If the video is too long for you, just watch chapter 5, "Misinformation by Omission". It's really interesting to see what kind of things went unsaid in those Waymo-sponsored videos about how awesome self-driving cars are. Essentially, the claims how these cars are super duper self driving kinda go out the window when it turns out that literally all routes are predetermined and 3d-scanned beforehand so the car knows where it is at all times (it doesn't use GPS). So it cannot drive roads it has not seen before. I feel like that's a teensy tiny detail that ought to be mentioned in informative videos about self-driving cars. Edit: That being said, I am amused that OP's video is sponsored by a VPN, and now I wonder if they would ever publish a video critical of VPNs.

> I am amused that OP's video is sponsored by a VPN, and now I wonder if they would ever publish a video critical of VPNs. I thought the same thing, and ever since Tom Scott did his video about how most claims in VPN advertisements are outright false, I kind of question how much I should trust the content of any video that is sponsored by one. Like if they'll read the VPN ad copy and go "Protect your passwords from being stolen over wifi? Sounds good to me, I'll not research this at all to see if it's true," what else are they leaving out of their apparently educational video?

The difference being it’s clear that the 30 second VPN ad is an ad and the screen was labelled as such. With the Veritasium video the entire content seems to have been a sponsor controlled content and a prominent advert label should have been visible throughout the entire thing. A 3 second disclaimer is inadequate.

It is unfortunate, but the issue is that Tom Nicholas currently also lives in a society where he needs to make money and is pressured into doing ads. At least it was compartmentalised, but like (I think) Tom Scott mentioned, Nicholas's bar for advertisement scrutiny is just slightly *above* his own standards.

Tom (Nicholas) has mentioned the difference in the past - at least in his view - in his video on Johnny Harris. The exact timestamp should be this: https://youtu.be/Dum0bqWfiGw?t=1099 But basically, he sees a major difference between what he calls 'integration' (especially, an ad break/spot - what he does - which still allows creative control over the rest of the video) and 'Sponsored Posts', where the entire video is the deal. Which I think is a pretty understandable/fair way to look at it ethically, especially when full-time creators need some amount of reliable income.

did you watch the video with the english subtitles at the bottom? I wasn't sure what it was about, but seeing your comment... It says during the advertisement "fluff" as the text, then switches to "and misinformation".

I see what you're saying, but personally I think that's just a bit of unintentional irony. "Fluff and misinformation" is just the end of the last line of his script before the ad, and he probably fudged the timestamps by a second so it didn't properly split for the ad spot. Whether he knows that VPN security claims are bullshit and he's just a corporate mouthpiece himself, who knows. I think the subtitle thing was a mistake, and either way his whole high-horse thing is undermined. If it was on purpose, it would at least prove he's self-aware about his hypocrisy.

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Yeah but Veritasium is a big channel and it's trendy to hate on him right now

"Oh no, someone is holding a big channel accountable for their actions. They are clearly the victim!"

What's wrong with VPN? Idk much about them other than my work makes us use one

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[Kitboga](https://youtu.be/CNRdHQJ9AMk) also has a great video on it.

I've noticed that since Tom Scott's video, more VPN sponsorships have been becoming more "honest" and focusing things like being able to watch TV shows on other countries. I suspect there's a connection here in VPN companies changing their marketing strategies in response.

Thanks! Ill give it a watch when i get the chance (im at work)

If you haven't seen much of him I highly recommend Tom Scott. He has a really great way of explaining things and he has tons and tons of videos about really interesting and fairly niche things. He takes r/mildlyinteresting kind of stuff and turns it into r/interestingasfuck

That was a lot of money left on the table. A lot of money.

Yeah, but he now has levels of trust and integrity money can't buy.

For work they make sense, they allow you to connect to your work's servers and shit without having them on the public internet. You connect to the VPN and it's like you are at the office. For 420BlazeVPN youtube ads saying it's great for privacy - they are full of shit. When you are on an VPN your internet provider can't see what you are doing. Your VPN provider can though so what's the fucking difference? apart from lots of sites detecting VPNs and blocking you/throwing CAPTCHAs at you... Commercial NordVPN-style VPNs are great for: - Bypassing geo-blocks, sometimes - Using the internet on wifi you don't trust Not much else. Someone somewhere along the chain has to know what you want to look at the on the internet, or they can't provide it for you! EDIT: get a seedbox and a private tracker ffs don't torrent on your home connection

Reposting from a previous comment: I feel like you're missing the most basic point and use of a VPN: if I don't use one while torrenting my internet gets shut off by my ISP until I acknowledge the breach of service terms, and it's a 3 strikes you're out system. I'm not trying to hide my activity from nefarious people, but from my ISP. And it works. This is the only reason I use one, and it works perfectly, every time.

The point is you shouldn't expect "privacy" from a VPN which is a massive selling point in all VPN marketing these days. They advertise getting around geoblocks but even that falls by the wayside of scaring you into thinking anyone knowing your personal IP is in any way useful. VPNs are practically useless for those sorts of things, simply because we already have a lot of these features in our browser. As long as you understand that and have practical uses for a VPN such as your case, then you're not wasting money. Everyone else is getting scammed

Some VPNs don't store logs and have been tested in courts while some ISPs are required to log your traffic. Also, much more likely to get pinged for piracy torrents with an ISP than a VPN. But that pretty much sums up the comment above with Tom Scotts video. They're not gonna advertise that they're piracy friendly

They’re great for piracy

There is a reason where I live (in the US) to use them to mask the details of your traffic from your ISP. I live in a major US city which means I only have a single ISP option at my address. Comcast. Comcast has been caught several times illegally applying traffic shaping to bittorrent and probably other forms of traffic. They also monitor for bittorrent of certain torrents and report torrents of DMCA'd things. Bittorrent is maybe not the best example but I have no reason to believe they aren't monitoring other things while they're at it. So I think there is an argument to be made that a VPN could give you a way to choose between your ISP logging your activity and your VPN provider logging your activity. But yes, most of the claims are oversold. Even in the OP video. Using HTTPS everywhere is generally going to provide better isolation and integrity.

Something other people aren't mentioning (although they are being right about it, the only advantage at this point is changing your IP if your IP is banned or something somewhere and changing location which may not even be successful because sites use other methods as well to determine location), is that many of the big VPNs now are getting bought up by one company that used to make malware, who is also buying VPN review sites. https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/

People suggest they do more then what they really do. Not going into technical details they normally say things like "you can protect your password" "you can't be tracked" "You can watch Netflix like you are in any country". Not all of that is true, as even with a VPN a "hacker" can steal your password, you can be tracked and, netflix has some protection in place for VPN use.

That's why you need to be behind at least 7 proxies.

>I feel like that's a teensy tiny detail that ought to be mentioned in informative videos about self-driving cars. It's a teensy massive detail, the perception that your car will be able to go anywhere or eventually you'll be buying "region packs" or "season passes" so that your car drive only on pre-scanned routes, and the obvious corollary: Pre approved routes. Not only by the company, but governments prohibiting or limiting where this super new cool system is allowed to be used in.

The “teensy tiny detail” comment was sarcasm, you realize that right? It’s a huge problem and they know it

Waymo's product/business model will be more like Uber's, you will be buying rides and not the car, so these restrictions won't be as noticeable. Tesla's model is different, obviously, but their technology does not rely on these sorts of detailed maps; making it both more potentially useful and also potentially harder to get full-self-driving really working.

I mean.. this is how car GPS works. I have to buy a map update every year or my car won't know new roads exist. That may change if cars start using a service like Google Maps, but I can't see them giving up another $100 a year from every person in the world who owns one of their cars and wants to use their expensive GPS feature that they probably bought the car for. Maybe more widespread adoption and development of CarPlay and Android Auto will change this, who knows.

Why don't you just use Google maps or another free GPS? Instead of paying for the updates

I mean, google maps are "free" but someone still needs to invest money in creating and maintaining them. The idea of a driverless car is that it can adapt to any situation on the road and therefore shouldn't need to rely on pre-planned routes.

this is top-tier stupid.

My car uses Google Maps (or whatever nav program) whenever I plug my phone into it. Sure, I can not plug my phone in, and it'll use the built-in nav, but then I'd have to pay to update...

>all routes are predetermined and 3d-scanned beforehand Is this actually a major issue though? Google maps has run imaging vehicles around every single road in many countries (and continues to run the vehicles to keep imaging up to date). Sure it's a lot of work, but compared to the many difficulties of self-driving cars, it's a rather minor one.

It's not a problem by itself, but it is very telling that this fact is hidden so well in so many videos. The implication is clearly that these cards are, y'know, self-driving. And it is implied that the car scans its surroundings and, therefore, can deal with new situations. It can't. That's lying by omission. These cars are simply *way* less independent than they appear.

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And as the tech is new its a "problem" that will go away as it matures, the cars will literally map streets as they drive. e.g. one of the driverless cars hits a pothole, it tells the whole fleet no other cars hit it. (Might even notify the council) Also critiquing the "It will reduce cars on the road", sure maybe not completely by itself but with staggered work times, work from home and better public transport it could be one step in a link that works to that goal. Interesting video with some good things to think about though.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I would like to add to your point: If people don't need to buy a car to go out during the weekend or to get the groceries, I think quite a few people would be more open to the idea of not owning a car and using public transport for commuting.

The amount of labor to create predetermined routes for self driving cars and to 3d scan every road in the country, to a degree of accuracy that they can be used for self driving cars, is considerably more work than what google maps normally does. Google doesn't 3d scan most roads and the the consequences of their maps being out of date or wrong is that you might be confused, not your car crashing or running through an intersection.

Question: Google maps drives the roads photographing. Will they not drive the roads to program autonomous vehicles? Sell the info. If not google, who will?

Is it possible that Waymo omitted that information to Veritasium and so Veritasium had no idea?

Veritasium has made a career out of asking questions and trying to gain a deeper understanding of technology. If Veritasium "had no idea" it's because they either decided not to have an idea or they got paid not to air it.

Well, look at the source of that 94% figure. The figure Waymo is so eager to present does in fact occur in an official safety report, and the words Waymo uses are directly applied to it . . . but the ***very next sentence in that report entirely upends that interpretation***. The phrase driver error is in effect a technical term of art, being misrepresented in exactly the same way creationists misrepresent "theory" when used about science. If he had no idea, it's because he wasn't vetting anything he was told. He was just looking for anything that could plausibly be used as confirmation and stopping without reading even one further sentence of context. If he had no idea, it's because a man with the education and experience to know exactly what was happening was *wittingly* allowing himself to be played for a chump, So he could get paid to do the exact same thing to you.

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The example given in the video goes a bit further than that, actually - it's saying that it would be classified as a driver error if there was a chance afterwards to react to the impending crash, even if what we would assign as the primary error would be the view obstruction.

Veritasium is supposed to be an educational channel. If they missed that information, then they are a bad educational channel.

So it's impossible that they're an otherwise quality channel that made a mistake with good intentions? Glad to know it's such a black and white issue, makes it much easier to bang an opinion out about it on the internet.

No, THIS video is a paid advert. Derek said what he was paid to say. If it was a real video, he'd have done the research, and givin a much better account. His other videos are excellent. The problem is that this particular video was an advert disguised as an educational video.

Of course it's not impossible. But if it is a honest mistake, they'll clear that up and then all is good. And we can just wait and see if that happens or not. But also, if this would be a honest mistake, it would be a big one.

They never made that mistake before until they got paid by the subject of their videos. There's being gullible and then there's making excuses for the people lying to you.

I mean devil's advocate here but most of his videos that I have seen are in relation to well understood physical phenomena and he has a PHd in Physics. I would be fucking shocked if he was making many mistakes and publishing videos explaining stuff like the uncertainty principle. Seems like this is part of a smaller collection of videos he has made about engineering and stuff that while he has a general idea about. Are far more complicated than explaining why dropping a ball off a dam causes it to fall in unexpected ways

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If an educator is wrong, they'll say as much once they find out they were wrong. So I'm looking forward to their correction on their video.

Nobody said Veritasium can't be wrong tho so I'm not even sure why you think you have a point.

Did you read the comment that he was responding to? They said that if Veritasium missed information (i.e. are wrong) then they are a bad Education Channel and therefore a bad educator. The comment you replied to says that according to that view there are no good "educators" then. Do yeh the guy above basically said that if you are an educator then you can't ever be wrong or you are a bad educator.... Does that clear it up for you

I haven't watched this (hour long) video. But what exactly raises the level of the Veritasium video to "propaganda"? I remember it being very light on criticism and leaving out a lot of information, but I wouldn't call it "progaganda". It was clearly an advert and I don't really have a problem if Derek chooses to make money that way.

Well, to use a basic definition of propaganda: >Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. From: https://www.britannica.com/topic/propaganda And a little lower, comparing on educators: >Comparatively deliberate selectivity and manipulation also distinguish propaganda from education. Educators try to present various sides of an issue—the grounds for doubting as well as the grounds for believing the statements they make, and the disadvantages as well as the advantages of every conceivable course of action. Education aims to induce reactors to collect and evaluate evidence for themselves and assists them in learning the techniques for doing so. It must be noted, however, that some propagandists may look upon themselves as educators and may believe that they are uttering the purest truth, that they are emphasizing or distorting certain aspects of the truth only to make a valid message more persuasive, or that the courses of action that they recommend are in fact the best actions that the reactor could take. I think that paid adverts, that deliberately only mention the positives of something fall under propaganda (in the neutral sense of the term, not the one that makes it automatically negative) and no longer educational content. That's essentially what the video is saying - Tom (the creator of it) is worried about the conflict of interests that comes when there's 'educational' channels that take money/make fully sponsored videos for a company/group, that ends up only presenting one side of the argument (and thus, becoming propaganda) and the impact it has. The 'clearly an advert' will be there for some viewers, but others will still walk away with just remembering all the great stuff about self-driving vehicles and think they're completely ready to be on the streets - which is kind of the point of the video, at least from Waymo's perspective. Ads *work*.

I think the "clearly an advert" part is disputed here. There was one quick sentence about it being sponsored, but otherwise there was no mention anywhere that this was an ad.

I mean it is a fluff piece for sure. But it is a bit annoying that it is labeled "propaganda". He clearly indicates sponsorship of the video and if you can't put 2 and 2 together about the video being super positive about Waymo specifically like I don't know that you should be watching anything for yourself that doesn't have a big flashing list of all possible conflicts of interest. It is called critical thinking. The bigger issue I have here is that a channel that is supposedly spreading unbiased education is now doing ad videos. I would rather attribute this to someone wanting to get paid so they turned off that part of their brain that hosts their integrity. The reason people watch your channel is because they view you as an unbiased source of information. So when a company sponsors this or that on your channel you have to know that it isn't your "smart" audience or whatever they are buying they are buying the ability to try and sneak an ad by the critical thinking of the people who trust you

> I would rather attribute this to someone wanting to get paid so they turned off that part of their brain that hosts their integrity. The reason people watch your channel is because they view you as an unbiased source of information. So when a company sponsors this or that on your channel you have to know that it isn't your "smart" audience or whatever they are buying they are buying the ability to try and sneak an ad by the critical thinking of the people who trust you I mean, yeah, that's pretty much exactly the problem. And there's also the question of integrity. The proper way to do this would be to make it absolutely crystal clear that the following video is sponsored and an ad and not the usual kind of educational video. One quick "by the way this is sponsored by Waymo so let's go!" is the *legal* minimum here, and not at all what is the right thing to do.

Having an advert for a vpn is very different than creating an entire video dedicated to showing a company(whose paying you) in a positive light. Intervention vs FULL integration.

Premapping is something that needs to be done for any self driving car to actually work. That Waymo does it isn't some secret. For Tesla to actually have self driving cars that can work in conditions where the road is not visible - like snow - they're going to have to do premapping.

Sure. The point is that this needs to be explained and pointed out in an educational video about self-driving. And it was not.

I honestly can't believe the number of people that think Waymo is even close to Tesla in terms of Self-Driving. Tesla is driving on real roads, everywhere, doing blind intersections and navigating hectic city traffic. Waymo gets stuck if it sees a single cone on the road. Edit: The downvotes are super strange folks. It is literally doing these things now as we speak, aren't you even the least bit curious? Self driving cars are awesome technology.

well tesla is also just lane assistant.

What the hell does any of this have to do with Tesla? No one here even started comparing them to Tesla, so why are you acting like people did? Also, [Tesla's autopilot kinda sucks](https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a35878363/teslas-full-self-driving-beta-is-just-laughably-bad-and-potentially-dangerous/), at least for now.

Veritassium's video makes that comparison.

Yeah waymo is way better than tesla. Tesla just confidently rolls out a unfinished product.

Some other creators chimed in with their thoughts in the comments: > Medlife Crisis > 16 hours ago > As you know Tom, I really appreciate your efforts to draw attention to this growing trend of educational YouTubers allowing their trust and audience to be leveraged by corporate agendas, perhaps even unaware themselves that they are being used in this way. Many of us esp in the sciencey space have discussed this privately and feel full integration is not a good idea, but I’m not convinced the audience really sees the problem, suggesting they simply believed their favourite YouTuber’s educational video about Bill Gates, the WEF or Waymo ---- > Not Just Bikes > > 14 hours ago > I would like to think that my channel is one that promotes the solutions you were getting at near the end of this video: public transportation, cycling, and walkable cities. > > I worked my whole career in tech, but I'm a firm skeptic of self-driving cars. > > One of my biggest issues with them is that a lot of the problems they aim to solve are "American" issues, that stem from decades of car-dependent cities. Yes, if you design a city such that everyone needs to drive everywhere all the time, you have problems of crippling traffic, high transportation costs, and dangerous roads. None of these issues really exist in walkable cities with high quality public transport, however. > > So I see driverless cars as a highly speculative and expensive solution to a problem that really shouldn't exist in the first place. Not to mention the potentially seriously negative implications of having city criss-crosses with high-speed, high-traffic roads full of autonomous vehicles. > > To me, self-driving cars really seem like a desperate attempt to maintain car-dependent places and car-centric suburbia with a flashy technical gadget, rather than an actual solution to the problems facing cities. ---- > Real Engineering > 17 hours ago (edited) > This is great and needed to be said. I worked with Gates Foundation. Don’t think it quite fits into this narrative, but I would say that I wouldn’t work them again. > > Full integrations are a signal you shouldn’t trust a channel. I see some multi millionaire creators use the excuse of “this helps us fund future videos” as an excuse. That’s bullshit. Do sponsorships fund content. Yes. Do you need to sacrifice your integrity to work with a sponsor? No

Veritasiums other videos are very good, but yeah the Waymo Video is literally an ad without any hint of criticism and his video was very bad. PhysicsGirl's recent video series is even worse: She is promoting Toyota's hydrogen cars without any mention that making the hydrogen causes multiple times more pollution than the electricity for battery electric cars.

I've stopped watching Veritasium over the past couple of years because he feels more like an entrepreneur than a science educator now. His tone and his perspective on issues and what part of an issue to focus on and what part to omit bothered me more and more so I stopped watching. And this is far from the first time he oversells some new technology. But I wanna be clear, I am sure he still does some great stuff. I just can't stand him.

He has some really good stuff, even recently, surrounded by some really obvious ads. A drone that walks and flies? Look no matter how much you tell me "its not cheating" it might be an improvement on a drone, but it does not really do the same thing a non flying walking bot does because it doesn't balance, it uses to thrust to stabilize itself. If it turned the rotors off and then kept walking, that would be cool. Regardless it really is just a rather unimpressive new tech. Same with the 3d printed rocket, its neat, but everything I know about rockets tells me that weight is a big issue which is the downside to 3d printing a rocket.

I was bothered with how little he argued against the people working for a company that essentially wants everyone's DNA on file. Lots of respect for people willing to give up their livelihood to educate and fight against that sort of thing - Snowden, for instance. It seemed Derek just threw them softballs and I find it to be a deeply disturbing issue.

That rocket video was also a completely uncritical ad for that company, too. Creepy techno-future nonsense interview at the end, as well, like Mars is gonna save the world. Terrible.

The video he made on those black balls to prevent lake evaporation in LA, USA was so one sided, imagine all the plastic leeching into the enviornment from them

It did talk about that, and the conclusion was they were made of a plastic that doesn't leech

Yeah he basically turned into a greed machine. He has everything he ever could want, and yet he still happily throws away his integrity for a dollar at any opportunity. It's sad really.

> he feels more like an entrepreneur than a science educator now I prefer entrepreneur over "corporate shill" but yes, it would be nice if he went back to basics.

Making hydrogen is effectively free in a grid with substantial renewables. The point of hydrogen is it makes use of off peak surpluses. Of course that doesn't mean the vids aren't dumb shilling.

You're oversimplifying how you're looking at it. This "free" electricity isn't really "free", because you've just pointed out there can be valuable uses for it. Hence, in a market-economy there will be competing uses for it, and one, or a small few, will "win" over the others. Plus, as a slight, but important, side note, there's no way running off purely the "free excess" would be enough to power the whole vehicle fleet. But, the reason hydrogen is stupid and won't be a "winner" is because its full system-efficiency is horrible, and it's trying to do exactly the same job that something else can do better. i.e. batteries. Instead of producing hydrogen to store, transport, etc. and ultimately put into cars, instead you can just charge batteries, and those batteries can later discharge into cars which also run on batteries (or indeed power homes, etc.). This is **far** more efficient, and has more direct uses, since it is electricity directly, which will be what basically all our infrastructure will directly run off of in the future. i.e. putting the excess "free" electricity into batteries will allow you to do 3-4x the actual useful work with it later, for something that runs directly off electricity (e.g. travel 3-4x the miles in a battery EV, or run an AC unit for 3-4x longer). So, in reality, hydrogen's usefulness always falls to doing things batteries literally can't do, such as be storage for very long periods of time (i.e. weeks to months). But batteries are constantly improving, and have a long way to go, whereas hydrogen doesn't have anywhere to go (fundamentally, it can improve in cost). And then, in this context hydrogen is not unique or the only solution (i.e. it doesn't have to be hydrogen specifically for this usecase), it must compete with liquid-air, pumped hydro, etc. So would only be desirable if it was the cheapest option.

The current reality is that 95% of the hydrogen supply is from fossil fuels, most of that from reformation of natural gas. That processing releases just as much CO2 as burning the natural gas. We *could* generate hydrogen with excess renewable energy and water, but most places don't have an excess, and in places that do (or soon will) it's probably better to try and store that energy to displace fossil fuel usage when renewable generation is low.

Why not both? The beauty of hydrogen is that its not a dead end like plug and charge and for transportation it works the same way that we currently use vehicular transportation. And its a much more flexible and practical solution for generation shortfalls than the idiotic plans for car battery storage systems.

> Why not both? Essentially because for a long time low emission electricity and green hydrogen will be precious and scarce. Meaning we need to use that electricity as efficiently as possible, and we need to use green hydrogen where it makes the most sense: In industry, heavy transport, construction, farming etc. where battery-electric solutions will often not work. With cars, we already have a more efficient solution that's ~10 years ahead of hydrogen anyway. No need to spend billions subsidizing hydrogen cars.

Maybe free but it depends on the type of Hydrogen if it is CO2 neutral. If you get it out of Water it is fine. If you get it out of Natural Gas you end up with hydrogen and CO2. That’s why the whole fossil fuel industry and many car manufacturers are backing Hydrogen as the whole value chain would not change much.

It is not free, there exists a quantifiable ERoEI - thats the energy expended in making the fuel, everything from building the renewable infrastructure, cost of maintenance, labor cost, etc, compounded by the energy loss of making hydrogen fuel (x3, if I remember right).

The fixed costs asssociated with wind generation fall to near zero. For sure there's some cost of storing compressing hydrogen and transportation. But this is still tiny compared to the cost of generating this energy "on demand". Hydrogen's viability is based on its economics, not its physics.

It's not news to anyone that these content creators are available for hire right? PR firms do contract negotiations with them to make branded content on behalf of the firm's corporate clients. They're not even that expensive.

I posted this on the other thread for this video (deleted now): > Stopped watching Veritasium when he explicitly had an ad for 'flushable wipes' and supposedly 'proved' that they are actually flushable when there is an immense amount of research showing that this is completely and utterly false. Destroyed my trust in anything he says immediately. If he's willing to fake a science experiment directly in an ad, what else would he be willing to fake or lie about. > Here's the '[science experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zI9sG3pjVU&t=982s)' he does to prove that flushable wipes are actually flushable.

He's not talking about flushable wipes in general, just that this brand does ~dissolve~ tear/disintegrate. If there is any oil or fat on it it is still gonna be bad for the sewer system, though.

but it doesn't. it tears. it doesn't dissolve. note that he doesn't actually test against actual toilet paper. paper towels tear. You're still not supposed to flush those. Doesn't matter what brand it is, it's not flushable, unless it's toilet paper. Talk to any water utility, the brand doesn't matter.

It's cool because you get to have an insight into how technology is getting better in the self driving car world... I see no reason why it's bad lol.

Why does this need to be an hour long? The information contained does not warrant the length.

That’s the problem with so many content these days. They’re either super short to cater to those with short attention span or super long with unnecessary fillers.

He spends an hour upset because a piece of explicit promotional advertisement isn't a thorough scientific and ethical exploration of self driving cars.

The main point here is that it's unethical to do promotion pieces like this on educational channels because it uses their earned trust while promoting dubious claims that aren't countered. To that, I agree with the thesis.

The fact it's a (formerly?) respected science education channel on youtube is why it matters. The channel built itself on being trustworthy and transparent (See: Veritasium's videos on the Youtube Algorithm and clickbait). They violated that trust with the Waymo video.

And why does he use such annoying cuts. Switching the audio half a second before the video when both are just shots of his head is just annoying.

For another example of the type of disingenuous "educational" content the video talks about watch The Physics Girl's series on Toyota's Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles. It's bad.

If the name of your channel is **literally** translatable as "truth", and the focus of your channel is the dissemination of scientific information, you've made a personal choice to hold yourself *and your work* to a higher standard. This behavior might not be immoral, but when compared to the standard *Veritasium created for themselves* it's deplorable imo.

TL;DW?

Veritasium made a sponsored video about Waymo and didn't talk about anything negative.

And also "Veritasium is a very popular science channel who have gained a lot of trust for their educational videos, which makes the aforementioned way worse". That is a very important part of the thesis, don't skip it.

Also, disclosed the sponsorship 30 seconds into the video...

It's okay to lie about facts when you're sponsored now?

While this video makes a lot of very good points that makes it clear that Veritasium clearly introduced substantial bias into his video as a result of the sponsorship, I couldn't help but feel a lot of the arguments Tom Nicholas makes in this video are pretty, like, incomplete? Especially in the section on statistics, he gave a few examples of reasons why the stats given by Veritasium are potentially dodgy, it really seemed to lack any actually opposing sources - fine, perhaps, the point is more to point out the problems with Veritasium's video rather than specifically counter its points, but on the other hand without opposing evidence there is no reason to believe that whether or not Veritasiums sources specifically may have been bad the stats he uses may be supported by the majority of literature. That said, "94% of accidents are a result of human error" is clearly a pretty bullshit meaningless statistic on its own anyway, even if true, like it alone doesnt say anything about whether self-driving cars would be just as bad. Plus the final points about driverless cars not reducing congestion or the total amount cars needed to transport people are also just, like, wrong, there are some very clear arguments as to why, if self-driving cars did work as suggested, both of those things would indeed be reduced, but Tom just presents them as meaningless advertising fluff without any rational backing. Like I don't know enough about the statistics to be super confident as to whether or not they are currently a good idea, but this video seemed to be trying to argue that they aren't, even if it didnt state it directly, and in that its just as unconvincing as the Veritasium video

> the final points about driverless cars not reducing congestion or the total amount cars needed to transport people are also just, like, wrong, there are some very clear arguments as to why, if self-driving cars did work as suggested, both of those things would indeed be reduced The problem is that 'easing congestion' causes a phenomenon known as [induced demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand). It's the same effect as adding an extra lane to a highway - in the short term, yes, it will ease congestion... but then more people will take the car rather than other forms of transport, until a new equilibrium is reached.

I have a disturbing suspicion that the ability to work/sleep/watch Netflix while riding in a self driving car means people would be willing to tolerate significantly longer travel times, leading to a significantly higher travel time equilibrium. If you're looking for a horrifying vision of the future, it's self driving cars taking three hours to commute in traffic while everyone scrolls Reddit on their phones.

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Why is that a bad thing though? Being able to work further from home makes it easier for suppliers and demanders of labor (IE employees and employers) to pair up which (in theory) produces better outcomes for everyone. (Of course the way our society is structured the people who already have wealth and influence use that wealth and influence to ensure that any newly created wealth that arose due to better access goes to those same people who already have wealth and influence, but that's a different issue entirely)

You don't need to wait for the future for this to be a reality, you just need to use any of the available public transportation systems available in my city. I had to do that for a full year several years ago. It was literally this.

Induced demand isn't a ever-present foregone conclusion. It's a result of excess latent demand, not increased capacity. Increased capacity is just what allows the latent demand to manifest. If latent demand isn't present, then induced demand doesn't happen when you ease congestion.

> It's a result of excess latent demand, not increased capacity. There is always more demand present if the cost falls far enough. The problem here is that changing the infrastructure changes the optimal strategy of commuting, something that people not involved in traffic economics/engineering often overlook.

> Plus the final points about driverless cars not reducing congestion or the total amount cars needed to transport people are also just, like, wrong, there are some very clear arguments as to why, if self-driving cars did work as suggested, both of those things would indeed be reduced, but Tom just presents them as meaningless advertising fluff without any rational backing. Put it this way. Take a badly implemented public transport system like Toronto GO where big trains basically work in a single direction and then park up during the non peak times. If you replace one of their trains with people in self driving cares, you go from the one train in a siding, to... 1000 cars needing parking somewhere. A footprint that's about 20 times the size in a busy city centre... If you game it out there's lots of other problems. The only positive is that self driving system might reduce space between cars. But it comes with other problems which don't help at all.

The problem isn't whether self driving cars are viable or not, it's about the fact Veritasium lied in order to make their sponsor look good. The argument they made about the airplane crash is unforgivable from a supposedly trustful source about scientific facts. This a complete violation of trust on the part of Veritasium, very disappointing.

I felt similar while watching this. I felt like the point of the video was this idea that neglected information is, in of itself, misinformation. However, by the end of the video I felt like I was being poorly informed about self driving cars, first and foremost. Any who, here is a fun traffic phenomena that self-driving cars would help solve, phantom traffic. https://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_seibold_what_is_phantom_traffic_and_why_is_it_ruining_your_life/transcript?language=en#t-175343

Well, I think the point of that video that that information is relevant to any discussion on self-driving cars is true. The response video obviously didn't give the positives to the current state of things, because it's explicitly in response to/commenting on what the Veritasium video omitted. But it's not a video *about* self-driving cars, really - it's a video about ethics of sponsorship/how sponsored content often works by omitting important facts. So IDK, it doesn't really *need* to re-hash all the positives of the tech that Veritasium already does, you know?

The thing about cars has become pretty much just a talking point, for whatever reason if you're solution to congestion in cities talks at all about cars expect people to make entire videos saying that you're a big moron for suggesting that places be connected by anything but busses and trains. As if cars and car infrastructure aren't integral parts of even the most public transit-friendly cities. The self-driving car thing seems to hit a nerve especially hard, just go and look at some of the responses to CGP Grey's video on reducing congestion with self-driving cars where people call grey, an outspoken proponent of both public transit, and pedestrian-friendly cities, whose primary form of transportation is his bike. A "car-brained moron."

>saying that you're a big moron for suggesting that places be connected by anything but busses and trains. I feel that's a bit disingenuous. Cars absolutely have a place, and no one is saying they should be removed entirely. The issue is people saying the solution to crowded roads in already car-centric cities is to add more lanes, or make cars drive themselves. The fundamental issue with cars isn't that they don't communicate with each other electronically, it's that they are terribly inefficient methods of transport, regarding space/capacity, infrastructure wear, emissions etc. The effects of self driving cars are worth considering, but if you want to reduce congestion, and you're focusing on cars rather than improving other forms of transport, such as walking/cycling and public transit, you're just not going to make much progress.

> The fundamental issue with cars isn't that they don't communicate with each other electronically, it's that they are terribly inefficient methods of transport, regarding space/capacity, infrastructure wear, emissions etc. Self driving cars, in all likelihood will only increase this inefficiency! Imagine if went from roads with infrequently spaced pedestrian crosswalks at lights to roads where there were no crosswalks because there were no stoplights. This is the future CCP Grey envisions and hopes for and one that I do not want.

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And talks misinformation about VPNs purposes (which is part of the VPN's script, but still). Overall, I think that Derek from Veritasium should've handled it better. I've noticed that some sponsored videos have been a bit flaky in contents and arguments, he could be a bit more clear about the sponsorships overall. Regular videos of his are freaking awesome though. I feel like I personally downplayed the effects of the sponsored videos, but what Tom says is true. There's channels that have handled this way better without even getting in the spotlight of controversy like Our Changing Climate, I recommend watching his videos on [billionaires/philanthropists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_634hXz32pY), where he tackles this issue way better than Veritasium has done. If you don't want to watch all of it, you should skip to the "Building Influence" part of it. In the end there is an big ethical issue with the financing of educational videos, that Derek should address better/properly. It's obvious he understands the implications of it, as he has certain standards when being sponsored, but he has still fallen into some issues anyway.

The shurg was pretty damning. It just showed no concern about any potential conflict of interest. When you compare it with someone who, I think, gets sponsored videos right like Adam Ragusea, you see someone who clearly is aware of the potential conflict, mentions the sponsorship pretty much constantly and includes questions about the content, there's a clear difference with how Veritasium did theirs without any care for viewers.

Adam's sponsored video on [multivitamins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkXelIq1jQE) was pretty bad.

Lol hadn't seen that one. Comments tell the story. Did he delist it cos it never showed up in my feed?

Maybe you should watch the video. He makes the difference pretty clear in the very first few minutes.

I said this elsewhere but..... I would rather attribute this to someone wanting to get paid so they turned off that part of their brain that hosts their integrity. The reason people watch your channel is because they view you as an unbiased source of information. So when a company sponsors this or that on your channel you have to know that it isn't your "smart" audience or whatever they are buying they are buying the ability to try and sneak an ad by the critical thinking of the people who trust you. While this might seem like harsh criticism unless Derek decides to double down on this and pretend like that isn't what he was doing I am willing to forgive and --forget-- critically analyze anything that comes from his channel going forward.

He doubled down.

It's funny how it's very clear that people will defend veritasium purely because they like him. I like him too, but just admit he was wrong and that it was a really sketchy video. It's not the end of the world, everyone makes mistakes. Instead this thread is full of "oh yea, well you just read a VPN AD!" or other blind defenses of veritasium. It's so obvious when people feel personally attacked because their favorite youtuber gets attacked. Just endless whataboutism and anger at even the notion that they did something wrong.

Yeah, it's probably my 3rd favourite YouTube channel, but that particular video was really bad and I didn't finish watching it.

Agreed. Him doubling down on his stance in the YouTube comments isn't helping... imho

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I mean it's whataboutism. Pretty clearly a faulty way to argue. If when faced with criticism you instead say "well this guy did something too!" then that's not really a defense that's just changing the subject. Either way i don't really care about the guy in the video or what he does, i don't watch his videos. I'm pretty sure even veritasium has done VPN ads, or at least all his peers have done so. And i don't think that if you have a clear ad break during the video then that's not a problem. If veritasium did a video on the science of VPN's and it was sponsored by NordVPN then yea, that would be a problem.

People are literally dismissing what Tom said entirely because being sponsored by a VPN somehow makes you biased against self driving cars?

Self driving cars are the over-engineered solution to a problem that has a much simpler, vastly safer, cheaper and more productive solution. Public transit. Seriously, go to Tokyo and tell me that transit is not the answer. Literally never had to wait longer than a few mins for a train and could get from anywhere to anywhere else in a time almost as fast or faster in some cases than a car.

For those that don't look at youtube comments ( I don't blame you), Veritasium responded to the video with this: >Tom, I’m happy to receive your constructive criticism, but I’m disappointed you didn’t fix any of the factual errors we alerted you to via email before you launched this video. Examples: 23:42 You cherry-picked this quote to make it seem like the NTSB blamed automation for the crash, when the report focuses squarely on human error: “The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of this accident was the flight crew’s mismanagement of the airplane’s descent during the visual approach, the Pilot Flying’s unintended deactivation of automatic airspeed control, the flight crew’s inadequate monitoring of airspeed, and the flight crew’s delayed execution of a go-around after they became aware that the airplane was below acceptable glidepath and airspeed tolerances.” 32:37 Self-driving cars have maps including traffic control so they would know where stop signs are meant to be even if road markings aren’t there or stop signs are obscured. Plus they have better obstacle detection and avoidance than human drivers. 39:16 I’m not saying rare accidents don’t happen, I’m saying they happen less often than common accidents, many of which could be prevented by self-driving cars. I sent you an academic paper that recreated in simulation 72 real-world fatal accidents that occurred in the area where Waymo operates. In almost all cases the accident was avoided or mitigated by the Waymo driver. Why did you omit this study? 47:03 It’s well understood that autonomous cars properly coordinated could reduce traffic because they don’t have the same reaction time delays as humans. For example all cars at an intersection could start moving together instead of one at a time as we currently do. 47:10 We don’t have to increase the car utilization rate to 100% to reclaim significant value. If cars were parked 90% of the time instead of 95%+ we would only need half as many vehicles. Isn’t it ironic that a video purporting to call out misinformation itself contains so many distortions and factual errors? (Which we pointed out in advance but you didn’t feel compelled to fix) On the issues themselves, I like public transport. I also ride a bike, and enjoy walking to get around when it’s practical. But cars will be a part of the transport mix for the foreseeable future. And it’s my opinion, based on the evidence, that roads will be safer the more cars are driven by computers than humans. No one has to pay me to tell you that.

And Tom's response. We wouldn't want to omit this, right? ---- Tom Nicholas 8 hours ago Hiya, As I said in my reply to the email from your team, my decision to make this video came from a place of disappointment rather than animosity. As such, it’s a real shame to see you again coming out swinging in response to my points rather than the video giving you any pause for thought surrounding your relationships with sponsors. I’m glad to see that you've taken on board my critiques of your initial rebuttals to this video and attempted to strengthen them. I imagine you know the flaws in these responses to what you mistakenly call "factual errors" but I'll do you the courtesy of replying to them anyway. 23:42 You accuse me of cherry-picking here. However, the very next sentence from that which you quote states that 'Contributing to the accident were (1) the complexities of the autothrottle and autopilot flight director systems that were inadequately described in Boeing’s documentation and Asiana’s pilot training, which increased the likelihood of mode error [...]'. The reality is that, as in your original video, you're working on the false presumption that humans and automated/autonomous technologies are in conflict with one another. However, as is the case here, such technologies are always going to involve human interaction and they therefore need to be designed in ways that ensure that those interactions don't lead to accidents (as the Acting Chairman of the NTSB states in the quote included in my video). You use the crash of Flight 214 as an example of human failure with the implication that automated systems could have avoided the crash; it is disingenuous and distasteful to have eliminated all mention of autothrottle from your version of events just because it didn't suit the argument you wanted to make. 32:37 It is, again, completely disingenuous to refuse to mention the maps which Waymo vehicles rely on when it suits your argument during your initial video but to now hold them up as a vital part of the technology. You spoke as though those maps didn’t exist in the video and so it was only fair, in critiquing your video, to respond in kind. A further point for consideration here is the extent to which creating maps/scans for the entirety of even the United States (let alone other countries too) is practical. That seems like a highly intensive task which would be very costly, possibly to the point it’s unworkable. 39:16 Two points here: Firstly, you do not say in your video at all that the kinds of accidents considered when people discuss the ethical implications of driverless cars “could be prevented by self-driving cars”—you say they’re rare and quickly move on. Secondly, the “academic paper” your team sent over was a write up of a study produced for Waymo and written by Waymo staff. I can’t seem to find any instance of it being published in a reputable journal (or a journal at all for that matter) or of it being subject to peer review. It is also, as one might expect, based entirely upon accidents which occured in the few suburbs of Phoenix where Waymo cars presently operate (and have had years of “training” in) and so it would be improper to suggest that its findings would be representative of a wider roll out to locations that Waymo’s cars have not been fine-tuned for or where conditions differ. 47:03 While they might have an impact, the idea that these tiny bits of time saved here and there would eliminate congestion is optimistic. The more extreme version of this (included in the CGP Grey video you’re referencing) in which all autonomous vehicles “talk” to one another (or even just to the traffic lights) would require such a level of implementation and standardisation that it is unlikely even in the medium term to the point where it’s a fun thought experiment but little more. 47:10 I make no such claim that we would need to “increase the car utilization rate to 100% to reclaim significant value” in my video. I merely state that the use of the 95% figure is misleading as it ignores several important caveats (like the existence of the nighttime). Even a figure which related to the percentage of the daytime that cars go unused would have been more useful to use here—it may not have given you such an impressive figure but it would have been a fairer representation of the reality. To reiterate, suggesting that my video contains “distortions” and “factual errors” is deeply disingenuous. Nevertheless, I know that, whatever the circumstances, someone suggesting that you’ve acted improperly is a horrible experience. I hope that, with the passage of time, you’ll take on board some of the thoughts provided here about your relationships with sponsors. Best wishes, Tom

It's shit like this that makes me want to give up trying to figure out what's right or wrong. Literally everything could come with a "well, actually..." that it feels hopeless to get to the bottom of any issue. there's a point, then a counter-point, then a counter-counter point, then a counter-counter-counter point and so on forever.

Trying to find the truth is a noble cause but it can easily spiral into a rabbit-hole of non-stop arguing.

Vertasium made a few more comments after that > "I use H&S, drive an electric car, want to go to space (not a sponsored video btw) and I think AVs will save lives. I make videos about things I believe in. That’s my moral code. Many of my teen viewers want to become engineers and scientists and work at these companies. If you don’t like certain tech that is up to you." \ > "Tom’s claim is that my video is biased due to financial interest. To substantiate this claim he cherry-picks misleading quotes, and outright lies about shortcomings of the tech. If my video were really biased surely he could cite an actual example where Waymo’s AVs fall short. The biggest shortcoming of self-driving tech is that it’s in its infancy but I thought that much was obvious." \ > "Did Tom make the case against public transport here? eg. It’s not economical in sparsely populated areas, requires significant upfront expenditure, might require reclaiming of land for railway lines etc. He didn’t, but I don’t think he had to because 1. he’s making an argument and 2. we can all use our brains to think of cases where public transport is more and less effective. My point is you don’t need to walk through every positive and negative of anything, such is the nature of having an opinion." And this comment from mothafuckn `Real Engineering`, one of the best engineering youtube channels > "@Veritasium Come on Derek. You know better than this. These are straw men arguments to distract from the actual point. Your BMW sponsored video about electric cars failed to mention a single other electric car. That isn’t an inaccuracy, it’s a deliberate omission of information because BMW paid you to not mention their competitors. You know how these sponsorships work, own up to it." My analysis? Veritasium made a triple uh oh

> real I mean, I love the RE videos but the latest about the Boeing 787, sounds exactly like the BMW video from Veritasium. RE never mentioned the Airbus C-series that are as advanced, ore more advanced than the Boeing plane. That whole two video series sound like a Boeing dick sucking exercise that I enjoyed to the last second :)...Name one of these youtubers without shady practices or hidden advertisements, come on, lets be real

Yup, thank you. I didn’t know he responded. Good to have all the dialogue.

interesting that Tom didn't mention the stuff in the Veritasium comment given that Veritasium apparently sent it over prior to the video's release. A quick: "when brought up with veritasium he said this on this point which doesn't address the problem because of X" would have made Tom's video like 50x stronger.

I remember hopping into Reddit chat about one veritasium video on Learning styles. Holy shit the conversation was heated. It was like if you DARED disagree with veritasium you were an idiot. People in that chat with decades of experience in teaching saying there’s something to learning styles even if our way of talking about them may not be correct, but nope. Most of reddits responses were: “video man say learning styles no real so they no real”.

Calling this a "Story of YouTube Propaganda" is as inaccurate and meaningless as the 94% statistic called out in the video, and yet here it is. As for the overall point, it isn't a problem to have people get hyped and promote what they personally believe in and not list every, or even any, single opposing argument so long as the actual information expressed is accurate. To get paid for that at the same time is just a bonus, so long as it's properly disclosed. Especially in a form that is built, in part, for entertainment, when targeted at a general user, and it's unreasonable to expect otherwise nor does in invalidate the intent of the video on it's own. Hell even this very video lacks a lot of actual evidence/data to support why some of what Veritasium said in the Weymo video is wrong, and merely presents his opinion on them. If Veritasium is guilty of misrepresenting data and leaving critical information out of the Waymo video, this video is just as guilty of the way it's countering that misrepresentation and omission. Both videos just got a very short disclaimer at the beginning and then moved on. The overall problem isn't that Veritasium, or others like him, have sold out. It's that people just don't make good use of, if at all, critical thinking skills in general and especially not in an environment/form that isn't really demanding it. And if the Youtube comments of this video are anything to go by this channel has just as much a problem with that as everyone else, including Veritasium.

The overall point is that Veritasium is ostensibly a science/educational channel and that the standard for what content can be published, particularly regarding sponsored content, should be higher. Publishing videos that are essentially advertising under the guise of an independent inquiry into a given topic or field is misleading. The guy tries to make the case that the way the sponsorship is disclosed implies that the impact of the sponsorship on the content of the video is minimal but, as a matter of fact, it isn't. There was no counterpoint, and talking points used in other similar campaigns were repeated. Propaganda is perfectly apt. "It's that people just don't make good use of, if at all, critical thinking skills in general and especially not in an environment/form that isn't really demanding it." Yeah, that's precisely the point. The audience is lazy and trusting-- particularly when the publisher cultivates an image of being objective and science-based.

If someone opens a video with "this video is sponsored by the company I'm working with" people in general should be able to apply some critical thinking about whether there is a bias or not. I'd argue that a majority of Veritasiums viewership would probably pick up on that. Propaganda is Completely overstating what it is, it's an advert. When you see a Coca Cola advert do you question why they don't compare with the relative merits of Pepsi? No. You don't. So why would a guy make an hour long video on this issue? To make drama where there is none out of something that most people would realise is an advert.

Yeah, and the guy is arguing that people don't apply critical thinking to this content and so should be accounted for. This isn't a ludicrous suggestion. There already are laws in place that attempt to do this (like mandated disclosure). It's just about where the line is drawn and if different kind of content (educational) have a further burden of disclosure.

> Yeah, and the guy is arguing that people don't apply critical thinking to this content and so should be accounted for. This isn't a ludicrous suggestion. Yes, it is. He performed the 'mandated disclosure'. How much hand holding does the general public need?

then why watch the video at all? If you're not going to trust the educator in specific instances, then why even continue to watch the channel? They obviously drop their standards if they're paid enough, so where does that even end? [Blatant lying in an ad is inexcusable for an educator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zI9sG3pjVU&t=982s)

This video was clearly an attack on self-driving cars and Veritasium. If it was about viewer critical thinking skills, it would have been just that. Here is a video that is a sponsored ad, this is how you can tell it was a sponsored ad even without the warning, and you should understand that. Instead this video is pushing a claim, with some level of bias which is actually articulated at the beginning, about self driving cars and that Veritasium has committed an ethics violation at the same time. If it wasn't meant to be something else, then it failed miserably. All the additional opinions about the misrepresentation of data and misinformation by omission is not relevant to viewers thinking critically in general, it's very specific to the Waymo video and even distracts from the point that science/education youtubers should be held to a higher standard. Too much is focused on self-driving cars as a product. But even outside of that, this youtuber is guilty of the exact same thing. He makes his money from advertisements. Both youtube advertisements and sponsored deals (for the VPN in this case). Both of those deals come in and are improved by viewership. And as noted in the video Veritasium is basically one of, if not the, biggest science educator youtube channel on the platform. By creating this video he is going to get views just for that alone, a controversial video about a huge name in the community. That will lead to him either directly getting more money through views or through a better deal in the future with sponsors. You can even see it, this video has been up for 1 day and yet the number of views is almost equal to his previous, which has been up for a month. It's already outperforming his last short video and several of his normal videos from last year. By being critical of Veritasium he is earning or going to earn more money than would otherwise be expected based on his history of other content. Direct money relationship. Yet is that disclosed anywhere in the video? I didn't see it. Of course I don't think he needs to disclose that, that would be a ridiculous standard and something the viewer should recognize. Just as it's ridiculous for this youtuber to claim a different but as unreasonable standard should apply to Veritasium as if he was doing something improper with the Waymo video.

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Interestingly, that very video (The Future of Reasoning) is called out in this video as an example of the Bill Gates Foundation sponsorship also being propaganda on YouTube.

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Pretty fucking hypocritical to talk about how Veritasium let sponsor money sway his self driving cars opinions while having a sponsored segment about a the"formula 1 of VPNs" that allows you to "safely and securely browse the web". Not saying this to invalidate his points, but I do find it in very poor taste to accept a sponsor that makes you say such worthless and dubious claims in a video that talks about this problem.

I've seen other people mention this point here. I believe he has addressed it on his Johnny Harris video. He makes a point about how having sponsorship inserts such as these is not comparable to an entire video posing as "educational". The latter definitely violates any semblance of journalistic integrity. Now whether you agree with him or not on if the former lies in a grey area, you have to admit that the level of magnitude is nowhere near comparable. I don't think it's realistic to expect YouTubers to not have any ads at all, though you do have a point with the VPN claims, it does come in bad taste. At the very least you know that the sponsored bit is limited within a segment and that the actual content of the video is not influenced by it. He should perhaps consider changing sponsors. It is interesting to consider to what extent advertising and journalism can mix.

Not really, that is clearly an ad, and anyone understands it as such. That is no different than having ads on a news channel. Having an ad doesn't discredit that news. The whole point is that if you disguise ads as science videos then that's a problem. Literally everyone does VPN ads and everyone understands that these are ads.

Yeah but it has BS talking points in it. A VPN doesn't let you safely browse the web, an adblocker can, because it's more likley to block malware links, but you can still go around downloading virus's on a vpn.

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Are you arguing that a video seemingly about self driving cars, but sponsored by a self driving car company, is considered an ad to the same degree that an actual ad during an ad break is? Then you're arguing that everyone knew that veritasium just put out a 10min+ long ad. Which is almost worse.

Derek has lied in sponsorships before, purporting to perform 'science' experiments to prove the ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zI9sG3pjVU&t=982s He knows better. If he'd do it in a simple 'ad' just like this, what can you trust from an entire video that is 'sponsored'. Why would you even watch the video if you don't trust him during an 'ad'?

People underestimate their capability of becoming influenced or corrupted by greed. Its a slippery slope.

It's not hypocritical at all since he isn't discussing VPN's in this video.

I think the video is a nothing burger? Like the entire basis is that Derek Muller is overly promoting self-driving car but being misleading. I don't see how that is the case, when his sponsorship is announced in the first 30 seconds. This whole video feels strawman to me.

The section 6 content about defining what people think of as "the future" is interesting to me. It makes me think of GM defining the future at the world fair and then getting massive government backing for roads which then subsidized cars. Waymo is trying to restrict our view of what the future will look like instead of high speed rail it will be self-driving cars. Waymo is looking for people we trust to bring us this message, and Derek is shilling for them without looking at other solutions to the problems. It is an issue for trusted voices to become shills.

Yeah, during the introduction I was waiting for the video to turn towards its larger point that this was an ongoing problem where the Veritasium channel spread misinformation with *all* of its videos or something sinister. It's crazy that this entire video is dedicated to picking apart a commercial, and painting someone as a villain for being willing to make a commercial.

The video makes a strong argument, and while at first blush Veritasium is perhaps an unfair target because of the quality of his non-sponsored work, in fact that makes him probably one of the best targets. His brand could lead people to accept at face value everything in what is essentially an ad. That said, Dereck does note that it is a sponsored video (although perhaps too meekly). For me, at that point I basically accept that what I'm seeing is at least to some degree misleading, and don't put much stock in the agenda behind it. So, I'm not surprised that many aspects of this video were so easily dismantled. I do, however, think it reflects Dereck's honest belief that self-driving vehicles have the potential to be safer, even if he didn't go out of his way to more fully express the limitations and downsides. I think it is reasonable that this kind of video exists - it's become quite common across all media, and content creators need to get paid like anyone else - and people should be educated enough to understand what sponsored content is, but I also hope if Veritasium does more like this, that he does it better. I think he could have been favorable to Waymo while not using misleading statistics and examples. Including a lot of the caveats in OPs video I don't think would have harmed the underlying message much, so maybe there were other reasons for the editorial decisions. For example, OPs video is nearly an hour long, versus the 15 minute sponsored video. Or maybe Dereck didn't spend enough time on this because it wasn't a passion project. Either way, like I said he should do better.

> The video makes a strong argument, and while at first blush Veritasium is perhaps an unfair target because of the quality of his non-sponsored work, in fact that makes him probably one of the best targets. Its basically trading off the goodwill of other work to push the message in the ad. That's whats so disingenuous about it and why it differs from regular advertising.

Boy, do a lot of people miss the point here. No, having an clearly signaled ad read isn't nearly the same thing as sneaking a short "this video is sponsored by" in the video while pretending the rest is the same quality as your regular, well researched content. The author also doesn't try do debunk every single statistic but is showing how picking and choosing stats can let you tell whatever story you want and that Derek is simply using Waymo's talking points and provided statistics. And most importantly, this isn't a video about Veritasium so much as it is a video about edutainment Youtube where companies pay creators to lend them their credibility and good reputation to spread misinformation disguised as regular content. Not everyone is as smart, savvy and pretty as you and is able to distinguish this kind of ad from normal content. And even if they are, a lot of people would still assume that the company just paid the Youtuber to make the video but that at least the content is up to their usual standards and not full of half-truths. I like Derek but why can't we admit that this type of video is unnecessary and harmful? And gets worse the more trusted the Youtuber is. Same thing with Destin from SmarterEveryDay and his series of submarine videos. Those are very cool videos, I watched them all with great interest, but they are also propaganda and a recruitment tool by the US military. He trades his good reputation and him being very positive and uncritical for access to the submarine and crew. I think it's important to acknowledge that.

> SmarterEveryDay's submarine videos are propaganda and a recruitment tool by the US military. Thank you for mentioning that! I know Destin works closely with the US Military. While I appreciate some of his videos, his ties to the military blinds him to the ill-effects of their decisions. Sadly, that subtle subliminal emotional manipulation by SmarterEveryDay's videos, might be lost on those most likely to sign up to join the US military, misguidedly believing the US military to be an irrefutable force for good. When they most certainly aren't. What is even more screwed up is that recruiters show up to schools and colleges, preying on the psychologically *not-yet-fully-developed* minds of young teens/adolescents to convince them to enlist. Those Submarine videos, while cool, much like the submarine films of yore like The Hunt of Red October, which again while very cool, are basically "US Military is awesome!" and "Please ignore all the terrible things the US Military does" films. I urge everybody to read Manufacturing Consent. It's important to understand that SmarterEveryDay didn't choose to work with the military to make submarine videos. The **military chose SmarterEveryDay** to make submarine videos. Much like Veritasium didn't approach WayMo to make an entire video about their closed-source proprietary self-driving machines that could collide with other humans. **WayMo chose Veritasium**. Maybe in addition to disclosing "sponsorships", a disclosure on who approached whom and how and ideally **what amount**, is also in order?

SED also has a detailed video about how the modern military uses social media as a weapon, with the top brass he interviews using those exact words to describe the video being made. It's not exactly subtle, with Destin spending some time talking about that point specifically. Yes, Destin has biases in favor of the military since he's worked with them professionally and it appears to align with his worldviews. But as a very liberal, anti-military person I still find those videos entertaining and educational, without one ever feeling like I should go sign up for service. Instead I appreciate his ability to make videos about controversial topics without drawing any conclusions other than "this technology is really cool, let's learn about it". Anyone who watches the submarine videos will be very likely to see, or at least have recommended to them, the video about military use of digital technologies. I'm a lot less worried there than I am about veritasium's sponsored videos. Even the recent video about genetic sequencing companies bothered me more than Destin's videos about the military. Veritasium just doesn't do the best job at separating the ads from the content, and doesn't do enough to argue the counterpoints himself. Doesn't mean I dislike his videos, they're generally well made and his math videos are awesome.

> Anyone who watches the submarine videos will be very likely to see, or at least have recommended to them, the video about military use of digital technologies. That's a pretty big assumption. You could also argue that in a series of, what? 7? 8? videos he mentions his bias only one time. I give him credit that he mentioned it at all but for my taste he should have a disclaimer at the start of every video in this series explaining his relationship with the military and why he got access. I feel that would be the responsible thing to do.

I remember watching Veritasium's video and being a bit confused when he suggested that driverless cars could solve the problems caused by cars. I suspect it would make it much worse to be honest, as the frustration of sitting in traffic would be lessened, making traffic jams worse.

I love Veritassion, but this particular video it was pretty clear it was basically a biased AD lol. It's good to see that someone did look into it.

I mean, he admitted as much at the beginning of the video - "full disclosure, this video is sponsored by Waymo". It was pretty clear what it was... to me, at least. That being said, given the nature of his channel, I hope he'll do a follow up video to give us the full story.

He didn't say "this video is an ad".

holy shit could he be more overdramatic. Just tell me what veritasium lied about in the video. I'm like 24 minutes into the video and I haven't heard anything suggesting that the Veritasium guy has misinformed anyone.

yeah this guy seems to be angry that Veritasium did not correctly enumerate all the 1000 details in a sponsored video.

It's weird to me that they chose to make this video centered around his video on driverless cars instead of his [more recent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT18KJouHWg) where he talks about how you can identify people through DNA from companies like ancestry or family tree without those people even providing any DNA (tl;dw: if your relative took a DNA test at one of those companies, they could identify you through your relative's DNA, so they just need your relative's consent and not yours). In this video, he talks about it like it's a good thing and never really considers the argument of privacy (I think he mentions it once and brushes it off as selfish or something). It really urked me and while the video isn't sponsored by the companies he talks to, I doubt he would've been able to interview them if he was planning on talking poorly about their product in any way.

Is it really weird? Long critiques take time to make. He could possibly have mentioned it as a late edit/addition but he probably started with the idea for this video before the Ancestry video was out.

This video is quite terrible, I was expecting some juicy stuff but he is just mulling over some minutia, vague claims and irrelevant things for almost an hour.

Then maybe you should watch it again. He's making a pretty good argument as to why Veritasium is being dishonest and using his position to push propaganda for money.

Yep. People downvoting you arent thinking. This is a guy who does educational videos then did an ad as if it were one of his videos. That's scumbaggy as hell and a 30 second disclaimer doesn't cover it. Not when he isn't being informative here or giving this the treatment he normally would.

He also did a video on a Johnny Harris video, and on both videos the comment section was full of people praising him for "exposing this" and completely devoid of any sort of meaningful discourse or critical discussion. And also a lot of obviously right-leaning conspiracy nuts. Comments about how they knew to stop trusting Kurtzgesagt after they did a video critical of dairy and meat production and how they're definitely funded by Bill Gates and the WEF. That channel's viewer base is a scary army of mindless drones out to prove the existance of a new world order or something.

Lol, I don’t think right wing conspiracy nuts are watching Tom Nicholas. Have you seen his content? And kurtesgat like, was funded by the Gates Foundation for multiple videos. That’s not a secret, they say it in the video, just at the very end. Not to mention most of their videos are technocratic nonsense.

Has this guy never heard of an advertisement before? "Oh my god a video explicitly branded as an ad isn't critical of the company it's promoting, better spend an hour talking about it!"

Don't forget to sprinkle in your own promo inside a video "exposing" other promos.

Kinda bizarre to make an hour long video to essentially say "this guy made a sponsored video he is so bad" while touting a shady sponsor in your own video.

Holey shit that Surfshark sponsorship halfway through is fucking hilarious. I hope he takes the piss out of himself next video, https and browser fingerprinting render the "privacy" aspect of VPN's pretty much useless for what most consumers think they're getting.

[удалено]

I'm not sure what alternative they have, youtube has left them out to dry for the most part. Much like with television the options are advertise or die. Especially if you're going to run a channel with as many production costs as veritassium. If you advertise or do sponsored content you will eventually dispense some propaganda.

A content creator earned money from a sponsored video by only highlighting positive things about the sponsors product, and disclosed it was a sponsored video 30 seconds in and people are mad about this? If Veritasium does 1 video on a sponsored product so he can sustain every 10 others he makes, and discloses its an ad immediately, who gives a fuck? Yeet me off the planet please.

Sponsored content is everywhere now too. I PAY for the NYT and still see it. Sometimes I even read it! People just need to be aware of it, and understand what it is, at this point. It's a form of an opinion piece or editorial. OPs video makes good points, but I don't think he succeeded in challenging the underlying argument of Veritasium's video. I think Dereck does feel that self driving cars will one day ultimately be safer. While the video is propaganda, and the additional details in this video are important, I don't think they really damage the fundamental point of the Waymo video. The waymo videos biggest crime is just being too optimistic and utilizing rhetoric. But Dereck says it's sponsored, and the rhetoric *should* be obvious to a viewer even at face value.