HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ jerf

YouTube fed me a couple of these videos before I blocked the channel(s); I didn't completely put all the pieces together that it was abuse like this but I intuited that they were at least manipulative, because they were just too interesting. My wife had an internship for her degree at an animal rescue facility. Though they didn't deal in pets, real animal rescue stories tend to be more like "someone found this animal; they took it to the rescue facility, it got better or it didn't, and they released it or not". You don't get:

"I'd seen this raccoon around the house for a while, had been feeding him, and had been filming his exploits for a while. But one day, he got caught in {extremely picturesque situation} and I knew something had to be done. So I called up these other people to help rescue him, and he was so cute when we fetched him!" (Real rescued animals, BTW, are often injured in ways that will make most people vomit.) "So we took him in to our facility, where he had numerous cute interactions with our other animals..." (real rescued animals are often quite distrusting; there's a couple of other videos where the main storyline was "and he instantly trusted us after a bit") "... and after we released him he still hangs around and visits us for treats and rollicking fun!"

Especially all the bits from before the injury are just crazy. This is a story line from a kid's book, not something that happens routinely. Maybe in the entire ~2 summers my wife worked at a rescue facility you could get one story of this level of "interest" out of it. You could get quite a few of lower levels of "interest", but not this sort of long-running sustained level of interest, and certainly not over and over, every week or on some other regular posting schedule. It was all just too pat to be something happening like this all the time.

⬐ yakshaving_jgt

Your description of the more sensationalist types of stories sound similar to the content that The Dodo publishes. It makes me wonder just how complicit they might be in this form of terrorism.

⬐ duxup

Unfortunately I think it fits the ... "everything is amplified on Youtube" type ecosystem that it stops being a weirdly storybook story and ... it's just what you expect to see so you don't notice it.

The YouTube guy who is amped up about everything, the latest movie is the worst ever, here are some videos of me overreacting to myself on video that I've seen before because I edited them but now I'll act like I didn't, everything celeb gossip type content, even videos reposed with slightly altered origin stories to fit a narrative....

It's all so skewed and wild it's just normal....

⬐ hanniabu

I wouldn't exactly categorize these 2 type of videos in the same basket...

⬐ duxup

They're not the same type of video, but the ecosystem is surreal as it is, I think that surreal nature makes folks less suspect of other sort of curious / awfully polished / almost surreal content as ... of course it is, it is on Youtube.

Kinda like on Twitter, people rarely just call anyone out for being what would qualify as a jerk IRL... because being a jerk on Twitter really isn't that weird.

⬐ cutitout

> I think that surreal nature makes folks less suspect of other sort of curious / awfully polished / almost surreal content

I agree, and it it reminds me of a very good article:

https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-ubiquitous-matrix-o...

⬐ Crosseye_Jack

> real rescued animals are often quite distrusting

Will confirm, we have a feral cat living in the garden. We have provided it with shelter (a cat kennel at the top of the garden) he will use during bad weather, we provide him food so he isn’t reliant on hunting and the little bugger will often take a swipe at me while I’m giving him his food. It’s not like I’m cornering him with, he comes running over to me now expecting me to have food.

⬐ HideousKojima

My wife and I feed some feral cats in our neighborhood, and it took months of fairly regular visits for them to get brave enough to get within 10 feet of us

⬐ Crosseye_Jack

Yeah same, this ginger cat has been floating around for a few years now. A while ago if he was at the top of the garden he would be ok with me being in the bottom half of the garden, but once I crossed into the top half he would dart off. Its only been in the past couple of months he has got brave enough to run over to me when I bring food out.

I find it a bit funny because he still doesn't fully trust me, so while he will come running over to me while I'm putting his food out he will hiss at me while running over to me. It was only a couple months ago I would have to put the food out and return indoors before he would walk over to it and have something to eat.

Little steps I guess.

⬐ omgwtfbyobbq

Even feral kittens take a while (a couple weeks) to become comfortable enough to be held after being caught. You can usually pet them at that point, but will still hiss as they see your hand moving towards them, and end up doing this weird combination of hiss(sees hand)/purr(gets petted).

⬐ mothsonasloth

This is absolutely shocking.

On one side, we have an extremely manipulative individual/group of people.

On the other we have gullible users, some of which are enabling this abuse by donating money and or sharing this content to other people.

Then in the middle of this sandwich we have the platforms, taking their cut.

I've seen other cases like this but on facebook with conjured sob stories that led to justgiving pages.

Not sure what the solution is apart from relying on good samaritans and people looking out for this bad behaviour.

However I can't remember who said it, but someone said "good people don't scale well on the internet"

⬐ Tade0

The youth that I interact with has grown to be automatically sceptical of such things.

There's a generation growing up that doesn't take anything at face value. I wonder what the second order effects of this will be?

⬐ ArekDymalski

I think that one of the long-term effects will be some kind of extreme localism/tribalism. People will trust only the information from their own bubble. And that will inlfuence how do they vote, what do they buy etc. I think we are already seeing it, especailly in the politics - in so many countries the voters have turned towards nationalism.

⬐ IWorkAtBigCo

Management is getting harder. I have a generation of developers that won't believe anything we tell them.

⬐ JoelMcCracken

I mean, how often are you telling them the real, true, unadulterated truth? How often do you even know that truth yourself?

Folks in management routinely filter messages. What surprises me more is that you are aware that your developers don't believe you.

⬐ EE84M3i

What sort of things do they not believe?

⬐ friendlybus

Knowledge is being abused en masse to win arguments and drive action. We are beginning to need a source for sacred, clean and trustworthy knowledge again.

It has to be edited by paid employees, legally sound and maintained. wikipedia doesnt cut it.

People are actively darkening their own worldviews by arguing themselves out of good knowledge and swimming into fake news for the thrill of victory. Heady aggression is killing our ability to hold rational positions, when they start misquoting fifteen studies and claiming the 'truth' is whatever they want to know.

⬐ remir

This is a generation that is being bombarded with information of various forms and they understand that most of it is pure garbage/noise. I guess they're adapting by having more discernement.

⬐ blondin

> There's a generation growing up that doesn't take anything at face value.

it's more like they pick what to take at face value...

⬐ dhimes

I think the second-order effects of that will be fantastic. Skepticism and critical thinking are sorely missing today- at least in the US.

⬐ duxup

>There's a generation growing up that doesn't take anything at face value.

I wish, my son came to me recently to tell me about how he is gonna get free robux on Roblox because someone on Roblox told him to do it.

Like in every other way I watch him and he's safe and smart but the moment humans hear a thing they want to be true ... out the window goes good choices.

There were a series of stories about how "this generation can spot fake news better than the last" that seemed encouraging ... but if you looked closer, the "this generation" was still really bad at it ...

⬐ rasz

For what its worth getting scammed in video game is a lot better than getting scammed IRL, while you learn the same lesson.

⬐ duxup

Very true. I can think of much worse things.

⬐ knolax

But once he gets burned by his first armor trimming scam he'll become much more skeptical no?

⬐ CraneWorm

> my son came to me recently to tell me about how he is gonna get free robux on Roblox because someone on Roblox told him to do it.

He's learning, that's a valuable lesson.

I don't believe this event alone supports the conclusion you try to make:

> the moment humans hear a thing they want to be true ... out the window goes good choices

⬐ csunbird

I agree that he is learning a lesson. I learned the common scams by getting scammed in the mmorpgs I played when I was a teenager.

⬐ duxup

I think the motivation / folks willingness to believe something less than believable totally is part of how folks get scammed.

⬐ the_only_law

The insane part to me is just that the bar for killing content in YT is already so low, why don't they just kill it? I mean I was watching videos where people had to bleep the word "massacre" and hace been told by others that words like "incursion" and "Saladin" have to be censored else they run the risk of demonitized content.

⬐ Timpy

These fake content farms are lucrative, it seems the demonetized items you're talking about are bad for advertisers. It's kind of like the stock market; you're not betting against what you believe, you're betting against what you think the general public will believe.

⬐ mcv

You're not allowed to discuss Saladin? The medieval Arab[0] general? Why not?

[0] correction: Kurdish, not Arab.

⬐ the_only_law

I'm not sure. I was told by a guy who does streaming for historical strategy games that this was a word he had to censor or else his vidoes got demonetized. Every single one of those words I listed could be discussed in a completely SFW, educational, historical context but I've either heard or heard of videos bleeping them. Perhaps its just hyper-caution on the side of the uploader.

⬐ notsureaboutpg

This is a false correction. The idea that there is a difference between Kurds and Arabs would not have even been recognized by Saladin himself.

⬐ HideousKojima

Saladin was ethnically Kurdish, so I wonder if someone of Arab, Persian, or Turkish (or whatever other groups might have a historical beef with the Kurds) descent works at Youtube has an axe to grind. Or maybe the Crusades are considered a touchy subject by someone at Youtube?

Stuff like this has happened before, I remember a year or two ago on Twitter there was someone who was friends with someone on the moderation team at Twitter and got them to shut down anyone tweeting anything negative about them, I can't remember the details at the moment. Or years ago on Reddit you couldn't criticize a certain moderator that had a friend who was an admin for the site.

⬐ notsureaboutpg

Hahahaha, way off base. Saladin is revered by khilafist Muslims who wish to reunite the Muslim world under one Islamic government. There's a lot of overlap between this group and groups proscribed by the US government.

Guarantee most Muslims have no idea that Saladin was ethnically Kurdish or think that that matters. Most Muslims don't even know anyone Kurdish or care about Kurds. The Kurdish story is really only told much in the West because they were allies with the West in all the last two decades' wars.

I'll bet the house that YouTube noticed lots of channels promoting Saladin are also heavily populated with videos praising groups with similar aims as Saladin but which are proscribed by the US govt (don't wanna say names for obvious reasons)

⬐ avar

> Or maybe the Crusades are considered a touchy subject by someone at Youtube?

Or more plausibly and less conspiracy-esque, a company like YouTube will eventually come up with a formula like:

    threshold=1.5
    if hassle(topic) / threshold > revenue(topic):
        ban(topic)

I.e. maybe they don't care at all about the subject, but dealing with reported videos, comments, the PR impact from flamewars about a contentious subject etc. just isn't worth it.

All for a topic that's hard to monetize, easier just to ban it and move on.

⬐ zouhair

Isn't this what the BBC used to do?[0]

[0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bbc-david-attenborough-...

⬐ mStreamTeam

This sounds a lot like reality TV that claims to be unscripted, but clearly isn't.

⬐ reaperducer

I can donate to The Real Housewives of Atlanta?

⬐ wil421

I’m almost positive if you told them about patreon they would do it if they haven’t already. Or onlyfans...

⬐ disown

> "good people don't scale well on the internet"

Where do good people scale well? Hollywood, news, DC, politics, military, wall street, etc?

⬐ A4ET8a8uTh0

I can't help but agree. I used to somewhat immune to that kind of pandering until I got a dog myself and now I simply cannot watch some of the ads/news/videos that deal with various animal rescues.

I absolutely get how some people's first reaction is to take the easy way and reach for a wallet. After all, the need is there and there seem to be people who seem to be helping. It does help that I don't have that much money to spare so when I donate, it is usually time and not money.

Frankly, I was trying to convince wife to create a dog sanctuary for a while.

Still, while there is special place in hell for some of animal abusers, the middlemen and scammers have their own little ring in there too.

⬐ shiftpgdn

It makes me so sad to see this. I have one of the first "viral" animal rescue videos on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zfKkihoH3Uk and one of those channels has a shot for shot recreation of my video.

For backstory I found a dog way out in the countryside and clipped together the videos I had sent my wife when I had found and picked up the dog. I wound up posting it to my local subreddit to try to get the dog adopted and it went viral from there. Within 24 hours I licensed the video for a mid 4 figure sum to an agency.

⬐ stareatgoats

Good job on the puppy rescue. The larger picture to me is that there is a market for "reality drama" videos, that can pay the lucky videographer mid 4 figure sums. Wasn't aware, but should have known. Not to detract from what you did here, but it explains why people increasingly are whipping out their mobiles when someone (human or animal) is in a life threatening situation nearby, instead of trying to help (or even get out off the way of rescue teams).

⬐ tartoran

Yes, it’s sad when everything is seen as an oportunity to make money; this is one of the parts I don’t like of capitalism when it is pushed to the extreme. We should all make money and be productive and happy and all that, but we should still keep the be human part.

⬐ namanyayg

The creator of the video has done a great expose and thorough research but is unsure about some parts that I think I can clear up.

* One of his videos, probably by one of the other guy, went viral and started getting them subscribers.

* They found that they could run ads on such content and get positive ROI due to the viral nature of this content.

* They started churning up more channels, because any single channel has the risk of getting banned. They probably have had other channels that got banned. That is pretty much the only reason he has multiple channels, otherwise of course it's better for 1 channel to have more content.

* The channel that got verified probably got verified only because they added the disclaimer that these are animal actors there, otherwise this content would not have been allowed by YouTube at all. They seeded that channel with safer videos, got verification, then started being more degenerate with the content. After being verified once, the channel is not really checked.

* They reused the description because they're not the best at English; and they reused animals because they probably were able to find a limited number of them. Both being quite stupid mistakes that they now would have erased thanks to this video.

1k American views = $3-5 revenue from ads; I haven't done the math but they could be making $500-2000/week. That's more than enough to live in Vietnam, where these animals are culturally part of their diet. Vietnam also has a culture of "MMO" i.e. "make money online" and has rich forums discussing YouTube ranking techniques, advertising and seo tricks, etc.

The sad part is, these channels will probably be deleted but they'll be back within 1-2mo with new channels.

Source: My company does a lot of YouTube and internet marketing; I previously had hired Vietnamese marketers, designers, and devs; and I've been there.

⬐ the_only_law

Is there anywhere I can learn about how this kinda stuff works. Similarly I watched a video several months back about a massive spam campaign that was incredibly bizarre and am just curious how people manage to scale these sort of things.

⬐ cutitout

Also notice one of the follow-up videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXZU6CTVts

> YouTube has now age restricted this video... unbelievable. Three painstaking videos diving into this issue, and in the end I'm the one who gets punished. I'm absolutely devastated

YouTube, once again a tool for abusers -- why am I not surprised?

⬐ Wistar

Yeah, that hardly seems equitable.

⬐ radoslawc

Thanks for posting this. Lots of people (including me) actively report animal abuse channels which youtube seems to pay little regard to. This issue was reported by penguinz0, Officer Paw Patrol, PaymoneyWubby and various other youtubers before. In the mean time accounts like 'Peluchin Entertainment' (kid that tortured and killed his cat and uploaded it to YT) is still up (it was banned after few months of internet outrage, but it's up again).

⬐ zomglings

I could not watch your whole video. The cruelty of these "rescuer" rings defies belief.

The sad thing is that the perpetrators of this cruelty were probably driven to it through poverty.

The solution that I naturally think of is to pressure YouTube to turn off monetization for videos depicting cruelty, genuine or not.

This is something they have the resources to do and we could make it expensive for them not to do it through public perception.

Are there better solutions we can apply to disincentivize this kind of cruelty?

⬐ mekoka

A few years ago I noticed how popular some of the early rescues captured on videos were getting and I became worried that this exact situation would become a thing. Fast-forward today and humanity is as predictable as ever, animal "rescuers" on camera have multiplied like mushrooms.

I'm taking the personal decision to stop watching all animal rescue videos, even the good ones.

To channels promoting other types of animal videos with sappy stories for sobs and glory, you keep doing your thing if you must. At least stop broadcasting rescue videos.

⬐ kalal

YouTube, it is your fault! It is too painful to watch such videos and knowing that the fix is possible. Efforts like YouTube-BB (https://research.google.com/youtube-bb/explore.html) clearly shows, that you have the capacity to process and annotate large quantities of videos manually. So hire annotators and manually check every video. Then stop the full channel.

⬐ encom

The fact that Google doesn't care about this, is the least surprising thing ever. Unless he accidentally plays some pop music track in the background of a video, there's no way this will get taken down.

⬐ lm28469

If it brings viewers/money and isn't an extremely violent crime (or god forbid, titties) you can be sure google won't do shit about it.

⬐ krona

I also want to highlight something which I haven't heard anyone talk about yet: the desensitization to animal abuse in the form of thousands of 'funny' TikTok videos and WhatsApp gifs.

No doubt many of these videos took many attempts (often by children) to get the animal to do something 'funny' and yet painful, sometimes beyond the threshold of what is considered animal abuse, at least in my country. All for a few likes.

⬐ srtjstjsj

It's the old America's Funniest Home Videos but bigger and worse.

⬐ geocrasher

Exactly. "Here's a video of a person being grievously injured... but we've put a laugh track on it, so now it's FUNNY!"

After AFV started increasing this I just had to stop watching it. YouTube of course has its share of Awful, just like everything else on the Internet.

⬐ dredmorbius

Imgur as well.

⬐ shuntress

Does WhatsApp have some sort of public discovery features that are not apparent or not enabled by default?

Like saying "thousands of 'funny' TikTok videos and iMessage gifs", it seems weird to group TikTok and WhatsApp this way.

⬐ angio

There is no public discovery feature but WhatsApp has been widely used to share this type of videos (together with revenge porn videos) since they don't monitor the chat content.

⬐ shuntress

I really don't understand the supposed equivalence here.

WhatsApp's one and only feature is private direct messaging. Basically equivalent to iMessage, SMS, eMail, etc.

edit: Did you mean that this content is being spread maliciously by spammers using WhatsApp?

⬐ krona

I didn't want to single out WhatsApp, but it's popular and I use it daily myself. Specifically I'm referring to their gif providers (which I believe are Giphy and Tenor.) and is essentially content available to everyone who uses the app.

⬐ 013a

You may be underestimating the size and scope of some of the big WhatsApp channels. Beyond a certain point they really look like a traditional social network, and not an isolated group of people sharing something in common.

As an example; the official Valorant Discord server has 200,000 people online right now. Not total; online, actively receiving messages. Some of these private WhatsApps, Discords, etc have tens of thousands of active members, and the content shared goes far, far beyond whatever the title of the channel indicates. The companies behind these isolated social network islands may do some light moderation on the overall server/channel, like not allowing terrorist groups to communicate, but very very rarely do they moderate any deeper; that's left up to the owners of the channel/server, and if they're complicit, it'll never be cleaned up.

Of course, WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, etc, they don't do discovery. They just let third parties handle that [1]. They get a ton of plausible deniability, which is even further empowered by the push for E2EE.

[1] https://top.gg/servers/list/top

⬐ surround

YouTuber Shawn Woods posts weekly videos on mousetraps. He has done much to educate people on humane ways to trap and kill pests, and condemns the use of traps which prolong suffering, such as sticky traps.

He has had years of struggles with YouTube censoring and demonetizing his videos. Meanwhile, YouTube is allowing, monetizing, and even verifying these fake animal rescue channels.

⬐ andromeduck

The big problem with valley based media platforms in general is that there's very little cultural diversity along some dimensions such as urban/rural or geographically due to being almost exclusively located in SF/LA metro areas.

It also seems to me that both conservatives and progressives here share a pretty strong paternalistic leanings here

⬐ Nextgrid

There are also knockoff mousetrap videos that are obvious animal abuse that are recommended on Shawn Wood’s videos. Unbelievable that they would censor the original (which is quite tame and tries its best to make it humane) but leaves the obvious abuse unchecked.

⬐ jbverschoor

Interesting to see that youtube (google) tolerates video's that bring ad revenue, but easily without notice or reason shuts down someone's email, or normal channel.

⬐ srtjstjsj

Nonsense. Demonetization is a huge issue in youtube.

⬐ userbinator

I'm not surprised --- there's lots of fake "restoration" channels too.

⬐ Nextgrid

Pretty much every genre that becomes popular on YouTube attracts a large chunk of bottom-feeders that churn out insane quantities of low-quality content (multiple accounts, clickbait titles, etc).

There are plenty of "Primitive Technology" knockoffs too.

⬐ iamAtom

Why they aren't punished yet ? This is horrible

Good job @Nick Crowley for exposing this Psychopath

⬐ nelsonenzo

If multiples of us report them for music licensing violations (at least 3 reports per video) it may at least immediately stop them and force youtube to look at them. Wish I was kidding.

⬐ Bjorkbat

I'm way more upset with Youtube than I am with the scammers.

Things like this will go on indefinitely so long as the controversy around fake animal rescues isn't big enough to upset advertisers. I would even go as far as to wager that commenting on these scams probably carries a greater risk of impacted ad revenue. Can't have family-friendly advertising on a channel with a reputation for exposing the dark underbelly of the internet.

I like working in tech, but moments like these really get me down.

⬐ jdndbfbf

There are many channels devoted to animal abuse on youtube. Some of the worst are where store bought mice are dropped in glue traps and they struggle to death. It's disturbing.

⬐ Nerada

Not an easy watch, it's a special kind of disturbing when people willingly torment small animals.

⬐ seles

These channels are immoral and against YT's TOS. YT should take them down, but they haven't (yet).

Something I could do about it is personally is stop using YT until they do. I've seen other instances of the negatives of YT that are making me think this is what it must come to (i.e. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24571038).

The ironic thing is that I'm tempted not to ban YT because there's so much content that I like (pbs spacetime, veritasium, etc). However this type of reasoning is how atrocities in the past have been allowed to happen. Essentially youtube is Google's real monopoly and this is just another example of the problem of monopolies.

So I'm going to block myself from youtube (since habit is too hard to break, I'll do it by adding these lines to /etc/hosts)

127.0.0.1 youtube.com

127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com

Could someone please post here when these channels are deleted?

⬐ amelius

You could also flag the content, as explained here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK8qRNSmhEU

⬐ seles

I was under the impression it was already being flagged and ignored. Could you explain how that would help?

BTW I cannot view that link... "This site can’t be reached" :)

⬐ progre

Search on youtube for "puppy jungle house". There are at least 4 channels dedicated to "rescue" dogs and cats that gets amazing jungle playgrounds. Videos are in the quiet style of "primitive technology".

⬐ hirundo

This seems to be a variation of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare disorder that's a favorite of medical TV dramas. I think I saw it on ER, St. Elsewhere and Chicago Hope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...

If people will do it with their own children, doing it with a small animal isn't much of a stretch. I wouldn't be surprised if there are youtube examples of this with a human child victim.

⬐ colanderman

The novel and miniseries Sharp Objects explores this disorder as well.

I wonder if this is technically that disorder however, since it seems to be primarily cash-motivated.

⬐ kobalsky

I'm betting on this being pure greed.

⬐ Zigurd

Munchausen by virality

⬐ klodolph

That made me wonder how rare it was. I found this literature review which suggests that while “rare”,

> There has been increasing recognition in the pediatric literature for the past 20 years that illness falsification by caregivers must be included in the differential diagnosis of children presenting with persistent, unexplained symptoms or laboratory findings.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990557/

⬐ passenger

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

⬐ koreanguy

disgusting Vietnamese youtubers who are profiting from poor animals, on facebook the dodo animal videos you see are doing the same by another gang.

⬐ koreanguy

disgusting , terrible people who are doing this, I have encountered these Vietnamese groups on Facebook.

dodo animal videos, probably by the same gang.

⬐ kome

it's a couple of poor people in south-east asia making some money on youtube... is that more exploitative and cruel to animals than the meat industry? i don't think so.

⬐ bigbubba

I'm sure there are plenty of 'poor people in south-east asia making some money on youtube' who are doing it without making fraudulent content. Why don't you save your sympathy for them, rather than offering it to the scammers?

⬐ seles

Meat industry cruelty does no make this cruelty ok, nor does this cruelty make the meat industry cruelty ok.

Does anyone know the name for this type of fallacy? Not False Dichotomy but similar?

⬐ npteljes

Whataboutism I think. Bringing up another issue, to distract from the current issue.

⬐ chordalkeyboard

I do think it's worse. The YT videos are a form of entertainment whereas the treatment animals get in the food industry is in the service of feeding people. Yes, there is a lot of unnecessary suffering in the meat industry. However this is a result of producers competing to offer the lowest prices and the consumer buying the lowest price they can find and being unaware of the suffering of the animals. In this case the suffering of the animal is the spectacle that is being offered as the product.

⬐ kome

"The YT videos are a form of entertainment whereas the treatment animals get in the food industry is in the service of feeding people."

False, both are for money - you don't need mass exploitation of animals to feed people - as you rightly point out: "there is a lot of unnecessary suffering in the meat industry. However this is a result of producers competing to offer the lowest prices and the consumer buying the lowest price they can find and being unaware of the suffering of the animals."

How is this different from this kind of videos? It's all about consumer buying the product (watching the videos) and being unaware of the suffering of the animals.

⬐ chordalkeyboard

both are for money but the suffering of the animal is necessary for the video and unnecessary for the food.

⬐ rasz

Same submission with same title month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610404

Yes, everything is fake on YT, just like everything was fake on TV.

Fake Cake Youtube empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpjlxgJMMc

Fake food clickbait https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSBSzWmjXO0

Fake NASA engineer glitter bomb clickbait https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/21/glitter-bomb-video-was-parti...

Fake parkour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9UbIynGdsQ

Fake electric trucks ;-) https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/315151-electric-vehicle-...

Fake speed records https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N22JfNHiC1k

Critical thinking should be taught in school :/

⬐ no-dr-onboard

Interesting that you end with a note about critical thinking.

OPs submission seems to link to a YT'r that is demonstrating a welcome dose of critical thinking. There are actually quite a few "critical thinking" YT channels that are worth checking out:

ex:

SolarSands on Liminal Spaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dRqMDgdp8

Nightmare Masterclass's "More Human Than Human" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcQk3qM3Ok0

Nightmind on Found Footage videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVeWfeHfTA

Note that I'm not particularly agreeing with the presumptions/premises/conclusions of these channels. Just showing some optimism that someone out there is flexing their critical thinking skills and drawing quite the crowd.

⬐ CivBase

You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

⬐ guardiangod

I am sad none of you guys caught the reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0

⬐ gnu8

I think the point is anything on YouTube is manufactured. It’s not necessarily lies, but people have to be aware when they are watching a video about an electric truck or rescuing animals, the intent wasn’t to do that thing, the intent was to create a video about doing that thing that people will enjoy watching. So while there is an inherit falseness to everything on YouTube, that doesn’t need to imply malignancy.

⬐ tartoran

To add to this, the intent is to add views to the videos. If something sells - and one can see what is trending - video creators jump on the bandwagon and do it. The problem is not only fakeness but inauthenticity.

Similar with kids content, there was a scandal a while back about this...

⬐ coward8675309

I think that’s a level of media sophistication that’s hard to instill in people. After all, motion pictures, literature, and art of all kinds produces emotional effects because at some level, people accept what’s presented to them. It takes consistent effort to remember that the thing we’re experiencing is not a naive, straightforward presentation “from nowhere” without any sort of goal, whether innocuous or nefarious.

⬐ bigwavedave

> You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

It's a sad world- it almost makes me regret creating the internet and inventing services like youtube and email and HN.

⬐ icandoit

Don't, we're still in the just-discovered-beer-and-dont-know-my-limits stage of things. Better days (and much darker ones too) ahead. :)

⬐ colanderman

Fortunately all of those examples don't involve abusing living creatures.

⬐ chaostheory

Some of them do. Outside of that video, I've seem one that involved a kitty and a sticky trap built for rats.

⬐ surround

A note on those sticky traps - don’t use them. It’s as inhumane to trap a rat/mouse in them as it is to trap a kitty.

If you have a mouse problem, stick to spring traps which kill them instantly, without prolonged suffering.

⬐ ornornor

If you check the traps often, I think they might be better than kill traps. You can take the glued mouse far away in the middle of nowhere and pour vegetable oil on the glue apparently which sets the mouse free. Then the mouse didn’t die and you got rid of the mouse.

See https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Live-Mouse-from-a-Sticky-Tr... for example.

⬐ NoOneNew

Critical thinking? Is it really critical thinking to understand that people have been dishonest to make money since... oh I don't know... the past few millennia? I know it's a fairly recent concept, but I think it's happened enough to have merit.

I need someone with some expert critical thinking skills to explain to me why people are so surprised by these "revelations" of overblown, sensational claims...

At some point, people need to take some responsibility in themselves of being ridiculously gullible and reward blatant cons (Theranos anyone?). There's a weird culture of "It's not my fault I was fooled". Yes, it is. This is literally why we're all taught "history". See the past faults, mistakes, success, good, bad, failures, cons, promises, etc. and understand that it can all happen again. Thus, you can protect yourself. Yet, people keep trying to over complicate that concept.

⬐ rasz

What if the "people" is a Russian based content farm injecting political bits into their kid friendly fun hack clickbaity videos? What if that content farm is THE biggest Youtube content creator, beating even pewdiepie? Let me introduce you to TheSoul Publishing. Just one of their channels, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-Minute_Crafts, is 5th most subscribed on the platform, and they run hundreds of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvqa8dsBtno

⬐ NoOneNew

Yea... but they dont exist in a vacuum. What can we do about people who are easily fooled by stupid crap? That's a serious question. People keep believing in the dumbest things and defend that to the death. When I was growing up, there were common jokes about the fact politicians will say anything to get a vote. Thus, dont believe any. Suddenly everyone is praising politicians like they're the second coming of Jesus. This is both sides of the aisle. "That politician has my best interests in mind". That's just as stupid as the person who goes, "Hey, you know what, after seeing that sign on the side of the road, I'm going to vote for them."

We are in the age of people so desperate to be apart of a "special group", they're willing to destroy everything around them. Both metaphorically and literally. What's worse, it's "okay" to do so. Folks bought into the life hacks, saving the planet staged videos because they want to so they can feel special doing their upvote. How do you stop it?

⬐ specialist

What if misinformation and trolling is treated like a DDoS? How would we mitigate it?

In this analogy, our brains are servers and bad actors were stealing our attention.

Thoughts?

⬐ NoOneNew

Yea, that's well known. Not just from federal law enforcement with proof of it, but twitter, youtube and facebook know it and admit to it too. Smarter Everyday interviewed all 3 and their folks talk about this directly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1RhQ1uuQ4

The actual social media platforms saying it's happening.

At the same time though, it's not all their fault. It takes two to tango and if you're gullible enough to wreck your own life on the words of someone you've never, and will never meet... that's a special kind of stupid.

Here's my hope. All of this gets out of our systems. After whoever wins this election, folks are going to go, "Hold on, we're all acting like crazy people. Let's be sensible and stop going to the extremes and work together." This is the fantasy that fills my dreams. Not flying, being rich or anything like that. That, society being sensible and taking some personal responsibility. That's my crazy, wild fantasy...

⬐ a1369209993

> This is the fantasy that fills my dreams. Not flying, being rich or anything like that.

Is it bad that I have a easier time believing that I would spontaneously develop the combined superpowers of both Superman and Batman than that society would develop the ability to make sensible and responsible decisions about topics that sociopaths and memetic diseases are attempting to subvert?

⬐ specialist

Thanks for the links. I hadn't seen those.

Wow. Those were rough.

TLDR: Barn, horses, open door, darn.

Social media created the problem, makes enormous profits, harms all of society, and is not only powerless to mitigate it, has no responsibility to do so. Because Freedom Speeches™, or reasons.

You attribute most of the blame on stupid users. And yet. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted a bot. https://youtu.be/V-1RhQ1uuQ4?t=1159 So then what hope does the average person have of doing better? (Rhetorical question.)

A la Merchants of Doubt, I've always wandered how skeptics, shills, and apologists sleep at night. Surely Sandberg, Zuck, Dorsey, et al somehow manage. But what about the drones? So I'll be watching the career arcs of the people interviewed (Del Harvey, Yoel Roth, Renee DiResta, others) to see where they land.

--

Back to my own quarter baked idea, the "mitigations" explained via Smarter Every Day operate at the medium layer. And they have a conflict of interest. I'm wondering if there's something to protect individuals, a way for noobs to up armor ourselves. My first notion is something akin to iOS Screen Time, like a uBlock for The Outrage Machine, where your device can help you ward off manipulation (inauthentic nudges).

⬐ ornornor

It’s not the same kind of fake though. In this kind of fake, animals are abused (and killed). In the ones you posted as examples that it’s not a big deal and you should use your judgement, no animal or people are hurt or abused.

⬐ uniqueid

  everything is fake on YT, just like everything was fake on TV.

They're more different than they are the same. There is a different set of incentives, and a different set of constraints with Youtube producers than there was in television.

⬐ thaumasiotes

> Yes, everything is fake on YT, just like everything was fake on TV.

> Fake Cake Youtube empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpjlxgJMMc

So I watched that video. It makes a few claims of relevance to the description "fake":

1. The videos show plausible cakes and their contents do not need to be debunked.

2. The channel is owned -- openly -- by what you might consider a conglomerate which operates about 100 youtube channels.

3. This conglomerate's website is copied from a web theme example.

4. Their various channels offer videos which appear, based on review of the thumbnails, to be repeated across several channels. This contradicts a written policy of YouTube, but not the actual policy. (Which, as stated officially but not publicly by YouTube, allows you to repeat content across multiple channels if you are the owner of the content.)

5. On closer inspection, several videos on each individual channel also appear, based on review of the thumbnails, to be repeats.

6. On even closer inspection, the contents of a video on one of these channels do not appear to be related to the video's thumbnail.

7. The conglomerate lists an address in Vietnam. If you look up that address, you can find a building displaying the corporate logo, and they have videos of themselves unboxing the many celebratory buttons they get from YouTube for having so many subscribers.

So summing up:

A. The video content is not deceptive.

B. The people behind the videos operate quite openly and can be found at the location where they say they are.

C. They comply with YouTube's policies on content repetition, despite some unfortunate wording in YouTube's public statement of the policy.

D. It is not even obvious that they are repeating content.

E. They definitely do use deceptive thumbnails.

Why are we calling this "fake"?

⬐ twright

Even if critical thinking is taught in school this problem wouldn't be solved. These videos pass by in feeds and people think "that looks cool" or "aww cute" and keep going. They don't open up photoshop and analyze the parallax and object seams. People do not have time nor cause to investigate every video or news item that comes up. Even the investors of Nikola didn't have time to do a full due diligence before investing! Most of this fake-content is largely banal (cakes, speed records) as for the non-banal, platforms need to step up and hinder or stop its spread.

⬐ scoutt

The question is why these videos "pass by in feeds". Is because they are popular? If so, why?

Is because people is "liking" this kind of content? To "like", you do it under a certain criteria. This criteria should exclude "shady" content under the knowledge that paying attention to the content means "to feed it". This can be taught but it's not.

⬐ idrios

Still puts the onus on the wrong party. The videos in question had 10's of thousands of views but were produced in such large quantity that the sum of all videos was in the millions of views.

By law of large numbers even if you educate 95% of the population how to notice when something's not right, an exploiter like this can still just keep getting views from the other 5%.

And the channel in question was in Vietnam, very likely views were coming from all parts of the world. It's not like adding critical thinking to US school curriculum could have stopped this anyway

EDIT: Rereading your comment I realize you were talking about how this gets shared at all and the algorithm that's used to make these videos recommended. My guess is that the channel had a couple dozen or hundred subscribers, and they maybe did some advertising on r/aww or something similar. I don't think it would be hard to get the numbers they were getting even if YouTube wasn't recommending these videos to anyone at all

⬐ jt2190

Could a browser plugin do the image analysis, then score the image?

⬐ Nextgrid

A lot of the fake content out there (both benign and malicious) is being paid for by "engagement" aka ads. If you remove that revenue stream (or attach liability to it, like the platform being complicit in the animal abuse in this case), you solve a large part of the problem.

⬐ judge2020

Removing money fixes most social problems.

⬐ None

None

⬐ phobosanomaly

Isn't most of reality TV fake, and this is the natural extension of that.

Seems like par for the course.

⬐ jiofih

Those videos are disgusting and obviously fake. It’s incredible that YouTube would not only turn a blind eye but actually verify it as legit.

⬐ duskwuff

I've seen "verified" channels which were obviously posting freebooted content (like copies of other users' popular videos, or compilations of those videos) for ad revenue. I'm not sure what YouTube is actually claiming to have verified, but it obviously isn't very thorough.

⬐ madengr

They are too busy taking down channels of conservatives.

⬐ jiofih

Wow. Being downvoted for criticizing animal abuse videos is a new low here.

⬐ uniqueid

I can believe it. I once stumbled across a series of vlog entries, on Youtube, by some disheveled guy shouting in his pickup.

They were all rants about how Youtube was blocking his content, and they got progressively scarier. Near the end he was shrieking things like "Oh, Susan Wojcicki! You think you're sooo smart! You'll pay for this, you globalist scum! You think you can get away with this, but I'm armed and dangerous, and I will NEVER roll over!"

It may sound like standard Alex Jones content, but this was just some random nut, screaming at his cheapo phone, day after day, in an old pickup truck. So... concerning.

I reported the video. It took them two weeks to take the content down. Even then, they didn't ban the Channel, just the one video (out of several) that I reported.

If Youtube can't take prompt action to protect their own damn CEO, I don't expect them to handle any issue effectively.

⬐ duskwuff

To be fair, that could have been deliberate. When you've got an unhinged dude screaming about how you're oppressing him by blocking his videos, the last thing you want to do is prove him right by blocking his videos.

⬐ uniqueid

That's a possibility. I can imagine a scenario where the issue bubbled up the chain a couple levels, with the junior employees not touching anything in the meantime, so as to avoid making things worse.

Another possibility is that the employee the system tasked with my report wasn't familiar with the CEO's name yet, and so couldn't follow the gist of the video. It's less likely, but the thought amuses me.

I still lean towards it being run-of-the-mill bureaucratic dysfunction. That's partly because it seems in-line with their spotty moderation, and partly, to be honest, because I'm just biased against Youtube.

⬐ deckarep

This world we live in...

⬐ aaron695

The chicken I just ate was worth ~$6

If they got more money off the puppy than $6 then I guess that makes them more ethical than me.

These unboxing videos which is what I guess is what this genre is? are interesting.

Flooded street drain unblocking is one that interests me. I've yet to see them faked. I guess it just takes time.

⬐ Clampower

As much as people might avoid him, or dislike him as a person, PayMoneyWubby did an episode on these and actually managed tot ake some of these channels down.

These fake animal rescue channels are just one example of creepy content. The subliminally sexualized family videos on YouTube are even worse.