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There is a massive YouTube and Instagram industry of outright faking craft and cooking tips. They're not just bad or a stretch, they're intentionally fabricated
by pornel 4y ago
There is a massive YouTube and Instagram industry of outright faking craft and cooking tips. They're not just bad or a stretch, they're intentionally fabricated, made at scale by TheSoul Publishing with 550 employees. That's because making cool things looking surprisingly easy goes viral way better than actual reality-grounded instructions, and for the adtech giants nothing matters except the number of clicks.
Before people realize that they can't really make a 3-layer cake in a toaster, the fakers already cash in on the views. Usually the risk of these faked craft hacks is just cut fingers and kitchen fires, but the "just grab 2000V, it's so easy!" videos take it to another level of lethality.
- Gigachad 4y agoJust the other day youtube suggested me this cutsie "what to do with old microwaves" video that just had the corporate jingle music over a video of a guy building various things out of microwave transformers without any kind of narration or warning of the danger. Considering people are actually dying trying these microwave tricks, this is no longer a theoretical concern. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2UfglFeOH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2UfglFeOH8 (much later the author added a warning saying this is for entertainment only)
- daemin 4y ago"For entertainment only" is such a cop-out, do whatever dangerous thing and show step by step instructions but then slap on a "for entertainment only" on it so you're safe from legal repecussions.
- b3morales 4y ago> you're safe from legal repecussions. Not necessarily: no way to tell whether it's sufficient until it actually goes before a court.
- starwind 4y agoExcellent point. As a matter of legal principle in the United States you can't unilaterally disclaim liability for future injuries. Signs that say "not responsible for accidents on these premises" don't hold up when you run a retail store where people are expected to freely to come and go as they please. More concretely: a perfectly reasonable judge could decide a dangerous step-by-step how-to guide negates the prior "for entertainment purposes only" warning. There's a reason Jackass frequently had skull-and-crossbone warnings and didn't show much of their set up, just the results
- daemin 4y agoI was being sarcastic with that, should have written it as: you're "safe" from legal repercussions.
- b3morales 4y agoFair enough :)
- jeshin 4y agothese are with a low voltage high current winding, instead of the standard 2000v winding, though, which is much safer. The danger of the unmodified microwave transformer isn't really so much that it has exposed mains voltage (although obviously you should be careful around that, too), but that it has 2000v+ and it's galvanically isolated, meaning no GFCI/RCD will save you (and obviously the 2000v will also do a much quicker job at passing lethal current through your heart/other organs) Comparatively, a spot welder is "just" as dangerous as any other mains-based experiment. Not safe, but you have a pretty good shot at surviving, even if you get zapped.
- mywittyname 4y agoI'm getting flashbacks of UnderDunn's home made battery spot welder built with a microwave transformer.
- jeshin 4y agoIt's a really common project for them. Certainly a better option than a jacobs ladder or fractal wood burning, since you have to just take the usual mains voltage precautions, and not worry about arcs and other high voltage schenanigans
- jeffbee 4y agoSalad is pretty dangerous and I don't see anyone putting disclaimers on cooking shows.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 4y ago
- t_mann 4y agoCare to elaborate? I've been eating salad my whole life and I'm just fine. But then again, I also cook eggs with runny yolk, so I guess I'm just a renegade in the eyes of the food safety folks.
- dr_orpheus 4y agoI can't tell if you are being sarcastic, or if you actually live in a country with poor safety standards on produce and it is a risk for food-borne diseases to eat uncooked food.
- jeffbee 4y agoI'm clowning on safety culture. It is not very dangerous to disassemble a microwave. Many people have died from eating salad, because fresh greens arrive liberally coated in goat shit. Also, you do not need to cook pork to 160°, that is an abomination.
- kragen 4y agoContact with live microwave oven transform secondaries has about a 70% fatality rate, if we believe bigclivedotcom. Eating salad has about an 0.001% fatality rate.
- kragen 4y agoActually I think I have overestimated the salad fatality rate here by orders of magnitude. If one out of every hundred thousand salads killed the eater then many, if not most, people who eat salad regularly would die of food poisoning or choking on salads rather than (as they in fact do) of heart disease, cancer, and infections.
- Tao3300 4y agothe dryness of the top comment is perfect > Remember, if you've got lathes and welders and assorted tools and materials, don't throw out an old microwave because you can use part of it to make a wire hot.
- diydsp 4y agoexactly! Plus, they do throw out 98% of the microwave... just to save a clump of iron which is one of the more easily recycled materials. Admittedly, it's in layers with resin between, but I'm sure that resin will cook right off in the massive slag crucibles.
- Arrath 4y agoChild me figured out how to make a wire hot with a 9v battery. Why fuck with a HV transformer.
- cush 4y agoThese videos are produced in giant production houses in China. That’s why there’s no voiceovers. They’re designed to be distributed in every language.
- viraptor 4y agoNot just fabricated for the views, but reactions too. For each debunking video, some will follow the actual videos to see how bad they are. But the viewer intention doesn't matter - clicks are clicks.
- logifail 4y ago> Not just fabricated for the views, but reactions too I regard videos which include the word "reacts" in the title as having a huge red flag. The signal-to-noise on this junk content is simply appalling.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- viraptor 4y agoI meant reactions in general, not just the reaction videos. "hey, look at this stupid video I've found" is a click as well.
- hef19898 4y agoThe one reason I still have Youtube, after getting rid of everything else Google, is the effort I out over time into getting rid of a whole bunch crappy content proposals on my attached account. Every once in a while I have to block some channels, overall it is acceptable. Once in a while I end up on Youtube without being logged in, man is it a mess. As bad as the proposals on Internet Explorers starting page I see at work.
- jermaustin1 4y agoMy wife thinks it is weird that I watch so much YouTube, because when she goes to YouTube (not signed in), she is inundated with so many spammy/scammy videos. I told her it has taken me almost 15 years to curate the feed I have. And some days I have no new videos I want to watch, so I rewatch old ones.
- 4y ago
- logifail 4y ago> Before people realize that they can't really make a 3-layer cake in a toaster Our 12-year-old recently tried to make himself "cheese on toast" by putting both cheese and uncooked bread into the (almost brand new, upright) toaster. Aaargh! Cue the house full of smoke, a stern reprimand, then a couple of hours of my time wasted on removing every last piece of burnt greasy cheese from inside the toaster, followed by several empty runs with it outside to let it get properly hot and burn off the last of the fatty residues. He was, at least, quite sheepish about his learning experience.
- flir 4y agoToaster pockets! A whole new world of bread-related experiments awaits.
- testesttest 4y agoAhhh, yea did that as a kid too. Although, I tipped it on its side. The trick was to make toast then microwave the cheese :) But seriously, my mom was furious. No YouTube required.
- fho 4y agoSame ... but for me it was plastic sleeves in a laser printer ...
- NickRandom 4y agoOr the other trick is to microwave the uncooked sandwich slightly (10-20 seconds) so that the cheese starts to melt and then toast it so bread and cheese both get toasty without burning.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> The trick was to make toast then microwave the cheese Just use a toaster oven. They're horizontal.
- germinalphrase 4y agoFar more versatile.
- honkdaddy 4y agoI just looked into it.. Ugh, this kind of content is just abysmal. 25 GLUE GUN HACKS YOU HAVE TO TRY 24 SIMPLE BEAUTY TRICKS TO MAKE YOU LOOK FABULOUS https://www.youtube.com/c/5MinuteCraftsYouTube/ https://www.youtube.com/c/5MinuteCraftsYouTube/ Who are the people watching this stuff? I assume it's largely women and parents, as a lot of the "hacks" are beauty or parenting related. I watched a few minutes and all the ideas were just... terrible? Ranging from silly to impractical to dangerous.
- cupofpython 4y agoI sometimes find myself watching similar content for a bit like a kind of engineering "reality" show. no real goal in mind and absolutely no intention of doing any of the things though. Knowing now that they put out videos suggesting people mess with live transformers... i think im over it.
- InefficientRed 4y agoStay At Home Mom is a massive market segment with a lot of purchasing decision power. Long-form advertising targeted at SAHMs is nearly as old as the advertising industry itself. This is just the next iteration. Video does particularly well with this segment (as opposed to text) because of the nature of parenting and housekeeping -- lots of time spent on your feet with busy hands and occasionally available eyes. The same reason radio/long-form podcasting is popular with truckers. Or text with office workers (relatively speaking). It's entertainment you can engage with during work hours between or during tasks.
- usrusr 4y agoSoap opera of the YouTube era, you might be on to something!
- shiftpgdn 4y agoLittle kids. My 7 year old loves five minute craft videos.
- tehwebguy 4y agoPlenty of people hate this shit and still watch it because they got tricked. I watched (skimmed) like 12 videos yesterday trying to find a hack to locate my empty AirPods case. There’s apparently no way to do it but each video had a more infuriatingly false title than the last.
- giantg2 4y agoNow I want to try to make a three layer cake in a toaster. I'm sure it can be done with the right technique and tools. Even if it's wildly impractical and will yield a tiny result.
- glogla 4y agoYes. But also, since the giants do only the bare minimum of automated moderation with no oversight and no checks and balances, the systems are easy to game by bad actors. See the example of someone on HN saying his wife lost Whatsapp account for reporting spam - the spammers probably retaliated from hundreds of fake accounts. Same with this youtube video. Same with people gettong reported az spam ehrn criticizing certain nations. And the giants of course do not care, why would they.
- TrackerFF 4y agoSeems like their DIY / craft vids have moved from glue guns to angle grinders and (tack) welding lately. Anyone with even the smallest amount experience with either, know that these things are accidents bound to happen.
- guggleet 4y agoDunno, I have used both since I was like 13. Also, we used to weld and do all sorts of things (acetylene torching, lathe, casting, grinding, sawing, milling) mostly unsupervised with very little instruction in middle/high school metal shop. I don't remember any accidents.
- mywittyname 4y agoMaybe you hit your head?
- winphone1974 4y agoWell if you got through high school without any accidents it must be a risk free activity...
- mikestew 4y agoHello, Mr. or Ms. Survivor Bias! I used to cut firewood with my father using a 3 foot buzz saw made over 100 years ago*, and had but only the most token of safety guards (ignore the giant power take-off belt that's just waiting to consume some of your loose clothing, and you with it), yet I still have all limbs, fingers, and toes! And yet I still think it asinine to shrug shoulders and say, "I dunno, nobody I know ever got hurt, yuk, yuk, yuk." If one cannot see the potential for harm in such scenarios, you are one of those accidents waiting to happen. *yes, really
- jermaustin1 4y agoSpeaking of a 3 foot buzz saw, my grandpa is rebuilding a sawmill with a 54-inch blade powered by a 1990's corvette engine. Fairly certain someone is going to get hurt on that one.
- skummetmaelk 4y agoA glaring example of how the advertising business model incentives lead to the worst outcomes for everyone. People working at TheSoul Publishing literally waste their lives producing straight up harmful content and the consumers either get brainrot from watching it or risk serious injury and death from replicating it.
- CSMastermind 4y agoWhat incentives would you put into place?
- Nextgrid 4y agoBanning advertising (or using strong regulation to make it non-profitable) so that people can directly pay for the content they want to consume. Content that provides value will survive, clickbait and this kind of crap will die off since nobody would pay for fake crafts (and those who did will ask for a refund when they try replicating it and it doesn't work).
- rozab 4y agoAnn Reardon, the subject of this article, is a good scientist who's been debunking these 'food hack' videos for years. She eventually branched out into debunking other things like this. I've always been impressed with her tenacity in challenging this sort of thing while also managing to educate and entertain. It must be soul destroying trying to fight this endless tide of misinformation, which is constantly boosted by the youtube algorithm.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoGlad to see this comment. I'm a huge Ann Reardon fan, and her original video that got her into this "debunking" theme is still great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6abePkXncCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6abePkXncCM Still, it's a little depressing that someone who made great, inspiring, detailed and actually feasible cooking/baking content found that they couldn't really pay the bills with that content, but instead it turned out that debunking all the BS on YouTube was a better way to actually get paid.
- asdajksah2123 4y agoI'm a huge fan as well. She does an amazing job, and seems to be one of the only people on YT who is actually pointing out all the BS a lot of these "crafts" and "baking" channels are. And she communicates a lot with YT trying to get them to remove some of the more dangerous "hacks" and I believe has also been successful with certain attempts in the past.
- astura 4y agoAnn Reardon's (subject of this article) channel calls out these other channels and she even tries to recreate these fake crafts to prove they are fake.
- tonfreed 4y agoI feel sorry for Dave. How many times do you think he's come home to an absolute mess, weird kitchen smells and Ann has just mumbled something about YouTube? She's definitely one of my favourites, and I have a copy of her cookbook that I use a lot.
- an1sotropy 4y agoYes! The fact that one of Ann Reardon's main interests is in debunking stupid/dangerous craft and cooking videos, and yet her video is the one getting taken down, is an important irony that seems lost on the author of the boingboing post, and many other commenters here. My kids and I love watching her videos, especially for iron-stomach Dave eating whatever she cooks, and learning the occasional Australian slang ("<adjective> as" == "very <adjective>")
- fritztastic 4y agoI thought it was just annoying that they're often on the top results of searches and thought of them as just digital clutter. But for people to post outright dangerous and deadly instructions is negligent at best and I would say more accurately in the realm of manslaughter at least.
- sebastianconcpt 4y agoWait until youtube recommends you to click on "How to start a fission reactor in your garage".
- hattmall 4y agoWhat I don't understand is the posting of these videos on Facebook by seemingly fake accounts. I'm in a bunch of yard sale groups and random unrelated accounts are constantly posting these hack and engineering type videos that are like 20 seconds of 50 different useless things with no explanations or other information. There's no ads displayed, there's nothing being sold or promoted and no links or way to find out more about the video. Does anyone else experience this? How are they making money or why is this being done? I guess my theory is somehow facebook rewards total views and then they are monetizing some other content.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Does anyone else experience this? How are they making money or why is this being done? Could they be building an audience to exploit later? IIRC, that's the tactic the Russian Internet Research Agency used -- build an audience with memes and cat pictures, then pivot to political propaganda.
- duskwuff 4y ago> Does anyone else experience this? How are they making money or why is this being done? I suspect these are trying to build reputation for the account posting them. The bizarre, inexplicable videos will get watched by a lot of users wondering WTF they are, which may cause further content posted by those accounts to be ranked higher in feeds.
- Nextgrid 4y agoThe account can later be resold, used to post ads or even sell courses to become a "successful" social media influencer using the account's own metrics as selling points.
- iasay 4y agoThere's also a lot of really really bad "electrical engineers" on YouTube, particularly from India I notice, who build stuff that runs directly off the mains with no isolation. Oh and the anti 5G maniacs ripping people off for magic stickers Reported them both and YT did nothing.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago> the "just grab 2000V, it's so easy!" videos take it to another level of lethality. The problem is, they're thinking too small. The 2kV supplies in microwaves aren't big enough. If you used the PSU from an old single-digit-megawatts klystron TV transmitter, then you'd have about 50kV at 50A or so. Now this sounds dangerous, but believe it or not, this would be far safer to work with than a microwave transformer. What, you don't believe me? Of course it is! If you got a shock off it, your arm would vapourise long before your heart stopped!
- GLGirty 4y agoThis plausibly might not be sarcasm O_o
- ericmcer 4y agoI see these constantly on instagram, and usually comment something skeptical, but it is drowned out beneath 500 comments of just heart and fire emoji’s. Maybe these recipes existing as just theoretical things you could do are enough for most people.
- circa 4y agoTrikTok is not too far behind with those videos either
- napolux 4y ago5 minutes crafts should be illegal
- t_mann 4y agoScary. I recently did some research into what's behind the 'Jungle Builders' channels (two guys pretending to build flashy, but completely dysfunctional, pools somewhere in a forest with little more than their hands as tools). Seems to be a similar scheme, it doesn't invite viewers to recreate, but they leave a lot of litter and moscito-infested concrete pits behind. Most of them are actually in the same tiny forest somewhere in Malaysia that looks like a v2 of the Banksy theme park now.
- teruakohatu 4y agoThere is a whole genre of people building "by hand" underground pools and other crazy structures in the jungles. Aside from being terribly unsafe, if you look closely you can often see marks in the dirt from machine tools that they forgot to smooth away in the soft clay.
- mulmen 4y agoDo you have some links to this? A few cursory quacks turned up nothing. My family loves those channels but it would be interesting to see how the structures hold up and how/if they are ever used.
- t_mann 4y agoHere's one, although I don't like it because I feel like it's overdramatizing a bit. With construction quality this low, my hinge is that the jungle will claim back those spots fairly quickly, but the (drainless!) water pits will remain moscito breeders for a considerable amount of time (and wildlife trap hazards for some time). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M In response to your question: they hold up extremely poorly. But ecologically speaking, it's probably no worse than the average palm oil farm.
- enos_feedler 4y ago"That's because making cool things looking surprisingly easy goes viral way better than actual reality-grounded instructions" <- I feel like this might be the soul of the whole "no code" movement and why it bugs me a bit.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mcv 4y agoIf YouTube leaves up the dangerous videos, but removes the videos warning of that danger, then they should definitely be held liable. This is literally the worst thing they can do. Doing nothing would be better. Automated moderation is no excuse; they designed that moderation, and they did a really poor job of it if it leaves the dangerous videos alone but removed those warning of the danger. It reminds me a bit of YouTube removing original content videos because of fraudulent copyright claims by Big Content, except this time people can actually die. YouTube needs to clean up its act and be held liable for this stuff.
- dpmitu 4y agoIt's a good thing they removed the dislike button!
- fredophile 4y agoIf people are curious about these, the YouTube channel "How to Cook That" often does videos exposing the fake cooking tips.
- cush 4y agoCertainly there must be some kind of liability here. One could never air these kinds of instructional videos on TV. As the defacto online video experience, YouTube has both become the FCC and NBC - both the governing body and the distributor, yet they take none of the risk and assume no liability of either.
- Nextgrid 4y ago> for the adtech giants nothing matters except the number of clicks Yet another example why advertising is a cancer on society. In a market not corrupted by advertising, this kind of garbage content wouldn't exist because nobody would pay for it since the content they show is false and misleading. But with advertising, the payment is automatic, non-refundable and happens preemptively even if the person doesn't consume the majority of the content (sometimes a single click is enough), therefore it becomes more profitable to mass-produce fake content designed to solicit clicks rather than content that provides true value such as information or entertainment.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y agoEven before this there was the bleach strawberries to make them white before using them video. Ann Reardon has done a great job debunking all the stupid 5 minute crafts BS but it’s an uphill battle. YouTube being trash doesn’t help.