You may be interested to see this critique of Veritasium which cooled my views on the channel significantly since I saw it:
Looking at just the video he left the feeling that all electricity being taught is completely wrong while actually he was talking about some edge case and failed to put it into the proper context. He did not mention at all that the proportion of what he was talking about was essentially irrelevant unless you are an electronics board designer.
In a simplified circuit model it would work like a circuit, in a as-real-world-as-possible model it would always be dominated by interference. In a carefully-segregated-semi-real model, it would be less than 1% on after 1/c seconds, would you really call that on? If it was, then 100% on would be way too much current!
So many minutes spent without explaining that the real world is very complicated and EEs apply different models to different situations as appropriate, and it's silly to say that only the field matters not the electrons because of course the electrons cause the field while the field moves the electrons, and the original question is a trick because it's an idealized thought experiment which tries to trick you into applying the wrong model but that's silly because it's an idealized thought experiment which wouldn't work in the real world so it's only purpose is to exercise a simplified model ...
Great fodder for a series of viral-y videos from multiple youtubers though. (electroboom's response was pretty good IMHO)
I'm not entirely sure if Derek didn't really understand what he was presenting in that video or deliberately based it on a really misleading bullshit gotcha to troll people and stir debate for clicks, and neither reflects very well on him.
For anyone following science in mice, this seems like an extremely huge red flag. That together with the cosmetic surgery and a clear financial incentive for the him to lie here, seeing as he is selling a book about it, was triggering just about every bullshit detecting neuron in my brain.
Veritasium however seems perfectly fine with it, and still posted the video.
I haven't ever seen anyone else bring this up, so if anyone wants to share their own hot take on this, I'd be interested to know :)
He also made it clear that the light globe in the original video did not receive enough current to light up.. it was hooked up to an alternative power source and an oscilloscope and upon receiving any signal above baseline would switch on the globe.
It really put me off his channel for a long time. I still watch his channel to be fair and get a lot out of it, but his videos hit different after seeing him double down on criticisms and contorting controversy instead of just saying sorry.
If you want to get that detailed most people would freak at conventional vs electron flow. The + wire is actually where the negative electrons are emitted. But as electricity was developed people didn't know that but it all works out so it was left as is. For physics or any other scientific experiments electron flow is used.
Even the term "negative" is a can of worms it could have been called green or red or yellow not "negative". It comes from Ben Franklin and accounting terms.
That said, the channel is more popular than ever so who knows.