaymerJenn]

Sorry KZbin unfairly demonetized this video. Your fans appreciate your hard work and integrity. ❤️

[@derekwhidden9730]

They did? It would seem then that KZbin gains as much as the spammers then.

[@evilsharkey8954]

KZbin makes a lot of money off of junk from content farms. They claim they don’t support such material, but they totally do. Pointing it out is an easy way to get demonetized.

[@cherrydragon3120]

​@@derekwhidden9730 fcourse. KZbin gets money by clicks just like the creators.

[@cherrydragon3120]

​@@evilsharkey8954 if they didn't support these people/content they would have actively removed it

[@niedas3426]

@@evilsharkey8954 That's such bull. Sorry but while I'm not exactly fond of YT, they know it's in their best interest to not let these videos flood their site. A site with user generated content lives and dies by that content. Though sometimes, when I look at how they demonetise creators and let bots run rampant, I'm not entirely sure how in touch the C suites are with the state of youtube. I'm sure there's a lot of people at YT who have their heads on straight, but all it takes is one person in a position of power to not aknowledge the problem, and then you're effed. My best bet is that they want to keep moderation costs as low as possible while keeping a minimum so that it doesn't become a lawless wasteland.

[@Dollightful]

It's the "5minutecrafts" of the science YT community, isn't it?

[@argylleagen]

Bullseye! ching ching ching

[@nathanGC__]

This subject really needs more attention. It spoils people's mind thinking they get smarter...

[@nojerama788]

Hey Dollightful 😂 love your channel and absolutely did not expect to see you here but glad to see you also hate fake science videos 💕

[@fennecfoxrocks649]

Honestly its more of the "Watchmojo" or "The Things" of the yt science community, but yeah basically

[@Yanto_sangat_ireng]

Yeah

[@MacElMasMancoDeTodos]

The title: 9TH PLANET has been DISCOVERED by NASA SCIENTISTS The video: 2 mins of useless intro, 1 min to explain how its not been discovered but just a theory, 1 min of sponsor, 2 mins of usless outro The info fonts: 0

[@Evil_Jyan]

Pluto

[@astralorygd]

Nailed it!! It's the same copy pasted script! I've always resented these types of channels! ESPECIALLY Ridddle

[@Leuthen57]

Pretty much

[@mikhail_roberts]

“Trapdoors of attention to pits of nonsense.” What a quote. Well done man.

[@markrice4808]

Don't forget "auditory-visual gumbo!" Cant wait to use it (but with proper credit to Kyle, of course!)

[@s13silly]

Thank you, seriously, I'm sick of telling my friends that what they are seeing in this regard is garbage. It amazes how gullible people can be.

[@maevwat]

there are people who believe wwe is real and argue about it😂

[@Cooper846]

​@@maevwat 🤦‍♂️

[@killermetalwolf2843]

it would be nice if someone made a somewhat comprehensive list of these to go report bomb

[@s13silly]

@@maevwat true

[@Comet-2011-W3-Lovejoy]

​@@killermetalwolf2843 should I do it

[@WongCharoen]

I've spent my life as a teacher, and I feel you big time on this one, Kyle. Fun is fun, but when it actively interferes with true education, it is offensive and painful to my mind and soul. Keep fighting the good fight!

[@patricknez7258]

Well said 💯

[@Moonshine449]

It has gotten so much worse. Nearly every ad is a scam ad now.

[@Un-PopularGuy]

Wow bro, those scam ads needs to be gone right now..

[@supreme1572]

Ads? I've used KZbin Vanced since 2017 haven't seen an ad since.

[@Starman_Dx]

When I want good, fresh, organically grown sciencing, and Vsauce isn't around, I come to my favorite scienceman. Well, after Kurzgesagt doesn't have anything new. And PBS... But Kyle Science Odinson is right up there.

[@Johncornwell103]

You should also look up Anton Petrov

[@Starman_Dx]

@@Johncornwell103 Been subbed, didn't want to list everyone.

[@Johncornwell103]

@@Starman_Dx Ok

[@theguy8412]

Kurzgesagt is propaganda

[@exomancer3632]

​@@Starman_Dx Isaac Arthur?

[@JesusOfTheJungle]

This is a genuine service to humanity. You've changed, man. All these years of masquerading as a super villain! What is the world coming to!?

[@paperburn]

The downfall of every super villain is when a tiny slip of humanity shows.

[@poopsiepop4179]

Science thor has always been a hero

[@kae5717]

Even supervillains have standards! That's what separates them from the standard villains. (That, and presentation!)

[@crystalsoulslayer]

Of course he's still a supervillain. Useful experimentation requires useful test subjects. Do you know what it's like to design and build an automated quadruple-blind facility to convert --foolish mortals-- I mean volunteers into human-octopus-osprey hybrids, and then find that all your testing is invalid because those humans watched two straight hours of absolute nonsense in the waiting room before the procedure? My lawyer says I don't know what that's like. But I mean, come on. We've all been there. I'm sure "Mr. Hill" knows exactly what I'm talking about. Though again, my lawyer would like me to reiterate that _I absolutely haven't_ done _anything_ like that. Ever.

[@devindykstra]

I unfortunately came across one of these channels when my mom sent me a link to one of their videos because she thought I would be interested in the topic. Bless her heart she meant well, but it made me realize how someone who is less technical might fall prey to these scams without even realizing they're being fed lies and misinformation. Thanks Kyle for bringing this issue to light. Here's to hoping this scam ends soon!

[@DaisyAjay]

Ugh, I went to a friend's the other week and her KZbin account was full of this crap. "You won't believe what scientists have found under the ocean", thumbnail was a blatant CGI of alien heads underwater. I wondered why she was paranoid, depressed, and mentioning crazy stuff. Beware, this content has severe ramifications on mental health. She was previously a happy and confident person with no interest in aliens & conspiracy theories.

[@minecraftify95]

did you send this to your mom? what did she say?

[@funforall9741]

It happens a lot man, we aren't the targets of these channels.

[@mattcolumbia7948]

They're just following the sop of the demoncrat party. Lie, trick, steal.

[@TechBuild]

The main worrything thing is that a lot of people new to the science topics who want to explore will come across these videos instead of authentic content.

[@jabloko992]

Wait until youtube's PRECIOUS ADVERTISERS realize that their money is going down the drain to AI video channels showing videos to other AI.

[@jussts]

I was on vacation recently and was watching KZbin, without logging in, on my hotel's smart TV. After watching a couple science videos that I searched for, the algorithm started recommending almost exclusively this sort of sludge. This is definitely a problem.

[@Whatsinanameanyway13]

Every once in a while I will launch a private tab and open KZbin to see what someone who isn't logged in sees. The absolute garbage that comes up is dumbfounding. Now imagine what some kids are exposed to whose parents don't supervise their accounts.

[@EndoftheBeginning17]

@@Whatsinanameanyway13 I'm not amazed anymore. I've watched young creators who are in their early 20's and the level of stupidity is staggaring. most can read, but their real world experience is so poor that they get the simplest things wrong. We have widespread confusion happening with the adoption of ideas that contain the individuals confusion, but its so flimsy that the moment you even question it the confusion rears its head and you just see what amounts to a very stupid person in fact. I think it's going to get much worse to the point that society will do itself in.

[@terribleterrier1685]

@@EndoftheBeginning17 I worry also we are doomed. I just hope I'm being overly pessimistic, but it seems we are truly watching a breakdown common knowledge, further separating the layman from the expert. Similar things happened due to the efforts of the church in the middle ages and I worry we are headed towards a digital dark age where facts are just a matter of opinion and indistinguishable from the scam.

[@ricbat9078]

Ditto, logged into our company account and got these recommendations yet we don't watch anything from that account.

[@Whatsinanameanyway13]

@@EndoftheBeginning17 The main flaw with "Idiocracy" is it's assumption that it will take a long time for humanity to get dumb enough to not be able to handle its basic needs.

[@TangiersIntrigue]

The thing that gets me about this topic is how, if this escalates, actual content creators might find themselves struggling to cut through the noise. Monetization through sheer quantity, preying on youtube's preferences, may lead us to a situation in which, in order to actually pay the bills and actually have success, content creators will find automation increasingly attractive.

[@wastelander1015]

This reminds me of Amazon. At first they would allow small brands to do business there but when a small business become very lucrative, Amazon would create a similar product and sell for a lower price, making the other business to slowly lose money and go bankrupt. I wouldn't be surprised if youtube is doing the same thing to rip off creators.

[@dieptrieu6564]

Automation is the future, tho. But it need to be the good kind of automation, not these scams

[@wastelander1015]

@@dieptrieu6564 this is exactly the type of automation you're going to get. It's cheap and it makes money. Take for example the replacement of hotline agents by chat gpt. You really want potential suicidal people to be talking to robots instead of a human being?

[@WhatWillYouFind]

Ann and her channel How to Cook That is an example of this. 5 minute craps puts out dozens of videos a week and she barely does 1 a month. You can't beat content farms unless you're huge on the same level is PewDiePie once was, only accounts of that size have the reach to discount or refute bunk things in our era. We need a fundamental overhaul of the internet and it's regulations. Freedom is great, until you have little kids making bombs or literal terrorist cells pushing propaganda out to the masses. We need less profits and a more hands on approach to monitoring these things. With the advent of modern AI we will have the power to do so, whereas before it was impossible to scan or review the thousands upon tens of thousands of new video releases.

[@dieptrieu6564]

​@@wastelander1015 Automation already exist in our world. It's why factory can produce mass product in large scale. In case you want to say that automation doesn't work with creative products. Then you should know that animation have been using automation for a long ass time, now. Otherwise we still would have to hand draw everything from scratch You use one example to show automation is bad despite it have nothing to do with the topic we currently talk about. While also ignoring all the benefit automation can bring. That's just a bad argument

[@HiR0SHi.the.D0G]

A great educational video. It's time for KZbin to see us as customers, partners and friends - instead of prey!

[@daMillenialTrucker]

it'll never happen

[@Aes_Saru]

@@daMillenialTrucker one day we will get the real prey 2.

[@devinohanlon5501]

I like being seen as prey OwO

[@eliteextremophile8895]

They won't. The profit is too good.

[@zacharylangston7286]

the whole internet is like this

[@WilliamMorales-kg2io]

This is absolutely true, but it's not only a "science" issue. Misinformation is prevalent in everything I find.

[@illarionbykov7401]

I noticed this too. It pollutes many categories of instructional and educational videos: science, math, technology, AI, history, geopolitics, modern military/war, martial arts/boxing, sex/gender issues... YT seems to demonetize, shadowban, or outright delete many of the best and most accurate channels while promoting countless sloppy spam clickbait channels. YT even deleted an entire channel of videos by Stanford/UCLA Professors lecturing on Internet policy and censorship.

[@johnfarias7230]

This is why everybody was so mad when they deleted the thumbs down button you seen that many negative votes you don't bother watching the video

[@TheKeystoneChannel]

You see the likes and subscriber counts and you do...what does that tell you? Cause even that is generated like with Google... small channels don't stand a chance , they are deliberately kept small when talking about this or removed all together as I have pretty much all my friends who have been removed and some had quite a lot of subscribers. KZbin is one fake cesspool of fakery now that is pushed on you how they please through their algorythm , the only reason I see this video and content creator for the first time is cause it was mentioned on Rumble , never seen him or heard of this guy

[@riptide0872]

If you're on a computer, there is an extension that adds the dislike button back, that's what I like to use

[@elishh8173]

@riptide0872 Really?! That's amazing!!! Everyone with a computer should use it! I dont have one right now but everyone with a computer should use it. Honestly U tjube is just a money grabbing liar platform nowadays. If they were serious, they would have kept the dislike button and not deleted all so called "conspiracy channels" I would still like youtube. But they are just money making liars nowadays.

[@dazm901]

@@riptide0872 Alphabet does not release the data to third party developers that make those extensions. The software just uses an algorithm to estimate the thumbs down. Yet another scam unfortunately.

[@Anti_Septikum]

​​@@riptide0872only on pc and only when you add the extension, this is shit.

[@TheRealTomLauda]

I think we would have more chances of bringing down those channels by reporting them as AI generated, instead of going after the "quality" of the content they "produce". This is freaking scary how fast these tools are exploited against us.

[@Kenton.]

Seriously. A month ago I just learned that ai voices could start making voiceovers for videos. Now they seem to be everywhere.

[@tlrlml]

Sure! It's not like Google has it's own AI dreams, or that these videos might not be a part of the process of realizing that dream!

[@neatwheat]

It's a good thing that Google's AI developer left his job there (even though he was way into retirement age already) to be able to openly speak his mind and about his worries concerning AI. Gives us some insight. We can only guess how many more experts at Google are bound contractually to be silent about their work, right?

[@PowerScissor]

Google can't even handle their own portfolio of ½ baked current products...they definitely don't have the capability to tackle this. For all I know they removed the thumbsdown feature specifically for these fake AI channels.

[@animatewithdermot]

The only thing that will stop this is a change in LAW, not individual behaviour.

[@JabberW00kie]

I’ve never seen your channel before, but I’m glad someone is calling this out. I too began noticing the similarities between these channels and can usually spot them immediately when they pop up in my algorithm. They often have sensational trigger words like “terrifying” or “shocking” or “scientists can’t explain” in the title. It’s somewhat similar to tabloids from back in the day.

[@kindlin]

This is one of the better popsci channels, along with all the others he name dropped. If you don't recognize any of those, either, they are all highly recommended (scishow (like 5+ different version), veritasium, vsause, steve mould, so, so many).

[@warrensteel9954]

This channel is well worth a sub.

[@TheRenofox]

Same to both. The science spam phenomenon just popped up like decoy links and comments in the past. All as a direct results of KZbin removing the downvotes.

[@UnderGroundMerlin]

@@kindlin StyroPyro is another good creator. CodysLab, Nile Red, Anton Petrov is a new one I found like a year ago. He delivers some really good space information. Geologyhub for seismic activity stuff.

[@panner11]

@@TheRenofox I also blame Bright Side for this. It's a "science" channel with almost 50 mil subs and a few years ago became the most subscribed "science" channel out there. But all it is a nonstop factory of misleading and poorly researched content that uploads more than once a day. Although the content isn't auto-generated, it becoming the most subscribed "science" channel despite it's poor quality showed that you find success in this genre through clickbait alone. I'm sure these channels saw bright side as evidence of feasibility for the success of their scams. This format of video is very reminiscent of typical Bright Side videos. The worst part is the only way these channels including Bright Side get any views is probably because of kids. The videos aren't clever and it's hard to see many adults that would find it engaging.

[@northerntribe8127]

Thanks for sharing my year long pain. I thought i was wrong till ur video came to affirm what i been stressed about KZbin. Seriously, thanks a bunch 👍🏻. U are a brave warrior in the great misinformation war

[@ceoatcrystalsoft4942]

Wish more people had morals like you. The problem is the apparent anonymity of the internet and thinking no one will ever be held accountable for the harm they do. The best we can do is support those who actually make a difference

[@djking881]

250$ is no small amount, thank you for helping people make a difference!

[@ObeyRL99]

@@djking881 The money is great for a good cause. But anonymity in the internet is super important. It’s a KZbin problem, not a anonymity problem.

[@sanctionh2993]

​@@ObeyRL99 Anonymity is the problem all over the internet, not just KZbin. And not just the internet either.

[@Nerb1]

@@djking881 250 philippino pesos is $5 US. And he is not the CEO at crystalsoft since they are in thialand and use thai baht. This highlighted comment is part of the problem that Kyle is talking about. We all have to be more wary.

[@LeTtRrZ]

@@sanctionh2993 Anonymity is a tool that, like any other, can be used or abused. Anonymity isn’t an issue in and of itself. Misuse of it is.

[@eliash8054]

The fact that this video was demonitized says a lot

[@thisandthat1701]

Just a thought ,you may or may not be religious or ordinarily dismiss these things but what word does demonitised contain?; even scientists shouldnt discount the supernatural ,if they do then they are not being open minded which is sort of supposed to be the ethos of science (in theory anyway).

[@Gordon_Freeman_PhD]

​@@thisandthat1701 Uhhhhh.... what?

[@Gimurei]

​@@thisandthat1701what are you waffling on about

[@forgenorman3025]

@@thisandthat1701 Scientists work on evidence, and there's no solid evidence for any of what you're saying. End of.

[@iveharzing]

​@@thisandthat1701 The ethos of Science is: *_COLD. HARD. PROOF._* Got any of that?

[@alanthefisher]

We have the same problem over in my corner of "infrastructure KZbin" too. I foresee this becoming increasingly more problematic for miss-information and combating it. Thanks for making this video

[@dani_lla]

I never thought I'd see the armchair urbanist himself in the comments of science thor...

[@sarimsalman2698]

I think the new wave of "trendy urbanism" has exploded you guys channels' but also led to people trying to farm all the new engagement. Love your videos btw, never thought I could be interested in trains, of all things, but here I am!

[@AfricanLionBat]

I had no clue infrastructure KZbin was a thing but that is awesome in my opinion

[@hypothalapotamus5293]

Honestly, looking at the viewcounts to these science videos, I think it's not a huge problem yet. They spam the videos out in a way that no human could, but they do not have a viewcount that I would associate with a human audience. What we are seeing is bots making content for bots. I think the longer term problem is that AI isn't useful for generating truth or new content without costly human intervention, but bad actors are going to put it on auto pilot producing plagiarizing content that is altered only very subtly. This will eventually have a severe impact on new content creation.

[@tomsmith6513]

This video that we just played is itself a scam video. lol :)

[@rd76pag]

I had a sneaky suspicion about these channels. Thanks for making a public awareness video.

[@accordingtoangela]

I recently found out by accident how they are making this. There’s an editor called Descript. It’s $144/year and you record your voice and it learns your cadences so when you copy and paste your script that is mostly likely farmed through chat gpt, it is recited automatically in your voice. To top it off, they have drag and drop access to millions of stock images and video. Takes 30 minutes tops. Its very….concerning.

[@freelancerthe2561]

so they fed it a bunch of Kurzgesagt (or another narrator voice for that matter), and it learned to mimic it? The new era of deepfakes is under way.

[@cerebrumexcrement]

a lot of these videos dont even bother sounding human

[@jackd1582]

@@cerebrumexcrement they certainly can't do nuance and inflection. Tone is all wrong . Dead giveaway is end of sentences 💀

[@jackd1582]

This needs to be pinned

[@syproful]

It’s the AI feedback loop we all should be afraid of. What is credible or not over the long term. For that i’m sure that internet will become a fully signed environment. Including plain text such as ASCII. It’s also the only way to see who or what(AI) wrote something. The wildwest that is the internet still now, will have to move to let’s say the darknet.

[@starlingeyed]

I don't have a ton right now, but I saw this got limited ads and had to come support. I'm glad someone's calling this out! Always love your work, and I really hope KZbin does something about this.

[@ArnoldWind]

I noticed this issue around 4 years ago, it's only become far worse since. KZbin literally don't care about misinformation on their platform, such as the removal of dislikes.

[@ar43r]

Same. I even watched riddler myself bevor realizing after a 2 vid that ther is no essence there

[@axeman2638]

yeah , they are too busy trying to remove the truth from their platform.

[@caramelapple5562]

if you also like knowing when videos have large amounts of dislikes, there are "return youtube dislike" extensions that at least seem to work well for me (of course i have no way of verifying)

[@axelignis3488]

Its not even just the channels, I get constant scam ads about how "this (veteran/doctor/college student) is gonna destroy the billion dollar (select industry)" in a robotic voice. And we can't even begin to talk abour all those insane phone app ads

[@AStoryteller-for-fun]

Yeah this had been a problem for quite sometime and is just growing day by day.

[@dewyakana1543]

I swiped pass this video thinking its AI generated and "that guy can't be a scientist! ". But I am a believer in you, Kyle. And now a subscriber!

[@AUKronos]

This epidemic of science spam reached my algorithm quite quickly as it's a genre I've been following for a few years from genuine content creators and channels like PBSSpaceTime, Cool Worlds, SEA, History of the Universe (just to name a few) The common trend in determining which channels aren't worth our time are the frequency of the uploads. If a channel is pumping out multiple uploads a day, it's not genuine. By quickly checking the upload frequency, you're not giving them views. Thank you for bringing this to light and exposing the clickbait side of this genre.

[@Mythicalreign22]

I love SEA

[@Pulko172]

We noticed that some users are avoiding some videos based on when they were uploaded. This hurts the creators so we decided to remove the info of when the video was uploaded.

[@chubbydinosaur9148]

​@@Pulko172 oh god no, don't give them ideas

[@oskarskalski2982]

@@Mythicalreign22 Me too, SEA is great for listening just before going to sleep:), the same with history of the universe. And for those scam channels, I used the same technique that Kyle is describing. And when I'm seeing Michio Kaku my alarm bells go off:D. It's sad to see that such a nice science communicator went so far off.

[@tpbenze5032]

I’ve had this problem too I’m glad he made a video I thought I was going crazy. I’ve been a big fan of scishow and pbs and all the science type channels for years so this hit me pretty quickly once they popped up

[@manuelfriend4060]

Highschools really need to start providing "how to spot scams" classes along their personal finance classes. Edit: Well some of these replies are just downright depressing. If you're a teen, find school boring and too slow, and want to try something new; I'd like to recommend the book College Without Highschool. Maybe it's up your alley. On the topic of personal finance, I don't have any one book to point to, but I can say the one most useful piece of advice I've heard in relation to it is: "Never spend money you don't have." Of course not always possible, but think twice before borrowing money in any form. On a related topic, Economics In One Lesson is also a great read. School will teach you the abstract and the numbers of economics, but this book I feel teaches you the application of it instead. Might help with personal finance if you get a look at the bigger picture too?

[@tupacalypse88]

I think the research shows the more you think you know how to spot scans the more likely you are to be scammed

[@honestiguana]

High schools ARE scams.

[@orppranator5230]

How about we bring back personal finance classes before that? Seriously, public schools barely teach you anything anymore.

[@NATESOR]

Information and science literacy is going to be one of the must critical skills to have in the foreseeable future. It hasn't even been on the radar for the past 20 years, so we have a lot of catching up to do...

[@austinm5630]

Sadly, this would likely collapse the economy. The U.S. Economy is largely built upon the backs of what the Soviets would call "useful idiots." Instead of being unwitting tools for spreading communism, our useful idiots buy crap they don't need because a marketing department told them to, on credit cards they can't afford to pay back because a bank convinced them they could, all so they can go into bankruptcy that won't save them the way they think it will. These useful idiots spend their entire lives in this endless cycle, and they are the difference between profitability and not for thousands upon thousands of low-margin businesses across well over a hundred industries. So if you educate them, all of those businesses go under, about 20% of the labor market evaporates with them, and boom, it's Great Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo, but twice as bad because unemployment is actually 10% higher this time. Capitalism itself is a Ponzi scheme. Socialism isn't any better, but just because a second option is bad doesn't automatically make the first option good. Fortunately, it plays out over decades and the life cycle of a human means the scheme is largely sustainable, so long as the ground floor of the pyramid can be kept ignorant. We really do live in the wh40k timeline, we're just in it 40,000 years early.

[@scroft469301]

This is why I’m a huge proponent of critical thinking being taught in schools.

[@Akrilloth]

Seems like the "Elite" or whatever one can call them is directly in opposition to that though, can't get cheap labour if the workforce actually thinks about their situation.

[@birdsamora9925]

@@Akrilloth what are you talking about bro

[@Akrilloth]

@@birdsamora9925 There is a reason geography is somehow an optional subject in american schools.

[@birdsamora9925]

@@Akrilloth 😵‍💫

[@birdsamora9925]

@@Akrilloth Welp guess keep on going to khan for now

[@Andy-iq6rk]

This is why I love my extension that changes the thumbnail to a point in the video itself, avoids a lot of clickbait thrash thumbnails and it removes emojis and changes clickbait titles, makes KZbin liveable for me.

[@evennorthug2585]

KZbin is like a city without a garbage system.

[@TheKeystoneChannel]

KZbin IS the garbage now

[@otter.mayhem]

It reminds me more of the dark ages when people dumped their chamber pots on the streets everyone else had to walk on 😂 I read once certains areas even had laws to punish you if you didn't call out a warning to people below before tossing your literal shit out a window, but I don't think youtube even has anything that basically decent lmao

[@TayWoode]

And deletes any comments exposing the garbage as if pretending there isn’t any

[@After2912]

So KZbin is basically new york

[@turolretar]

It’s even worse. You can’t even say the n word proudly. Only sheepishly, otherwise they ban you.

[@Ginger_bit]

The "Spam and Scams" report category is probably KZbins most used option, and unfortunately the least enforced. That shotgun method does more than just overwhelm the algorithm, it also overwhelms the last two people at YT who actually do manual reviews.

[@Nippleless_Cage]

What's a better idea?

[@Ginger_bit]

@@Nippleless_Cage Have over 100k subs and complain on twitter. In my 10+ years on the platform, I have rarely, if ever, seen KZbin address something outside of this exact scenario.

[@Ginger_bit]

@@AylienYu I'll believe it when I see it.

[@jensenraylight8011]

@@Nippleless_Cage the better idea is, if you saw a video containing Elon Musk face or any AI, it was an auto spam flag

[@bestage9429]

@@Nippleless_Cage Bring awareness and spread the word around I guess

[@JesseBellas]

Thank you, Kyle, for taking a stand against these education vampires, and doing your part to save future generations.

[@tyripley2495]

Instantly subscribed, I’ve ran into this same problem on KZbin lately

[@LethargicVids]

Thank you for posting this information. I think it’s wrong that KZbin is reacting in this manner. Here’s for your time and effort in this.

[@eliteextremophile8895]

Ad revenue, profit, is the reason they pushed forward the change of KZbin to become a platform for bots. Taking down dislike count was one of the best strategies to support bot accounts and fake videos. Had nothing to do with internet bullying.

[@skyfeelan]

@@eliteextremophile8895 eh, at least with that one we can still use return yt dislike extension

[@Photasmatic]

Thank you for addressing this. I absolutely hate how it feels like a minefield when looking for good science videos. There is so much junk to sort through.

[@somedudeok1451]

Soon this feeling will extend to nearly every media we consume and even online interactions, as AI gets incorporated into every aspect of life. Everything will feel fake, because we won't ever know who's using AI for what. The only thing we'll know is that it's cheaper and easier to use AI very almost everything, so we'll be suspicious of everything. Poison for society's mental health.

[@tominieminen66]

Huh... I have never had that problem but then again I'm not actively hunting down good science channels

[@petesandwich3246]

It’s real bad with search too since KZbin gives you only about 20 or so videos actually related to the search and the the rest is filled with unrelated recommendations. So if I wanna learn more about a subject I can’t find videos on it since these channels crowd them out.

[@parkerwebb3470]

I think these channels are getting bought or getting greedy because they used to upload good science content go to their most popular videos they were actually good like the ridddie (yes I spelled it right) used to upload good content now they upload this shit.

[@damonroberts7372]

There's a similar problem with political/news content. The most annoying part is that despite KZbin having literal years of my viewing preferences, they keep putting viral garbage into my recommended videos.

[@mishmash86]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. We need more people to know about this. Hope this small contribution helps. Keep fighting the good fight!

[@kevinbarrios5718]

What currency Is MYR?

[@ainnajwa5527]

​@@kevinbarrios5718Malaysia Ringgit

[@ultr7712]

​@@kevinbarrios5718 Malaysian Ringgit

[@aquanos]

@@kevinbarrios5718 Google goes crazy with these types of questions

[@PeterParker-ff7ub]

There's so much nonsense online and everyone is here. Some people need to clean it up.

[@shiva369]

I've noticed the increase in these spam channels in history subjects, too. It's one of the looming AI downsides we can all see happening literally before our eyes

[@ringofkaren]

I love the history channel where they tell you every historic figure was actually black, Netflix is not far of anyway.

[@zyxw2000]

There are plenty of good history and science channels, if you look. I bookmark them in my browser and keep returning to them. BBC Earth, Stefan Milo, PBS Eons, Nature, National Geographic, The History Guy, Chicago Stories, American Experience, etc. I don't use YT's algorithm, and find good channels myself.

[@zyxw2000]

@@ringofkaren No, History Channel says everyone is an alien.

[@shiva369]

@zyxw2000 yes, I'm very familiar with most of those and will check out the others you mentioned. Cheers

[@zyxw2000]

@@shiva369 I've been on YT many years, and just learned recently about the algorithm. I've never used it, always found my own channels.

[@Elish-a]

This is why I stick to reputable science channels like Kyle Hill. It’s well presented, I know it’s thoroughly researched and I know it’s legit science. Thank you Kyle and all of the other real KZbin creators 😊

[@MizzzFizzz]

PBS spacetime, absolute history, journey to the microcosmos, Nurdrage, Practical engineering. They are some of my favs, everyone comment your loved nerdy channels i want more in my sub list ^ There are a few like The thought emporium and The secrets of the universe that i like but this video made me question them, Ill have to have a look. If its not something outlandish I probably wouldn't notice an error.

[@alcor4670]

It's odd how, after watching this vid and refreshing YT, almost a sixth of all the stuff recommended to me are these exact same fake-science channels. I've spent the last 20 minutes rapidly searching stuff about pastry art, Rammstein react vids, and vtubers just to get the search algorithm to scrub off all the garbage from its pool of crap it wants to recommend to me. I'm glad Kyle's calling out these quacks, but I feel YT itself has to take a more proactive role regarding this nonsense. I can't help but feel that there's going to be a *_lot_* more false-information channels popping up in the next few years.

[@Trippyllamacorn7047]

Another cool Chanel to watch would be issac aurthur makes great science futurisum content

[@Supremax67]

Who's Kyle Hill?

[@hurhurhur123]

@@Supremax67 the channel that posted the video you are commenting on

[@kelbybrewer2038]

As a former Ridddle subscriber that left when they started spewing about how the Moon is apparently hollow, I've been waiting for someone like you to talk about this.

[@davemccombs]

Aw, you missed them claiming scientists found evidence for dragons the other day.

[@m3redgt]

@@davemccombs i like the other theory better that they were real because ancient people around the world (who had no way of communicating about those creatures) had art about them but there aren't any fossils of dragons because they had hollow bones like birds and they degraded too quickly to turn fossil

[@hiimapop7755]

Left when they started going wild with their video ideas after their 1 googol years video, which was pretty much at the start of their channel years ago. Regretted subbing to them after seeing their uploads over the course of a year since their videos were so out of touch like the fake science channels that are common today. They're even more disappointing to look at today, just looking at their most recent uploads.

[@m3redgt]

@@hiimapop7755 easy money, minimal effort it gets to peoples head... also the fact that this video here is still up.. but their "reply" isn't.. speaks volumes

[@grendab]

dude same they used to make half-decant stuff and then they just didnt

[@i25island46]

Dude thank you for covering this. I can’t stand these fake channels. all clickbait

[@kevinbradley8613]

It is frustrating to have one of these AI videos play right after watching a PBS or some other type of legit educational video. I’ve noticed these types of things for at least the last few years and I think the algorithm has gotten pretty good at keeping them away. Great job making more people aware of the problem!

[@useodyseeorbitchute9450]

If you want something more frustrating - I did not get any. I purged trash or mainstream media long while ago, while algorithm apparently consider that as something similar.

[@KevinJDildonik]

Protip: Turn autoplay off in settings. Never let a corporation tell you what to watch.

[@kevinbradley8613]

@@KevinJDildonik auto play is nice for when I’m listening to stuff while driving. Like I mentioned, I haven’t seen or heard many of these types of videos for quite a while since the algorithm has filtered them out. If something from a channel that I know is trash pops up, I simply hit “hide content from this channel” or “do not recommend”.

[@jae52247]

I am glad I am not the only one that noticed it. Even during the commissioning phase of the James Webb Space Telescope, there were videos about “scary” or “shocking” discoveries that it made.

[@JustABaptistApoligist]

Especially one channel called Future Unity, total scam and fake

[@frozenthirdyear]

@@JustABaptistApoligist Good to know my gut feeling was right on it being BS!

[@pressplayulysses]

​@@JustABaptistApoligist I basically blocked them. Their videos will make you go "Yeah, we know that, yeah that one also, yeah, yea-WILL YOU GET TO THE POINT ALREADY?!?"

[@Nordlicht05]

Also pseudo newsletters makes that.... Shocked the world .... XY feared the new discovery... If not simple piss me off clickbait, pure shit 😂

[@robertmaxey5406]

I took note of the same thing. I might do my pumpkin pie video and reveal the shocking things they don't want you to know. Or perhaps a makeup channel.

[@SmigGames]

Man, I just had a conversation with my mom where she was talking about all the things we thought we knew pyramids that were wrong because of a documentary on the History channel, since she was unaware of its reputation and she doesn't have the background to doubt any of it. This is the kind of thing that preys on vulnerable people but on a massive scale with a very small barrier for entry.

[@jacobharris5894]

This is why education is so important. It’s the most sure fire way to avoid getting conned. Unfortunately even if you’re a life long learner you can’t learn everything though.

[@uploadJ]

@@jacobharris5894 you're - you're a life long learner? your doesn't work there.

[@jacobharris5894]

@@uploadJ oh yeah, thanks for the correction. I fixed it.

[@mikebergman1817]

@@uploadJ Oooh, Jacob ended up being a humble guy, and made you look like a dick😆 I kid

[@christofthedead]

@@jacobharris5894 what a charming interaction

[@John_Gillman]

On the "Voyager" channel they say that elon musk bought like 26 different companies and made a "warship to destroy russia"

[@BrandonMcBarrettFace]

This video earns my very first "super thanks" ever because I thought I was going crazy before you made it. This became a problem so fast, it's wild

[@NightRogue77]

Dude Kyle doesn’t even know how much Gaslighting he defeated today. He’s my gd hero

[@NightRogue77]

This is a Chinese operation I bet…. It’s just the topics I see - it comes across as what the East would think the West would be into

[@niceatpingpong]

I think "Low-effort content" is actually a reason for channels to be removed. I remember that there was a point in time where a ton of people were putting up essentially powerpoint presentations with TTS voiceovers and YT cracked down on them pretty hard. I'm hoping this happens to these channels as well.

[@JayQwery]

The baramater shouldn't be low effort though. Because what is low effort for one person isn't low effort for someone else. Someone's first ever video may seem low effort by the standards of most of youtube. Somehow you whould have to prove that the content is produced in a manner unbeffiting of a proper poster on KZbin. Not sure how you avoid bot created content. Certaintly a large problem that they should get a team on. If this does become more common it could really decrease the experince of users on the platform. Which ultimatly does hurt the bottom line of KZbin, and that's why they'll really have to step in. But.. hopefully they don't want tooo long to do something.

[@caleballen1330]

I disagree. Low effort still demands effort. It could be bad, underesearched, lazy, whatever, but there's still effort there. No effort content however, the things churned out by bots and AI, that's the stuff that KZbin needs to watch out for and take down. When there's humans on the other end then the supply of garbage content is limited. When there's bots, well we're gonna drown in garbage

[@BusinessSkrub]

It's probably not going to happen unfortunately, because that's the format of many shorts and tik tok videos; just someone else's video with a TTS voice over it. It wouldn't surprise me if they're totally okay with it now because it makes them phat staxx

[@therealspeedwagon1451]

Unless they’re doing it for now payment like me. I just rarely post low effort memes that just come into my head or I steal from Discord. But I’m not getting paid for it nor do I ever plan on getting paid for it.

[@Piromysl359]

Bruh, they literally introduced shorts, which entire essence is being low effort.

[@SoullessAIMusic]

I am a video editor who got hired to put one of these together. When I accepted the videography job they then proceeded to give me a detailed list of things that were expected of me that were way outside the realm of video editing. They expected me to make them a logo, a KZbin Banner, find a voice actor and or actress to read the script. When I asked them for the script they told me I had to write it out myself. When I told them a lot of this stuff isn't actually video editing they rolled their eyes and returned with a chat GPT script and an AI voice over.

[@arisily]

Sounds like some of the stuff I've run into as an academic writing editor. People submitting AI generated journal articles and expecting a low paid editor to turn nonsense into something coherent

[@FairbrookWingates]

@@robertmusil1107 Just because those who submit the stuff *expect* the person to edit their nonsense doesn't mean the person actually does so. You kind of jumped to a conclusion there. ;)

[@malcontender6319]

@@robertmusil1107 No. Say that again, this time try making sense.

[@shiina29]

They will be always able to find people who just started and don’t know what’s appropriate to ask for yet to do the work for them.

[@SoullessAIMusic]

@@shiina29 Thats a perfect sign of a reckless/foolish person right there. They try to spend their hard earned money on something they didnt do their homework on. Thats both a waste of my time, their money, and can lead to a negative experience for everyone. Thats not an excuse, thats a self harming catalyst.

[@Rubbly]

More and more AI TTS videos! When visiting my Grandma, she just had one playing in the background, it was so distracting to me but she couldn't tell the difference!

[@U-A-FAUTTPAYFGAAZNTTPUTTD]

My Grandpa Keeps Watching AI Slop💀☠️☠️

[@hollyoswald7808]

I avoid any “terrifying” scientific discovery. If there is a new discovery, I see what new books or papers by actual researchers associated with academic institutions discuss the data. Doesn’t always work, but it helps filter out some fiction.

[@damara2268]

Or find a channel who actually post most of their sources in the video description

[@Luthiart]

Yeah, I was getting real tired of seeing videos with titles like: "NASA Receives TERRIFYING Message from Voyager Space Probe!".

[@FairbrookWingates]

Yes, yes, yes! I also tend to come to new education-based channels at the recommendation of channels I've known and trusted already. For instance, Kyle could lead me to a new channel but KZbin's feed suggestions are generally ignored. And if the channel is filled with hyperbole, designed to grab attention over education, or focuses on conspiracy theory topics, it's a no-go.

[@mushroomsteve]

I love the video with the thumbnail, "Einstein was wrong!" and the title proclaiming unironically, "This Experiment Just Proved Einstein's Quantum Theory WRONG After 107 Years." For one thing, Einstein did not come up with quantum mechanics. For another thing, he went to the grave not believing in quantum mechanics, saying, "God does not play dice." So yeah, there's that.

[@SEMIA123]

Any headline with "Boom! ____ just _____!" can be immediately discarded

[@ivanchagasp]

This is called content farm. This has been plaguing KZbin for a while, even before chatgpt, but now they are easier to make. There are actual companies who employ people - writers and editors to pump out these videos.

[@A_piece_of_broccoli]

No one is making these videos they're ai generated. Yes companies pay employees to develop the software but there is almost no human interaction involved in the video process.

[@YRR_J]

One example of content farming is old Mr. Bean content. Can't remember who made a video about it, but it was really something.

[@Chuck_EL]

​@@A_piece_of_broccoli Many channels especially the conspiracy theories ones are definitely content farm channels

[@yourtimetraveleralara]

yeah

[@dracos24]

@@A_piece_of_broccoli It doesn't matter whether the videos are AI generated or human generated, what matters is that there is no curation of verification that the content they contain golds any value. The same has been a growing problem among human generated media, but the problem will only get worse as it becomes easier to generate content faster than it can be consumed.

[@jaredkennedy6576]

Hey Science Thor, glad to see you spreading awareness on this garbage. I was actually having a conversation the other day about AI in general, and the associated dangers. We're moving rapidly into a world where nothing can be believed. We don't have a way for the average person to look at a piece of information and tell if it's real or fake, and there are many more than willing to take advantage of that.

[@turn.off.the.century]

Post-Truth Era 💔

[@cow_tools_]

Hypernormalisation.

[@relo999]

@@turn.off.the.century We've already been there for more than a decade. Fake clickbait as well as established news media mixing their own speculation as fact (or deceptive editing or any number of deceptive practices) and picking up any "clickable" news story or making it clickable (by the former) is already pretty standard. We have and had social and political movement based on both fake, deceptive and overblown news from every side. The era of post-truth is already going strong, it now just is, at least partially, automated.

[@shruggzdastr8-facedclown]

...and this will have possibly permanent negative impact on any and all legit media -- science-based or otherwise

[@peacemaster8117]

We've always lived in a world where nothing could be believed, the only difference is that people are starting to realise that.

[@its_evynn]

We need a list of this scam videos.

[@runswithfeathers47]

This reminds me of my grandfather. When he grew in the Depression, you didn't send or recieve mail unless it was important and legit, so he fell for every single spam mail he recieved. He couldn't wrap his head around the ease and reasoning of spam. I imagine there are so many other similarly vulnerable people. I can't decide if the kids are just screwed because they'll just never have easy access to real info before they know better, or if most will adapt and be sniffing out BS when they're like 7.

[@middleofnowhere1313]

As for me I am skeptical about just about any communication I receive, which has caused me to have to play phone tag with doctors and dentists if they call me from an alternate line.

[@destructionman1]

We live in the Age of Information, but it is also the age of misinformation. It is getting harder and harder to sift out the scams/junk/hysteria. I am not envious of the next generation. Although as you say, maybe they'll have a knack for identifying it? Or maybe scammers will equally evolve. The better we get at defense, the better they'll get at offense.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

The kids are getting screwed as much as any kind of help, so for the foreseeable future, it's a mixed bag. Some will find someone physically to teach them about critical thinking and skepticism enough to find credible sources for information... Many, trapped in public schools under dubious political ambitions in the leadership and budget cuts, will be neglected and left to their own devices... This may well have the only real solution of abandoning the internet en masse... dropping every "platform" of infotainment to purely entertainment if that... or even just strictly disciplining ourselves to communications with people we can confirm are, in point of fact, human... It may well come down to "discord or bust"... or even just go physically to the g** d*** public library. Researching just about anything is so full of pitfalls and rabbitholes over the last 10 or 15 years, that it's almost inevitable at this point. You CAN'T trust anything. ;o)

[@kgddugvjj]

Ever since i was in kindergarten, my parents have taught me to be skeptical of everything. Some friends still get annoyed if i do a check when they switch phone numbers. It's better to be safe then sorry :).

[@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat]

The people that grow up with this will find it easy as shit, like we do with using tech compared to our parents presumably

[@BrianPeiris]

Thanks for bringing attention to this. I figured generated videos would be a problem, but I didn't expect them to succeed to this level (assuming those subscribers aren't also bots)

[@forgenorman3025]

I'm pretty certain they're bots myself. There's just no way they can rack up that many subscribers so quickly.

[@DarthWoodrack]

@@forgenorman3025 also the lack of comments is suspicious. Feels like Kyle was going to say something about that, but it slipped through the cracks

[@forgenorman3025]

@@DarthWoodrack He touches on it very briefly.

[@miltenignis1017]

This video is speaking from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for raising awareness about these channels and giving us this video to post in response to anyone who shares clickbait on social media.

[@jdogsful]

id say science itself suffers from a scam crisis. that scam is called capitalism. you cant expect good science when every scientist and corporation is motivated by profit, rather than truth, knowledge and intellectual integrity.

[@seaborgium919]

and its so frustrating because i love science and picking my good science channels leads directly to the "THEY DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW" stuff.

[@BlackHistoryBuffTV]

It’s not just science, it’s every single niche you can think of

[@x-iso]

yeah, and it's been going on for a long while now, Smarter Everyday have a 4 year old video on this topic, about auto-generated content that started flooding trends and recommendations.

[@notDANGEROUSnot]

And in nearly every major language too.

[@BlackHistoryBuffTV]

@@notDANGEROUSnot It’s the new version of email spam. What’s really interesting is when you start asking yourself “If the content is from bot/Ai farms, how much of the Watch time is?” Because if the content and views are fake then this is a problem that youtube cannot fix as it will affect everything from advertising spend to music streams and the share price of some major companies. Fake content and views could be the sub prime mortgages of the streaming era ! Now that’s a topic so one needs to make a video about

[@randomshxt2099]

yes

[@adeadgirl13]

Yes! I was wondering about this because I saw this pattern in a lot of cooking channels. They at least have real video content of cooking. But all the footage across channels is similar and has good production value (doesn't feel like an individual trying to make a video in their kitchen). All the thumbnails and titles are same. There's no voiceover, just closed captions. Every channel is talking about how they like this dish so much that they make it everyday (for every third video). And they are reuploading the same videos with slightly different titles and thumbnails. And they upload very frequently and always at a fixed consistent frequency like they've been automated. And they either have a lot of views or very few views. (I guess that depends on which videos get picked up by the algorithm. And then they start spaming that same video over and over again.) I'm not sure if these are bots or just people taking the Mr. Beast approach to KZbin to an extreme. Reverse engineer what works and only optimize for views. Eventually everyone does the same thing coz they're copying each other.

[@snowbofr3ak]

Never lose that Journalistic Integrity we all admire in you, Kyle. Thank you ❤

[@evahahaha]

Oddly enough, these channels have existed long before AI became commonplace. I spent so much time during 2014-2016 watching channels like therichest, talko, and many other fake fact channels that also churned out bland,boring content continuously( presumably by a corporation?) . It's sad to see how something I thought couldn't get worse, has become worse

[@zvxcvxcz]

These are just the next level of those, content farming to the next level, even more garbage output, even fewer staff, even fewer safety rails (if you can imagine that), etc...

[@Bicornis]

Yeah. The fake food hack channels that result in people injuring themselves in the kitchen were already bad enough, we don't need content farms poisoning science education too.

[@sleepyfella]

Isn't big channels like bright side also doing this? Why target only smaller channels

[@tysonchickennuggets]

@@sleepyfella u cant trust what there saying is true. The smaller ones

[@luckyblockyoshi]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@sleepyfella because these new smaller ones are next level, channels like bright side are old news now - these are the new paradigm for content farming

[@aussieklutz]

Saw this come up as a recommendation again... and i dont think i've seen as much of the spam over the last handful of months...

[@HayBayle]

I'd like to say that I'm surprised KZbin doesn't take this more seriously given that it's essentially wasting their server bandwidth, but then again they are barely able to moderate botted comments so... Thanks for bringing this up Kyle!

[@christylbk]

as long as someone watches an ad they don't care.

[@katiekawaii]

It makes them money.

[@danilooliveira6580]

content farms drags billions of views, that is A LOT of advertising money for youtube. they are never going to do anything about it.

[@HayBayle]

Fair points.

[@GeronimoPlaz]

How about you just think for yourself instead of wanting a crooked company like KZbin to make up your mind for you? Why are people so willing to give away their intellectual integrity? Did you all sleep through the last few years?

[@jonathanbailie]

I watch so many science shows on KZbin like you, veritasium, smarter everyday, etc., that these fake shows are always popping up in my feed like they're equivalent to the shows I'm watching. It's highly annoying, but I'm glad you are mentioning it and putting out content to combat it! 🤘

[@LadyDoomsinger]

I literally never thought about it until just now - I'm so used to just ignoring these videos, that I haven't even given them a thought until Kyle brought it up. To me these kinds of videos are the opposite of attention-grabbing. I don't even notice them. Then again, maybe I've been uniquely exposed to this sort of thing, that I've developed a tolerance.

[@MaximilianonMars]

Veritasium is too Soyiencey™ for my taste, he pushes garbage politicised Science like global warming without any critical examination of the evidence, just 'hey Bill Gates is giving away millions to influence science media, better get on that money train' and off he goes making dogshit videos to mislead people. I wish people would stick to what can be proven, like engineering. That's why I do like Smarter Every Day and other clean sciences, not this tampered political nonsense. It's a scam, a money grab. Can't you see that?

[@kai-pop57]

I unfortunately have fallen prey to the algorithm so I subscribed to the two channels you mentioned. Are there any other channels you suggest?

[@michaelyork4554]

What angered me the most is when I watched a few of these videos, invariably the title/clickbait topic was never mentioned, which was the only reason I watched. What a great way to get the watch time, getting viewers to think that if they wait till the end, maybe the topic stated would be addressed. Happy to see someone expose these.

[@popbigdaddy9422]

Maybe this comment won’t be important for the majority of people here. Some of you will ignore it, most of y’all won’t bother to read it and it will go unnoticed along with other comments. Maybe I’ll be criticized for this, but I just wanted to let y’all know that I put a lot of effort into making this comment

[@Sara3346]

Worse that anger can drive viewers to comment driving engagement ratings further :-( I was guilty of this because I trusted a channel before watching a topic I knew about and then seeing them not only get it wrong but never even TRY to back the initial claim their title and thumbnail made.

[@triggersights]

@@popbigdaddy9422 Well said.

[@DepravedSluggy]

@@popbigdaddy9422 Dang that was a good bait. Good job on showing that.

[@DennisSullivan-om3oo]

@@popbigdaddy9422 LOL .... The self referencing paradox. All comments are false, including this one.

[@de_vlad]

Amazing! Finally someone is publicly speaking about these channels! Was waiting for this for quite some time

[@averagegaming3740]

Yes, I’m glad someone’s finally calling it out. One of my friends falls down the rabbit hole of these channels every day and he wants to discuss science with me almost every day and I just can’t even handle it with him.

[@squadbroken962]

Just cut him out of your life, it's not that hard

[@whyplaypiano2844]

@@squadbroken962 You are what is wrong with modern society. A minor inconvenience that could be handled with essential communication? "Cut them out of your lives!!" What a joke.

[@some_doofus]

@@squadbroken962 or, crazy idea, take the opportunity to point out the flaws in the videos they’re watching and introduce them to actually beneficial scientific media, saving your friendship and improving their learning habits at the same time. This modern notion of cutting anyone who inconveniences you out of your life is such a selfish and divisive mindset. We need to work together, help each other, teach each other, forgive each other. If everyone looks out for everyone else then you don’t have to spend so much time looking out for yourself. Compassion and forgiveness demonstrate far more strength of character than telling someone to fuck off.

[@alastorgdl]

@@whyplaypiano2844 said "A minor inconvenience that could be handled with essential communication" Pretty much all scientism adepts are unable to sustain essential communication Your naivety make you blind to a wise advise

[@alastorgdl]

@@some_doofus said "This modern notion of cutting anyone who inconveniences you out of your life is such a selfish and divisive mindset" This scientism notion of pretending to be able to educate somebody else is such a selfish and divisive mindset

[@LeoX2]

Wow, that's actually terrifying to see. We definitely gotta get rid of these parasites in order to retain the quality of our educational side of yt. Thanks a lot for this video :)

[@rektexcalibur5254]

This comment is for the algorithm

[@JanStrojil]

Not just that. But imagine when chatgpt 6.0 gets trained on all the trash spewed out by this. The Uroboros is going to have a feast.

[@Flesh_Wizard]

I'd like to see someone go in the opposite direction. Imagine a science documentary with Max0r editing, personality injection and still being scientifically accurate. It would stand out and take attention from the clickbait as well as possibly capturing the attention of the zoomers

[@theMPrints]

lol scientist get money after publication , not just youtube , the whole scientific community suffers from this ......

[@brolohalflemming7042]

YT doesn't care. YT is in the business of selling adverts. These are content for ads to get wrapped around. It's only when they notice bots creating the content are also clicking on the ads that they may do something. The same thing happens with search, especially now Google and Bing have changed their algorithms to favour news rather than plain keyword searches.

[@stefanhuber7357]

Glad you are mentioning this now! I was noticing with some of these auto-generated channels that they were espousing misinformation with careless disregard. So damaging to our younger viewers who do not have the epistemological tools to filter this garbage.

[@estherstreet4582]

It reminds me a lot of the concerns around 5 minute crafts. Sure, they're *probably* just a lazy cash grab, but when they turned out to also have a geopolitics channel with some slightly spicy views the CIA was concerned by them. These fake science channels are almost certainly the same thing, just a get-rich-quick scheme, but it would be fairly trivial for someone to use the same tactics to deliberately spread misinformation for some form of gain.

[@gianni_schicchi]

Yes, they’re pretty obvious though. Same stock footage and monotone voices. Often mispronouncing scientific words. After blocking a handful of them the algorithm seems to have corrected itself for me.

[@stefanhuber7357]

@@gianni_schicchi yeah and sometimes I’m stunned by the words they would mispronounce!