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Comment by octagons | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

In this case, I think it's safe for the viewers to share some of the blame with Google.

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.

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.

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.

William himself said the reason he is stopping is because of the trolls. I don't remember him mentioning the algorithms at all.

> 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.

I am not familiar with Youtube's payment system. Are you saying they do something like reduce the $ per ad / per view you receive based on the age of the video?

I think it works a little different.

I think your best videos don't get recommended in the sidebar of other videos as much, unless you prove to Youtube that you can keep your subscribers coming back to your content daily.

I think its why you see the Trend in higher quality creators, of cutting out snippets of their longer videos and posting those clips daily. That way they can achieve the frequency without needing to put out brand new content every day.

> If you quit, someone new will take your place.

Why is this a bad thing?

You wouldn't actually prefer if Google kept new creators from getting views just to benefit old creators who aren't producing as much content, would you?

> 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.

No, Google does not want you to "literally die". They aren't taking anything away from old YouTubers by letting users watch content from new YouTubers.

YouTube is an increasingly crowded content and more and more creators are vying for views and advertising dollars. You're ascribing a lot of malice to Google, but you're literally just describing market competition.

The alternative (keeping new content creators locked out so old content creators could continue to profit more) is obviously not viable.

>Why is this a bad thing?

Because it's a systematic force affecting any and all content creators on YouTube.

Both the first person, and the person replacing them, would be under the same pressures.

The incentive is for frequently released bites low effort content at the expense of high quality content.

>You're ascribing a lot of malice to Google, but you're literally just describing market competition.

Sometimes the product of market competition is a race to the bottom, which is great if we're talking solar panels, but less so if we're talking viability of a job and quality of a work product.

I think the more charitable way of understanding the person you are responding to is that ought to be ways of rendering the model sustainable even for those not interested in racing to the bottom.

Google is constantly in the process of restructuring the contours of the experience, the relationship between the audience and the creators, and we're calling everything that happens within those strictures "the market" even though they're a product of Google's discretion.

> Because it's a systematic force affecting any and all content creators on YouTube.

It’s a systematic force for creators across all platforms, with or without YouTube. People make content on the internet and compete for attention. Google didn’t invent market competition.

It doesn’t make sense for you to blame Google for new creators making new videos.

> Both the first person, and the person replacing them, would be under the same pressures.

To compete for viewers? Again, how is this Google’s fault?

I have no idea what you actually expect Google to do.

Limit new creators so the old creators don’t feel competitive pressure?

Hide content from new creators so old creators don’t have to compete with it?

I think you’re angry at the fact that competition exists in the free market, but you’re laying the blame at Google’s feet instead.

It turns out competition can lower overall market quality.

Popularity and quality do not necessarily equate either, but I think there are many people not competing in this arena that would boost the overall quality. I remember the old commercials on TV about Slim Whitman claiming to have sold more albums than Elvis and The Beatles combined. Can anyone here name more than one song, if that, from Slim Whitman? I am in my late 50s and when I take a glance at the most popular Tik Tok or Instagram or YouTube accounts, it makes me think that a culture with lots of time and luxuries on its hands produces mainly garbage watched by people with seemingly nothing better to do, a lot of narcissism; I get guilty reading HN more than 20 min. per day, but I find the discussions thought-provoking, and having programmed since 1978 on a Commodore PET 2001, among familiar folks and subjects.

"Why is this a bad thing?"

It is not necessarily a bad thing, cause good and bad are metrics determined by different people's relative preferences. But I would say it would be nicer if there was more even spread in recommendations between the stars and the people who put out quality videos every so often but don't dedicate their life to being a superstar, rather than a heavily-lopsided. The original spirit was supposed to be "You"Tube, and now it is more like SuperStarTube.

(But I don't want to come across as hating YouTube...I can accept it for what it has become and get my enjoyment out of it and I enjoy the benefit from people stumbling across my videos. I just want to present a different perspective.)

I don't think that's what's happening, I think these quality niche creators are just flooded out by the views from videos that get much wider audience adoption. Stuff like "Win/Fail Compilation 246" that gest 10mil views with a new release every day is more profitable for YouTube to show than a science video that gets 1m views with a release once a month, which is high for a science video.

I guess there's always a trade-off and fine balance between suggesting older good quality videos vs giving chance to the new ones. YT algorithm is probably skewed towards quantity than quality.. that means often favoring someone who releases more frequently with decent quality compared to someone releasing great videos at a far less frequency.

This sounds like an opportunity for multiple long-form video producers to join under a single co-op owned channel. The channel can meter out a video a day or so, from a group of several dozen contributors, each one getting a share of the profits based on individual video popularity.

This.

Though the risk of the channel being the victim of a Google ban-hammer goes up given more contributors. Assuming some incident in which Google's response is warranted, they won't care if told that it was one "bad apple". Chances are they'll hit the channel (and in typical megacorp automated governance mode, not hit that "bad apple" user/contributor).

If Google were smart, they'd see this as an opportunity to "do better" and facilitate these kind of co-ops, with appropriate technical, financial and governance support.

That's clever, but I would be hesitant to join such a co-op because you also share strike count with the others, and if another creator gets your channel banned for wondering about the lab leak theory (back when that was still verboten) you are screwed.

Also I would make sure it's not against the terms of service somehow.

You mean likea Patreon or an OnlyFans? I think this is what OF was originally intended for, and they were kind of caught by surprise that adult performers flocked to the site.

What they're doing is working on Nebula.app

Where the creators themselves have strong say in the platform policies and the recommendations system is much simpler and more transparent. Money comes from subscribers, not ads. (sponsor segments seem to still be allowed)

> Youtube and the algorithm want you to put out content every day

I follow a bunch of YouTubers who put stuff out less than weekly, and make a decent (in some cases huge) living off it. Their content is a bit niche, has zero outrage value, and is incredibly well produced.

Maybe I’m just in a very different part of YouTube but I can’t even think of anyone who posts content daily.

I was going to mention this: on 2019 I started a niche channel, through some good timed posts on reddit I gathered traction, and then my own interest in the channel waned. I still have ~400 subscribers (it stayed at about the all-time high level) and the channel is still gathering about 100 views a month on content that is 2-years old for the newest.

I'm not sure "The Algorithm" is really such a beast as it's portrayed, and some of these takes seem like reductionist views on something that is complex to understand. Two other important metrics that YT checks on videos are watch time and watch %. If those are high, they know the content is good for recommending, even if it's sporadic.

And yes, I also follow channels who post content on a per-week/fortnight/monthly basis and they do fine.

I'm not surprised most tech youtubers don't suffer with burnout with the amount of work and manual labour that needs to go into your standard NileRed, Stuff Made Here, mark Rober, Simon, Giertz, etc. video compared to the rest of youtube.

And that's even before you consider that his house and all his tools burnt down. It's heartbreaking to see that the same has happened to How To Make Everything and I hope he doesn't burn out too

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.

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.

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.

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.

Colin Furze's videos are much worse in the way he shows not using safety gear. At least an X-Ray tube is hard to come by, hard to use and people generally know it's dangerous.

Colin Furze is basically a first world mining operation compared to the "look at how they do <insert thing here> in <insert equatorial country here>" type videos that nobody takes any issue with.

There's a double standard in there somewhere.

Of Course we should set a good example when it comes to working with dangerous things in our youtube videos. We should use PPE at all times and give clear warnings about the risks throughout the video…

… But Maybe if you’re too stupid to realise that a safety tie isn’t actually protective, then maybe your upcoming appointment with evolution is overdue.

Alternate option - stemming from the OP comment - if we want to get children involved in engineering and science fields, and this kind of cool shit science is how we can easily do it, they absolutely have to assume a portion of their audience won't know what is real and what isn't.

In other words, not everyone is you. Always remember that.

Wiley Coyote and the roadrunner rarely wear appropriate PPE. ;) Kids don’t watch any cartoons, do they?

Kids can get their hands on a circular saw, they can't get their hands on a giant mallet the size of a car.

They imitate what they see on roadrunner as best they can.

He has a safety tie

Even that seems not to be featured anymore in his latest videos

> an X-Ray tube is hard to come by

I don’t know what energies you need for medical imaging, but a keV linear electron accelerator is commonly called “a CRT”, and it’s already powerful enough to screw you up if you really try.

(Of course, the power supply, the flyback converter, and all the other stuff you get at immediately upon opening the case are plenty dangerous even without all the effort it takes to get ionizing radiation out of the tube.)

Colin was arrested in 2010:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/plumber-arrested-on-fi...

(I was going to find a "better" source, but the Mirror's version is a bit more entertaining).

After Osmans video all cheap x-ray tubes ware just gone on ebay for weeks.

This often happens.

The video also did not really emphazise the dangers involved.

https://youtu.be/ldYXQxmDP_0?t=1032

You can add: photonicinduction. Everybody looks crazy until they're next to this dude. The dimensions involved scare me, and his "goes to 11 is not enough" attitude makes it even worse.

There is no pearl clutching in science.

Photonicinduction's videos fulfill the wild mad electrical engineering fantasies I never had the guts to try as an undergrad.

I honestly have no idea how he can do that in his own house legally.

I'm pretty sure he's passed that boundary long ago. I'm surprised the power company hasn't tried to stop service yet.

Well, they’d probably need to make a law banning it - and who seriously believes anyone is going to do that anyway enough to pass a law about it? (Lol)

Also, even relatively nanny state UK probably figures if he’s only going to take himself out, why bother trying to stop him.

Well most of the politicians don't have a clue that any of that stuff is possible either.

I also quite enjoy Edwin Sarkissian's "shoot at large/heavy/explosive stuff with very high caliber out in the desert" videos, although it's quite a bit safer than the stuff already mentioned upthread due to his simply being sufficiently far away from the impact/explosion.

Fascinating in the same way as the classic/famous Hydraulic Press Channel.

I believe (though my memory is foggy, so don't quote me on this) Styropyro was approached by some military/DARPA projects with an employment offer, but he reportedly turned it down.

From memory I believe the reason he got the visit was because he made a joke about creating a fusion reactor - something like "until I get my fusion reactor running I'll need to use the sun"

That would be surprising. Building small fusion reactors is neither illegal nor unheard of as a hobby: https://fusor.net/

Unsurprisingly, doing so is hazardous. The process involves high voltage, and if successful, emits X-rays and neutrons.

In contrast, I appreciate that ElectroBOOM carefully scripts every seemingly accidental fire or spark to ensure he's safe. He has had only one instant where he screwed up and survived through luck.

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

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.

Free climbing is dangerous enough to be in that list, IMO. Lots of things can go wrong even with ropes.

You should check out Ryan Jenks on How Not To. His rope swings are pretty safe but also just insane at the same time.

How Not To is so good. Tons of scientific research and analysis goes in to his work.

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

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"

Really? It seems to me like folk on YouTube generally get upset over folk doing dangerous things without framing them as such. Folk are upset at Alex Choi over his involvement with the recent Tesla jump that resulted in a crash and damaged property. There was a fair deal of outrage at Trevor Jacob within the aviation community over his apparent fake engine failure video, where he did the wrong thing even if the engine had failed. The Thought Emporium had folk wagging their finger at them when they had a video on a guy trying to modify his own genome so they wouldn't be lactose intolerant.

But folk generally aren't mad with about things the Mythbusters' did, even though they could have been dangerous, because they were presented as dangerous. Folk have gotten into competitions to fill their backyards with the most foam they can -- which can be dangerous. But it's generally presented as that and they talk about the heat generated and such. Those sorts of things are generally presented as entertaining not a way to get around an expensive medical system or good idea.

Is there anyone who doesn't understand that modifying their genome has risks? The bad engine recovery is misinformation, that deserves criticism. But the intersection of people who could copy the xray design and those who don't know xrays cause damage must be vanishingly small right? It feels like some sort of moral outrage.

Exposure to x-rays is harmful every time. In contrast, basejumping, skateboard tricks, etc. only pose a risk of harm.

Edit: why the downvotes?

The risk of catastrophic harm for BASE jumping (and I say this as a licensed skydiver who has many friends who are base jumpers) is high enough it’s almost certainly safer taking a machine gun, pointing it straight up, and emptying a couple belts in the air trying to hit yourself in the head.

As a noob, it’s more like putting on a blindfold and wandering across 101 at 8pm for a few minutes.

Skateboarding for noobs is much safer as it’s more on the broken bones side than fatalities.

You might be missing my point.

It's like how stabbing yourself in a random spot on the torso with a knife would be (in my estimation) more frowned upon/antisocial than playing Russian roulette with a six shooter.

My big hate, is seeing the more common but much more dangerous activities on youtube not being called out for really stupid OH&S issues.

I watch a lot of car stuff on youtube and I wince ever time I see someone use an angle ginder without gloves, or worse the blade shield.

It's a lot more common to go turn on a power tool and rip a finger off than to do a bmx jump, or build a killer robot or some such. There's a degree of normalization of deviance there.

Doing stuff with science and technology is dangerous in non-obvious and unintuitive ways, and making experiments safe requires expert knowledge. So, the analogy doesn't hold. I don't know anyone who considers those other things you listed as not dangerous.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

You really can't think of a time where powerful people used their platform to spread misinformation or persuade people towards terrible outcomes? And besides, no one is shutting down conversation. They are simply publically denouncing Joe Rogan. Isn't that exactly what you're saying we should be doing, countering speech?

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-ra...

So it's not like the safety concerns are entirely off-base. But still, I agree that it's his life to risk.

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.

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-ma...

Anyway, thanks for the story that I hadn't heard before!

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.

They're widely (although not universally) considered to be irredeemable in England after an article they published in 1934 entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".

Wikipedia is probably a good place to learn a handful of examples and go further down the rabbit hole from there if interested, starting with these sections:

7 Libel lawsuits

    7.1 Successful lawsuits against the Mail
    7.2 Unsuccessful lawsuits
    7.3 Legal action by the Daily Mail

8 Criticism

    8.1 Racism accusations
    8.2 Homophobia accusations
    8.3 Sexism accusations
    8.4 Paying for footage under investigation
    8.5 Byline removal
    8.6 Sensationalism
    8.7 Reliability

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail

Although of course the wikipedia page just has a small number of examples, I'd say that the first words of those 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.6 subheaders above, and lack of 8.7, do a decent job of surmising the Daily Mail.

Safety concerns are real and I believe William Osman manages them pretty well.

Here's a "reacts" video where a radiologist agrees he's being pretty safe and what he's doing isn't that risky (assuming he knows what he's doing with high voltage.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXJs598n3gE

Thanks for this!

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.

Tangential: could you expand on the phenomenon behind software engineer salaries? Or any links for my own research?

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.

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

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

God I miss William.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Why it is immature ?

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".

well, this specific commentor claimed to be an expert on this topic...

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.

Getting worked up enough about a random internet comment to go to that length to try to humiliate the person is immature. Especially with a fraudulent job application.

Here, let's try something out: Neatze, I think you're a big ol idiot.

Now, what is your response going to be? Will you just shake your head and move on with your life? Or will you try to e-stalk me, set up a fake job interview for me, just so you can get a one up on me?

Probably not, because I bet you're more mature than the dude in the video.

In a somewhat comical sense, it's pretty "mature" to draw up a contract with someone (a very "professional" thing to do) to prove a point that someone trolling on your video has no idea what they're talking about. How else could he prove the point in any other realistic manner?

Calling something immature when it's a well thought-out and explored topic doesn't seem fair. He's touched on how random internet trolls hurt other YouTubers, not just him, in other videos (to show this isn't some impulsive thing).

There's nothing mature about violating contract law. It feels like fraudulent misrepresentation to me. Key aspects of fraudulent misrepresentation[0]:

1) a representation was made

2) the representation was false

3) that when made, the defendant knew that the representation was false or that the defendant made the statement recklessly without knowledge of its truth

4) that the fraudulent misrepresentation was made with the intention that the plaintiff rely on it

5) that the plaintiff did rely on the fraudulent misrepresentation

6) that the plaintiff suffered harm as a result of the fraudulent misrepresentation

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraudulent_misrepresentation

I don’t think Will committed fraudulent misrepresentation, if that could even apply or if this somehow caused harm. Either way, who said violating contract law was immature? Only you. Why suggest I did? What motive do you have here?

If you make tens of thousands of dollars a month on YouTube with AdSense, you are effectively a business. And indeed, many of these YouTubers have setup businesses in their name that receive the AdSense funds, and pay themselves a salary out of that.

A company does not publicly humiliate a customer who makes a detrimental statement to its products - can you imagine the devastation from someone who is socially awkward and receives this kind of backlash for the horrific crime of speaking slightly out of line?

Does your employer have a "worst employee of the month" poster with enumerated examples of all of the fuckups they made in the last month? That would be a million times less harmful than a pop-culture hack doing the same thing to you because you said something out of line.

People should be free to abuse each other online, call each other all sorts of stuff and ESPECIALLY lie or stretch the truth, without facing offline scrutiny or embarrassment.

I disagree with your opinion that people should be free to abuse others online without any scrutiny offline. Especially when people claim to be experts and assert authority on subjects.

Also, what is with creating these fictional scenarios about an employer punishing a customer or employee? Even if “he” were a business, he’s free to react to criticism however he chooses.

My local barber chose to respond to negative reviews by chastising every single one. They still somehow have plenty of happy customers.

> A company does not publicly humiliate a customer who makes a detrimental statement to its products

This happens quite often.

It's very common to find reviews on Yelp where someone leaves a less-than-honest review and the company owner comes in and explains what a piece of shit that person was and how they aren't telling the whole story.

If you come into a store and act like a dick towards the staff, you will almost certainly be publicly humiliated.

It even happens with larger companies where someone goes to the media with some BS story, and then the company issues public statements about how that person is full of shit.

I see nothing wrong with what William did. It may be petty, but who cares. If you don't want to be called out, don't be a troll.

There are three differences between what Osman Unincorporated and the companies that you describe have done.

# Number one is scope:

- They do not have the same amount of readers, evangelists etc. that could harass the person making the erroneous claim

# Number two is positioning:

- Reviews can be, by their very nature, points of discussion, therefore meaning that anything underneath a review, including a comment from the company that makes the product, is a point of discussion and thus necessary to protect in order to have a free and open dialog.

# Number three is punching power:

- William Osman published a fraudulent job application and got someone to sign a contract while promising him that he moving up in the world, only to pull the rug out from underneath him and instead shock him with the fact that he is now going to be harassed due to his uninformed "trolling" (which happens plenty of times from informed professionals even on Hacker News). This kind of bait and switch is mentally devastating, and the person is undoubtedly shocked from such an act of bullying which could be argued to be traumatizing. All of this happened because the guy spoke out of line on a specific technical issue on which both people were wrong.

Yeah, that whole video was very cringe-inducing.

Thanks for that video. I now have MASSIVE respect for this dude. I don't think it's immature at all. It was a very fun way to call out this piece of shit of a person.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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