Veritasium: A Story of YouTube Propaganda

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

"people are using youtube for education" this is true, and a large part of the problem with removing the dislike count. removing the dislike count is anti-information/education, pro-propaganda.

Spare a moment for the poor dude who saw Veritasium tweet at Tom regarding this vid and commented, “oh boy this collab will be awesome!”

17:50 i love how the poll itself is slanted like "i can't wait!" and is not mutually exclusive with "they're not ready now". also, it (along with "they're terrifying") makes the poll about your personal excitement and not about your honest assessment of the tech. i'd love to see a poll where the options were neutral and more specific, ie "i think they're ready to be used now", "they will never be ready", and "they will be ready in >10 years". i imagine they may not be as optimistic.

I love how they think that adding more cars "that are more aware" would stop rush hour from being a thing. You know how you get less cars on the road? You build a subway system, a bus system, a train system. Any kind of collective traffic where one driver can ferry 30-700 people in one go. I take the car, the train, and the subway to get to work every day. The only reason I no longer take the bus instead of the car is because the bus times did not fit me on my way home. A good collective traffic system will make people go "oh I no longer need the car" and they will stop using it. This is the case for most of my coworkers, who live a lot closer to work.

I would like to think that my channel is one that promotes the solutions you were getting at near the end of this video: public transportation, cycling, and walkable cities. I worked my whole career in tech, but I'm a firm skeptic of self-driving cars. One of my biggest issues with them is that a lot of the problems they aim to solve are "American" issues, that stem from decades of car-dependent cities. Yes, if you design a city such that everyone needs to drive everywhere all the time, you have problems of crippling traffic, high transportation costs, and dangerous roads. None of these issues really exist in walkable cities with high quality public transport, however. So I see driverless cars as a highly speculative and expensive solution to a problem that really shouldn't exist in the first place. Not to mention the potentially seriously negative implications of having city criss-crosses with high-speed, high-traffic roads full of autonomous vehicles. To me, self-driving cars really seem like a desperate attempt to maintain car-dependent places and car-centric suburbia with a flashy technical gadget, rather than an actual solution to the problems facing cities.

This is great and needed to be said. I worked with Gates Foundation. Don’t think it quite fits into this narrative, but I would say that I wouldn’t work them again. Full integrations are a signal you shouldn’t trust a channel. I see some multi millionaire creators use the excuse of “this helps us fund future videos” as an excuse. That’s bullshit. Do sponsorships fund content. Yes. Do you need to sacrifice your integrity to work with a sponsor? No

Another point in the "20M miles driven" argument is that comparing the distance traveled by Waymo cars to a human driver is completely pointless. I could write a program to make a car self driving and send it out to drive for 100M miles; if the program is incapable of learning and I don't update it in any way, it's exactly the same as when I sent it out having driven 0 miles. Waymo presumably does update their software regularly, and it may very well be capable of learning to some degree, but that doesn't change the point that saying "we've driven 20M miles, that's more than any human so we're more experienced than any human driver is" is completely ridiculous. The company/program simply does not learn in the same way a human being does.

The ad read promising that a VPN with single-handedly guarantee online security is a nice touch

As Tom Scott once put it on his own channel: "You cannot trust me". Not because he has ever maliciously spread incorrect information but because he cannot ever guarantee that the information he provided is really correct and that he didn't make a mistake. He's trying his best to avoid it but he realized that there is no way he can avoid it all the time. It's novel approach to tell your audience: Keep in mind, I'm human and I make mistakes, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Just watching this video now. I wanted to point out that there was a Veritasium video in the past that was sponsored by a paper towel company, and as part of the advertisement the host creates an "experiment" to measure how much bacteria are deposited when reusing a cloth towel versus a paper towel. The conclusion of this advertisement/experiment was that paper towels are safer because they don't leave behind bacteria. As a proponent of zero waste practices I found the whole thing to be rather disgusting, because there was no discussion of environmental impact, and it was disingenuous because I use cloth rags, but I keep a pile of clean ones and I can always grab a fresh one if needed. This advertisement was worse than just saying "buy these paper towels" because it created a rigged experiment by a trusted science youtuber, giving much more weight to these claims which were not properly discussed. So I am really glad you are digging in to this.

On the subject of driverless cars: There is a good Kyle Hill video that talks about how an ai beat the world champion at the game Go in 2016. But in 2022, amateur go players were able to beat that ai consistently. He brought up a great point that computers are incredible at recognizing patterns, but ultimately don’t understand what a game is, what a board is, what a piece is. This is the thing that scares me the most about automation in anything involving humans: we assume that computers can make leaps in logic like humans. It comes as naturally to us as breathing. Ai looks like it does on the surface, but it is relying entirely on a predetermined information set. Taking that for granted is extremely dangerous when it comes to the unpredictability of humans.

If you are going to make a video like this one, I really recommend talking to a security practitioner about the many VPN providers doing sponsored reads all over the web and why they are practically universally hated in the security space... food for thought.

This is why I have such respect for Tom Scott - who, when a VPN company tried to change the sponsored video more than he was comfortable with, dropped the sponsorship and released the video he wanted and obscured the name of the VPN company. He chose to release an educational video he believed in instead of releasing an ad that'd have made him a decent amount of money.

The point about "educational" and "news" youtube channels focusing on cars as the default mode of fixing issue is something that has bothered me for some time. "Hmm, cars are producing too many emissions, making them electric will fix our issues." and "People die because humans are bad drivers, lets make computers do it." have been repeated throughout major online media channels, when busses and trains get rid of both of those issues, as well as have other benefits such as encouraging more sustainable and equitable urban design.

The biggest issue with educational channels on YouTube is really what they DON'T say... I watched a lot of Digital Foundry in the past, they had an overall well-rounded approach when it came to real-time graphics. But about 5 years ago, you could easily tell how there was a massive influx of money as the were able to hire several people during a very short time frame. As a long-term viewer I became a bit cautious when a lot of sponsorships were made in collaboration with NVIDIA. The topics were "educational" to paint a very positive image around the company... But even on non-sponsorship videos, you could tell that Digital Foundry was (and still are) extremely careful of what they say to keep up a good working relationship with NVIDIA... There was definitely a sudden shift in how their videos framed and portrayed 5 years ago. Their conversation about real-time graphics was now biased towards NVIDIAs goals rather than the consumer-oriented focus they had before. DFs whole channel shifted to an approach that perfectly aligned with NVIDIAs long term vision and goals. It was during the time when they shifted from being a graphics card manufacturer to an AI-company, focusing on real-time ray tracing and AI solutions surrounding such technologies etc. Increasing the public perception of NVIDIA as an AI company. Educational content should never be mixed with money.

The juxtaposition of "most experienced driver in the world" with "can't drive in inclement weather" is just too good. Really is an apples to oranges comparison.

94% of car accidents are caused by humans is one of the most useless stats ever when you think about it. There are very few other factors that can cause accidents at the moment. It's like saying 99% of boating accidents involve water.

"Just build a train" -Adam Something

This reminds me a lot of the early days of TV when you could see your favorite cartoon characters whip out their favorite brand of cigarette and advertise to you directly in the content. Here it is even more insidious, in my opinion, because it is content that purports to be informational/educational. There were regulations that drew bounds between ad and content then, why not now?