HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ carvking

Some context about this woodburning tech.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40410809/fractal-w...

⬐ TheChaplain

Why is this flagged?

This obviously content that is worthy to take note of, and YouTube moderation are making clowns of themselves by banning content that is trying to prevent people from killing themselves or others.

⬐ tomjen3

Because it is a shit headline written as by a mad 13 year old to attract an audience on some tabloid.

⬐ dredmorbius

NB: Hacker News guidelines specifically permit (and encourage) un-clickbaiting headlines. Submitters can do so (I almost always leave a note about how I've edited a title if I do so).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Readers can also email the mods at [email protected] to both report and suggest alternatives to overly-clickbaity headlines. I'd done so in this case.

My suggested headline edit is pretty much what the BoingBoing story used, and I'd first suspected that the headline and link might have been changed. Apparently that was an independent submission.

See that submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31945425

⬐ yucky

Because it's clickbait.

⬐ kevingadd

It looks like a boingboing article about it made it to the front page, so that's probably a better way to consume the info.

⬐ JasonFruit

I would be more likely to watch and learn about these DEADLY HOW-TOS if there was a hint in the title or description of what she's talking about. Apparently she values clicks over the 35th life.

⬐ kevingadd

The original video was way less indirect, but I assume she's trying to avoid getting this one pulled.

⬐ mhalle

She explains that she wants clicks so that the video rises to the top of the fractal woodburning search results.

She also probably wants this new video to get attention because she's risking reposting banned content.

⬐ sophrocyne

And based on the Ritz crackers ad that just played when I opened the link, she’s not opposed to monetizing her moral outrage.

⬐ me_me_me

And so fucking what? Jeez, take a look at yourself before demanding everyone around you to be 100% faultles, pure paragon of virtue.

⬐ sph

Please HN guidelines, let us use a different title when linking Youtube videos.

I don't want to see such a clickbait title on the frontpage.

⬐ mvuijlst

Is it clickbait when it's completely accurately describing what is going on?

⬐ __void

...by now even youtube video previews are the evolution of clickbait, they would make even dante's divine comedy or The Great Gatsby look like total garbage

⬐ nix23

You can hide them, it's your turn.

⬐ unwind

Uh, not wanting to read the clickbaity title is not the the same as not wanting to see the actual video.

Unfortunately it's quite common on Youtube to have creators almost apologize for the baity title (but still use it plus matching thumbnail, to feed The Algorithm).

⬐ jsnell

The guidelines already let you use a different title in this case: "use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"

⬐ kevingadd

Good to know, I wasn't aware of this.

⬐ systemz

I hope YouTube will focus on human based moderation / curation of content and clean transparent guidelines in the future instead of those robots with flawed algorithms.

They have so many years and resources to create moderation robots but it keeps happening over and over again. At this point people are loosing lives because of poor YT decisions.

⬐ 2OEH8eoCRo0

These systems have such a staggering amount of content and are only profitable at scale. Moderating them in their current form with humans would be expensive and difficult if not impossible.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-up...

> 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

This is why Section 230 needs a revision IMO. There is zero incentive for anybody to moderate properly.

⬐ Asooka

It would be ok if YouTube only moderates really popular channels and videos that have the most potential to cause harm. As always, the problem is scale - solutions that work for my 5-man IRC server do not scale to YouTube's size. So, a video with 5 views probably doesn't need manual attention. Even if it is extremely misleading and dangerous. Once you have a few million views of your "just jab high voltage electrodes into some wet wood, it's safe!" video, then it should be up for manual review. You absolutely can have an algorithm decide if the video has any one of several potentially dangerous topics and then flag it for manual review. I'm certain YouTube already does that with a myriad of other topics, they just need to improve their methods a bit.

⬐ nojito

They can't afford it.

If social media is forced to human moderate 100% of their content, they will all cease to exist financially.

⬐ iinnPP

Why not?

I used to admin a fan-site for EA Games with ~30,000 users and 2 volunteer mods(friends). Didn't seem all that difficult.

You don't have to get everything either. People just need it to feel fair and the bad actors just need to feel some pressure. A lot of it ends up handling itself.

⬐ nojito

720,000 hours of video per day. You're looking at 100,000 employees just for looking at content for their work day.

⬐ sigio

Back in 2019: 500 Hours of Video Uploaded to YouTube Every Minute

There's no way to manually (using people) to moderate this.... but it should be easier to report bad videos and have people just look at those for moderation, and not just auto-ban videos when enough people click on it.

⬐ phh

Quick computation: 500hrs/minute => 262Mhrs/yr, US minimum wage 7.25$/hr, assuming no tool (but no verification), 1x playback rate, 2B$/yr, youtube revenue was reported at 15B$/yr in 2019.

Yes they can afford it.

⬐ beej71

More nebulous is YouTube profit, which might be as low as zero (I can't find a source).

But the net earnings are over $30 billion for the whole company, so it could come from there.

That said, would human content moderation be particularly better? Lots of stuff falls in the gray.

⬐ phh

> More nebulous is YouTube profit, which might be as low as zero (I can't find a source).

Ah right sorry, I googled youtube profit, and it returned youtube revenue. I would guess Google doesn't want to even know the profit of youtube, because that would be another anti-trust nail.

> That said, would human content moderation be particularly better? Lots of stuff falls in the gray.

Yeah I agree, that's just back of the napkin computation and it's missing a lot of nuances. Like how can you fact check a video by just looking at it? You can't. This requires more work. But then, you can probably look at videos at x1.5 speed, many videos are probably similar so with proper tooling you can find similarities and at least route it to the same person so they'll have less research to do to validate.

But overall I believe that there are both issues that make it cost more than just that, but also easy optimization wins that make it cost less than that. Either way, I believe that if youtube comes forward saying they spend 2B$/yr human salaries (spending 2B$/yr in training GPT-42 doesn't count) they'll get more respect from their users, even if it's not enough to be prefect.

⬐ themitigating

As a volunteer

⬐ weberer

I'm guessing that was long enough ago that all the bad actors were still actual humans.

⬐ Xelbair

Then maybe they should cease to exist?

⬐ lnxg33k1

Looking forward to that day

⬐ marak830

I think they should be held to a higher standard.

⬐ drstewart

So you think nearly every platform with user submitted content should cease to exist?

⬐ marak830

I think they should be held to a higher standard than they currently are.

⬐ highwind

Maybe platform that's impossible to moderate shouldn't exist?

While I understand the good that YouTube brings, it has such a huge negative side that I wouldn't miss it if it were gone.

⬐ jasode

>Maybe platform that's impossible to moderate shouldn't exist?

The entire web platform as a whole is unmoderated. I think we can agree that most people don't want the web to not exist even though most of the trillions of web pages are unmoderated.

Also, many want "uncensored web platforms" -- which requires even less human moderation. (I.e. the common complaint that "Youtube shouldn't be censoring content")

The issue with both human-moderation and computer algorithms is the false positives which makes the news headlines. It's those mistakes that we see that leads people to have contradictory conclusions about "moderated content". What's unseen is all the bad content that was correctly blocked by both the human & computer moderators.

⬐ yucky

Forums managed to moderate their own content for decades. Maybe the problem is scale, so yes to the platforms that are too large and unwieldy.

⬐ Xelbair

if they don't moderate it up to a standard? yes.

to use dreaded food analogy - same thing with food safety, if restaurant isn't up to the standards they get closed down.

⬐ chongli

Hacker News is a platform with user submitted content and human moderation. It is still going strong. I am a reader of some hobby forums and subreddits that also use human moderation. They are going strong as well.

If I woke up next day and we had laws that made automated content platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok impossible as business models then it would be no great loss for me. I see zero issues standing in the way of human moderated replacements.

Personally, I use YouTube and Instagram similarly to how I use Reddit: I heavily curare who I follow/subscribe to anyway. I get a lot more enjoyment out of seeing new videos by people I’ve followed for years who don’t post very often than I do from some recommendation to a viral clickbait video.

⬐ drstewart

>then it would be no great loss for me

So far all the responses to me have revolved around "well I don't care about it, so ban it"

Not a great argument. There is plenty of stuff you no doubt enjoy (like your hobby forums) that I don't care about. Should I advocate for banning them?

⬐ chongli

I didn’t say anything about banning any content whatsoever. The argument is whether social media platforms should be held accountable to the point where human moderation is necessary.

To that I say yes.

Human beings function best in small communities where light moderation, strong norms, and reputation are allowed to develop. These social media giants are trying to replace what has worked for millennia with unaccountable, automated, authoritarian systems. Is it any wonder that pathological behaviour would predominate?

⬐ CoastalCoder

> At this point people are loosing lives because of poor YT decisions.

I'm not sure YouTube is entirely to blame here. Adults should have some discernment about their sources of information.

That said, if YouTube is curating the videos in a way that suppresses important safety information, I consider them to bear significant responsibility. (No idea if the legal systems would agree.)

⬐ falcolas

> Adults should have some discernment about their sources of information.

Not to necessarily disagree, but it’s a learned skill, a skill that some 65% of the population simply doesn’t have.

https://goingdigital.oecd.org/indicator/24

⬐ BrandoElFollito

This is called natural selection.

And a soft one, nobody is asking people to fight a bear with bare hands or something. Just do not do what an average Joe terms you too.

⬐ zepolen

I've had both 2k volts and 240v shocks, the difference is night and day, 240v is in comparison a slow tingle and unless your hand is clenched around the connection you still have senses and can move if you try hard enough. At 2k your whole body seizes up instantly and you lose all control/eye vision. Super scary.

⬐ AstralStorm

Lucky you. If you had a worse parh, especially between arms like the dangerous tutorials show, even 230V can stop your heart, and kilovolts are nigh certain.

⬐ nix23

I had many 220v and one 380v, 220 hurts but the 380 one (thru my pinky finger) was like someone hitting it with a sled-hammer, cannot imagine a 2k one.

⬐ Semiapies

I follow her; she does excellent debunking of viral cooking/crafts videos.

⬐ Y-bar

She's one of the true treasures of the modern internet.

⬐ tomjen3

That may be the case, but I still hope HN bans her until we can get titles that accurately reflect the content.

Otherwise this community will very quickly disappear.

⬐ Semiapies

Yes, we have right-wing channers infesting the place, we have a constantly declining level of tech competence in the comments, we have people who never actually read past a title, but it's Ann Reardon's YouTube titles that will destroy this community.

⬐ tomjen3

If they become general, then yes.

⬐ Semiapies

When I run into people like you, I'm amazed this place even lasted a year.

⬐ hobs

Well she certainly makes clickbait video titles I would never click to reward such shameless HACKS THAT HAVE KILLED 34 PEOPLE (you must click this to see what the hell I am on about.)

Maybe I can avoid it if I do this ONE WEIRD TRICK. The internet is so tedious.

⬐ zeofig

It's becoming pretty common even for good content. Weird, thanks internet.

⬐ UmbertoNoEco

> It's becoming pretty common even for good (YOUTUBE) content

Fortunately there is still a niche(but not-zero) zone of the good internet which does not resort to this.

⬐ Semiapies

That sounds like a problem with your heuristic, there.

ETA: I once sarcastically said we need a technology so that links here are not described by anything that looks like a title due to all the people who get ridiculously outraged by any attempt to attract their attention.

Maybe I was on to something. Too many of you don't read or watch past titles.

⬐ hobs

If it looks like a sales attempt it probably is, and I don't need anything you're selling.

⬐ Semiapies

Believe me, I do not want your money.

⬐ dewey

It's annoying that it's that way but I try not to blame the creators for that. If you want to play the game you have to do it that way.

This is also true for the clickbaity thumbnails with the creators face and some shocked face expressions where people confirmed that they perform way better than "professional" and clean looking ones.

⬐ tgv

What if somebody now sued Youtube? They've not only been told it's dangerous, they've removed the one safety video.

⬐ beej71

The DMCA section 230 says that YouTube isn't liable for the content its users post, so it's going to be an uphill battle.

The poster of the video could be sued, though.

⬐ SAI_Peregrinus

Section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act, not the DMCA.

⬐ sudden_dystopia

Well duh. Pulling transformers out of microwaves and tampering with them is clearly dangerous. How is pointing that out a “debunking” video? Isn’t that just a “quit being a moron, this is incredibly dangerous” video? It’s not like you are proving that fractal wood burning doesn’t even work, you are just pointing out that playing around with high voltage devices when you don’t really know the first thing about electricity is a bad idea. You aren’t Nikola Tesla, put the microwave down. I would have to see the “banned” video but her complaint video I found annoying.

⬐ kevingadd

It's really depressing that YouTube remains so bad at content moderation and general safety. You can search for stuff that will kill you and find lots of videos without disclaimers, but a "please don't do this" video gets banned once it starts competing with the highly profitable Cool Hacks videos

⬐ javajosh

Maybe it's old fashioned of me, but I think viewers are responsible for their actions. YouTube is such a wonderful resource, and it seems terrible to judge it on this basis. It's like judging a library that happens to have chemistry books that kids misused to hurt themselves. The problem isn't the library, or the book.

(Note: its different with political/emotional content. That stuff is more like a virus.)

⬐ actionfromafar

I don't know how old fashioned that is. Before the web, you didn't stumble upon this kind of content, and it was certainly not promoted to the top of anyones feed.

⬐ boomlinde

By all means, I agree that everyone should be responsible for their actions. It is by this same principle that I believe that YouTube should be responsible for what they publish. The "the problem isn't the library" argument falls short if the library is actively banning books that offer information on the hazards and risks of the "how to manufacture large amounts of chlorine gas using just kitchen appliances" books they happily put on the shelves.

⬐ jeroenhd

I'm convinced the many highly-ranked Cool Hacks channels abuse the content reporting system to remove any videos that will get in the way of their adsense cash, especially ones that tell you not to try their Cool Hack. Spamming abuse reports is common on any platform and even if Youtube were to review every reported video manually (which they don't have time or resources for), the video would still be down for ages for being "under review". If it comes back up, the reporters would just try another category and the cycle repeats. You can't ignore mass-reported videos until review either.

I think this is a design flaw in the whole concept of social media and the only solution seems to be to seriously cut down on the amount of content being uploaded. Not exactly a profitable or popular idea, but there's no feasible way to do any useful content moderation for this many users without employing a small province or country just to review reports.

⬐ actionfromafar

The same adsense slice would still go to popular content creators, even if they were rate limited. But such a system would have to be mandated "from above" somehow, or upstart "Youtube Competitor" would just outcompete Youtube if Youtube unilaterally would impose such a rate limit.

⬐ Pakdef

Nice that she used the opportunity to warn again.

It's surprising that 2 experienced electricians died from it though.

⬐ origamiPyro

Experienced electricians aren't usually dealing with voltages that high.

⬐ arghwhat

Well, a residential electrician wouldn't work with kilovolts, no.

⬐ arghwhat

As someone who was once an electrician, I find it very unsurprising.

When someone just shrugs off the occasional 230 and 400 V zap, they're unlikely to wear more than a safety squint and tie when playing with kilovolts...

⬐ sudden_dystopia

Yea, my grandfather was an electrician and I have see him create some truly dangerous electrical arrangements around his own house. He almost killed my dad by having him work on a live wire without telling him it was live because that is what a “pro” would do.

⬐ arghwhat

In your grandfather's defence, it is what pros do, as the pros rarely follow safety practices.

It's so ingrained that I have to fight back to not start explaining why getting zapped by mains is perfectly safe in the vast majority of cases. That is a piece of information that - while technically correct - completely misses the point that working with any risk whatsoever is pretty stupid when you can remove all risk by just disconnecting the circuit.

⬐ CoastalCoder

Sounds like the normalization of deviance.

Kinda like how familiarity with using a table saw eventually costs people their fingers.

⬐ sudden_dystopia

Table saws seem like a bell curve. Low familiarity leads to lost fingers(or being impaled by a kicked back board), mild familiarity saved fingers and know how to avoid kickback, too familiar back to lost fingers but you likely won’t impale yourself.

⬐ Asooka

That's more of a U-curve. Tall in the ends, short in the middle.

⬐ devortel

I’m speculating here, but I suspect a significant factor in her video’s removal was the part where she displayed a rough hand-drawn diagram of the assembly a fractal wood burning kit. She deliberately left out a lot of detail, but perhaps it was still too much for YouTube’s content moderation team.

⬐ actionfromafar

I find it bold to assume any human was involved at all. (Except possibly wood-burning youtubers reporting her video, but I digress.)

⬐ dewey

> but perhaps it was still too much for YouTube’s content moderation team

I think the assumption that the moderation team watches the full videos and then carefully weights the pros and cons is a bit naive.

⬐ snthd

Another video on the same subject: The most deadly project on the Internet - bigclivedotcom[0] (15:13).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBeSKL9zVro

⬐ seeekr

While the title of the video is clickbaity, it's entirely accurate, and it's a message worth spreading. Hope YT will reconsider, acknowledge their mistake and fix it as best they can. Good luck, Ann!

⬐ Semiapies

I like how this is flagged, and yet BoingBoing blogspam about this very same video is the top item as I post this.

⬐ senectus1

ahh that woman... she's great. My wife and kids curl up on a couch to watch her stuff together. not just the debunking but the general cookery stuff. Another great aussie product :-)

⬐ xn

Is 34, about 6 per year, a lot? How many people do fractal wood burning? How many people are electrocuted using jumper cables on cars each year?

⬐ globular-toast

It's an interesting point. Car jumper cables maybe isn't a good example, but what about extreme sports or even just car crashes etc? Is there something in particular that makes this activity worthy of so much attention? Is it perhaps that electrocution seems very dramatic, or maybe the fact that many people have one of these deadly devices in their own kitchens?

⬐ xn

The questions were meant to be rhetorical questions, but did get plenty of informative answers that using jumper cables with a 12V car battery is unlikely to result in accidental death.

Any article/video that says N number of people died doing X should provide some context about how many people do X, how many people die doing Y, which is similar to X.

⬐ aaronmdjones

There are plenty of ways that it could result in accidental deaths, just not by electrocution. For example, if you have an open container of gasoline (also known as a fuel-air bomb) and you accidentally strike both jumper cables together (spark).

⬐ jsiepkes

> How many people are electrocuted using jumper cables on cars each year?

Unless you have a pace maker or something getting electrocuted by a car battery is going to be hard. A car batter outputs 12 Volt. The transformer in a Microwave oven outputs 2000 volt. 2000 volts is instant death even with super low current.

⬐ tclancy

Huh? The first thing my dad did after showing me how to jump a car was to warn me never to touch the live ends together because they would “do this!” and proceeded to do it and show me the … hang on, I’m going to go make a video for clicks.

⬐ upofadown

>How many people are electrocuted using jumper cables on cars each year?

That's easy question. None. The 12V from a car battery is much less hazardous than the 20000V from a microwave transformer.

⬐ aaronmdjones

> How many people are electrocuted using jumper cables on cars each year?

Approximately zero over the last hundred or so years, I'd venture.

⬐ kevingadd

fwiw, that's just 34 in the US. Apparently the numbers in other countries are also quite high, so we're probably looking at hundreds worldwide. Considering YouTube is making money off it, I think even 34 is an unacceptably high number.

How would car jumper cables electrocute you? Aren't car batteries 12v?

⬐ NovemberWhiskey

12V car battery electrocutions? Uhm, I would guess approximately none?

⬐ k8sToGo

It is not the voltage that kills you. It is the current and a car battery can deliver quite the current.

⬐ globular-toast

It is usually voltage that kills you, but not all electric shocks are equal. The type that kills you quickly is one that goes through the heart, disrupting its rhythm. This happens, for example, if you use both hands to work on something electrical. It doesn't need much current at all. Electricians are trained to not use both hands. If you use only one hand the shock is more likely to be straight to ground. In that case a high current is going to do more damage to you, but might not actually kill you. But in any case you need enough voltage to overcome the resistance of the skin the first place.

⬐ aaronmdjones

At such a low voltage, and a DC voltage nonetheless (so you're only dealing with resistance, and not impedance), you will never get enough current through you, even if you'd just waded out of the ocean.

⬐ upofadown

Not through the resistance of a person. For electrocution, the voltage is the indicator of hazard. The current required is very small.

⬐ NovemberWhiskey

V = IR. It's voltage that causes the current to flow.

You can certainly get a lethal shock from a car battery if you pierce the skin with an electrode attached to one of the terminals, due to the reduced resistance through the body, but you're not going to get one through your skin.

The amount of current required to stop you breathing is as low as a few hundred mA, and only 1A to stop your heart in v-fib.

On the other hand, even wet or broken skin should offer about 1 kilohm; so your chances of being electrocuted by a car battery are slight.

⬐ aaronmdjones

> and only 1A to stop your heart in v-fib

Much less than that, depending on length of exposure. The AC death graph (probably not applicable to this DC scenario, but illustrative nonetheless):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/IEC_TS_6...

Red is fibrillation with increasing probability of occurrence. Yellow is injury, green is harmless, and blue is imperceptible.

⬐ jaclaz

I believe that AC is way more dangerous than DC, and particulary the low frequency (50-60 Hz) that are used on normal mains, once upon a time lighting in tunnels (during excavation) was through a frequency converter that elevated frequency (i.e. essentially making AC more similar to DC):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20736124

According to:

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chp...

A DC shock may stop the heart (which once the contact is broken is easier to restart) whilst AC males it fibrillate, and there is the "tetanic" reaction induced by AC that in many case might make the contact last longer or be impossible to break.

The old, basic rule is - in case of doubt if a wire is live - to touch it first with the back of a finger, and never with a fingertip, as the reaction to the shock would be to close the finger/hand around the wire in a very tight grip.

⬐ aaronmdjones

> I believe that AC is way more dangerous than DC

Yes. I pointed this out myself several months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682725

⬐ FooHentai

Interesting to see this particular issue crop up so much lately - Big Clive did a video on microwave inverters and how dangerous the fractal wood burning process is, and I've seen several other creators coming out and speaking about either their own accidents doing this or people they know who are no longer around to speak for themselves. It even popped up fairly locally to me a few days back in a news article: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/129099866/woman-shocked-fro...

I guess it has the characteristics of appearing fairly safe while being absolutely the opposite, plus it's one of those activities where you do it 100 times carefully and the momentary lapse on round 101 gets you. Like using an angle grinder with one of those round chainsaw blade attachments. The failure modes are horrific. Amateur crafts-persons get lured in by the neat end product without necessarily having the background understanding of what they're risking.

⬐ rwmj

Bigclive's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBeSKL9zVro