Should we stop supporting them with our eyes for taking sponsorships from shady companies?
Edit: I took my first step and unsubscribed from the channel and I will continue to withhold my viewership to those that don’t take better care of the viewers.
Likely doesn’t matter, but I’m on a roll of not giving my money to companies that are immoral so why not do the same with my eyes.
I don’t watch any video that’s sponsored by Ground News, and I complain in the comments
What’s wrong with ground news?
I’ve notice a tremendous amount of ground news links on social media that weigh the stories wildly, and improbably inaccurately. I don’t know if it’s early results vs results over time, trolling, or what, but I genuinely do not trust their analysis anymore.
Examples include trump lovers supporting the rule of law (that’s just convicted their guy) or liberals doubting biden (apparently 90% of likely biden voters were somehow reconsidering?) - I don’t buy their spiel.
To begin with, they operate with some very shady definitions of left and right.
Any political coordinates centered on American view of left and right are super skewed and already biased. If you consider Democrats to be “the left”, boy something is wrong with that.
And when this happens, what you think is “unbiased news” is really just two flavors of right-wing propaganda, one a bit more extreme than the other.
When capitalists are doing minor successions to be just a bit less evil, this is not “left”, and whatever is between that and fascist dictatorship is not the enlightened center.
TL;DR Ground News is one of the places that teach you the position between American Left and American Right is actually neutral and balanced. It is very much not.
that’s every mainstream news in the US. All of them.
Yes.
There’s no such thing as unbiased news. News is informed by all kinds of biases at every moment, many of which are completely innocuous and harmless, even good.
For example, most news sources refer to people in stories as men or women, and use gendered pronouns. Gender is a social construct, so recognising it implicitly in an article is a bias. An unbiased news source would refer to everyone as they/them and never present a gender identity as fact. It would always refer to people as people. Well, except for the fact that personhood is a social construct too. And so is humanity. They’d have to call everyone beings or entities. And that’s bad. An unbiased news source is bad. The news should have the bias that it presents people’s gender identities as facts.
What Ground News presents as unbiased stories are usually center-biased stories, not unbiased stories. And the lie that centrism is unbiased is dangerous. Every story on Ground News is equally biased, because everything is a bias. Their bias rating is a dangerous lie. Because encouraging people to see the most common view as unbiased causes people to go along with whatever view is common, even if it’s bad. Even if, for example, the government has been taken over by Nazis. Bias confirmation machines like Ground News are always dangerous, but they’re especially dangerous when fascism begins to be normalised, which is the struggle we’re currently facing.
I’ve been using Ground News for the last six months or so and quite like it. It does seem like you may have a misunderstanding of how it works though. Ground News is not, in itself, a “news outlet”, nor does it generate articles, its an aggregator. When viewing a story there is an AI generated summary of all of the articles related to that story, but its generally no more than 3-5 bullet points, and certainly not enough information to form an opinion (nor is it intended to be). The user should read several of the articles and form their own opinion based on that. Further, their bias and factuality gauges use data thats averaged from external organizations, so again, not generated by Ground News itself. They lay it out here:
I’ve been seeing a lot of ground news links with improbable numbers. I’m beginning to doubt their conceit.
their bias and factuality gauges use data thats averaged from external organizations
And they shouldn’t. Those sources are wrong and Ground News amplifies their wrongness. Everything is a bias. Reality is socially constructed and every piece of buy-in is a bias. From gender, to money, to race, to nations, to names, to humanity, to personhood.
This is a silly take. You can’t ignore all news because all news has some form of bias. You should try to map out your sources to an even spread across the spectrum. Media literacy shouldn’t entail just reading from what you find agreeable. That will inevitably lead to an epistemic bubble.
I have an even spread across the spectrum. I read antirealist news (left wing), socialist news (center), and even capitalist news (far right). That’s a great diversity of sources.
Or by “whole spectrum”, did you mean it would be a good idea for me to read Nazi news as well?
By spectrum I mean what you just described. I’m confused now. Didn’t you say one comment above that you don’t read anything from ground news?
Wait, really? Ground news has antirealist sources and describes all capitalist sources as extreme right wing? Okay, if that’s true, you’ve changed my mind and ground news is awesome. Can you show me that it’s true?
I have no idea what you’re arguing for any more. In one comment you say you read across the spectrum but then you follow up with another comment and complain that ground news is not left enough or something. It makes no sense. I don’t know who or what you’re arguing for.
they don’t write the stories though, so can’t control the pronouns. I do appreciate their effort to try make sense of the news with an alignment reading, but I agree with you that it encourages centrism in the long run
Yes, but why aren’t they marking all the news sources that implicitly push the idea that gender exists as biased in that way? Why do they ignore certain biases and not others? The answer is that they’re conflating bias with controversy. If something is uncontroversial, they’re saying it’s unbiased. That’s bad.
I guess they level a political narrative over that of social narratives. As someone who’s not LGBT (but obviously will always vote for the rights of others), it’s the political one I care about most to read, and I’m guessing a majority of their readers too.
It’s not an LGBT thing. I’m using gender as an example of a thing we can all agree is a social construct so I can make my point about bias without having to get any more controversial with it. But if you really want a political example, here is the same point but more political:
Every news source that refers to the existence of the United States of America is biased. The USA is a social construct, it doesn’t have objective existence. And many groups have objected to its existence, as it’s a genocidal state illegally occupying stolen land. Any news article which refers to the USA as though it were a thing that exists is implicitly pushing settler colonial narratives. This is a clear bias. Ground news should be labelling any article which refers to the USA as biased.
Anything, if you examine it, is just a social construct. The news sometimes wield these constructs to create false narratives to constrict our views/rights, but more often than not, the news is simply trying to convey a set of events from its perspective using a shared grammar that the majority of its audience will understand.
We cant push the frontier without having a base.
I worry that so many calculations for everything would be very tiring quickly. I don’t think I could do it.
Then choose to wilfully accept good biases into your life, and don’t strive for the imaginary, impossible ideal of “unbiased”
Ok so we can’t use ground new because of bias. Where do you suggest we go to get our news then. I agree that there will always be some bias but surely a system that gives you news from so many sources will be less biased than sticking to just one or two sources
surely a system that gives you news from so many sources will be less biased than sticking to just one or two sources
Not really. Suppose I show you one article that says vaccines don’t cause autism. Now suppose I show you that one article, and 99 articles that say they do cause autism. Which one is giving you a more accurate view of the facts? Obviously, including more lies and misinformation will not reduce the amount of bias.
The point is to show different biases through their source’s own interpretation of facts, not to deliver unbiased news themselves.
Put another way, Ground News is kinda saying “here are some cold days, hot days, and in-between days. This is what we experience.” You’re sitting there saying “they’re liars! Have you forgotten 0 degrees kelvin and the center of the sun?!?”
We haven’t forgotten but it’s not the point. Moreover if they changed their scale to show the modern left is not really left wing at all, then they would not be representing what we’re seeing, and critically, they would not be shareable as a demonstration of bias in news. Because most people would dismiss them as propaganda without really digging in.
Well see that’s the problem. They’re lying to gain mass appeal. They’re calling liberals leftists and participating in the move of the Overton window in America towards fascism. That’s bad. You figured out the problem all by yourself, you didn’t need me to explain it for you.
I made sure to dislike the moment this sponsorship came up and closed the video. With analytics they should see the connection.
i like ur optimism. we need more ppl to do this.
Veratasium had some similar issue a few years ago too, didn’t he?
There was a video he did on a startup taxi service using self driving cars. Basically the entire thing was an advertisement for that company.
Then another Youtuber, Tom Nicholas, released a video about that a few months later and how it’s an issue. I’ll have to watch it again as I don’t remember what he specifically talks about.Yeeep I remember the saga bc of the Tom Nicholas video
I recall Tom Nichols making a video on them and also perhaps an incorrect video about electricity so probably.
On the electricity video, he was actually correct. It was mostly a matter of semantics and people clinging to the common models of electricity.
I’m not really sure it was just semantics. He was technically correct the light would get some power right away, but the thing everyone would understand when hearing the main assertion, i.e. the light is fully lit and the circuit is in its relatively steady, final state, is very much not true.
The electricity one wasn’t so much him being wrong as it was him being really bad at communicating that one point
His video with one of those “genetic research” companies was very bad anti-privacy propaganda, where they used the excuse of catching the Golden State Killer as justification for storing and using the related genetic information of masses of unconsenting individuals.
He’s also dipped several times into making state department propaganda like Smarter Every Day consistently does. Not nearly quite as bad as him yet though.
And he’s made several videos about failures of capitalism, wherein he very obviously refuses to identify it as the problem. Like the one about planned obsolescence or leaded gasoline and another I’m forgetting.
I’ve watched his leaded gasoline video, capitalism doesn’t seem like something he would need to bring up? Unless I’m not remembering the video correctly, the cause of the problems aren’t something he goes into
He also has a habit of making videos that are just long ads, like that self-driving car, or that shampoo
Wow, those comments are a dumpster fire.
Not sure what Derek 's best response might be. I’m thinking that this video will likely be taken down and replaced by one without a sponsor.
That seems unlikely considering contracts and legal stuff
Right. You have to scroll quite a way to see something other than him being called out.
I’m out of the loop, what did Better Help do?
I think part of it is selling mental health data to companies such as meta. I dont know if it was anonymised but either way it’s horrible
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The “BetterHelp” YouTube Virus is BACK
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Sharing users’ mental health information with advertisers and connecting LGBT users with Christian faith-based therapists are the two big issues I’m aware of
Is there a source for this? I’m generally very positive on therapy and helping people get access to it, but fuck them if that’s the case (and fuck the US healthcare system in general. Although I will say that where I’m at now, Japan, is even worse with mental healthcare not being covered by insurance (only psychiatry is covered; some psychologists having sliding fee scales but sometimes it’s students and, if you don’t speak Japanese well enough to articulate your issues in the language, then the premium for foreign language support is real)).
Just as an FYI: although laws are strict about US-based therapists practicing only in states where they are licensed, there are no laws regulating international practice of psychotherapy. If the people you’re talking about have a hard time in Japanese, they may be able to to find a telehealth therapist in their country of origin who speaks their native language and is embedded in their native culture. You have to deal with timezone shenanigans, but it beats going without. Something to consider.
Yeah, I fully agree. The yen being super weak right now has put some people off of such (it was about 110-115 yen: 1 dollar when I came, now it’s 160 T_T)
Yikes! Yeah, that’s messed up. Thanks for the info!
Better Help is also awful for the therapists, it basically turns them into contracted gig workers and they’re less invested in their clients’ success. It’s also awful for the clients, because going to therapy is hard and requires hard work and facing some difficult things. The platform makes it overly easy to switch therapists whenever, and a sizeable chunk of people will jump shark when challenged, continuing to throw money down the Better Help hole with no progress to show for it
Better Help is also awful for the therapists, it basically turns them into contracted gig workers and they’re less invested in their clients’ success. It’s also awful for the clients, because going to therapy is hard and requires hard work and facing some difficult things. The platform makes it overly easy to switch therapists whenever, and a sizeable chunk of people will jump shark when challenged, continuing to throw money down the Better Help hole with no progress to show for it
Wow 😲 I’m so surprised that a therapy app with shortened appointments and suspicious pricing is bad for anyone! There’s no possible way to have anticipated such a thing would fail in such a harmful way.
A channel absolutely should be held accountable for the sponsors they accept. Advertisements from YouTube are mostly outside channel owners control, but sponsors are not.
I don’t support channels with unethical sponsors. It can be tough sometimes.
It’s likely they signed a contract with them before the (second) controversy, I feel like a better way to do this is to see if they continue with the shitty sponsors
But they should be held accountable for this kind of stuff
I watch basically any channel with 100,000+ subscribers through Piped so that my views or retention or engagement don’t get counted by YouTube.
No. It’s their channel and they can do whatever they want, just as how you can handle yourself however you want. Just do as you’ve done and remove yourself from something that conflicts with your opinion and everyone’s happy. Life is often that simple
“No. But, in a snarky tone yes.”
ah yes, a “fallout 4 no”
Philip de Franco did a better help sponsor and his community went up in arms about it. now he doesn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. surprised more communities don’t care about it
most people don’t know anything about it. they skip sponsors and watch the videos. it’s not complicated.
yo dawg I’m not telling you what to think but what you’re saying is the fundamental thing the county is made of time and time again. you’re just saying these things as a way to see the voices of the big blue building that sacrifices and sacrifices for what? you don’t even know.
is this a bot
no
then what is that nonsense supposed to be
most people.
Meaning not all people, meaning some people can get screwed over. By a content creator they’re supporting.
You’re right it’s not complicate. Just unsubscribe from people that don’t respect the viewers. Or keep watching and only think about yourself and how it affects you.
maybe follow the conversation before you tell me what my own words mean.
—surprised more communities don’t care about it
—most people don’t know anything about itmeaning not all people, meaning some people do know about it, which is why some communities do care, but most don’t know, which is why more communities don’t seem to care.
My apologies.
I was just replying to comments when I woke up and it’s hard to be diligent of comments that are in a wider thread vs top level comments.
I should do better and I will try.
no worries
Veritasium is YouTube propaganda. It’s well documented - Derek takes sponsor money and gets people killed in the process. I blocked Derek on all platforms the day Tom put this documentary video out.
Funnily enough the person that made this video had a little controversy on the vape-o-nomics video when he was talking about how subscription services were bad but then immediately pivoted towards an ad read for a subscription service.
Eventually it was removed (without a comment talking about, it happened silently) but still this stuff reaches everyone eventually.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Veritasium is YouTube propaganda
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I’ve hated him for so long. Glad to see it’s getting some light
I do that kind of thing, yes. Although I usually find it so distasteful, that I lose interest in watching other videos anyways.
But yeah, especially when it’s a channel making educational content, there’s a chance that some viewers take the sponsored section as general educational content (no matter, whether that’s because they’re gullible, young or did not pay attention when the sponsor segway happened).
There’s also various tech channels which recommend products that are objectively worse than the alternatives, or even exert malware-like behaviour. Those also immediately lose any and all respect from me.
Obviously, if it was a genuinely good product, it wouldn’t need the sponsorship deal for people to make videos about it. So, I do understand the struggle.
But everyone wanting to make a living off of media has that struggle. If I artificially inflate the view numbers of one media creator, the others receive less sponsorship money.Mark Rober was a big disappointment too. he made a pretty weird video about autism, using the fact that his son has it as like qualification for him to talk about it. folks with autism tried to talk to him about the problematic nature of the video in the comments, and he just blocked them. plus, he partnered with NXT for Autism, which does work with Autism Speaks, which is genuinely a hate group that’s trying to exterminate autism, and, last I checked, had no autistic people on the board.
After that video with a military defense company, I stopped following his videos
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
that advert is terrifying, what the hell
Rober is just a con man that pretends to be science to sell stuff to people.
He also ripped off KiwiCo IIRC.
Psst hey kid. Over here. It’s me Science. Got any questions?
Try to understand that influencers and content creators are human beings and not infallible. I don’t think Mark or Derek are the greatest people in the world, but they are trying to put educational and entertaining content out into the world, and don’t seem to be malicious in intent.
Give them a break and see where they land down the road. If they turn out to be trash, judge em all you want. As someone that doesn’t spend the time and effort to pass my experience on to others, I’ll give them a bit of wiggle room on the politics associated with operating in the public attention economy.
Haha. That would be too sensible.
Yes, they’re not infallible. That’s why they should be held to account for their actions. You’re the one saying to treat them like they make no mistakes.
lol no. he had a chance, when we tried to have a reasonable conversation with him. his views on autism suck, he partnered with a bad actor, and he muted people who tried to talk to him about it. that’s three different problems.
As a parent of a child with Level 1 autism I would never dare speak as an authority on the subject. There’s just so much nuance to it. I could give people a surface level introduction but that’s it. Being a parent does not make people by default into expert psychotherapists.
That being said, don’t discount your expertise in your lived experience. The importance of theoretical and experiential expertise is equal in my eyes.
Maybe not directly correlated, but I would hire someone with 10 years experience over someone who studied the subject for 10 years.
There are different kinds of experience. For instance there’s the experience of having a child with autism. There’s also the experience of being autistic.
Thanks. Well, we’re in our first year since the diagnosis. There’s still a lot I don’t understand.
The more you understand the better you can help. You’ve made the first and most important step. I’m extremely passionate about this and you will find many around you are also passionate. I’m a grown ass dude and 46 and could cry.
Talk to their teachers as they get older. The best thing you can ever do is diagnose. There are so many kids in the school system parents bury their heads and it hurts everyone.
If you ever want to talk I’m almost a decade into my autism journey. Started at 3 and my son is now 11.
Thanks for the kind words stranger! We are fortunate that we moved to Italy (from US) and they have a -relatively- good integration with the schools. He will need an aid next year in the class for some time so the teachers ‘get it’ (sort of).
Yes, I will save your contact info. I may actually reach out. There are a lot of things I’m still struggling with (he has a loud projection when he expresses himself and it’s almost all the time). I think we sort of adjusted to it over time but it gets heavy at times. I’ll stop here.
Thanks again!
I disagree. It’s not as simple as that.
I wasn’t diagnosed until age 30, and I am thankful I went through my childhood without the label.
As a parent of two kids on the spectrum my messaging has been just this with a resounding “there are legions of autistic people that are NOT represented. Ever.”
Every representation of autistic people you see in the media, or chatting with online are the exception and the fact that they collectively shit on the fact that there are many isolated and struggling is goddamn frustrating.
If you’re autistic and on Lemmy I’m proud of you. My youngest son can’t manage his own diabetes, can’t wipe his ass, needs help showering, has worsening anxiety and ADHD. I could go on.
As a parent I’m supposed to defer to that representation in the media or on Lemmy because “they’re autistic bro.” disgusts me.
My final takeaway. Fuck the DSM V for making Asperger’s the same as Autism. It isn’t. It hurts both parties but I’d argue it hurts Autistic people far more than Asperger’s people.
lol all that just to finish with a definitive statement about autism. Asperger’s has always been an aspect of autism. Dr. Asperger was a Nazi scientist, responsible for deciding who among the neurodivergent would go to the gas chambers. the patients that he deemed to have “mild enough” autism to be used for labor, were called “Asperger’s”.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like you have your hands full and as a parent I can only empathize. I totally hear you about media representation missing the mark. We have some roadway to make. I’m surprised how many parent friends we have that are relatively clueless (even though I must admit, until this January when we got the diagnosis I was too).
My little one started group therapy about two months ago and I’m super grateful even though the journey ahead is still quite long.
On the Asperger’s topic: I was under the impression Asperger’s is no longer in use as a diagnosis and was folded into the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). At least that’s what we learned this year throughout the diagnosis process.
Stay strong brother (or sister)!
From a diagnosis and classification, Autism = Asperger’s.
From a lived experience, Autism != Asperger’s.
The latter has been validated by every expert I have talked over the years from doctors to therapists to education.
Ok. Interesting. I’ll take your word at it.
Please don’t but pay attention to your support group as you move forward. You will learn there are a lot of people that genuinely care about your child and their future. The irony of course is the vast majority of these people make little to no money and are doing what they do because they love it.
As part of your research are you speaking with autistic adults?
Thanks for raising this, I get attacked here if I ever point out autism is a disability. I can only assume these people have literally never met anyone with anything but the mildest of Aspergers cases.
made a pretty weird video about autism, using the fact that his son has it as like qualification for him to talk about it. folks with autism tried to talk to him about the problematic nature of the video in the comments, and he just blocked them.
So typical Autism Parent™ then lol it’s like they can’t help but make it about themselves… 🙄
As a parent of 2 children on the spectrum I need to give you a well thought out “fuck you” in response.
My experience online is a lot of you “champions” for autism are only speaking for yourselves and those like you, which is to say the ones that have some means of independence be it verbally, physically or emotionally. I have one son like that. He’s Asperger’s. He will have challenges, but he will live a long and productive life with all the proper tools. My other son is your “traditional” autistic. He is thankfully verbal but at this point there is no plan for him to be independent ever. As parents we hope for the best and take every day at a time.
To assume that our opinions and decisions are derived as “making about ourselves” is part of the problem. Everything I have done since his birth has been to NOT make it about myself.
The last thing I need is people like you punching down because you can’t look past your own goddamn nose.
he’s not talking about parents of autistic children. he’s talking about parents of autistic children who make that their main personality trait, walking around referring to themselves as “autistic moms”, intentionally using confusing language so you can’t tell if they’re autistic, or if their child is autistic. sort of like Munchausen by Proxy but you don’t have to fake it
Oh yeah those parents who make it their identity are weird AF.
Have you considered working memory training as a method for helping your son become more functional?
Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t consume or not consume whatever content you feel like. Theres an uptick in this weird attitude of “you’re an asshole/fascist/whatever trying to cancel everyone” if you decide to stop watching someone or buying a product. Its bullshit, you don’t owe anybody jack.
You’re one person. Either you bailing won’t matter, or a bunch of people bail and they learn their lesson. Either way you don’t have to put up with a damn thing you don’t want to. 🤷
pretty sure his video about Charmin flushable wipes being the only actually flushable wipes on the planet was bullshit
Yeah
