His justifications bother me, it's still making money from manipulation, and in at least one example he makes, fear.
One thing that doesn't get mention is how clickbait changes your audience, usually in a race to the bottom. It alienates fewer people than it attracts, but then your new audience reacts differently to your content.
Any title will change the state of the reader's mind. The question is what is the split of benefits or harms between the reader and the writer. This goes beyond Youtube, and even interactions motivated by money.
This is an area where I was initially very bothered, but over time have arrived at the opinion that it is very nuanced, and that things like this can be incredibly positive.
If I go to the grocery store, they have a display of fruit, and I decide to buy a few, I have been manipulated. They were motivated by profit (sell more fruit). This required consuming some of my attention (I had intended to go to the store and buy different items). However, both I (yummy healthy fruit) and the grocery store (money to owners, employees, suppliers) benefit from this interaction.
There are other types of interactions where one or more parties are negatively affected in the sum of the overall interaction. This are obviously bad, but are besides the point.
If someone has a product with the highest value for the opportunity cost, I want to be manipulated into using it. However I also want to avoid manipulation where I gain little, zero, or negative benefit. It's a complicated problem, and I have found that the maximum benefit to me (and everyone involved) sits squarely (and very annoyingly) in the grey area.
As for Veritasium, I have watched his videos for roughly a decade. Any video of his in my subscription feed is going to be watched. Any increase in viewership which allows him to increase his budget and quality only benefits me, provided he's behaving ethically. I see from this video that he's examining the problem and at least trying to be ethical, which I appreciate.
Well, one YouTuber I follow, don't remember which, was quite irate and disappointed regarding his coverage of a recent self-driving cars video (IIRC), that amounted to ~"barely a bit more than an ad". (Haven't watched the Veritasium's video in question yet, so cannot really comment on the veracity of the claims.)
I took the video as a long winded “don’t hate the player hate the game” and assume he wants external validation that it’s okay to manipulate people if everyone else is doing it.
I like him and watch all his videos, but the ease of that justification is why we are on a long slippery slide straight into dystopia.
What do you expect people to do? Let their YouTube careers bleed to death because of their principle? The only one at fault here is YouTube and their algorithm.
On the other hand, judging people for actions/justifications like these makes it easier to postpone or avoid making demands for systematic changes. Blaming individuals is easier, and has a higher chance of getting results. The fossil fuel industry is great at utilizing this, placing blame on individuals of the general public for pollution.
The challenge, as he mentions a bit at the end, is that "no manipulation" isn't an option. He didn't have to climb up on a ladder, or post-edit 3D labels on top of his presentation, or make a cute little animation of a present unwrapping into another present. He did all of that to make the video more engaging, which means nothing more or less than manipulating people to keep watching. Crazy titles bug me personally a lot more than fancy editing or weird props, but as long as they're not so misleading I can't make an informed decision on what to watch, it's hard to begrudge content creators an engagement tool that can make such a difference.
What is and is not "manipulation" depends on your definition of manipulation. A very narrow definition captures only intentional harm and a very broad definition excludes only existing in a vacuum isolated from the universe.
It is pretty easy, when you are engaging in questionable manipulation to justify what you are doing by picking a somewhat broader line for what counts as manipulation compared to what you are doing and then saying "see! there's no way I can't manipulate!". Comforting perhaps but more of a rationalization than a reason.
When you make your decisions about quality with popularity as a basis, there is no way you don't end up being manipulative with or without intent. This is what is wrong with the attention economy, it evolves the world to find and exploit the weaknesses in humans.
>so misleading I can't make an informed decision on what to watch
I'm finding this to be more and more the case. It seems like a competition on who can withhold the most information about what the video is actually about. Soon enough all youtube videos will be titled "???" and the thumbnails will just be random static
I have found this video to be cope, it's trying to justify clickbait as "making an effective title". I think it's important to have in mind what was the purpose of the internet: to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world can move forward faster. Clickbaiting people to watch 10 minutes videos for tiddly little bits of information is a colossal waste of potential there.
Have you also found other videos by the author to be "10 minutes of tiddly little bits of information"?
I think Veritasium makes some of the most valuable and informative videos out there. Definitely not the kind of channel that i would consider "baiting" with titles and then disappointing with the video content itself.
His views on video titles' "clickbaitiness", given the state of affairs of Youtube recommendation algorithms and the "competition" for viewers' attention, seem pretty on point to me.
Veritasium is good but it's definitely on the fluffy/filler content side of things. I wouldn't exactly call it the most valuable and informative videos out there. It's more breath than depth.
I know that he makes good videos, but he seems to give a free pass to clickbait here. We know how clickbait works from SEO: thousands of articles with same clickbait titles, which ends up in content mattering less and less, creates SEO farms, leads to content makers having to buy ads to feature their
content etc. Also, even the title of this video becomes confusing: this video will now show up for someone searching for Wigner's famous speech with the same name, plus the title is factually incorrect, clickbait is reasonably effective, not unreasonably.
He specifically said in the video that he hasn't been doing this in the past, but plans to "get better at it".
I think one of his videos that qualifies as pure clickbait is "Can a Wind-Powered Car Go Faster Than The Wind?". It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. Certainly not 20 minutes worth, and very different from the rest of his videos. It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching.
A shame he doesn't name them properly to make the "most valuable and informative" videoes more easily accessible to those in need of information on the topic
> Have you also found other videos by the author to be "10 minutes of tiddly little bits of information"?
Yes. His videos are personable and pleasant to watch, but information sparse. They are more likely to leave me with the feeling of learning something than they are to impart lasting knowledge (ironically, I believe this is a problem he has discussed before, I guess that much stuck with me at least.)
Some of your criticism seems to be directed at video length and not a clickbaity title. If a video takes 10 minutes to tell me a single piece of information, the title isn't the issue with that video.
Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but what if there's a human reason why 10m videos are popular. Maybe 10 minutes is just the minimum time needed to get across a non-trivial idea to a broad audience. Sure, the platform itself encourages that length implicitly but maybe that's not an arbitrary decision and is based on the human capacity to absorb information.
Tough to put in words really. Maybe it could be rephrased to "I found that he is trying to legitimize clickbait", however the second part of the sentence says that too.
> to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world can move forward faster.
While I would love this to be true, we have to remember that so much of the internet is a business in our capitalist economy. To many YouTube channels (especially the big ones), the primary purpose of the title is to get someone to watch the video to make money. Sharing information is only a secondary purpose.
This is true across basically every business. The primary purpose of anything is profit, and every other thing is secondary. This is why health care is difficult to privatize, as the primary purpose of profit is very easily at odds with the secondary purpose of health outcomes.
I feel like I see this purpose thing come up all the time in different parts of businesses, and it really makes me wonder whether this system is sustainable. The YouTube channel is justified in writing a clickbait title, because other types of titles reduce profit. And because of the way our society and economy works, reducing profit is always a “bad” thing. You could say that with more profit, the creators could expand the business and provide even more value to their viewers. Maybe that’s true in this case, but that’s basically the whole reason clickbait exists. I’m not sure we should be that happy about it.
Veritasium is an awesome channel. Check his videos out if you haven't already.
Derek wrote a PHD on how to make videos interesting while learning and his YouTube reflects some deep thoughts on how to do that. Quality is awesome, he is personable, and you feel you always learn some deep insider knowledge.
some quick research says that he got a PhD in physics education research from the University of Sydney. You can read his PhD thesis, "Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education", right here: https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/supe...
OT: Youtube should adopt Github-like URLs so you could know that this was a Veritasium video just by looking at the link. Secondly, HN should show more of the URL for such sites.
IF Youtube revealed the creator's channel on the URL THEN HN could (and should) show that element.
Note that the suggested change would also better enable my requested feature of being able to block specific channels by providing the in-URL hooks to do so.
While I like the channel in general, these attempts at justifying click bait are just annoying. Just do it if you deem it necessary, but don't pretend like you have the moral high ground for doing it. You don't.
That being said, Veritasium is among the least clickbaity clickbaiters.
My grandfather, who I respected very much, was an accomplished career bureaucrat and considered any sort of promotion beneath him, and for sure crafting clickbait would earn his scorn. Thus marketing, promotion and crafting clickbait goes against everything I come from.
But, making something that I think will actually help people, and then watching it go unseen because I wouldn't do the thing required to spread the message via the network effect is a far worse fate.
I really appreciate his current title of that example video "The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - The Collatz Conjecture" because the thing that pisses me off most about clickbait is that I just don't know what the video or article is even about. It just creates an immediate dilemma which I personally find stressful. I think it actually violates the principle of autonomy because they're intentionally taking away your ability to make an informed decision. People mention deception but it's a little bit more than that because of this.
Maybe that's me, but I think the worst offenders are the ones who actually disappoint (Veritasium not being one.) How can we disincentivize them doing that? Currently, there seems to be little downside for them completely misrepresenting their content.
At least in that particular case the image (if not the title) gave you, personally, the information you needed about the video topic. If you know what the Collatz Conjecture is, the image “3x+1” makes the topic obvious. If you don’t, your curiosity is piqued.
Readit News
One thing that doesn't get mention is how clickbait changes your audience, usually in a race to the bottom. It alienates fewer people than it attracts, but then your new audience reacts differently to your content.
This is an area where I was initially very bothered, but over time have arrived at the opinion that it is very nuanced, and that things like this can be incredibly positive.
If I go to the grocery store, they have a display of fruit, and I decide to buy a few, I have been manipulated. They were motivated by profit (sell more fruit). This required consuming some of my attention (I had intended to go to the store and buy different items). However, both I (yummy healthy fruit) and the grocery store (money to owners, employees, suppliers) benefit from this interaction.
There are other types of interactions where one or more parties are negatively affected in the sum of the overall interaction. This are obviously bad, but are besides the point.
If someone has a product with the highest value for the opportunity cost, I want to be manipulated into using it. However I also want to avoid manipulation where I gain little, zero, or negative benefit. It's a complicated problem, and I have found that the maximum benefit to me (and everyone involved) sits squarely (and very annoyingly) in the grey area.
As for Veritasium, I have watched his videos for roughly a decade. Any video of his in my subscription feed is going to be watched. Any increase in viewership which allows him to increase his budget and quality only benefits me, provided he's behaving ethically. I see from this video that he's examining the problem and at least trying to be ethical, which I appreciate.
Well, one YouTuber I follow, don't remember which, was quite irate and disappointed regarding his coverage of a recent self-driving cars video (IIRC), that amounted to ~"barely a bit more than an ad". (Haven't watched the Veritasium's video in question yet, so cannot really comment on the veracity of the claims.)
I like him and watch all his videos, but the ease of that justification is why we are on a long slippery slide straight into dystopia.
It is pretty easy, when you are engaging in questionable manipulation to justify what you are doing by picking a somewhat broader line for what counts as manipulation compared to what you are doing and then saying "see! there's no way I can't manipulate!". Comforting perhaps but more of a rationalization than a reason.
When you make your decisions about quality with popularity as a basis, there is no way you don't end up being manipulative with or without intent. This is what is wrong with the attention economy, it evolves the world to find and exploit the weaknesses in humans.
I'm finding this to be more and more the case. It seems like a competition on who can withhold the most information about what the video is actually about. Soon enough all youtube videos will be titled "???" and the thumbnails will just be random static
I think Veritasium makes some of the most valuable and informative videos out there. Definitely not the kind of channel that i would consider "baiting" with titles and then disappointing with the video content itself.
His views on video titles' "clickbaitiness", given the state of affairs of Youtube recommendation algorithms and the "competition" for viewers' attention, seem pretty on point to me.
Here's an example of someone low-key having really valuable and informative content, with very little fluff: https://youtube.com/channel/UCGKe6VmbFOX-3C30JjEsV-g
I think one of his videos that qualifies as pure clickbait is "Can a Wind-Powered Car Go Faster Than The Wind?". It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. Certainly not 20 minutes worth, and very different from the rest of his videos. It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching.
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Yes. His videos are personable and pleasant to watch, but information sparse. They are more likely to leave me with the feeling of learning something than they are to impart lasting knowledge (ironically, I believe this is a problem he has discussed before, I guess that much stuck with me at least.)
Tough to put in words really. Maybe it could be rephrased to "I found that he is trying to legitimize clickbait", however the second part of the sentence says that too.
While I would love this to be true, we have to remember that so much of the internet is a business in our capitalist economy. To many YouTube channels (especially the big ones), the primary purpose of the title is to get someone to watch the video to make money. Sharing information is only a secondary purpose.
This is true across basically every business. The primary purpose of anything is profit, and every other thing is secondary. This is why health care is difficult to privatize, as the primary purpose of profit is very easily at odds with the secondary purpose of health outcomes.
I feel like I see this purpose thing come up all the time in different parts of businesses, and it really makes me wonder whether this system is sustainable. The YouTube channel is justified in writing a clickbait title, because other types of titles reduce profit. And because of the way our society and economy works, reducing profit is always a “bad” thing. You could say that with more profit, the creators could expand the business and provide even more value to their viewers. Maybe that’s true in this case, but that’s basically the whole reason clickbait exists. I’m not sure we should be that happy about it.
I am not familiar with this phrase - is it a typo or is this just a bit of slang I have missed out on - is it a variant of this https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope
For example:
Alice: I may be ugly, but at least I’m not superficial.
Bob: Cope
Derek wrote a PHD on how to make videos interesting while learning and his YouTube reflects some deep thoughts on how to do that. Quality is awesome, he is personable, and you feel you always learn some deep insider knowledge.
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Note that the suggested change would also better enable my requested feature of being able to block specific channels by providing the in-URL hooks to do so.
(Not OP.)
That being said, Veritasium is among the least clickbaity clickbaiters.
But, making something that I think will actually help people, and then watching it go unseen because I wouldn't do the thing required to spread the message via the network effect is a far worse fate.
So, I do the thing.
Maybe that's me, but I think the worst offenders are the ones who actually disappoint (Veritasium not being one.) How can we disincentivize them doing that? Currently, there seems to be little downside for them completely misrepresenting their content.
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