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It’s worth noting that William Osman stopped producing videos on his YouTube channel due to the fallout of this video. It was a long time coming because he com

It’s worth noting that William Osman stopped producing videos on his YouTube channel due to the fallout of this video. It was a long time coming because he comes off as very aloof and has received criticism about the safety of many other projects, but this one appears to have triggered a lot of outrage. FWIW, I think we need more young, brilliant minds sharing this kind of content. It has the entertainment value needed to capture the interest of young viewers who may not be otherwise interested in engineering disciplines. There are many, many other channels out there (backyard scientist, action lab, Cody’s lab, stuff made here, etc.) who are very successful on YouTube, but they tend to cater to viewers who are deliberately choosing to watch their videos.

mkdirp 5y ago
> It’s worth noting that William Osman stopped producing videos on his YouTube channel due to the fallout of this video. Was it really because of that video? My impression from his last video was just people being unnecessarily mean to him for no reason in general, not just because of that video, but maybe I missed something. Personally, I was super impressed by this video. It was the first time I had seen his videos (or heard of him). It was an instant subscribe for me when I saw it. I hope he's doing well. He seemed in a really bad place in his final video.
- jaykk 5y ago
  he's okay and currently does a super nice podcast with other youtubers like nilred and the backyard scientist called "safety third". He will release videos sometime soon again - He talked about his backlog with his releases because he wanted to release a video about his mr. beast's squidgame involvement first and didnt find a good angle to tell the story.
  - Ruthalas 5y ago
    I enjoyed his main channel content, but found the first few episodes of the podcast to be a little rough going because they had a strong focus on complaining about the people complaining about their lack of safety measures. (Which just wasn't interesting listening to me.) Have the more recent episodes moved past that? I'd like to give it another shot.
    - MivLives 5y ago
      They have for the most part. It comes up occasionally now, and for the most part they're still as unfocused as normal. They rotate in people all the time which is fine. The last few episodes have been weirdly a lot about Taxes but the Nilegreen episode was interesting.
- deleted 5y ago
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mdrzn 5y ago
God I miss William. I hope he gets better (mentally), and he comes back to making videos.
- kioshix 5y ago
  He hosts a podcast channel called Safety Third[1] with a few of his science friends, and has some interesting guests too. I quite enjoy it, check it out. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg
piyh 5y ago
Cody's Lab did a video series on making yellow cake uranium that got him a visit from g men. Most everything Colin Furze does has mortal danger. Styropyro is probably also on a watchlist. Williams project was dangerous, but I don't see a reason why he should be a pariah.
- hef19898 5y ago
  - vinyl7 5y ago
    Maybe it's time we don't allow children on the internet. Same way we don't allow children to wonder around in the city by themselves
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Since we do the latter, I don't see problems with the former.
      - anamax 5y ago
        Huh? Where and when don't we allow children to wander around the city by themselves? In many large cities, kids are expected to use public transit to get to/from school. It's not unknown for parents to send kids on errands. And, how does the kid get to the park? This "kids can't go anywhere alone" idea is very new. My Mom complained that the one route that I never used to go to/from school is the one that she showed me.
        sho_hn 5y ago
        It seems to be a recent development in some larger American cities. I work in a company in Berlin that has job applicants from many different countries, including the US. Common question during the process (we generally require relocation at this point) are: - "Can my 12yo children go somewhere alone? I'm from Portland/similar and this is not the case here and it's why we're moving." - "We've been looking and it's really hard to find an apartment in Berlin. We have this ground-floor option, but they just shot the ground-floor windows in across the street here again this morning. Is ground floor safe in Berlin? I'm no longer surprised when it comes up, but it's quite sad.
_fat_santa 5y ago
After watching his X-Ray video, I watched the video where he said he was done with it. The guy needed to stop reading all his comments. Joe Rogan literally has a bit about this exact situation with Youtube comments.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Why is the reaction "stop making videos?" You can serve videos from Cloudflare and sell your own ad placements to pay the paltry fees...with no one hanging over you. These content creators could easily use YouTube to promote their own site and pivot away.
- Maursault 5y ago
  Poor Joe Rogan just can't get a break while singing dangerous praises as though Gospel. He uses his platform irresponsibly, gives voice to crackpots and idiots, and is prone to disseminating misinformation, which makes him remarkably dangerous. Rogan, Hannity and Carlson are only for the weak-minded.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    Damn after I found out he made it a habit to say a particular racial slur on the show I figured people were done with this guy. Can't fathom how people think he's defensible (and indeed, not a single downvote has left a defense).
    - rogan69156 5y ago
  - trident5000 5y ago
    Sorry people you dont agree with can have a voice. Theres no such thing as a "dangerous" opinion. Learn to listen to all sides and let others listen to all sides and then make independent decisions. The way you battle terrible speech is with countering speech, not shutting down conversation to your liking.
0x_rs 5y ago
That video also resulted in him, Osman, setting up a fake job application interview with one commenter for the sole purpose of filming and posting it online on his YouTube [0]. Which is, in my opinion, very petty and immature. It's good that he stopped making videos for the time being while learning what most creators online have to deal with and don't take to this level. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHyFihLolyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHyFihLolyg
- neatze 5y ago
  Why it is immature ?
  - 0x_rs 5y ago
    If you watched the video, I'll have to be the one asking you — why do you think looking up somebody from your comments section, making them sign agreements under a false pretence and setting up an interview, and then making fun of this individual talking about how "embarassing" he is in your videos is not immature? I won't even begin talking about brigading against somebody when you have a vast user base. Content creators have some unwritten responsibilities and such acts are uncommon because they usually do not fall into these things trying to make "a point".
    - jaykk 5y ago
      well, this specific commentor claimed to be an expert on this topic...
      - Maursault 5y ago
        It is irrelevant who said what, only what was said. It is not possible to validly counter an argument by attacking the man, which is why ad hominem is a fallacy. The logical way to have approached this is to ignore the man and point out the argument from authority, also a fallacy.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
ballenf 5y ago
He does a regular video podcast still on Youtube that has some pretty cool behind the scenes discussions. And an awesome title. Safety Third: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg
- octagons 5y ago
  Yes! This is a great podcast if you are a fan of William Osman, NileRed, Michael Reeves, Peter Sripol, and the like.
TT-392 5y ago
Pretty sure it was a combination of factors, not just this vid, and he just needed a break.
- octagons 5y ago
  Yes, I agree it was many factors. This video seemed to be the breaking point, but it was certainly a long time coming. I recall several videos over the past 2 or so years where he drew attention to the invective he receives. I don’t really participate beyond watching the videos, so perhaps there are others who are more informed about the factors behind his decision. Regardless, I wish him all the best and hope he’ll find a way to showcase his talent or at least find fulfillment elsewhere.
  - TT-392 5y ago
    As far as I heard listening to the podcast, I am not convinced he is done making videos. And even if he does end up stopping, they got a pretty great podcast which he seems to enjoy.
throwaway14572 5y ago
I was saddened to see that he stopped producing videos after this. This is exemplary of a serious social problem we seem to have. I feel for him personally, because I've had a similar personal "ultimatum" regarding online interaction: I don't comment and don't contribute at all any more because the emotional load of what you receive in return just... Isn't worth it. So much nasty, pointless noise. I was taught as a kid to "Say nothing at all, if you have nothing nice to say". Now I'm sticking to it, and some. It's sad for sure, as this represents a macro-level chilling effect on social interaction. I don't want to be "that Evan guy" in the comments trolling, and I don't want to risk receiving the noise of trolls. So I just opted out. These days, I just passively consume things online, observing the waves of rage and bigotry, and letting them flow by, knowing I have no stake in their game. Things are much better in real life, where I have great conversations with friends, family, and coworkers. We can get in to deep conversations and negativity isn't taken personally like that. Because the bandwidth is higher between participants and we care about each other. The only remaining way I contribute, is to create one-off accounts, say what I think if it's nice, and never look at it again. I don't want to see the responses, because they just lure you in to wanting to respond, and they end up wasting emotional space in my mind.
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  I explained once that I think social media as-is must perish. A more humane business model should rise from the ashes. Responses boiled down to shrugs stating Twitter reflects society and we can't escape it. I'll remain optimistic.
- monksy 5y ago
  I think that a lot of society has changed for the worse given the freedom and aggressive adoption of tech companies "disrupting." (What I mean is: They're given the ability to try to aggressively make money at all costs and force their will. Consequences on people, rights, laws be damned.) Youtube has no interest in curating great content by creators. They just want to keep that money printer going and keeping people on the site. There was a comment somewhere about the views that someone gets.. honest, good, and educational content doesn't get rewarded as much as a person doing pranks that harm people.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I agree with you. But the safety concerns are real. It's his life to risk, but during Edison's days, one of his assistants lost everything to x-ray damage. His body became totally deformed. Oddly, this Daily Mail article is somehow near the top of the results. But reading over it, it seems pretty accurate from what I remember. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7180945/X-rays-ravaged-Thomas-Edisons-assistants-hands-killed-him.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7180945/X-rays-ra... So it's not like the safety concerns are entirely off-base. But still, I agree that it's his life to risk.
- megous 5y ago
  Just one exposure of the assistant is many orders of magnitude more exposure than this guy had for the entire experiment. It's not really comparable.
- swores 5y ago
  Might I suggest that even on occasions when the Daily Mail (/ Mail Online) has accurate content, they still don't deserve page views or advert impressions and that when not too hard other links would be better. I'm not sure how the exact content stacks up, but this Smithsonian Mag link was high in my search results https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-man-who-gave-thomas-edison-x-ray-vision-123713565/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-ma... Anyway, thanks for the story that I hadn't heard before!
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    That's an interesting suggestion. May I ask why? I really don't know anything about it. The hesitation I had with sharing a daily mail link was "Is it accurate?" rather than whether they deserve impressions. It hadn't occurred to me that it might be a bad idea to support them.
    - ftyers 5y ago
      They're widely (although not universally) considered to be irredeemable in England after an article they published in 1934 entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".
willis936 5y ago
I was one of the commenters criticizing him, though I did not post anything until his dismissive response video. I made no personal attacks, but highlighted how dangerous it is to the audience to present 10+ kV supplies as no-big-deal toys. Everyone can acquire an HV supply and play with it. Many of them even should, but certainly not because of a video demonstrating ways to kill yourself with absolute no risk assessment.
- in0v8r 5y ago
  This line of thinking is quite confusing to me. The amount of neglected children lucky enough to participate, unsupervised, in an experiment like this is certainly dramatically less than the amount you could save by hiring more social workers. With respect to supervision, why is responsibility being shifted away from parents? Blaming a YouTube video for your child's chronic exposure to X-rays is a poor excuse for not paying attention to you kid. Not to mention, the proliferation of this type of video would automatically expose the inherent danger as the safety-adverse content providers reveal the consequences.
  - willis936 5y ago
    I am not talking about children. Children do whatever the hell they want. I'm talking about adults who see some guy playing with HV with no safety systems, causing arcs that could have easily killed him, and vehemently defending this behavior. Adults can trivially acquire HV supplies. If they listened to this guy and never stopped to research things further they'd be dropping like flies.
bluescrn 5y ago
It's strange that doing potentially-dangerous things with technology is frowned upon so much more than doing 'conventionally dangerous' stuff like base jumping, huge tricks on bikes/skateboards/snowboards, free climbing, and so on
- a1pulley 5y ago
  I think you mean "free solo climbing," not "free climbing." Free climbing means climbing with a rope and belayer but without artificial aid, like etriers or jumars.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    Free climbing is dangerous enough to be in that list, IMO. Lots of things can go wrong even with ropes.
    - gonzo41 5y ago
      You should check out Ryan Jenks on How Not To. His rope swings are pretty safe but also just insane at the same time.
      - nathancahill 5y ago
        How Not To is so good. Tons of scientific research and analysis goes in to his work.
- warent 5y ago
  Probably conventionally dangerous stunts happen much more often than potentially dangerous engineering stuff. By definition you'll hear more outrage around more densely outrageous things. If more people did dangerous engineering stuff then it would be vice versa. Also perhaps a dangerous skateboard trick is less likely to harm anyone else but oneself, whereas an engineering disaster can catastrophic at a range
- atoav 5y ago
  Skateboarders don't really create the impression that their sport is that one cheap trick to skip a propper medical X-Ray. Or phrased differently: there are no people with broken bones and insufficient funds looking at skateboarders and thinking: "I should do that, because I live in a nation without a propper health care system"
mrguyorama 5y ago
Was it really the fallout from this video? William got hit by the same thing most other good Youtubers like him struggle with: Burnout. Youtube and the algorithm want you to put out content every day, and will penalize you, and literally give you less money if you don't. This sucks for the "science" youtubers because their videos are projects that often require months of work and sometimes don't pan out. NileRed, and close friend of William Osman's, has also significantly reduced his output, because it's absurd. Google wants you to kill yourself putting out as much content as possible, and doesn't care if you have to reduce quality or literally die as a result. If you quit, someone new will take your place.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  In this case, I think it's safe for the viewers to share some of the blame with Google.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I think it's certainly part of the discussion. The truth is that these 'big' creative channels often pale in comparison to the channels getting the big views. In their categories they're probably amongst the best, but YouTube also has thousands of videos every day of really lowest common denominator content that gets a much wider audience. So what people are asking for I think is a way to make sure these niche channels are still viable, so that they don't get overwhelmed and ousted by the waterfall of wider audience content that gets the majority of the views. That may not make financial sense for YouTube, and I suspect there's room for a new platform that focuses on higher quality content creators.
- hackmiester 5y ago
  His followup video about burnout repeatedly referenced the comments he got about the X-ray video. So I'd say it was a large contributing factor.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  That's why a lot of project based channels lean more on sponsorships, patreon and youtube members for a regular income. For example, thought emporium (my favourite science youtuber) puts out videos very rarely but they're always big innovative projects and he makes enough to have bought a new lab recently.
mrtksn 5y ago
Woah, I was wondering why I'm not seeing new videos from him. Turn's out, he even made a video about it and I simply missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok
- strunz 5y ago
  Seems like he's coming back and outsourcing the editing - https://twitter.com/WilliamOsman/status/1486815129563918338 https://twitter.com/WilliamOsman/status/1486815129563918338
deltaonefour 5y ago
At the very worst (and it's not even at the worst) you can call this guy stupid for building something like that. But 69k for an xray? That's where the outrage should be directed. That's evil in it's purest form. More then just simple outrage, the person responsible for charging that 69k bill is someone that needs to go to jail. The sad thing is, the responsibility is distributed among the entire medical industry. It's very similar to the phenomenon of software engineer salaries.
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  Tangential: could you expand on the phenomenon behind software engineer salaries? Or any links for my own research?
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease It's relatively early. Nobody is associating this with software yet. But given the unique salaries in the US (with the epicenter being the bay area) it's quite obvious this is what's going on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
newacct0 5y ago
[flagged]
birriel 5y ago
Tangentially, I believe Josiah Zayner's YT channel got pulled when they found out he was documenting a DIY COVID-19 vaccine along with 2 or 3 fellow biohackers in 2020.
devwastaken 5y ago
They'll come back eventually. Everyone who becomes big on the internet has the problem of not being able to disconnect from it's commenters. It goes against our nature even because real humans don't talk like that. You eventually learn that these are ignorant people commenting because they don't know any better - and the sea of opinions doesn't matter. Either you let them hold you against your will or you just do what you want. It's a hill anyone has to climb.

mkdirp 5y ago

> It’s worth noting that William Osman stopped producing videos on his YouTube channel due to the fallout of this video. Was it really because of that video? My impression from his last video was just people being unnecessarily mean to him for no reason in general, not just because of that video, but maybe I missed something. Personally, I was super impressed by this video. It was the first time I had seen his videos (or heard of him). It was an instant subscribe for me when I saw it. I hope he's doing well. He seemed in a really bad place in his final video.

jaykk 5y ago
he's okay and currently does a super nice podcast with other youtubers like nilred and the backyard scientist called "safety third". He will release videos sometime soon again - He talked about his backlog with his releases because he wanted to release a video about his mr. beast's squidgame involvement first and didnt find a good angle to tell the story.
- Ruthalas 5y ago
  I enjoyed his main channel content, but found the first few episodes of the podcast to be a little rough going because they had a strong focus on complaining about the people complaining about their lack of safety measures. (Which just wasn't interesting listening to me.) Have the more recent episodes moved past that? I'd like to give it another shot.
  - MivLives 5y ago
    They have for the most part. It comes up occasionally now, and for the most part they're still as unfocused as normal. They rotate in people all the time which is fine. The last few episodes have been weirdly a lot about Taxes but the Nilegreen episode was interesting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mdrzn 5y ago

God I miss William. I hope he gets better (mentally), and he comes back to making videos.

kioshix 5y ago
He hosts a podcast channel called Safety Third[1] with a few of his science friends, and has some interesting guests too. I quite enjoy it, check it out. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg

piyh 5y ago

Cody's Lab did a video series on making yellow cake uranium that got him a visit from g men. Most everything Colin Furze does has mortal danger. Styropyro is probably also on a watchlist. Williams project was dangerous, but I don't see a reason why he should be a pariah.

hef19898 5y ago
- vinyl7 5y ago
  Maybe it's time we don't allow children on the internet. Same way we don't allow children to wonder around in the city by themselves
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Since we do the latter, I don't see problems with the former.
    - anamax 5y ago
      Huh? Where and when don't we allow children to wander around the city by themselves? In many large cities, kids are expected to use public transit to get to/from school. It's not unknown for parents to send kids on errands. And, how does the kid get to the park? This "kids can't go anywhere alone" idea is very new. My Mom complained that the one route that I never used to go to/from school is the one that she showed me.
      - sho_hn 5y ago
        It seems to be a recent development in some larger American cities. I work in a company in Berlin that has job applicants from many different countries, including the US. Common question during the process (we generally require relocation at this point) are: - "Can my 12yo children go somewhere alone? I'm from Portland/similar and this is not the case here and it's why we're moving." - "We've been looking and it's really hard to find an apartment in Berlin. We have this ground-floor option, but they just shot the ground-floor windows in across the street here again this morning. Is ground floor safe in Berlin? I'm no longer surprised when it comes up, but it's quite sad.

_fat_santa 5y ago

After watching his X-Ray video, I watched the video where he said he was done with it. The guy needed to stop reading all his comments. Joe Rogan literally has a bit about this exact situation with Youtube comments.

datavirtue 5y ago
Why is the reaction "stop making videos?" You can serve videos from Cloudflare and sell your own ad placements to pay the paltry fees...with no one hanging over you. These content creators could easily use YouTube to promote their own site and pivot away.
Maursault 5y ago
Poor Joe Rogan just can't get a break while singing dangerous praises as though Gospel. He uses his platform irresponsibly, gives voice to crackpots and idiots, and is prone to disseminating misinformation, which makes him remarkably dangerous. Rogan, Hannity and Carlson are only for the weak-minded.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  Damn after I found out he made it a habit to say a particular racial slur on the show I figured people were done with this guy. Can't fathom how people think he's defensible (and indeed, not a single downvote has left a defense).
  - rogan69156 5y ago
- trident5000 5y ago
  Sorry people you dont agree with can have a voice. Theres no such thing as a "dangerous" opinion. Learn to listen to all sides and let others listen to all sides and then make independent decisions. The way you battle terrible speech is with countering speech, not shutting down conversation to your liking.

0x_rs 5y ago

That video also resulted in him, Osman, setting up a fake job application interview with one commenter for the sole purpose of filming and posting it online on his YouTube [0]. Which is, in my opinion, very petty and immature. It's good that he stopped making videos for the time being while learning what most creators online have to deal with and don't take to this level. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHyFihLolyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHyFihLolyg

neatze 5y ago
Why it is immature ?
- 0x_rs 5y ago
  If you watched the video, I'll have to be the one asking you — why do you think looking up somebody from your comments section, making them sign agreements under a false pretence and setting up an interview, and then making fun of this individual talking about how "embarassing" he is in your videos is not immature? I won't even begin talking about brigading against somebody when you have a vast user base. Content creators have some unwritten responsibilities and such acts are uncommon because they usually do not fall into these things trying to make "a point".
  - jaykk 5y ago
    well, this specific commentor claimed to be an expert on this topic...
    - Maursault 5y ago
      It is irrelevant who said what, only what was said. It is not possible to validly counter an argument by attacking the man, which is why ad hominem is a fallacy. The logical way to have approached this is to ignore the man and point out the argument from authority, also a fallacy.
- oh_sigh 5y ago

ballenf 5y ago

He does a regular video podcast still on Youtube that has some pretty cool behind the scenes discussions. And an awesome title. Safety Third: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg

octagons 5y ago
Yes! This is a great podcast if you are a fan of William Osman, NileRed, Michael Reeves, Peter Sripol, and the like.

TT-392 5y ago

Pretty sure it was a combination of factors, not just this vid, and he just needed a break.

octagons 5y ago
Yes, I agree it was many factors. This video seemed to be the breaking point, but it was certainly a long time coming. I recall several videos over the past 2 or so years where he drew attention to the invective he receives. I don’t really participate beyond watching the videos, so perhaps there are others who are more informed about the factors behind his decision. Regardless, I wish him all the best and hope he’ll find a way to showcase his talent or at least find fulfillment elsewhere.
- TT-392 5y ago
  As far as I heard listening to the podcast, I am not convinced he is done making videos. And even if he does end up stopping, they got a pretty great podcast which he seems to enjoy.

throwaway14572 5y ago

I was saddened to see that he stopped producing videos after this. This is exemplary of a serious social problem we seem to have. I feel for him personally, because I've had a similar personal "ultimatum" regarding online interaction: I don't comment and don't contribute at all any more because the emotional load of what you receive in return just... Isn't worth it. So much nasty, pointless noise. I was taught as a kid to "Say nothing at all, if you have nothing nice to say". Now I'm sticking to it, and some. It's sad for sure, as this represents a macro-level chilling effect on social interaction. I don't want to be "that Evan guy" in the comments trolling, and I don't want to risk receiving the noise of trolls. So I just opted out. These days, I just passively consume things online, observing the waves of rage and bigotry, and letting them flow by, knowing I have no stake in their game. Things are much better in real life, where I have great conversations with friends, family, and coworkers. We can get in to deep conversations and negativity isn't taken personally like that. Because the bandwidth is higher between participants and we care about each other. The only remaining way I contribute, is to create one-off accounts, say what I think if it's nice, and never look at it again. I don't want to see the responses, because they just lure you in to wanting to respond, and they end up wasting emotional space in my mind.

abnercoimbre 5y ago
I explained once that I think social media as-is must perish. A more humane business model should rise from the ashes. Responses boiled down to shrugs stating Twitter reflects society and we can't escape it. I'll remain optimistic.
monksy 5y ago
I think that a lot of society has changed for the worse given the freedom and aggressive adoption of tech companies "disrupting." (What I mean is: They're given the ability to try to aggressively make money at all costs and force their will. Consequences on people, rights, laws be damned.) Youtube has no interest in curating great content by creators. They just want to keep that money printer going and keeping people on the site. There was a comment somewhere about the views that someone gets.. honest, good, and educational content doesn't get rewarded as much as a person doing pranks that harm people.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I agree with you. But the safety concerns are real. It's his life to risk, but during Edison's days, one of his assistants lost everything to x-ray damage. His body became totally deformed. Oddly, this Daily Mail article is somehow near the top of the results. But reading over it, it seems pretty accurate from what I remember. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7180945/X-rays-ravaged-Thomas-Edisons-assistants-hands-killed-him.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7180945/X-rays-ra... So it's not like the safety concerns are entirely off-base. But still, I agree that it's his life to risk.

megous 5y ago
Just one exposure of the assistant is many orders of magnitude more exposure than this guy had for the entire experiment. It's not really comparable.
swores 5y ago
Might I suggest that even on occasions when the Daily Mail (/ Mail Online) has accurate content, they still don't deserve page views or advert impressions and that when not too hard other links would be better. I'm not sure how the exact content stacks up, but this Smithsonian Mag link was high in my search results https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-man-who-gave-thomas-edison-x-ray-vision-123713565/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-ma... Anyway, thanks for the story that I hadn't heard before!
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  That's an interesting suggestion. May I ask why? I really don't know anything about it. The hesitation I had with sharing a daily mail link was "Is it accurate?" rather than whether they deserve impressions. It hadn't occurred to me that it might be a bad idea to support them.
  - ftyers 5y ago
    They're widely (although not universally) considered to be irredeemable in England after an article they published in 1934 entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".

willis936 5y ago

I was one of the commenters criticizing him, though I did not post anything until his dismissive response video. I made no personal attacks, but highlighted how dangerous it is to the audience to present 10+ kV supplies as no-big-deal toys. Everyone can acquire an HV supply and play with it. Many of them even should, but certainly not because of a video demonstrating ways to kill yourself with absolute no risk assessment.

in0v8r 5y ago
This line of thinking is quite confusing to me. The amount of neglected children lucky enough to participate, unsupervised, in an experiment like this is certainly dramatically less than the amount you could save by hiring more social workers. With respect to supervision, why is responsibility being shifted away from parents? Blaming a YouTube video for your child's chronic exposure to X-rays is a poor excuse for not paying attention to you kid. Not to mention, the proliferation of this type of video would automatically expose the inherent danger as the safety-adverse content providers reveal the consequences.
- willis936 5y ago
  I am not talking about children. Children do whatever the hell they want. I'm talking about adults who see some guy playing with HV with no safety systems, causing arcs that could have easily killed him, and vehemently defending this behavior. Adults can trivially acquire HV supplies. If they listened to this guy and never stopped to research things further they'd be dropping like flies.

bluescrn 5y ago

It's strange that doing potentially-dangerous things with technology is frowned upon so much more than doing 'conventionally dangerous' stuff like base jumping, huge tricks on bikes/skateboards/snowboards, free climbing, and so on

a1pulley 5y ago
I think you mean "free solo climbing," not "free climbing." Free climbing means climbing with a rope and belayer but without artificial aid, like etriers or jumars.
- yupper32 5y ago
  Free climbing is dangerous enough to be in that list, IMO. Lots of things can go wrong even with ropes.
  - gonzo41 5y ago
    You should check out Ryan Jenks on How Not To. His rope swings are pretty safe but also just insane at the same time.
    - nathancahill 5y ago
      How Not To is so good. Tons of scientific research and analysis goes in to his work.
warent 5y ago
Probably conventionally dangerous stunts happen much more often than potentially dangerous engineering stuff. By definition you'll hear more outrage around more densely outrageous things. If more people did dangerous engineering stuff then it would be vice versa. Also perhaps a dangerous skateboard trick is less likely to harm anyone else but oneself, whereas an engineering disaster can catastrophic at a range
atoav 5y ago
Skateboarders don't really create the impression that their sport is that one cheap trick to skip a propper medical X-Ray. Or phrased differently: there are no people with broken bones and insufficient funds looking at skateboarders and thinking: "I should do that, because I live in a nation without a propper health care system"

mrguyorama 5y ago

Was it really the fallout from this video? William got hit by the same thing most other good Youtubers like him struggle with: Burnout. Youtube and the algorithm want you to put out content every day, and will penalize you, and literally give you less money if you don't. This sucks for the "science" youtubers because their videos are projects that often require months of work and sometimes don't pan out. NileRed, and close friend of William Osman's, has also significantly reduced his output, because it's absurd. Google wants you to kill yourself putting out as much content as possible, and doesn't care if you have to reduce quality or literally die as a result. If you quit, someone new will take your place.

ShamelessC 5y ago
In this case, I think it's safe for the viewers to share some of the blame with Google.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I think it's certainly part of the discussion. The truth is that these 'big' creative channels often pale in comparison to the channels getting the big views. In their categories they're probably amongst the best, but YouTube also has thousands of videos every day of really lowest common denominator content that gets a much wider audience. So what people are asking for I think is a way to make sure these niche channels are still viable, so that they don't get overwhelmed and ousted by the waterfall of wider audience content that gets the majority of the views. That may not make financial sense for YouTube, and I suspect there's room for a new platform that focuses on higher quality content creators.
hackmiester 5y ago
His followup video about burnout repeatedly referenced the comments he got about the X-ray video. So I'd say it was a large contributing factor.
beaconstudios 5y ago
That's why a lot of project based channels lean more on sponsorships, patreon and youtube members for a regular income. For example, thought emporium (my favourite science youtuber) puts out videos very rarely but they're always big innovative projects and he makes enough to have bought a new lab recently.

mrtksn 5y ago

Woah, I was wondering why I'm not seeing new videos from him. Turn's out, he even made a video about it and I simply missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok

strunz 5y ago
Seems like he's coming back and outsourcing the editing - https://twitter.com/WilliamOsman/status/1486815129563918338 https://twitter.com/WilliamOsman/status/1486815129563918338

deltaonefour 5y ago

At the very worst (and it's not even at the worst) you can call this guy stupid for building something like that. But 69k for an xray? That's where the outrage should be directed. That's evil in it's purest form. More then just simple outrage, the person responsible for charging that 69k bill is someone that needs to go to jail. The sad thing is, the responsibility is distributed among the entire medical industry. It's very similar to the phenomenon of software engineer salaries.

abnercoimbre 5y ago
Tangential: could you expand on the phenomenon behind software engineer salaries? Or any links for my own research?
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease It's relatively early. Nobody is associating this with software yet. But given the unique salaries in the US (with the epicenter being the bay area) it's quite obvious this is what's going on.
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newacct0 5y ago

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birriel 5y ago

Tangentially, I believe Josiah Zayner's YT channel got pulled when they found out he was documenting a DIY COVID-19 vaccine along with 2 or 3 fellow biohackers in 2020.

devwastaken 5y ago

They'll come back eventually. Everyone who becomes big on the internet has the problem of not being able to disconnect from it's commenters. It goes against our nature even because real humans don't talk like that. You eventually learn that these are ignorant people commenting because they don't know any better - and the sea of opinions doesn't matter. Either you let them hold you against your will or you just do what you want. It's a hill anyone has to climb.