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.)
For what it's worth, I enjoyed the video. However I'm bullish on Waymo's approach to self driving, so I wouldn't feel it as much if the video is too positive.
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.
Maybe that race car driver is a brainlet who would otherwise be living in poverty, so we shouldn't give him too much grief for it. Probably not, but maybe. But the veritasium guy? He's surely a bright guy with plenty of opportunities; he could have chosen another line of work.
A race driver is a much more elite position. There are less of them than there are Youtubers, and there's a lot more attention on you. A dismissal of a sponsorship could be spun into a big PR move, if they wanted to. Compare that to a single social media actor, you'd have to be an absolute huge name to make any sort of difference, simply because there are so many others out there that will immediately fill the gap you'd leave.
Maybe Derek (I had to google his name) would be able to choose another line of work, but what if your passion is to spread knowledge about science and such to the general public? As much as I dislike them myself, I really do believe that social media such as Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, is the best way to achieve that goal today.
I don’t think anything he said is incorrect, but he does seem to miss the world of possible incentive structures that would reduce clickbait.
The only way to stop it is to stop giving an inch. But that will never happen, guys like him have way too much to lose to take a stand. Plus most of the other YouTubers will happily continue so it will have been for nothing.
It's completely unrealistic to expect an individual to do the "right" thing here. When that right thing means their career ends.
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