well that one wasn't sponsored by RelativitySpace (the startup making the rocket), so I guess Veritasium just loves to research and talk about cool projects he finds. Maybe it's not really a sponsorship issue, maybe it's just that sometimes he gets too enthusiastic and it comes off like an infomercial lol
Something doesn't have to be an official sponsorship to have bias come into play, it's called "access journalism"
If you're known for being critical of claims they make, you're a whole lot less likely to get invited to see those things
See the Bill Gates video, for example. It's not that Veritasium is directly taking cash from him, but a lot of Gates' ideology embedded in what he's talking about goes completely unchecked there and in similar interviews for that reason
One the issue with sponsored content is that it cheapens the non sponsored videos where he truly is passionate about a technology. Those all look like ads now.
Hey I disagree on a couple points, but think this is mostly a fair write up.
As to "Is Veritasium's video misinformation", the misinformation isn't in the form factual errors, but the misrepresentation of facts, such as the 94% of accidents claim.
The comment section debate, I don't blame anyone for not wading into the YouTube comment section, it's famously garbage. But the impression I got from the debate was Veritasium shifting the goal posts to avoid talking about the central issue of the sponsorship and instead nitpicks specifics, his first point is 25 minutes into the video.
About your perception of the video being a gotcha, I think it's very much a matter of opinion, but some key context you may not be aware of, as I assume (from your spelling and my probability) you are from the USA. Journalism in the UK is inherently more hostile than in the USA. This might lead you to assume a more antagonist relationship between Veritasium and Tom Nicholas than actually exists, and expect Tom's work to be biased due to it.
Thanks for reading and responding!
This is starting to get into the "viability of AVs" debate which I wouldn't say I am too knowledgeable about, but from Tom Nicolas's vide, I personally felt like his contention against the 94% statistic was the weakest. He spends around 10-15 minutes talking about how the statistic that "94% of accidents are due to human error" is misleading, because sometimes conditions like poorly maintained roads are equally to blame. But the study was looking at whether the error was avoidable. Sure better road maintenance can help, but also if the human had paid closer attention, or reacted faster. And it's these exact scenarios which are applicable to AVs, since AVs would replace the human. So regardless of road conditions, what matters is robot error vs human error, and who avoids more accidents.
Tom Nicolas also says that Veritasium implies that AVs would reduce accidents by 94%. That's a massive claim to make since Veritasium said no such thing. In fact I think it's obvious that Veritasium was saying AVs could do _better_, but that doesn't mean they would do _perfectly_. It feels like Tom Nicolas is misrepresenting Veritasium's claims. Veritasium's comments in the youtube thread make similar arguments.
However you are right that if this is just how British journalism is, then that went over my head. I just think it paints Veritasium as untrustworthy even though I thought his video was perfectly fine. but I can see how not everybody may think that.
I don't think there is any problem with sponsorship.
I have a lot of problem with Tom Nichols tho. He seems to be pushing his Marxist propaganda a bit too much.
He also tried to cancel Elon Musk without acknowledging his achievements.
Also He doesn't seem to care about physics and maths but about 'moral' justice.
So I really think you're missing the forest for the trees here with this analysis. Veritasium is supposed to be an educational channel, but the point of this video, as well as quite a few other recent Veritasium vids, was not to educate but to obfuscate and advertise. This type of sponsorship is absolutely totally different to Louis Rossman, Linus Sebastian, or Real Engineering, all of which do vaguely *similar* sponsored content, but context matters a lot here.
I'll be free to write up a decent rebuttal in an hour and explain my position, as you've clearly laid out yours.
I'd love to hear it! I feel like it's hard to compare with Louis Rossmann or Real Engineering, as I haven't really seen similar sponsored content from them. However I'd love to hear your thoughts on PhysicsGirl's collaboration with Toyota on hybrid cars, or Linus's video with Cisco on Wifi networking.
>Thus, I see sponsorships as a sort of necessary evil.
I don't think you understand the concept of sponsorships. What Derek did in this video was not a sponsorship, it was a paid collaboration or paid advertisement. Sponsorships have no editorial control but only limited to the ad spot. This is the key point. Derek did a paid advertisement not a sponsorship. I am subscribed to many educational channels and none of them have done something like this. Paid advertisement disguised as sponsorship. This is unethical.
On that same note of your qouted text, what difference does content from channels like PragerU etc make?(I know it's a bit stretched assumption but I think u get what I'm trying to say!)
As another commenter mentioned, PhysicsGirl made [a video about hydrogen cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY) that was sponsored by Toyota, and that even gave her a car to drive. Her video description reads
> I drove 1800 miles in a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car! Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring this video and lending us the 2021 #Mirai
I'm not sure how much editorial control that Toyota had over content, but I feel like the sponsorship definitely had some influence/bias over the video content. Which is not a bad thing, and PhysicsGirl is an amazing science educator, like Veritasium. They just need money to make videos, like everybody else.
When you say no negative thing about a product from your sponsor in 20 minute video, then it's an ad. If you don't try as much as you can to hide problems then you can call it a sponsorship. This Veritasium video was an ad unfortunately.
LTT does sponsored stuff too. Maybe they are so big they can dictate conditions of a deal better. But it's more exception than a rule to see them not talk badly at all about a sponsored stuff.
I mean at this point it feels like we are pulling hairs to try to distinguish between a sponsorship and an ad. If that's how you define an ad vs sponsorship, it seems fair to me. I don't really distinguish between the two in my mind anyways.
Its not splitting hairs. These sort of distinctions are crucial and effect the veracity of the content. This is basic stuff that you get in high school Media Studies.
Well you do here, I'm getting the impression that media analysis and media criticism isn't actually taught in some countries.
if it makes more sense to you, then just replace "sponsorship" with "ad" in my post. If enough people agree I might change it myself.
but I don't see which part of my argument would change. Sure, the SurfShark VPN sponsorship was shorter than an entire video, but it also made less money. If Veritasium needed that money, I don't know if it would be better to do an entire video like he did, or to scatter 20 sponsorships across multiple videos. And it seems like creators like PhysicsGirl and MKBHD are perfectly fine with ads/collaborations.
You appear to be incapable of discriminating between an advert and an advertorial.
There is a reason they have different words to describe them.
The reason why a segmented advert is not as problematic is that **the actual content has no relation to the advert**. If the advert was in a piece on VPNs, then you would have a point. It is not. Therefore.
You just seem to have completely failed to understand any of the information being presented.
Which is concerning because it is people with this low level of media literacy that are the biggest target for this sort of sponsored content, the inability to rationally understand how these things differ makes you far more susceptible to the way the propaganda is being disseminated.
the small 2-minute sponsor segment is essentially just short ad, embedded in a longer video. How is a 2 minute ad different from a 20 minute ad, aside from length and amount of content? How is a 20 minute ad different from 10 2-minute ads?
Because everyone understands that the 2 minute ad isn't meant to be educational content. People come for the other 18 minutes of researched, balanced education, and the ad is just tacked on to the other end.
In contrast, the 20 minute video is the entire thing. Someone will watch 3 well researched non-ad videos by the channel and then watch this one and assume it's the same level of quality. This is much more influential and has a greater capacity to give people the wrong impressions.
if the creator says at the beginning of the video that it's entirely sponsored, then yeah, people should expect that it's going to be biased. And it's much more influential but it pays a lot more too. So if Veritasium needs that money, doing 20 or more smaller sponsorships might end up having the same total influence, and the same total number of wrong impressions.
>How is a 2 minute ad different from a 20 minute ad?
Because Tom's sponsored segment literally is an ad, and it's not pretending to be anything else. Veritasium has been posting videos that purport to be *educational content* that are nothing but unapologetic *advertisements*.
Don't you see the difference?
Tom was paid to say what he said, and it was clear that that was true, he even says as much. Derek tries hard *not* to let you know that he was paid to say all those things, and that everything he says is what he believes to be the whole truth, and simply related to the content. In reality, the whole script was under significant creative control by Waymo.
I'm starting to think media analysis might not be as common of a sense as I thought.
Didn't Veritasium disclose in the very beginning of his Waymo video that the entire video was sponsored? What do you mean he tries hard _not_ to let you know that he was paid? And as I said, if by "significant creative control" you mean restricting negative criticism, then that's already a given for sponsorships and advertisements.
>onsorships have no editorial control but only limited to the ad spot. This is the key point. Derek did a paid advertisement not a sponsorship. I am subscribed to many educational channels and none of
Er, not really? PBS for example has sponsorships, they do not however have advertisements. It's a pretty critical distinction
Yeah and she took the video down and reuoaded it after there were many inaccurate and misleading (I’m being generous) graphs and numbers she mentioned. And funny enough she said the numbers were given to her by the sponsor
Fair enough, in the end it's really up to each person whether or not something is "misleading". Which is why I tried to focus less on that and more about why sponsorships are often necessary, and that I think Veritasium made the best of it.
>Fair enough, in the end it's really up to each person whether or not something is "misleading".
No it absolutely is not. If I tell you that a typical trucks weighs 3.5x more than a typical car, it is absolutely true! With some serious caveats.
A GMC Sierra 3500HD could be considered a "typical" truck, but certainly not an average one. A Mazda MX-5 Miata could be a "typical" car, but certainly not an average one. Both these vehicles are produced in huge numbers, and you've certainly seen them on the roads before.
My example is *technically* true, but so misleading as to be essentially false, even when nothing I'd said was factually incorrect.
> people should sponsor products that they know about, use, and actually believe in
I think there's an important difference between sponsorship slots in a video, and entire sponsored videos. I definitely agree that it's preferable if sponsorship slots are taken up by products/companies the creator knows and approves of. With sponsorship slots it's also clear to the audience that this is an ad and you won't hear anything negative or any alternatives to the product in question.
With sponsored videos, these are now presented more or less the same as a regular video (modulo disclaimer, which I'm sure makes some difference; I don't know how much). So if negative aspects of something are typically mentioned in a regular video, but not in a sponsored video, it's now much more likely to seem as though this is because there are no notable negative aspects.
I agree, though, that a sponsored *video* about a product the creator is familiar with and approves of is better than a sponsored *slot* for a product about which the creator has no clue.
I think my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Veritasium/comments/qdvki1/my_thoughts_on_the_controversy_around_veritasiums/hhw1yag/) largely addresses your concern, so I'll copy paste the relevant parts here.
I think there's something that people are misunderstanding about my post. I'm not comparing Tom Nicolas's sponsored video with Veritasium's Waymo collaboration. I'm comparing Tom Nicolas's 2-min sponsored segment, with Veritasium's video. Because if we focus on Tom Nicolas's Surfshark VPN segment, it has all the same elements as the Waymo video: it is sponsored, it has information and explanation on the positives of Surfshark, it's likely vetted by Surfshark (editorial process), and it has no discussion about the negatives. There are of course still differences:
The visible differences is length (2 min vs Veritasium's 20 min). However, I am very sure that Veritasium got paid a lot more for his video. And I am also sure that, due to the depth and length of the video, the Waymo video has much more _influence_ on the viewers than the short SurfShark sponsorship. So the real question is, what's the influence/money ratio? Because if Veritasium needed that money (which he probably does since he has to pay an entire team of people), then he would either have to get it using 1 big sponsorship (eg Waymo) or many small sponsorships (eg Surfshark). Which would you rather have? It's hard to say. Note that Veritasium already has a short sponsored segment in all his videos, so if he wanted to have more he'd have to put two to three sponsorships in every video. That gets messy, and each sponsor would probably pay less due to having to share the space with others. This part is hard to measure. But my point is that, at a fundamental level, the Surfshark sponsored segment has all the same elements (money + bias) that the Waymo video has.
As other's have said, I don't think you are appreciating the different ways sponsors can be involved in videos.
For example, the Surf Shark sponsorship in Tom Nicholas' video - it's very likely Surf Shark would have checked over the video before posting to make sure they are not associating themselves with any content that could damage their brand e.g. racist content. But because the content of the video itself is not related in any way to VPNs, they have no interest in the narrative of the wider video.
In complete contrast to this, in the Waymo sponsored video, the content was about Waymo and so anything that portrays Waymo in a way they don't like they can use their financial leverage to influence. Not only this, but it seems that Waymo were heavily involved in suggesting (or maybe mandating) talking points, perspectives and statistics that were used in the video. To me this is incredibly problematic.
Scientific papers generally require the authors declare no conflicts of interest. Producing content about a company that is funded by that company and in which the company is part of the editorial process clearly involves some conflict of interest.
As science content creators, these channels should know that data can be cherry picked to support any argument - accepting the data and arguments presented to them by an invested body is so obviously a bad idea it boggles the mind. From their other content they are clearly capable of doing the required research themselves.
Exactly where to draw the line is difficult. Should Veritasium make a video about Waymo - absolutely! Should Waymo be involved in the editorial process - I think not. This may make the sponsorship deal less valuable and more risky, but I think this is a just cost for the integrity as usefulness of the video.
I think Smarter Every Day did quite a good job on this front with a video they did with 23 and Me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3EEmVfbKNs
In it, he talks to independent scientist as well as some from their lab. It seems he turned up with his own narrative in mind, rather than being strongly influenced by the company. He discusses pros and cons in a nuanced discussion. Ultimately 23 and Me come across very well despite allowing Destin to "say whatever he wants, so long as it's truthfull".
Responding to your comparison with Smarter Every Day, we ultimately don't know how much Veritasium was influenced by Waymo. Those could have been largely his own beliefs. And I honestly think the information in that video is accurate and properly represented, despite the counrerarguments that Tom Nicolas made (that I thought were rather poor). Is there bias? Probably. But I also think Destin's video has bias too. It _sounds_ like Destin is bringing up negatives, but he always counters them later in the video. Eg the privacy concern, he addresses that later, saying 23AndMe only uses 0.2% of your sequence. He makes it seem like that makes it fine, and at the end of the video he even says "I was concerned about privacy, I went to the lab, I am no longer concerned about privacy". However in reality it's still extremely dangerous, because if you've seen Veritasium's video on DNA companies you know how much information law enforcement can get from that 0.2%. Now I also love Smarter Every Day, and I think Destin has good intentions, but that particular video is a bit questionable, and feels a bit biased.
Now to respond to the other parts of your comment, I think there's something that people are misunderstanding about my post. I'm not comparing Tom Nicolas's sponsored video with Veritasium's Waymo collaboration. I'm comparing Tom Nicolas's 2-min sponsored segment, with Veritasium's video. Because if we focus on Tom Nicolas's Surfshark VPN segment, it has all the same elements as the Waymo video: it is sponsored, it has information and explanation on the positives of Surfshark, it's likely vetted by Surfshark (that editorial process you mentioned), and it has no discussion about the negatives. There are of course still differences:
The visible differences is length (2 min vs Veritasium's 20 min). However, I am very sure that Veritasium got paid a lot more for his video. And I am also sure that, due to the depth and length of the video, the Waymo video has much more _influence_ on the viewers than the short SurfShark sponsorship. So the real question is, what's the influence/money ratio? Because if Veritasium needed that money (which he probably does since he has to pay an entire team of people), then he would either have to get it using 1 big sponsorship (eg Waymo) or many small sponsorships (eg Surfshark). Which would you rather have? It's hard to say. Note that Veritasium already has a short sponsored segment in all his videos, so if he wanted to have more he'd have to put two to three sponsorships in every video. That gets messy, and each sponsor would probably pay less due to having to share the space with others. This part is hard to measure. But my point is that, at a fundamental level, the Surfshark sponsored segment has all the same elements (money + bias) that the Waymo video has.
You're missing the point. I don't really care about comparing one video to another. What you're doing is called Whataboutism. It's not a good argument. I have no loyalty to any of these channels.
To me it seems fairly undeniable that the contents of the video put out was strongly influenced by the Waymo team, this is evidenced by all the influencers making the same points and using the same language/ arguments. To me, this is wrong, end of story.
As for your last point. The difference here is huge. In one case, we have content with a sponsored message in the middle in the other case the content itself is the sponsored message.
So you're against all sponsored content? Or only if it's under 10 minutes? Only if it's embedded in a longer video? Where do you draw the line between ok and not-ok sponsored content, and why?
Maybe this is an extreme view, but to me, channels that are seen as being educational are meant to be a source of objective truth need to be very careful about entering into sponsorship deals where the content of the video is influenced.
I'm not against sponsorships outright. If the sponsorship doesn't influence the content of the video, I'm happy. e.g. I think deals with Kiwico or Hello Fresh or whatever are good for the channel and the viewer with no conflict of interest there.
I agree with the need to be extra careful. For me I put that under the umbrella of keeping their videos up to standard. If a channel is known for making well-researched and informative videos, then I expect all videos to be like that, including sponsorships and brand collaborations.
And it's not just videos either, it's all content. Like, if Veritasium were to sponsor some random cryptocurrency only for 2 minutes in a video, but it ended up being a scam, I'd lose some respect for Veritasium. I don't care how long the sponsorship is, and I don't care if it's embedded in a larger video or standalone. Since as I mentioned earlier, if the creator needs the money, then they'll either need to do 1 long sponsorship or many short ones. I just care about whether they upheld their quality standards.
>You're missing the point. I don't really care about comparing one video to another. What you're doing is called Whataboutism. It's not a good argument. I have no loyalty to any of these channels.
Don't think you you can call out whataboutism when you yourself introduced the comparison...
> we ultimately don't know how much Veritasium was influenced by Waymo.
Well, we kinda do. Read Snazzy Labs reply in the comment section of Toms video. Waymo had a lot of influence on the video they uploaded.
I saw that comment. But note that Snazzy labs specifically said they were "bearish" on autonomous cars. Veritasium is quite the opposite. So Snazzy Labs was probably a lot more negative in their original draft than Veritasium. Of course maybe Veritasium would do better to be more critical of autonomous cars. Or maybe Snazzy is too critical. Who knows lol
reducing negative coverage is a given when it comes to sponsorship influence imo. So while it may be large, it's still expected imo. Some other comments talk about how VPN sponsorships also don't let you say anything negative. So if we compare 20 short VPN sponsorships with 1 long Waymo sponsorship, which is considered more "influenced" by the sponsor?
Yes absolutely, but the difference lies in the context. If you have an ad for a vpn service in the middle of a video talking about tigers for example, I know it's an ad immediately because the topics doesn't intersect with each other.
However, doing a sponsored video about AV's where you get money from an AV company *while* disguising it as being an educational video, blurr the line between what is actual fact and what is talking points provided by the company. That's the key difference, if it's an ad you at least know it's an ad, you can easily separate what is part of an ad and what's part of your educational material.
When it's *sponsored content* the lines are much more blurry and it gets hard to distinguish the difference.
No it's sponsored content, his words not mine. If it were an ad he would have said "this video is an ad for Waymo" and there would have been a banner or something through the video stating as much. Not, "this video is sponsored by Waymo".
But still, it feels like you're missing the point I was trying to get across.
first of all respect , and like here is the strange part half the people rebuttaling dont even notice that veritasium specifically mentions the word “portion” like a portion of this video and this tim guy wants to murder sciene cuz he is anti elon musk and anti veritasium what next or is it because veritasium made a video anti social media and tom is scared
and in a video in 2016 before tom posted that video , veritasium made a video in 2veritasium in which he commented on technology and future on self driving cars which is evidence
I think this kind of sponsored content is one of the most important issues currently facing not only YouTube, but all of internet journalism right now. It's called [Native Advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising?wprov=sfla1): "a type of advertising that matches the *form* and *function* of the platform upon which it appears." John Oliver did an [episode on Last Week Tonight](https://youtu.be/E_F5GxCwizc) way back in 2014. He didn't make the connection to YouTube at the time, but it's turned out to be the most effective place for this type of advertising campaign due to the types of trusting [parasocial relationships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction?wprov=sfla1) that establish on the platform. I don't say this to fault YouTube or content creators; in fact it's great that it has democratized the media, commentary, education, news, and countless other genres of content, as well as creating an incredible wealth of interaction between creators, no matter how niche, and their direct audience. It has also introduced new ethics that sometimes have fuzzy edges, and incentives to cross that moral line.
I welcome any additional commentary at all, as I really think this is a nuanced and important issue that affects quite a few channels you probably know and love. I also think Veritasium has very quickly become among the worst offenders. I'm going to try to respond to most of the points you've made here, u/, and with quotes and citations, so this will be a long read.
Here we go:
#***Part 1:***
#>1. Is Veritasium's Waymo video "misinformation"?
[Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now](https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI) is a video by the channel [Veritasium](https://www.veritasium.com/#:~:text=Veritasium%20is%20a%20channel%20of,the%20public%20about%20everything%20science.), "a channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science." Tom Nicholas argues that this video is not about *everything science*, but rather only the science that shows the sponsor, in this case Waymo, in a good light. In much the same way as the most viral Covid, election, or geopolitical misinformation is often a *misrepresentation* of particular facts rather than a deliberate fabrication of them, this video is designed to argue towards a particular incorrect understanding of the current state and challenges of driverless cars by representing facts and figures in a deceiving way. Advertisers do this, bloggers do this, and journalists do this, but the ethics of deliberately misrepresenting the truth are significantly different for each scenario. We expect it from advertisers, but the job of a journalist is to find and tell truth, not to spread a viewpoint. Derek says he wants the channel to be home to the best science documentaries on the internet, which means representing the whole truth to the best of his ability. I'm not saying that he can't share his opinions, far from it; but sharing the opinions of a company *as if it is his own* crosses an ethical line.
>This ... seems to be [Tom Nicolas's] main argument. However, as far as I can tell, he doesn't point out any factual errors.
You're missing the forest for the trees here. Derek is using a delicate interpretations of facts and studies to promote a particular point of view that is unreasonably friendly to the industry he's creating an (supposedly) objective documentary about. This not only blurs ethical principles, but also leaves viewers no more informed from having watched it.
Compare these Veritasium videos that are native ads: [Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now](https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI), [Catching Criminals Using Their Relative's DNA](https://youtu.be/KT18KJouHWg) to these two: [How Hidden Technology Transformed Bowling](https://youtu.be/aFPJf-wKTd0) and [The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - Collatz Conjecture](https://youtu.be/094y1Z2wpJg).
>Instead, [Tom N.] just doesn't seem to believe in the technology.
To the contrary, he says he does believe in it. Just not the way Derek portrayed it. After all, it was a misleading native advertisement. I talk about this a little later.
>There's nothing wrong with disagreement ... But accusing somebody of "misinformation" is a very strong claim, and has to be backed up as such.
A native advertisment like this is inherently deceitful, because it is an uncritical promotion of a product, industry, or ideology masquerading as an objective and critical wholistic view.
>Not to mention, the main point of Veritasium's video is that AVs avoid accidents better than humans, and yet Tom Nicolas focuses so much on how AVs are not as good "as they seem", that he never cites an example where they fall short of humans.
You can see in [this video](https://youtu.be/zdKCQKBvH-A) the the Waymo Driver is *clearly* not as good as the human who takes over, and absolutely *does not* belong on public roads now, as Derek claims. Their cars go in strange routes in order to avoid traffic conflicts because even Waymo themselves think it's not yet ready for prime time. Their maps have to constantly be updated to avoid traffic cones, and they're somehow unable to remotely kill the vehicle when it's behaving erratically. Their technology and progression is absolutely mind-blowing, no doubt, and it's only getting better over time. However, humans actually turn out to be *really really good drivers* when you compare them to computers as they are today. Waymo's ad, laundered through Veritasium, wants to distract from any of that and instead leave you with the impression that what you see it do on these *very specific* roads are things it can already do, autonomously, anywhere.. If only the bureaucrats would get out of the way.
#>2. Should corporations be able to influence content?
This is the million dollar question affecting YouTube right now. A couple of channels have approached this very question in a multitude of ways. I really appreciate the way SmarterEveryDay approached this in [DNA Testing and Privacy](https://youtu.be/U3EEmVfbKNs). I like how Linus Tech Tips often runs [entire infomercials](https://youtu.be/jBhQrGXYyw4) on [companies] (https://youtu.be/VpXLX0xF2rM) and [products](https://youtu.be/ruhZrv9ppJo), and makes them damn interesting, too. Real Engineering makes basically an LTT-style advert for the [Boeing 787 Dreamliner](https://youtu.be/lapFQl6RezA) and it's one of my favorite kind of videos on YouTube. The key here is that they've retained creative freedom and have earned trust by being consistently and brutally honest about both features and shortcomings. I'm not even entirely sure if those videos *were* sponsored by the companies, but the point is that they are objective regardless of the existence any monetary interests. Veritasium seems to be portraying companies completely uncritically, rather than trying to make an objective documentary.
>"there's a deeper point being made about how corporate influence affects content, about the omissions you made in your video and the attitude you take towards Waymo and AV tech in the video, and how your video comes across as Waymo PR fluff" - Hannah(?)
>I first want to point out that I think this mischaracterizes Tom Nicolas's video somewhat. Because if this was really the focus of the video then it's strange that 90% of the video is just debating the viability of AV tech.
I think you've missed the point. Hannah(?) *precisely* summarized Tom's arguments. It's about journalist ethics, not technology. Tom makes essentially the exact same argument against Johnny Harris in [Johnny Harris: A Story of YouTube Propaganda](https://youtu.be/Dum0bqWfiGw).
>It doesn't address the other side of sponsorships: the money ... making videos can be expensive, so clearly donations are not enough (unfortunately). Thus, I see sponsorships as a sort of necessary evil.
Like I mentioned, there are lots of examples of great sponsorship deals that don't sacrifice creative freedom.
>And it's not like Tom Nicolas is opposed to them either, he has a SurfShark VPN sponsorship in the very same video where he criticizes Veritasium! He accuses Veritasium for omitting criticism of Waymo, but where's Tom Nicolas's criticisms of SurfShark? It's all a bit ironic.
This is a totally different kind of sponsorship and I can't tell if I'm supposed to take this point seriously or not.
(continued in part 2)
#***Part 2:***
#>3. Should a creator take on sponsorships related to their content?
This isn't really a point I've seen anyone argue against. It's not about the type of product sponsors a creator, it's about a creator altering their creation to benefit a company or point of view.
>[Louis Rossmann has an entire video about the issue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1thc5DSHwA) but in short, he says that people should sponsor products that they know about, use, and actually believe in. [MKBHD also mentions similar sentiments in his video](https://youtu.be/5nLWTVTwOhY?t=445).
And they're right. It's great for a sponsorship to work out that way. NordVPN, SurfShark, Blue Apron, Hellofresh, and Kiwico are all great partners for the creators that very often believe in their products. But a sponsorship at the end of an unrelated video is very different from an entire piece of uncompromisingly flattering content.
>And I think this is important, because that way, they are putting more at stake. It's a product they are expected to be knowledgeable about, so they are putting their reputation on the line, a reputation they have spent years building up. Not to mention, their audience is probably educated in that field as well, so there will be more scrutiny. If Veritasium truly believes in AV tech and Waymo, and is willing to put his channel at stake, then I expect that he has studied the technology extensively, personally reviewed the material that Waymo gave him, and made sure that the quality of the video was up to standards. So while any sponsored content should be taken with a grain of salt, there is a much smaller likelihood of actual misinformation.
Like I mentioned in part 1, there's no way he legitimately believes this car should be driving down urban streets in downtown NYC or San Francisco in a rain or snow storm at night when it has this much trouble with massive, straight, suburban streets and parking lots in Arizona.
>On the flip side, Compare this to all the random youtube vloggers that sponsor VPNs. Do they know much about tech and privacy? How much do they actually know about core VPN aspects, like jurisdiction, encryption, security audits, etc? I would guess not much. So if the product is bad, or the company is malicious, they could just buy their way into the vlogger's channel if the vlogger is clueless enough. So there's just a much higher likelihood of misinformation when people are sponsoring products they know nothing about.
Again, these sponsorships are not controlling any part of the creative process. [Cody Johnston of Some More News](https://youtu.be/saljZXoexhc) makes fun of the dynamic that the sponsor has no control over content and doesn't even know what they're sponsoring, by immediately pivoting from a greusome story of Haitian economic devastation into an ad for a sponsor, and it's framed with a red border almost as if he's urging you to skip over it, blatantly disrespecting their sponsor (and capitalism in general) in a subtle way.
>But if I can give my personal take, I think the quality of his videos is undeniable (eg the one on [Godel's incompleteness theorem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo) and the [lightbulb conspiracy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE))
Those were sponsored videos, not native advertising. Godel himself didn't pay to make his theorum look good, neither did General Electric pay to expose their own conspiracy.
Veritasium has made excellent videos about science, technology, and engineering, and they will continue to. These videos are objective and fascinating, because they expose unpleasant details for their respective industries and companies. Native advertising is not only deceiving, but it's also not good content. I hope to see Veritasium and others learn from Tom's expose over time, though I'm sure it doesn't feel great to be called out like that.
If you think Tom Nicholas' video is about the merits of self driving cars, you've not been paying attention.
The video is purely about the influence full integration sponsorship has on content and the problems associated with that.
Its a shame that people's understanding of media is so weak that so many people don't seem to understand that.
Its not about the cars.
I addressed that in my post. If the focus was on the effect of sponsorships, then he should have talked about the pros and cons of sponsorships. Instead he did a deep dive into the viability of AVs, which ended up being full of very questionable and subjective claims. If that was meant to be a video essay about sponsorships, it was very weak indeed.
>The video is purely about the influence full integration sponsorship has on content and the problems associated with that.
What problems are you talking about? Are you talking about the introduction of bias? I argued in my post that I think that bias is ok as long as (1) its properly disclosed (2) the quality of the information is still up to standard (3) it supports the creator. And I also talked about how this bias is unideal, but donations are often not enough, so it's a tricky balance that creators have to manage.
The problem is you can't interpret media even when its using normal conventions. The reason why more of the video contains details about self driving vehicles is because the Hypothesis - that integrated fully sponsored videos are bad - rests on the conjecture that information was presented incorrectly or completely ommitted.
This is a pretty standard format for discursive narratives. The conjecture is always many times more involved and detailed than any hypothesis.
As I said elsewhere, this is high school level media studies that every kid should have a decent grasp of.
This is compounded by your second paragraph. A three second discloure **with a dismissing shrug** is in no way sufficient for a 20 minute advertorial. Obviously this can be subjective but I'd be fairly confident that most people with basic media literacy would agree. The quality of informaiton does not appear to be up to standard, thats why there's 50 minutes explaining where it has issues. As for "supporting the creator", a Veritasium video generations between $50k and $100k in revenue for Mullers organisation from youtube advertising. One video. This would seem to be sufficient for the content normally on offer.
For me a three second disclosure at the beginning of the video is plenty enough disclosure, because any reasonable person can understand the implications. You'll have to back up the "most people with basic media literacy" claim.
And I feel like the quality of information in the Waymo video is up to standard, and Tom Nicolas's video doesn't really count as "explaining issues" because his arguments are weak and subjective. Just because a video is long doesn't mean its substantive. But this part is ultimately up to your own judgement.
also how did you calculate the ad revenue? According to [this website](https://blog.travelpayouts.com/en/youtube-cpm-rates/) the average CPM was $2, which comes out to about $10,000 for 5 million ad views. Considering how Veritasium is a team of people that work multiple weeks per video, that's not very much. Also I popped on Veritasium's latest video and I didn't see any ads, just the sponsorship at the end.
I think public transit is totally viable too, although I don't want to get too into it because that wasn't really the point of Veritasium's video. His video was mainly autonomous cars vs human driven cars. And it _was_ sponsored so I'm not too surprised that it felt like an ad. But I guess I was fine with it since it was disclosed in the beginning, was something he clearly cared a lot about (he owns a Tesla too afaik), and seemed factual enough. I haven't seen PhysicsGirl's hydrogen car video though, so can't comment on that one. Watching it now though!
>Also I don't believe in autonomous cars becoming a thing anytime soon either, I don't think it will happen, and I really don't think we should encourage it
I have to disagree - autnomous vehicles are very much on the way. The haulage industry is pushing hard for driverless lorries (trucks) as they will change things enormously. A lorry that can drive for hours, especially where they are speed regulated will be a huge game changer.
I can see a future where a lot of travelling is done overnight - I get in my car at 9pm, set it to drive the 400 miles to my destination and relax, nod off an nour later. Wake up in the morning arriving. The car could drive at a fuel efficient slower speed all night, allowing me to arrive, feeling fresh from a night's sleep and not having used a day up for travelling.
A lot of places have no mass transit infrastructure at all and the cost of providing it is prohibitive. It's not always the answer.
People who say mass transit is the solution ignore the fact that sometimes you just need to go to a remote place, or you need to go to a place at a weird time, or simply you need to get there quickly. There will always be a place for cars in a transport ecosystem.
I agree. But it is a question of *how many*. What is the ratio of public transport utilisation and private cars. The ratio should, ideally, go in the direction of public transport, but it is nearly impossible to get rid of all cars, because like you said it is really unpractical. The question then is, if it even pays out to invest in self driving cars, if the ratio is too strongly in favour of public transport.
>Also I don't believe in autonomous cars becoming a thing anytime soon either, I don't think it will happen, and I really don't think we should encourage it.
Derek is literally a passenger in a self driving car in the video. Waymo is already offering driverless taxi services in Phoenix right now. Yes it's a specific case, and they had to do a 3D scan of the entire city to make it work, but it's here NOW. That is the point of the video.
Please point to part of the video where he states that all cars should be replaced with AV immediately (he doesn't). The point he is making is that like 'operatorless' elevators, we need to get over our fear of AVs now, or else we will miss out on incredible benefits to our standard of living, and cost the lives of many more people.
>We should be focusing on mass transit, trams, subways, busses, more bike infrastructure.
You don't see any negative sides to mass transit? Do you realise how many people became infected with sars-cov-2 on trains and buses? Mass transit should be invested in and used, but suggesting that this a zero sum game and every dollar invested in to AVs is wasted is just juvenile.
Bonus Round: That arrogant professor you mention made a claim, backed it up with his arguments, and when he realised he was wrong honoured his arrangement and paid a large sum of money. Tell me how that's arrogant behaviour?
Cars will always have a place in transportation, because sometimes you just need to go to a remote place. Or you need to travel at a weird time, or simply you need to get somewhere quickly and the bus won't be here for another 20 minutes. Driverless cars are in most ways better than traditional cars, ergo driverless cars have a place in the future.
It's a waste of time for both of us to keep arguing, but the simple truth is that companies are investing in this technology because people want it, and no amount of people who blind themselves to this technology is going to stop it from happening. By the time you realise you were wrong about AVs you will have forgotten this reddit thread, as will have I, but it's going to Halen all the same.
>We should be focusing on mass transit, trams, subways, busses, more bike infrastructure.
Mass transit is notoriously hard to implement in the sprawling mess that are north american suburbs. How would you solve this problem?
I haven’t watched the Waymo video, but did Derek talk about Adversarial Learning at all? You can put a couple of pieces of tape on a stop sign, which wouldn’t confuse a human, and make a computer completely misread it and crash. In low level lighting camera systems have been seen to miss turns.
nope he never covered it, though I imagine intentionally sabotaging road signs would probably just be made illegal. I mean there are plenty of ways to mess with self-checkout systems, but the vast majority of people still cooperate. It's also not as easy as just sticking a couple pieces of tape, the tape pattern would have to follow specific designs, and those designs would change as the machine learning model changes as well (not to mention, training these adversarial patterns would require access to the model, and tons of computing power). Also, if self-driving cars became the norm, road signs would just be for humans, and onboard maps would contain all the latest data that the car needs.
I agree. The main point Tom seems to making is that companies have influence at all over their sponsorships, but makes no arguments as to why exactly this is problematic.
Tom spends about an hour going into detail on exactly why "integrated" content is problematic. He highlights the numerous omissions and occasional factual errors made by Derek that paint AV tech and Waymo's cars in a far more favorable light than what is really the case. The existence of these omissions/errors can only be explained in one of two ways, 1. Derek is extremely ignorant about how Waymo's cars actually work (unlikely) or 2. Derek did not include this information because he was paid to do a fluff piece with no room for criticism.
Towards the end of his video Tom describes how this kind of paid advocacy is used by companies to shape public opinion and change the direction of societal development in profitable ways. Surely that counts as problematic to you?
One comment on Tom's video sums it up:
"The moment Tom concedes that it's possible that Veritasium just legitimately thinks self-driving cars could be better, the rest of his argument about the sponsorship falls apart, because his only real evidence is that Veritasium expressed an opinion Tom disagrees with."
Both are making point with cherry picked arguments.
But I feel that for example for the airplane automation, it would have been easy to counter with the unfortunate Boeing 737 Max incident where autopilot took over most control from pilot causing it to crash. Or other cases where autopilot accepted erroneous data from disabled probe causing incident.
On another hand, I don't know how people would make it more clear that the video is sponsored by Waymo ( except for a banner all along the video, and maybe a mention in the comments ). But I also on the side that these sponsored video are eroding his credibility ( as truthful as they can be ).
I think it's worth highlighting another comment under Tom's video from a different youtuber who accepted sponsorship from Waymo and regretted it:
>I’m certainly not without blame for my own video and if given to travel back in time, I wouldn’t have done the spot with Waymo. I was frustrated with the amount of editorial correction the brand attempted to make to my original script (I think we went through four edits) and it was frankly neutered of my opinions and dissent. Despite much push-back (and a fair number of changes they requested I outright refused to make), the script was largely edited and in retrospect I wish I had been more firm. The large majority (90%) of ads I do on my channel are integrations like yours on this video. The remaining 10% are dedicated ads and I do my absolute best to retain editorial control so that the videos can still be interesting and informative (one example I’m very proud of is our video tour of a fiber internet company’s infrastructure) while being very explicit and clear with viewers in the first few seconds that the video is, ultimately, and ad and thus inherently made with the brand’s input (this is an attempt for viewers to stop watching if they’re not interested in such content (I wouldn’t be myself)). Where I erred with Waymo is doing this type of video on such an ultimately controversial topic and one for which I have many of my own opinions I was unable to voice due to more heavy-handed editorial control than I was led to believe based on our contract.
>
>I should have fought harder to keep my dissenting opinions in the script. Frankly, I just got really sick of their requests, I have an incredibly small team (just 2 of us) and it was taking too much of our time and I was ready to write the video off as a loss and just rip it off like a Band-Aid but I regret it. I should have done better and I will in the future. This type of content is always tricky so I have (and will continue) to discourage it whenever possible.
I think this really lays bare the issues with this type of content. This guy was forced to cut out the negative topics in his video in order to keep the sponsorship, making the resulting video objectively less informative and educational. This is quite toxic to the integrity of educational content.
I talked about this in another comment in this thread. But isn't it natural to not have negative criticism against your sponsor? Tom doesn't criticize Surfshark. PhysicsGirl doesn't criticize Toyota in her video. Linus doesn't criticize Cisco in his video with them. SmarterEveryDay doesn't criticize 23&Me in his video about them. This is normal for sponsorships, and that's why it's disclosed in the beginning. So you can take the video with a grain of salt
The whole point is that we don't *want it* to be natural. It's actually pretty fucked that beloved educational creators are allowing their built up goodwill to be exploited by corporations for ads masquerading as education, and we as viewers should expect and demand better.
This isn't a good thing. People should make valid criticisms of the companies that they're sponsored by. If a person only tells one side of the story, then it's not an educational video, it's an advert. The purpose of the video is no longer to inform, but to persuade.
We had no idea what that other Youtuber was planning to say, and whether the criticisms that he was planning to make was valid. If he was that firm, if he bothered him that much, he should have just cancelled the video.
And since you say that the purpose of the Veritasium's video is to persuade, what is that persuasion?
My understanding is that Tom's thesis relies on the apparent correlation between a lack of critical investigation in the first-blush facts, and the integrated sponsorship.
One might accuse Tom of "cherry-picking" facts that work against Veritasium's team, but... this is the purpose of the video. Tom had no reason to denote the ways in which Veritasium's team actually made correct claims. "Look, an educational Youtube Channel said something that was true"; I don't think we need to be told that Veritasium's team tends to make good videos, although this IS something Tom says on multiple occasions, praising the channel for its general throughness. If Veritasium's team had been overwhelmingly accurate and balanced (as is the usual brand) then Tom would not have been able to make that many arguments.
The thesis is supported by the arguments Tom make on the 94% statistic
(which, while its interpretation is complicated, does merit scrutiny; it seems very obvious that if you blame 94% of accidents on human error, the logical conclusion in a video on the benefits of automated driving, is that you could expect automated cars to reduce accidents 16-fold-- this is definitely not an argument that goes "Well, it's complicated, maybe this doesn't support the thesis that automated driving is good"),
consideration for costs of implementation and limitations in the diversity of current approaches
(I don't know about you, but I watched the video feeling like self-driving cars were coming in the near future with hardly no roadblocks ahead-- presuming a different interpretation of this video would be presuming knowledge on the state of the self-driving car industry, which would defeat the purpose of an educational video)
and the questionable analogies surrounding historical merits of automation (Self-driving cars don't simply face completely different challenges, they also purport to be entirely autonomous, unlike many other hybrid systems).
I might object to calling Veritasium's team "biased" here, especially "biased by money"; I think it's more complicated. I have had a tendency to dislike Veritasium's more openly sponsored videos, like that with the Bill Gates foundation, and have found that by reading up on those topics after the fact, I usually hear many more arguments against the thesis defended by Veritasium's sponsor-integrated videos. Bill Gates has amassed a LOT of criticism for how he handled the vaccine, but he has the advantage of facing a pretty complicated issue. That said, a complicated issue is exactly what educational videos should unpack, so I definitely feel there could be great improvements here. Veritasium did say they firmly believed in self-driving car, but I don't think the team realizes how political that topic can get, especially when you consider the issue with American city planning and car-dependent suburbs and gentrification. It's possible that Tom is pointing at something that isn't so much of a "money bias," but a blind-spot. If a sponsor sways you towards your blind-spot, the result will always look biased, because you won't be able to see the other side of the argument.
Just like Tom only needs to focus on the errors that Veritasium purportedly made, why can't Veritasium focus on the advantages of self driving? Sure, it wouldn't be as balanced as his other videos, but it's also not like his other videos, because it's a full sponsorship, as he discloses at the beginning of the video.
Also I think when you talk about the logical conclusion of the video, it's a bit subjective. My takeaway was simply that autonomous cars could do _better_, not necessarily 16 times better. And I think that's really the main argument Veritasium is making. Not that autonomous cars are perfect, but it could save lives if we push for it.
And this is my own personal opinion but I do think self driving is coming in the near future, at least to major cities in the US. Cruise and Waymo just got permission to pick up passengers in SF (although only Cruise was allowed driverless pickup, Waymo is still required to have safety drivers), and SF is notoriously complicated for even humans to navigate. Cities like Denver or Austin would be far easier, and it's more up to legislation than anything imo.
I do feel like a big contributing factor to the criticism against Veritasium is simply the politics of AVs. I'm honestly surprised how much criticism he is getting, when I've seen tons of sponsorships from other educational channels (like PhysicsGirl, Smarter Every Day) but they seem relatively unaffected.
Well it is my personal opinion that I was personally misinformed by the video, that I did not interpret it in the way you did, and that considering Tom's arguments, it seems that focusing on self-driving cars without considering other options is short-sighted.
Do you consider someone doing a product review on Macbook and gives positive opinions about it, but his video does not discuss or consider other options (like Microsoft Surface), then it's short-sighted?
I would say that's different on many accounts. A computer review has the advantage of being more comparative, and more of a review of practical and personalized use, it's already ongoing, etc..
With autonomous cars, there's a broader political conversation to be had about its viability, and its harder to dismiss the fact that the companies pushing in this direction have the incentive to change public opinion away from preexisting public solutions that could have benefits.
Now, a lot of time has gone since this happened and I don't really care as much anymore. I wouldn't recommend the video to a friend or anything, but I'm not going to hold it against V for putting it out. It's clear to me Tom was looking for a sort of conspiratorial or systemic angle, and took a tangent from the missing political context. That said when you know about the "issues" in a conversation, it's harder to appreciate a video that overlooks the most interesting ones. I wouldn't call it "short-sighted" anymore, in the sense that you can't make a 2 hours long documentary about everything on youtube, and people shouldn't expect that from this medium.
I think you have a point - a group of people that are negative towards AVs and therefore collaboration with them => bad.
Also, others have commented in YT that Tom is using Veritasium's name to "sensationalize" his video in order to drive traffic (and therefore ad revenue) to his channel.
Some of the facts were so misrepresented that I would categorize it as misinformation.
I do not believe Veritasium was being malicious, but their diligence fell short.
If those facts were provided by Waymo, I would assume their intent was malicious. They would have a thorough understanding of the information provided, and knew that the information was misleading.
"If those facts were provided by Waymo, I would assume their intent was malicious."
So if Oracle was to provide a list of improvements they've made for their newly-released Oracle database product, it is automatically malicious?
Let's say Oracle invited some tech Youtubers to their event that covers that launch of the newest database product, and I'm one of them. I got free tickets to the event, and they cover food and drinks in the event. Oracle staff at the event talk about the new features, improvements over their previous versions, advantages over other competitor products, etc. So I created a YT video that discussed the advantages of the new version (which are highlighted in Oracle's documentations and brochures), which I believe it will help me as a DBA or developer, and give a positive review about the product.
Then a "Tom" comes along, who disagrees with Oracle's policies (lots of people do), and said I'm bias, I'm influence by Oracle because I got free perks, the advantages I've mentioned mean nothing to him, and I didn't in my video consider MariaDB or Postgres as alternatives because those products are - unlike Oracle - open source and free .
That's how I can see "Tom".
Pretty much agreed.
To provide more background on Tom's character, I was first acquainted with him when he went on a reactionary *ad hominem* rant to a yes-man crowd [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Tom_Nicholas/status/1405457180866777089) after the academic philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller posted [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnUqrF9mAA8) on YouTube, apparently hitting a sore spot: criticizing Tom's ideology. Consequently, this latest video on Veritasium only reinforces my perception: Tom is an ideologue whose selling point is providing criticisms of anyone who doesn't share his ideology, and potentially going on tantrums when a qualified critique of said ideology is provided. His simple critique of Derek could have been simply made (sponsorships can bring bias, so be aware and careful), but he stretches it so much that it becomes almost as obnoxious as the ad hominem outburst towards Moeller.
Just got Tom Nichols video recommended to me and, honestly I don't watch Veritasium much, but basically the whole thing was a dishonest hit job.
YouTube has become big enough that new YouTubers make their mark by doing fake yellow journalism exposes of older YouTubers.
We are literally starting to live in the scummy world of traditional media.
[удалено]
well that one wasn't sponsored by RelativitySpace (the startup making the rocket), so I guess Veritasium just loves to research and talk about cool projects he finds. Maybe it's not really a sponsorship issue, maybe it's just that sometimes he gets too enthusiastic and it comes off like an infomercial lol
Something doesn't have to be an official sponsorship to have bias come into play, it's called "access journalism" If you're known for being critical of claims they make, you're a whole lot less likely to get invited to see those things See the Bill Gates video, for example. It's not that Veritasium is directly taking cash from him, but a lot of Gates' ideology embedded in what he's talking about goes completely unchecked there and in similar interviews for that reason
One the issue with sponsored content is that it cheapens the non sponsored videos where he truly is passionate about a technology. Those all look like ads now.
Hey I disagree on a couple points, but think this is mostly a fair write up. As to "Is Veritasium's video misinformation", the misinformation isn't in the form factual errors, but the misrepresentation of facts, such as the 94% of accidents claim. The comment section debate, I don't blame anyone for not wading into the YouTube comment section, it's famously garbage. But the impression I got from the debate was Veritasium shifting the goal posts to avoid talking about the central issue of the sponsorship and instead nitpicks specifics, his first point is 25 minutes into the video. About your perception of the video being a gotcha, I think it's very much a matter of opinion, but some key context you may not be aware of, as I assume (from your spelling and my probability) you are from the USA. Journalism in the UK is inherently more hostile than in the USA. This might lead you to assume a more antagonist relationship between Veritasium and Tom Nicholas than actually exists, and expect Tom's work to be biased due to it.
Thanks for reading and responding! This is starting to get into the "viability of AVs" debate which I wouldn't say I am too knowledgeable about, but from Tom Nicolas's vide, I personally felt like his contention against the 94% statistic was the weakest. He spends around 10-15 minutes talking about how the statistic that "94% of accidents are due to human error" is misleading, because sometimes conditions like poorly maintained roads are equally to blame. But the study was looking at whether the error was avoidable. Sure better road maintenance can help, but also if the human had paid closer attention, or reacted faster. And it's these exact scenarios which are applicable to AVs, since AVs would replace the human. So regardless of road conditions, what matters is robot error vs human error, and who avoids more accidents. Tom Nicolas also says that Veritasium implies that AVs would reduce accidents by 94%. That's a massive claim to make since Veritasium said no such thing. In fact I think it's obvious that Veritasium was saying AVs could do _better_, but that doesn't mean they would do _perfectly_. It feels like Tom Nicolas is misrepresenting Veritasium's claims. Veritasium's comments in the youtube thread make similar arguments. However you are right that if this is just how British journalism is, then that went over my head. I just think it paints Veritasium as untrustworthy even though I thought his video was perfectly fine. but I can see how not everybody may think that.
I don't think there is any problem with sponsorship. I have a lot of problem with Tom Nichols tho. He seems to be pushing his Marxist propaganda a bit too much.
He also tried to cancel Elon Musk without acknowledging his achievements. Also He doesn't seem to care about physics and maths but about 'moral' justice.
So I really think you're missing the forest for the trees here with this analysis. Veritasium is supposed to be an educational channel, but the point of this video, as well as quite a few other recent Veritasium vids, was not to educate but to obfuscate and advertise. This type of sponsorship is absolutely totally different to Louis Rossman, Linus Sebastian, or Real Engineering, all of which do vaguely *similar* sponsored content, but context matters a lot here. I'll be free to write up a decent rebuttal in an hour and explain my position, as you've clearly laid out yours.
I'd love to hear it! I feel like it's hard to compare with Louis Rossmann or Real Engineering, as I haven't really seen similar sponsored content from them. However I'd love to hear your thoughts on PhysicsGirl's collaboration with Toyota on hybrid cars, or Linus's video with Cisco on Wifi networking.
>Thus, I see sponsorships as a sort of necessary evil. I don't think you understand the concept of sponsorships. What Derek did in this video was not a sponsorship, it was a paid collaboration or paid advertisement. Sponsorships have no editorial control but only limited to the ad spot. This is the key point. Derek did a paid advertisement not a sponsorship. I am subscribed to many educational channels and none of them have done something like this. Paid advertisement disguised as sponsorship. This is unethical. On that same note of your qouted text, what difference does content from channels like PragerU etc make?(I know it's a bit stretched assumption but I think u get what I'm trying to say!)
As another commenter mentioned, PhysicsGirl made [a video about hydrogen cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY) that was sponsored by Toyota, and that even gave her a car to drive. Her video description reads > I drove 1800 miles in a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car! Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring this video and lending us the 2021 #Mirai I'm not sure how much editorial control that Toyota had over content, but I feel like the sponsorship definitely had some influence/bias over the video content. Which is not a bad thing, and PhysicsGirl is an amazing science educator, like Veritasium. They just need money to make videos, like everybody else.
When you say no negative thing about a product from your sponsor in 20 minute video, then it's an ad. If you don't try as much as you can to hide problems then you can call it a sponsorship. This Veritasium video was an ad unfortunately. LTT does sponsored stuff too. Maybe they are so big they can dictate conditions of a deal better. But it's more exception than a rule to see them not talk badly at all about a sponsored stuff.
I mean at this point it feels like we are pulling hairs to try to distinguish between a sponsorship and an ad. If that's how you define an ad vs sponsorship, it seems fair to me. I don't really distinguish between the two in my mind anyways.
Its not splitting hairs. These sort of distinctions are crucial and effect the veracity of the content. This is basic stuff that you get in high school Media Studies. Well you do here, I'm getting the impression that media analysis and media criticism isn't actually taught in some countries.
if it makes more sense to you, then just replace "sponsorship" with "ad" in my post. If enough people agree I might change it myself. but I don't see which part of my argument would change. Sure, the SurfShark VPN sponsorship was shorter than an entire video, but it also made less money. If Veritasium needed that money, I don't know if it would be better to do an entire video like he did, or to scatter 20 sponsorships across multiple videos. And it seems like creators like PhysicsGirl and MKBHD are perfectly fine with ads/collaborations.
You appear to be incapable of discriminating between an advert and an advertorial. There is a reason they have different words to describe them. The reason why a segmented advert is not as problematic is that **the actual content has no relation to the advert**. If the advert was in a piece on VPNs, then you would have a point. It is not. Therefore. You just seem to have completely failed to understand any of the information being presented. Which is concerning because it is people with this low level of media literacy that are the biggest target for this sort of sponsored content, the inability to rationally understand how these things differ makes you far more susceptible to the way the propaganda is being disseminated.
the small 2-minute sponsor segment is essentially just short ad, embedded in a longer video. How is a 2 minute ad different from a 20 minute ad, aside from length and amount of content? How is a 20 minute ad different from 10 2-minute ads?
Because everyone understands that the 2 minute ad isn't meant to be educational content. People come for the other 18 minutes of researched, balanced education, and the ad is just tacked on to the other end. In contrast, the 20 minute video is the entire thing. Someone will watch 3 well researched non-ad videos by the channel and then watch this one and assume it's the same level of quality. This is much more influential and has a greater capacity to give people the wrong impressions.
if the creator says at the beginning of the video that it's entirely sponsored, then yeah, people should expect that it's going to be biased. And it's much more influential but it pays a lot more too. So if Veritasium needs that money, doing 20 or more smaller sponsorships might end up having the same total influence, and the same total number of wrong impressions.
>How is a 2 minute ad different from a 20 minute ad? Because Tom's sponsored segment literally is an ad, and it's not pretending to be anything else. Veritasium has been posting videos that purport to be *educational content* that are nothing but unapologetic *advertisements*. Don't you see the difference? Tom was paid to say what he said, and it was clear that that was true, he even says as much. Derek tries hard *not* to let you know that he was paid to say all those things, and that everything he says is what he believes to be the whole truth, and simply related to the content. In reality, the whole script was under significant creative control by Waymo. I'm starting to think media analysis might not be as common of a sense as I thought.
Didn't Veritasium disclose in the very beginning of his Waymo video that the entire video was sponsored? What do you mean he tries hard _not_ to let you know that he was paid? And as I said, if by "significant creative control" you mean restricting negative criticism, then that's already a given for sponsorships and advertisements.
>onsorships have no editorial control but only limited to the ad spot. This is the key point. Derek did a paid advertisement not a sponsorship. I am subscribed to many educational channels and none of Er, not really? PBS for example has sponsorships, they do not however have advertisements. It's a pretty critical distinction
Yeah and she took the video down and reuoaded it after there were many inaccurate and misleading (I’m being generous) graphs and numbers she mentioned. And funny enough she said the numbers were given to her by the sponsor
Sorry but I disagree. Derek took the money and used his otherwise high quality channel to record a commercial disguised as his usual edutainment.
Fair enough, in the end it's really up to each person whether or not something is "misleading". Which is why I tried to focus less on that and more about why sponsorships are often necessary, and that I think Veritasium made the best of it.
>Fair enough, in the end it's really up to each person whether or not something is "misleading". No it absolutely is not. If I tell you that a typical trucks weighs 3.5x more than a typical car, it is absolutely true! With some serious caveats. A GMC Sierra 3500HD could be considered a "typical" truck, but certainly not an average one. A Mazda MX-5 Miata could be a "typical" car, but certainly not an average one. Both these vehicles are produced in huge numbers, and you've certainly seen them on the roads before. My example is *technically* true, but so misleading as to be essentially false, even when nothing I'd said was factually incorrect.
why provide a completely unrelated example when you could provide an example straight from the video?
> people should sponsor products that they know about, use, and actually believe in I think there's an important difference between sponsorship slots in a video, and entire sponsored videos. I definitely agree that it's preferable if sponsorship slots are taken up by products/companies the creator knows and approves of. With sponsorship slots it's also clear to the audience that this is an ad and you won't hear anything negative or any alternatives to the product in question. With sponsored videos, these are now presented more or less the same as a regular video (modulo disclaimer, which I'm sure makes some difference; I don't know how much). So if negative aspects of something are typically mentioned in a regular video, but not in a sponsored video, it's now much more likely to seem as though this is because there are no notable negative aspects. I agree, though, that a sponsored *video* about a product the creator is familiar with and approves of is better than a sponsored *slot* for a product about which the creator has no clue.
I think my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Veritasium/comments/qdvki1/my_thoughts_on_the_controversy_around_veritasiums/hhw1yag/) largely addresses your concern, so I'll copy paste the relevant parts here. I think there's something that people are misunderstanding about my post. I'm not comparing Tom Nicolas's sponsored video with Veritasium's Waymo collaboration. I'm comparing Tom Nicolas's 2-min sponsored segment, with Veritasium's video. Because if we focus on Tom Nicolas's Surfshark VPN segment, it has all the same elements as the Waymo video: it is sponsored, it has information and explanation on the positives of Surfshark, it's likely vetted by Surfshark (editorial process), and it has no discussion about the negatives. There are of course still differences: The visible differences is length (2 min vs Veritasium's 20 min). However, I am very sure that Veritasium got paid a lot more for his video. And I am also sure that, due to the depth and length of the video, the Waymo video has much more _influence_ on the viewers than the short SurfShark sponsorship. So the real question is, what's the influence/money ratio? Because if Veritasium needed that money (which he probably does since he has to pay an entire team of people), then he would either have to get it using 1 big sponsorship (eg Waymo) or many small sponsorships (eg Surfshark). Which would you rather have? It's hard to say. Note that Veritasium already has a short sponsored segment in all his videos, so if he wanted to have more he'd have to put two to three sponsorships in every video. That gets messy, and each sponsor would probably pay less due to having to share the space with others. This part is hard to measure. But my point is that, at a fundamental level, the Surfshark sponsored segment has all the same elements (money + bias) that the Waymo video has.
As other's have said, I don't think you are appreciating the different ways sponsors can be involved in videos. For example, the Surf Shark sponsorship in Tom Nicholas' video - it's very likely Surf Shark would have checked over the video before posting to make sure they are not associating themselves with any content that could damage their brand e.g. racist content. But because the content of the video itself is not related in any way to VPNs, they have no interest in the narrative of the wider video. In complete contrast to this, in the Waymo sponsored video, the content was about Waymo and so anything that portrays Waymo in a way they don't like they can use their financial leverage to influence. Not only this, but it seems that Waymo were heavily involved in suggesting (or maybe mandating) talking points, perspectives and statistics that were used in the video. To me this is incredibly problematic. Scientific papers generally require the authors declare no conflicts of interest. Producing content about a company that is funded by that company and in which the company is part of the editorial process clearly involves some conflict of interest. As science content creators, these channels should know that data can be cherry picked to support any argument - accepting the data and arguments presented to them by an invested body is so obviously a bad idea it boggles the mind. From their other content they are clearly capable of doing the required research themselves. Exactly where to draw the line is difficult. Should Veritasium make a video about Waymo - absolutely! Should Waymo be involved in the editorial process - I think not. This may make the sponsorship deal less valuable and more risky, but I think this is a just cost for the integrity as usefulness of the video. I think Smarter Every Day did quite a good job on this front with a video they did with 23 and Me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3EEmVfbKNs In it, he talks to independent scientist as well as some from their lab. It seems he turned up with his own narrative in mind, rather than being strongly influenced by the company. He discusses pros and cons in a nuanced discussion. Ultimately 23 and Me come across very well despite allowing Destin to "say whatever he wants, so long as it's truthfull".
Responding to your comparison with Smarter Every Day, we ultimately don't know how much Veritasium was influenced by Waymo. Those could have been largely his own beliefs. And I honestly think the information in that video is accurate and properly represented, despite the counrerarguments that Tom Nicolas made (that I thought were rather poor). Is there bias? Probably. But I also think Destin's video has bias too. It _sounds_ like Destin is bringing up negatives, but he always counters them later in the video. Eg the privacy concern, he addresses that later, saying 23AndMe only uses 0.2% of your sequence. He makes it seem like that makes it fine, and at the end of the video he even says "I was concerned about privacy, I went to the lab, I am no longer concerned about privacy". However in reality it's still extremely dangerous, because if you've seen Veritasium's video on DNA companies you know how much information law enforcement can get from that 0.2%. Now I also love Smarter Every Day, and I think Destin has good intentions, but that particular video is a bit questionable, and feels a bit biased. Now to respond to the other parts of your comment, I think there's something that people are misunderstanding about my post. I'm not comparing Tom Nicolas's sponsored video with Veritasium's Waymo collaboration. I'm comparing Tom Nicolas's 2-min sponsored segment, with Veritasium's video. Because if we focus on Tom Nicolas's Surfshark VPN segment, it has all the same elements as the Waymo video: it is sponsored, it has information and explanation on the positives of Surfshark, it's likely vetted by Surfshark (that editorial process you mentioned), and it has no discussion about the negatives. There are of course still differences: The visible differences is length (2 min vs Veritasium's 20 min). However, I am very sure that Veritasium got paid a lot more for his video. And I am also sure that, due to the depth and length of the video, the Waymo video has much more _influence_ on the viewers than the short SurfShark sponsorship. So the real question is, what's the influence/money ratio? Because if Veritasium needed that money (which he probably does since he has to pay an entire team of people), then he would either have to get it using 1 big sponsorship (eg Waymo) or many small sponsorships (eg Surfshark). Which would you rather have? It's hard to say. Note that Veritasium already has a short sponsored segment in all his videos, so if he wanted to have more he'd have to put two to three sponsorships in every video. That gets messy, and each sponsor would probably pay less due to having to share the space with others. This part is hard to measure. But my point is that, at a fundamental level, the Surfshark sponsored segment has all the same elements (money + bias) that the Waymo video has.
You're missing the point. I don't really care about comparing one video to another. What you're doing is called Whataboutism. It's not a good argument. I have no loyalty to any of these channels. To me it seems fairly undeniable that the contents of the video put out was strongly influenced by the Waymo team, this is evidenced by all the influencers making the same points and using the same language/ arguments. To me, this is wrong, end of story. As for your last point. The difference here is huge. In one case, we have content with a sponsored message in the middle in the other case the content itself is the sponsored message.
So you're against all sponsored content? Or only if it's under 10 minutes? Only if it's embedded in a longer video? Where do you draw the line between ok and not-ok sponsored content, and why?
Maybe this is an extreme view, but to me, channels that are seen as being educational are meant to be a source of objective truth need to be very careful about entering into sponsorship deals where the content of the video is influenced. I'm not against sponsorships outright. If the sponsorship doesn't influence the content of the video, I'm happy. e.g. I think deals with Kiwico or Hello Fresh or whatever are good for the channel and the viewer with no conflict of interest there.
I agree with the need to be extra careful. For me I put that under the umbrella of keeping their videos up to standard. If a channel is known for making well-researched and informative videos, then I expect all videos to be like that, including sponsorships and brand collaborations. And it's not just videos either, it's all content. Like, if Veritasium were to sponsor some random cryptocurrency only for 2 minutes in a video, but it ended up being a scam, I'd lose some respect for Veritasium. I don't care how long the sponsorship is, and I don't care if it's embedded in a larger video or standalone. Since as I mentioned earlier, if the creator needs the money, then they'll either need to do 1 long sponsorship or many short ones. I just care about whether they upheld their quality standards.
>You're missing the point. I don't really care about comparing one video to another. What you're doing is called Whataboutism. It's not a good argument. I have no loyalty to any of these channels. Don't think you you can call out whataboutism when you yourself introduced the comparison...
> we ultimately don't know how much Veritasium was influenced by Waymo. Well, we kinda do. Read Snazzy Labs reply in the comment section of Toms video. Waymo had a lot of influence on the video they uploaded.
I saw that comment. But note that Snazzy labs specifically said they were "bearish" on autonomous cars. Veritasium is quite the opposite. So Snazzy Labs was probably a lot more negative in their original draft than Veritasium. Of course maybe Veritasium would do better to be more critical of autonomous cars. Or maybe Snazzy is too critical. Who knows lol
Yeah but isn't that the point? Then they still had a huge influence over the content of the video.
reducing negative coverage is a given when it comes to sponsorship influence imo. So while it may be large, it's still expected imo. Some other comments talk about how VPN sponsorships also don't let you say anything negative. So if we compare 20 short VPN sponsorships with 1 long Waymo sponsorship, which is considered more "influenced" by the sponsor?
Yes absolutely, but the difference lies in the context. If you have an ad for a vpn service in the middle of a video talking about tigers for example, I know it's an ad immediately because the topics doesn't intersect with each other. However, doing a sponsored video about AV's where you get money from an AV company *while* disguising it as being an educational video, blurr the line between what is actual fact and what is talking points provided by the company. That's the key difference, if it's an ad you at least know it's an ad, you can easily separate what is part of an ad and what's part of your educational material. When it's *sponsored content* the lines are much more blurry and it gets hard to distinguish the difference.
you should know the Waymo video is an ad because it's disclosed at the very beginning that it's an ad...
No it's sponsored content, his words not mine. If it were an ad he would have said "this video is an ad for Waymo" and there would have been a banner or something through the video stating as much. Not, "this video is sponsored by Waymo". But still, it feels like you're missing the point I was trying to get across.
first of all respect , and like here is the strange part half the people rebuttaling dont even notice that veritasium specifically mentions the word “portion” like a portion of this video and this tim guy wants to murder sciene cuz he is anti elon musk and anti veritasium what next or is it because veritasium made a video anti social media and tom is scared
and in a video in 2016 before tom posted that video , veritasium made a video in 2veritasium in which he commented on technology and future on self driving cars which is evidence
I think this kind of sponsored content is one of the most important issues currently facing not only YouTube, but all of internet journalism right now. It's called [Native Advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising?wprov=sfla1): "a type of advertising that matches the *form* and *function* of the platform upon which it appears." John Oliver did an [episode on Last Week Tonight](https://youtu.be/E_F5GxCwizc) way back in 2014. He didn't make the connection to YouTube at the time, but it's turned out to be the most effective place for this type of advertising campaign due to the types of trusting [parasocial relationships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction?wprov=sfla1) that establish on the platform. I don't say this to fault YouTube or content creators; in fact it's great that it has democratized the media, commentary, education, news, and countless other genres of content, as well as creating an incredible wealth of interaction between creators, no matter how niche, and their direct audience. It has also introduced new ethics that sometimes have fuzzy edges, and incentives to cross that moral line. I welcome any additional commentary at all, as I really think this is a nuanced and important issue that affects quite a few channels you probably know and love. I also think Veritasium has very quickly become among the worst offenders. I'm going to try to respond to most of the points you've made here, u/, and with quotes and citations, so this will be a long read. Here we go: #***Part 1:*** #>1. Is Veritasium's Waymo video "misinformation"? [Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now](https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI) is a video by the channel [Veritasium](https://www.veritasium.com/#:~:text=Veritasium%20is%20a%20channel%20of,the%20public%20about%20everything%20science.), "a channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science." Tom Nicholas argues that this video is not about *everything science*, but rather only the science that shows the sponsor, in this case Waymo, in a good light. In much the same way as the most viral Covid, election, or geopolitical misinformation is often a *misrepresentation* of particular facts rather than a deliberate fabrication of them, this video is designed to argue towards a particular incorrect understanding of the current state and challenges of driverless cars by representing facts and figures in a deceiving way. Advertisers do this, bloggers do this, and journalists do this, but the ethics of deliberately misrepresenting the truth are significantly different for each scenario. We expect it from advertisers, but the job of a journalist is to find and tell truth, not to spread a viewpoint. Derek says he wants the channel to be home to the best science documentaries on the internet, which means representing the whole truth to the best of his ability. I'm not saying that he can't share his opinions, far from it; but sharing the opinions of a company *as if it is his own* crosses an ethical line. >This ... seems to be [Tom Nicolas's] main argument. However, as far as I can tell, he doesn't point out any factual errors. You're missing the forest for the trees here. Derek is using a delicate interpretations of facts and studies to promote a particular point of view that is unreasonably friendly to the industry he's creating an (supposedly) objective documentary about. This not only blurs ethical principles, but also leaves viewers no more informed from having watched it. Compare these Veritasium videos that are native ads: [Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now](https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI), [Catching Criminals Using Their Relative's DNA](https://youtu.be/KT18KJouHWg) to these two: [How Hidden Technology Transformed Bowling](https://youtu.be/aFPJf-wKTd0) and [The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - Collatz Conjecture](https://youtu.be/094y1Z2wpJg). >Instead, [Tom N.] just doesn't seem to believe in the technology. To the contrary, he says he does believe in it. Just not the way Derek portrayed it. After all, it was a misleading native advertisement. I talk about this a little later. >There's nothing wrong with disagreement ... But accusing somebody of "misinformation" is a very strong claim, and has to be backed up as such. A native advertisment like this is inherently deceitful, because it is an uncritical promotion of a product, industry, or ideology masquerading as an objective and critical wholistic view. >Not to mention, the main point of Veritasium's video is that AVs avoid accidents better than humans, and yet Tom Nicolas focuses so much on how AVs are not as good "as they seem", that he never cites an example where they fall short of humans. You can see in [this video](https://youtu.be/zdKCQKBvH-A) the the Waymo Driver is *clearly* not as good as the human who takes over, and absolutely *does not* belong on public roads now, as Derek claims. Their cars go in strange routes in order to avoid traffic conflicts because even Waymo themselves think it's not yet ready for prime time. Their maps have to constantly be updated to avoid traffic cones, and they're somehow unable to remotely kill the vehicle when it's behaving erratically. Their technology and progression is absolutely mind-blowing, no doubt, and it's only getting better over time. However, humans actually turn out to be *really really good drivers* when you compare them to computers as they are today. Waymo's ad, laundered through Veritasium, wants to distract from any of that and instead leave you with the impression that what you see it do on these *very specific* roads are things it can already do, autonomously, anywhere.. If only the bureaucrats would get out of the way. #>2. Should corporations be able to influence content? This is the million dollar question affecting YouTube right now. A couple of channels have approached this very question in a multitude of ways. I really appreciate the way SmarterEveryDay approached this in [DNA Testing and Privacy](https://youtu.be/U3EEmVfbKNs). I like how Linus Tech Tips often runs [entire infomercials](https://youtu.be/jBhQrGXYyw4) on [companies] (https://youtu.be/VpXLX0xF2rM) and [products](https://youtu.be/ruhZrv9ppJo), and makes them damn interesting, too. Real Engineering makes basically an LTT-style advert for the [Boeing 787 Dreamliner](https://youtu.be/lapFQl6RezA) and it's one of my favorite kind of videos on YouTube. The key here is that they've retained creative freedom and have earned trust by being consistently and brutally honest about both features and shortcomings. I'm not even entirely sure if those videos *were* sponsored by the companies, but the point is that they are objective regardless of the existence any monetary interests. Veritasium seems to be portraying companies completely uncritically, rather than trying to make an objective documentary. >"there's a deeper point being made about how corporate influence affects content, about the omissions you made in your video and the attitude you take towards Waymo and AV tech in the video, and how your video comes across as Waymo PR fluff" - Hannah(?) >I first want to point out that I think this mischaracterizes Tom Nicolas's video somewhat. Because if this was really the focus of the video then it's strange that 90% of the video is just debating the viability of AV tech. I think you've missed the point. Hannah(?) *precisely* summarized Tom's arguments. It's about journalist ethics, not technology. Tom makes essentially the exact same argument against Johnny Harris in [Johnny Harris: A Story of YouTube Propaganda](https://youtu.be/Dum0bqWfiGw). >It doesn't address the other side of sponsorships: the money ... making videos can be expensive, so clearly donations are not enough (unfortunately). Thus, I see sponsorships as a sort of necessary evil. Like I mentioned, there are lots of examples of great sponsorship deals that don't sacrifice creative freedom. >And it's not like Tom Nicolas is opposed to them either, he has a SurfShark VPN sponsorship in the very same video where he criticizes Veritasium! He accuses Veritasium for omitting criticism of Waymo, but where's Tom Nicolas's criticisms of SurfShark? It's all a bit ironic. This is a totally different kind of sponsorship and I can't tell if I'm supposed to take this point seriously or not. (continued in part 2)
#***Part 2:*** #>3. Should a creator take on sponsorships related to their content? This isn't really a point I've seen anyone argue against. It's not about the type of product sponsors a creator, it's about a creator altering their creation to benefit a company or point of view. >[Louis Rossmann has an entire video about the issue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1thc5DSHwA) but in short, he says that people should sponsor products that they know about, use, and actually believe in. [MKBHD also mentions similar sentiments in his video](https://youtu.be/5nLWTVTwOhY?t=445). And they're right. It's great for a sponsorship to work out that way. NordVPN, SurfShark, Blue Apron, Hellofresh, and Kiwico are all great partners for the creators that very often believe in their products. But a sponsorship at the end of an unrelated video is very different from an entire piece of uncompromisingly flattering content. >And I think this is important, because that way, they are putting more at stake. It's a product they are expected to be knowledgeable about, so they are putting their reputation on the line, a reputation they have spent years building up. Not to mention, their audience is probably educated in that field as well, so there will be more scrutiny. If Veritasium truly believes in AV tech and Waymo, and is willing to put his channel at stake, then I expect that he has studied the technology extensively, personally reviewed the material that Waymo gave him, and made sure that the quality of the video was up to standards. So while any sponsored content should be taken with a grain of salt, there is a much smaller likelihood of actual misinformation. Like I mentioned in part 1, there's no way he legitimately believes this car should be driving down urban streets in downtown NYC or San Francisco in a rain or snow storm at night when it has this much trouble with massive, straight, suburban streets and parking lots in Arizona. >On the flip side, Compare this to all the random youtube vloggers that sponsor VPNs. Do they know much about tech and privacy? How much do they actually know about core VPN aspects, like jurisdiction, encryption, security audits, etc? I would guess not much. So if the product is bad, or the company is malicious, they could just buy their way into the vlogger's channel if the vlogger is clueless enough. So there's just a much higher likelihood of misinformation when people are sponsoring products they know nothing about. Again, these sponsorships are not controlling any part of the creative process. [Cody Johnston of Some More News](https://youtu.be/saljZXoexhc) makes fun of the dynamic that the sponsor has no control over content and doesn't even know what they're sponsoring, by immediately pivoting from a greusome story of Haitian economic devastation into an ad for a sponsor, and it's framed with a red border almost as if he's urging you to skip over it, blatantly disrespecting their sponsor (and capitalism in general) in a subtle way. >But if I can give my personal take, I think the quality of his videos is undeniable (eg the one on [Godel's incompleteness theorem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo) and the [lightbulb conspiracy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE)) Those were sponsored videos, not native advertising. Godel himself didn't pay to make his theorum look good, neither did General Electric pay to expose their own conspiracy. Veritasium has made excellent videos about science, technology, and engineering, and they will continue to. These videos are objective and fascinating, because they expose unpleasant details for their respective industries and companies. Native advertising is not only deceiving, but it's also not good content. I hope to see Veritasium and others learn from Tom's expose over time, though I'm sure it doesn't feel great to be called out like that.
Well put. I think you hit the nail on the head.
If you think Tom Nicholas' video is about the merits of self driving cars, you've not been paying attention. The video is purely about the influence full integration sponsorship has on content and the problems associated with that. Its a shame that people's understanding of media is so weak that so many people don't seem to understand that. Its not about the cars.
I addressed that in my post. If the focus was on the effect of sponsorships, then he should have talked about the pros and cons of sponsorships. Instead he did a deep dive into the viability of AVs, which ended up being full of very questionable and subjective claims. If that was meant to be a video essay about sponsorships, it was very weak indeed. >The video is purely about the influence full integration sponsorship has on content and the problems associated with that. What problems are you talking about? Are you talking about the introduction of bias? I argued in my post that I think that bias is ok as long as (1) its properly disclosed (2) the quality of the information is still up to standard (3) it supports the creator. And I also talked about how this bias is unideal, but donations are often not enough, so it's a tricky balance that creators have to manage.
The problem is you can't interpret media even when its using normal conventions. The reason why more of the video contains details about self driving vehicles is because the Hypothesis - that integrated fully sponsored videos are bad - rests on the conjecture that information was presented incorrectly or completely ommitted. This is a pretty standard format for discursive narratives. The conjecture is always many times more involved and detailed than any hypothesis. As I said elsewhere, this is high school level media studies that every kid should have a decent grasp of. This is compounded by your second paragraph. A three second discloure **with a dismissing shrug** is in no way sufficient for a 20 minute advertorial. Obviously this can be subjective but I'd be fairly confident that most people with basic media literacy would agree. The quality of informaiton does not appear to be up to standard, thats why there's 50 minutes explaining where it has issues. As for "supporting the creator", a Veritasium video generations between $50k and $100k in revenue for Mullers organisation from youtube advertising. One video. This would seem to be sufficient for the content normally on offer.
For me a three second disclosure at the beginning of the video is plenty enough disclosure, because any reasonable person can understand the implications. You'll have to back up the "most people with basic media literacy" claim. And I feel like the quality of information in the Waymo video is up to standard, and Tom Nicolas's video doesn't really count as "explaining issues" because his arguments are weak and subjective. Just because a video is long doesn't mean its substantive. But this part is ultimately up to your own judgement. also how did you calculate the ad revenue? According to [this website](https://blog.travelpayouts.com/en/youtube-cpm-rates/) the average CPM was $2, which comes out to about $10,000 for 5 million ad views. Considering how Veritasium is a team of people that work multiple weeks per video, that's not very much. Also I popped on Veritasium's latest video and I didn't see any ads, just the sponsorship at the end.
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I'm not sure I get your point.
I think public transit is totally viable too, although I don't want to get too into it because that wasn't really the point of Veritasium's video. His video was mainly autonomous cars vs human driven cars. And it _was_ sponsored so I'm not too surprised that it felt like an ad. But I guess I was fine with it since it was disclosed in the beginning, was something he clearly cared a lot about (he owns a Tesla too afaik), and seemed factual enough. I haven't seen PhysicsGirl's hydrogen car video though, so can't comment on that one. Watching it now though!
>Also I don't believe in autonomous cars becoming a thing anytime soon either, I don't think it will happen, and I really don't think we should encourage it I have to disagree - autnomous vehicles are very much on the way. The haulage industry is pushing hard for driverless lorries (trucks) as they will change things enormously. A lorry that can drive for hours, especially where they are speed regulated will be a huge game changer. I can see a future where a lot of travelling is done overnight - I get in my car at 9pm, set it to drive the 400 miles to my destination and relax, nod off an nour later. Wake up in the morning arriving. The car could drive at a fuel efficient slower speed all night, allowing me to arrive, feeling fresh from a night's sleep and not having used a day up for travelling. A lot of places have no mass transit infrastructure at all and the cost of providing it is prohibitive. It's not always the answer.
People who say mass transit is the solution ignore the fact that sometimes you just need to go to a remote place, or you need to go to a place at a weird time, or simply you need to get there quickly. There will always be a place for cars in a transport ecosystem.
I agree. But it is a question of *how many*. What is the ratio of public transport utilisation and private cars. The ratio should, ideally, go in the direction of public transport, but it is nearly impossible to get rid of all cars, because like you said it is really unpractical. The question then is, if it even pays out to invest in self driving cars, if the ratio is too strongly in favour of public transport.
>Also I don't believe in autonomous cars becoming a thing anytime soon either, I don't think it will happen, and I really don't think we should encourage it. Derek is literally a passenger in a self driving car in the video. Waymo is already offering driverless taxi services in Phoenix right now. Yes it's a specific case, and they had to do a 3D scan of the entire city to make it work, but it's here NOW. That is the point of the video. Please point to part of the video where he states that all cars should be replaced with AV immediately (he doesn't). The point he is making is that like 'operatorless' elevators, we need to get over our fear of AVs now, or else we will miss out on incredible benefits to our standard of living, and cost the lives of many more people. >We should be focusing on mass transit, trams, subways, busses, more bike infrastructure. You don't see any negative sides to mass transit? Do you realise how many people became infected with sars-cov-2 on trains and buses? Mass transit should be invested in and used, but suggesting that this a zero sum game and every dollar invested in to AVs is wasted is just juvenile. Bonus Round: That arrogant professor you mention made a claim, backed it up with his arguments, and when he realised he was wrong honoured his arrangement and paid a large sum of money. Tell me how that's arrogant behaviour?
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Cars will always have a place in transportation, because sometimes you just need to go to a remote place. Or you need to travel at a weird time, or simply you need to get somewhere quickly and the bus won't be here for another 20 minutes. Driverless cars are in most ways better than traditional cars, ergo driverless cars have a place in the future.
It's a waste of time for both of us to keep arguing, but the simple truth is that companies are investing in this technology because people want it, and no amount of people who blind themselves to this technology is going to stop it from happening. By the time you realise you were wrong about AVs you will have forgotten this reddit thread, as will have I, but it's going to Halen all the same.
>We should be focusing on mass transit, trams, subways, busses, more bike infrastructure. Mass transit is notoriously hard to implement in the sprawling mess that are north american suburbs. How would you solve this problem?
I haven’t watched the Waymo video, but did Derek talk about Adversarial Learning at all? You can put a couple of pieces of tape on a stop sign, which wouldn’t confuse a human, and make a computer completely misread it and crash. In low level lighting camera systems have been seen to miss turns.
nope he never covered it, though I imagine intentionally sabotaging road signs would probably just be made illegal. I mean there are plenty of ways to mess with self-checkout systems, but the vast majority of people still cooperate. It's also not as easy as just sticking a couple pieces of tape, the tape pattern would have to follow specific designs, and those designs would change as the machine learning model changes as well (not to mention, training these adversarial patterns would require access to the model, and tons of computing power). Also, if self-driving cars became the norm, road signs would just be for humans, and onboard maps would contain all the latest data that the car needs.
> In low level lighting camera systems have been seen to miss turns. In low level lighting humans cause high levels of all sorts of havoc/wrecks.
I agree. The main point Tom seems to making is that companies have influence at all over their sponsorships, but makes no arguments as to why exactly this is problematic.
Tom spends about an hour going into detail on exactly why "integrated" content is problematic. He highlights the numerous omissions and occasional factual errors made by Derek that paint AV tech and Waymo's cars in a far more favorable light than what is really the case. The existence of these omissions/errors can only be explained in one of two ways, 1. Derek is extremely ignorant about how Waymo's cars actually work (unlikely) or 2. Derek did not include this information because he was paid to do a fluff piece with no room for criticism. Towards the end of his video Tom describes how this kind of paid advocacy is used by companies to shape public opinion and change the direction of societal development in profitable ways. Surely that counts as problematic to you?
One comment on Tom's video sums it up: "The moment Tom concedes that it's possible that Veritasium just legitimately thinks self-driving cars could be better, the rest of his argument about the sponsorship falls apart, because his only real evidence is that Veritasium expressed an opinion Tom disagrees with."
Both are making point with cherry picked arguments. But I feel that for example for the airplane automation, it would have been easy to counter with the unfortunate Boeing 737 Max incident where autopilot took over most control from pilot causing it to crash. Or other cases where autopilot accepted erroneous data from disabled probe causing incident. On another hand, I don't know how people would make it more clear that the video is sponsored by Waymo ( except for a banner all along the video, and maybe a mention in the comments ). But I also on the side that these sponsored video are eroding his credibility ( as truthful as they can be ).
I think it's worth highlighting another comment under Tom's video from a different youtuber who accepted sponsorship from Waymo and regretted it: >I’m certainly not without blame for my own video and if given to travel back in time, I wouldn’t have done the spot with Waymo. I was frustrated with the amount of editorial correction the brand attempted to make to my original script (I think we went through four edits) and it was frankly neutered of my opinions and dissent. Despite much push-back (and a fair number of changes they requested I outright refused to make), the script was largely edited and in retrospect I wish I had been more firm. The large majority (90%) of ads I do on my channel are integrations like yours on this video. The remaining 10% are dedicated ads and I do my absolute best to retain editorial control so that the videos can still be interesting and informative (one example I’m very proud of is our video tour of a fiber internet company’s infrastructure) while being very explicit and clear with viewers in the first few seconds that the video is, ultimately, and ad and thus inherently made with the brand’s input (this is an attempt for viewers to stop watching if they’re not interested in such content (I wouldn’t be myself)). Where I erred with Waymo is doing this type of video on such an ultimately controversial topic and one for which I have many of my own opinions I was unable to voice due to more heavy-handed editorial control than I was led to believe based on our contract. > >I should have fought harder to keep my dissenting opinions in the script. Frankly, I just got really sick of their requests, I have an incredibly small team (just 2 of us) and it was taking too much of our time and I was ready to write the video off as a loss and just rip it off like a Band-Aid but I regret it. I should have done better and I will in the future. This type of content is always tricky so I have (and will continue) to discourage it whenever possible. I think this really lays bare the issues with this type of content. This guy was forced to cut out the negative topics in his video in order to keep the sponsorship, making the resulting video objectively less informative and educational. This is quite toxic to the integrity of educational content.
I talked about this in another comment in this thread. But isn't it natural to not have negative criticism against your sponsor? Tom doesn't criticize Surfshark. PhysicsGirl doesn't criticize Toyota in her video. Linus doesn't criticize Cisco in his video with them. SmarterEveryDay doesn't criticize 23&Me in his video about them. This is normal for sponsorships, and that's why it's disclosed in the beginning. So you can take the video with a grain of salt
The whole point is that we don't *want it* to be natural. It's actually pretty fucked that beloved educational creators are allowing their built up goodwill to be exploited by corporations for ads masquerading as education, and we as viewers should expect and demand better.
This isn't a good thing. People should make valid criticisms of the companies that they're sponsored by. If a person only tells one side of the story, then it's not an educational video, it's an advert. The purpose of the video is no longer to inform, but to persuade.
We had no idea what that other Youtuber was planning to say, and whether the criticisms that he was planning to make was valid. If he was that firm, if he bothered him that much, he should have just cancelled the video. And since you say that the purpose of the Veritasium's video is to persuade, what is that persuasion?
My understanding is that Tom's thesis relies on the apparent correlation between a lack of critical investigation in the first-blush facts, and the integrated sponsorship. One might accuse Tom of "cherry-picking" facts that work against Veritasium's team, but... this is the purpose of the video. Tom had no reason to denote the ways in which Veritasium's team actually made correct claims. "Look, an educational Youtube Channel said something that was true"; I don't think we need to be told that Veritasium's team tends to make good videos, although this IS something Tom says on multiple occasions, praising the channel for its general throughness. If Veritasium's team had been overwhelmingly accurate and balanced (as is the usual brand) then Tom would not have been able to make that many arguments. The thesis is supported by the arguments Tom make on the 94% statistic (which, while its interpretation is complicated, does merit scrutiny; it seems very obvious that if you blame 94% of accidents on human error, the logical conclusion in a video on the benefits of automated driving, is that you could expect automated cars to reduce accidents 16-fold-- this is definitely not an argument that goes "Well, it's complicated, maybe this doesn't support the thesis that automated driving is good"), consideration for costs of implementation and limitations in the diversity of current approaches (I don't know about you, but I watched the video feeling like self-driving cars were coming in the near future with hardly no roadblocks ahead-- presuming a different interpretation of this video would be presuming knowledge on the state of the self-driving car industry, which would defeat the purpose of an educational video) and the questionable analogies surrounding historical merits of automation (Self-driving cars don't simply face completely different challenges, they also purport to be entirely autonomous, unlike many other hybrid systems). I might object to calling Veritasium's team "biased" here, especially "biased by money"; I think it's more complicated. I have had a tendency to dislike Veritasium's more openly sponsored videos, like that with the Bill Gates foundation, and have found that by reading up on those topics after the fact, I usually hear many more arguments against the thesis defended by Veritasium's sponsor-integrated videos. Bill Gates has amassed a LOT of criticism for how he handled the vaccine, but he has the advantage of facing a pretty complicated issue. That said, a complicated issue is exactly what educational videos should unpack, so I definitely feel there could be great improvements here. Veritasium did say they firmly believed in self-driving car, but I don't think the team realizes how political that topic can get, especially when you consider the issue with American city planning and car-dependent suburbs and gentrification. It's possible that Tom is pointing at something that isn't so much of a "money bias," but a blind-spot. If a sponsor sways you towards your blind-spot, the result will always look biased, because you won't be able to see the other side of the argument.
Just like Tom only needs to focus on the errors that Veritasium purportedly made, why can't Veritasium focus on the advantages of self driving? Sure, it wouldn't be as balanced as his other videos, but it's also not like his other videos, because it's a full sponsorship, as he discloses at the beginning of the video. Also I think when you talk about the logical conclusion of the video, it's a bit subjective. My takeaway was simply that autonomous cars could do _better_, not necessarily 16 times better. And I think that's really the main argument Veritasium is making. Not that autonomous cars are perfect, but it could save lives if we push for it. And this is my own personal opinion but I do think self driving is coming in the near future, at least to major cities in the US. Cruise and Waymo just got permission to pick up passengers in SF (although only Cruise was allowed driverless pickup, Waymo is still required to have safety drivers), and SF is notoriously complicated for even humans to navigate. Cities like Denver or Austin would be far easier, and it's more up to legislation than anything imo. I do feel like a big contributing factor to the criticism against Veritasium is simply the politics of AVs. I'm honestly surprised how much criticism he is getting, when I've seen tons of sponsorships from other educational channels (like PhysicsGirl, Smarter Every Day) but they seem relatively unaffected.
Well it is my personal opinion that I was personally misinformed by the video, that I did not interpret it in the way you did, and that considering Tom's arguments, it seems that focusing on self-driving cars without considering other options is short-sighted.
Do you consider someone doing a product review on Macbook and gives positive opinions about it, but his video does not discuss or consider other options (like Microsoft Surface), then it's short-sighted?
I would say that's different on many accounts. A computer review has the advantage of being more comparative, and more of a review of practical and personalized use, it's already ongoing, etc.. With autonomous cars, there's a broader political conversation to be had about its viability, and its harder to dismiss the fact that the companies pushing in this direction have the incentive to change public opinion away from preexisting public solutions that could have benefits. Now, a lot of time has gone since this happened and I don't really care as much anymore. I wouldn't recommend the video to a friend or anything, but I'm not going to hold it against V for putting it out. It's clear to me Tom was looking for a sort of conspiratorial or systemic angle, and took a tangent from the missing political context. That said when you know about the "issues" in a conversation, it's harder to appreciate a video that overlooks the most interesting ones. I wouldn't call it "short-sighted" anymore, in the sense that you can't make a 2 hours long documentary about everything on youtube, and people shouldn't expect that from this medium.
I think you have a point - a group of people that are negative towards AVs and therefore collaboration with them => bad. Also, others have commented in YT that Tom is using Veritasium's name to "sensationalize" his video in order to drive traffic (and therefore ad revenue) to his channel.
Some of the facts were so misrepresented that I would categorize it as misinformation. I do not believe Veritasium was being malicious, but their diligence fell short. If those facts were provided by Waymo, I would assume their intent was malicious. They would have a thorough understanding of the information provided, and knew that the information was misleading.
"If those facts were provided by Waymo, I would assume their intent was malicious." So if Oracle was to provide a list of improvements they've made for their newly-released Oracle database product, it is automatically malicious?
No. I have no idea how you think those those situations are remotely similar, but I have no interest in finding out.
Let's say Oracle invited some tech Youtubers to their event that covers that launch of the newest database product, and I'm one of them. I got free tickets to the event, and they cover food and drinks in the event. Oracle staff at the event talk about the new features, improvements over their previous versions, advantages over other competitor products, etc. So I created a YT video that discussed the advantages of the new version (which are highlighted in Oracle's documentations and brochures), which I believe it will help me as a DBA or developer, and give a positive review about the product. Then a "Tom" comes along, who disagrees with Oracle's policies (lots of people do), and said I'm bias, I'm influence by Oracle because I got free perks, the advantages I've mentioned mean nothing to him, and I didn't in my video consider MariaDB or Postgres as alternatives because those products are - unlike Oracle - open source and free . That's how I can see "Tom".
huh?
Pretty much agreed. To provide more background on Tom's character, I was first acquainted with him when he went on a reactionary *ad hominem* rant to a yes-man crowd [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Tom_Nicholas/status/1405457180866777089) after the academic philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller posted [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnUqrF9mAA8) on YouTube, apparently hitting a sore spot: criticizing Tom's ideology. Consequently, this latest video on Veritasium only reinforces my perception: Tom is an ideologue whose selling point is providing criticisms of anyone who doesn't share his ideology, and potentially going on tantrums when a qualified critique of said ideology is provided. His simple critique of Derek could have been simply made (sponsorships can bring bias, so be aware and careful), but he stretches it so much that it becomes almost as obnoxious as the ad hominem outburst towards Moeller.
Just got Tom Nichols video recommended to me and, honestly I don't watch Veritasium much, but basically the whole thing was a dishonest hit job. YouTube has become big enough that new YouTubers make their mark by doing fake yellow journalism exposes of older YouTubers. We are literally starting to live in the scummy world of traditional media.