Maybe not that interesting for everyone here, but I found no better community for this.
And of course, the video was preempted by an AI slop ad of a talking monkey wearing a neck brace.
Use Firefox + uBlock Origin on desktop and on mobile. Only watch YouTube via Firefox. Never see these bullshit ads again.
Currently adblocking is winning the war of the technical evolution of control vs. resistance.
Shoutout to Revanced patcher if you’d like an app equivalent with the same level of customization
Honestly, it isn’t the AI so much as it is the suspension that rules that apply to us should also apply to AI. They are barely legal companies getting away with murder due to the residual power of a corrupt empire in decline.
Much the same as blockchain - it could have been exciting and fun, but it was immediately put to work to exploit people, and in the end that’s what the tools effectively were.
I don’t think blockchain has any legitimate uses. All of the proposed uses for blockchain are all tech bro nonsense.
I think they were talking about having a decentralised property permits. As if that’s something that would be even remotely useful.
You’d be surprised how valuable these technologies can be when they’re not only being developed to create new financialized services to overcharge people for. Manufacturing and shipping has huge capital and logistic buffers created by information gaps, production shortfalls, fraud, etcetera, and cryptographic ledgers are excellent for ensuring accurate production and inventory information is relayed to clients in realtime. What’s more, it has the potential to mediate international transactions without relying on Swift or global banking institutions that are an extension of US authority.
Notice how nothing I said was about fucking NFTs. The western financial system completely lost the plot doing super cocaine and became convinced they could just ask the rest of the world to stay slaves forever. They don’t even care about its potential! They want TrumpCoin.
Their quality going down is probably what’s killing their channel. Every video is a merch ad, and the occasional shilling for the fossil fuel industry probably doesn’t help any.
These things are to be expected when you get bought by private equity, but let’s not be dishonest and say it’s all AI slop that’s killing them.
When did they shill for fossil fuel? Not saying it didn’t happen, just wondering
They accepted, and continue to accept a great amount of money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation owns over $11 billion in investments in the fossil fuel industry, including coal-burning utility companies.
In return, there were quite a few videos that Kurzgesagt admits were funded directly by the Foundation, that exaggerate the positive influence corporations owned by the foundation have had. Videos which the CEO of Kurzgesagt has admitted they probably would not have made if the Foundation had not paid for them.
That’s really embarrassing that we as a community have chosen, of all possible creators, to deride Kurzgesagt for taking money from The Gates Foundation. It’s 0.05% of their holdings. ZERO POINT ZERO FIVE. Which, by the way, is down from 6% in the past after public concern — yes, a whopping 6%. Scourge of the earth, locked out of heaven: The Gates Foundation. Those computer nerds strike again. And we choose to punish a great content contributor for that. Shameful display of purity politics.
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Yeah. It seems like a ridiculous accusation to make. Bro couldn’t even answer the question about example of shilling so they had to pivot into the crime of taking money from a foundation to produce high quality educational content.
How dare they?
They accepted, and continue to accept a great amount of money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation owns over $11 billion in investments in the fossil fuel industry, including coal-burning utility companies.
In return, there were quite a few videos that Kurzgesagt admits were funded directly by the Foundation, that exaggerate the positive influence corporations owned by the foundation have had. Videos which the CEO of Kurzgesagt has admitted they probably would not have made if the Foundation had not paid for them.
question answered. if you don’t want to accept the CEO of Kurzgesagt word that they would not have made the videos if they hadn’t been paid to, then that isn’t my problem. I’m not here to convince you, and I don’t mind if you don’t believe him.
Still waiting on that citation. (not of your own prior post)
I did a few searches and while I didn’t find that quote from Kurzgesagt’s CEO, I did find the contribution listed from a decade ago on the Gates foundation website. $570,000 paid out over four years. They also gave NPR $2,000,000 the next year.
Since I didn’t find the CEOs quote you’ve mentioned, I can only question the context around it. Would those videos not have been made because the Gates foundation specifically tied the funding to those videos being created? Or would they not have been made because Kurzgesagt didn’t have the money to do so otherwise?
Regardless, Kurzgesagt is a private company and if they wanted to conceal hidden agendas by corporate contributors, they would just keep quiet - not openly acknowledge that they made content with money given to them by some larger organisation.
If we’re going to denounce any group of people that are connected via Bacon’s Law to a disastrous corporate industry, the moral high ground will be unachievable for the entirety of our species.
The Hated One did a video some years ago on the matter, if you’re curious then search it up because they list all their sources for everything including the quote from the CEO.
The problem is when the contributors influence what the videos say, in contradiction to data.
Kurzgesagt’s video on +2° / +3° / +4° over the global mean isn’t going to be so bad video was conspicuous to me, and is in fact, based on fossil-fuel industry rhetoric, rather than climatology estimations (which tell us over +1.5° is going to fuck us, and is).
That’s a pretty dishonest take from that video honestly.
Feel free to explain it in better terms. TBH, I watched the first half and quit in disgust.
“I’m going to watch half the movie then complain about it not making sense and having a bad ending”
They accepted, and continue to accept a great amount of money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
It’s interesting how any false narrative starts with a granule of truth.
Kurzgesagt was indeed provided $570,000 in 2015. That money was paid out across the following four years.
They have not continued to accept any amount of money from the Gates foundation.
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Idk about fossil fuels specifically but they been directly being sponsored by big companies and in return making propoganda for them for a few years now.
As much as i regret linking to reddit here, i feel it is fair to also post the channels answer to the video.
I watch that channel for years and i had no idea. I post his answer over the channels answer. Although that is 3 years old, i wonder what is now happening.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thehatedone/comments/10pb1q9/my_response_to_kurzgesagt/
I just looked at the public company records and they are not owned by private equity. What are you talking about?
First off, no you didn’t.
Secondly, if you take money from billionaires to make propaganda videos for them, then you’re owned by them. You sell your soul to the devil, you can’t undo it later because you get called out for it.
These things are to be expected when you get bought by private equity,
Excuse me, what?
They are owned by private equity? It’s pretty common these days for the more popular YT channels. Veritasium, Astrum, Fireship, fern., and Hoog are some other examples. Basically, if it’s a popular YT channel, it’s either owned by PE, in negotiations to be acquired by PE, or pursued by a PE firm in the hopes that they can acquire it. Private equity is accelerating their acquisitions, actually, and they want to control everything that captures the attention of viewers.
Here’s a video that talks about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ-rRXWhElI
No wonder veritasium has felt “off” for me for a good while as well. A few years ago I deliberately stopped watching that channel, seems there was a deeper reason behind my superficial reasons and gut feelings
He basically only makes “why everyone except me is wrong about X” content now, and it’s super smug and obnoxious.
They seem to use the “shotgun” future in Youtube for titles and Thumbnails. Having the a bunch of different titles and and thumbnails and eventually sticking with the combo that drives the most engagement.
The content is higher-quality, more like a TV production. But it’s still pretty solid. Good analogies and intuitive explanations.
There’s an incredible amount of money in those offers. Years ago Linus Tech Tips got an offer of 100m, so I get why people take the money.
I mean, I would probably sell the channel myself. That’s a lifechanging amount of money. I would buy some land deep in the backcountry, build a little walled village, and invite my family and friends to come live there. Grow our own food, set up some solar panels and wind turbines, buy up plenty of guns and ammo, and see if we couldn’t hunker down and live out the ever more likely downfall of the American economy in relative peace.
You had me up to “lots of guns and ammo”.
if you wanna just have boards with rusty nails and maybe a baseball bat for defense when trump takes the mask completely off and his raving followers form pogroms to round up people who aren’t loyal to him, then I will say something nice in your memory when the time comes.
You can’t even say anything nice now
So basically you would turn yourself in a mini-me version of Zuckenberg, Musk and Bezos. Given this consideration I would reassess my life priorities if I were you
the priority would be the lives of my friends and family. that is a priority that will not change as long as I draw breath, no matter what anyone thinks.
Well, if the societal structure falls there won’t be anything left to provide for your friends and family and you’ll be left to eat each other in your compound as will the billionaires using their fortunes to build survival bunkers. If that’s the way you wanna go, with the leg of your mother as dinner, be my guest. If you, on the other hand, want to have a positive impact on the whole process helping stop this social decline there are much better ways to use your hypothetical money. It’s up to you to decide, greed over cooperation or the other way around?
Do you have actual evidence for Kurzgesagt being among PE-owned channels, or are you just extrapolating? Because the video you linked doesn’t mention them, and a quick search didn’t turn up anything about that.
extrapolating
Interesting way to say “making shit up”
Didn’t want to be too combative from the start lol
I don’t see any evidence of that, as well.
if most of your money comes from billionaires and you admit to making propaganda videos for them, you’re owned by private equity. it doesn’t matter how much you or they argue about how that isn’t technically true because it’s not officially on paper.
Like it or not, words have meaning, and black and white thinking is comfortable, but doesn’t help anyone. There is still a massive difference between the gates foundation having a 0.5% stake in Kurzgesagt and them being “owned” by PE, and pretending otherwise just means you’re not actually interested in any kind of productive discussion.
When you sell your soul to the devil, it’s gone forever. And I never implied I was interested in “productive discussion”. I said what I said because I’ve seen what evidence there is and have made my own conclusions. I never said I was interested in debating.
I dont think its AI Slop thats “killing the channel” if that statement is even remotely true its due to more and more of their videos being slop sci low information videos. The target audience must be stoners who want to watch something that is visually appealing and feels educational
I want an ad / DNS blocklist for AI slop. I want to not even be able to go to HiSToRiAn AsLeEp In ThE WoOdS channels on my networks and devices
You can have your Google search go before 2022. I do this sometimes
Have they considered that they’re just not a great channel?
Have you actually watched any of their videos? That’s obviously not true
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I lost interest in the channel due to their overly optimistic hopium, e.g. “We WILL solve climate change.”
We will not solve it, it’s way too late for that. Still, every 0.01°C additional warming counts. People not born yet will suffer more from everything we don’t do now. So, rolling on our backs and giving up is not helping at all. Going vegan is a easy first step to make a difference. Start blowing up pipelines after that. :)
going vegan has not made any difference
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This whole video felt like an advertisement to me. I’d already seen it twice, was it necessary to crosspost it again? You could at least have waited a couple of weeks before reposting the same content.
I have noticed that I don’t click on their videos as fast. Used to be that as soon as you see a video in the feed it was an instant click.
I think the topics they make videos on these days feel more gimicy and click baity so I kinda avoid them
100%. The recent videos all seem like they’re ragebait (‘alcohol is awesome’ springs to mind).
They could be good, I haven’t watched them. if they’re targeting people who respond to that tone then it’s not for me.
It’s a shame. I liked the earlier videos on ant colonies and strange matter and stars and stuff.
I mean, you’re petroleum industry apologists, so for a change I’m not that broken up.
🚨 🚨 PURITY TEST INCOMING! 🚨 🚨
I feel like propping up the industry primarily responsible for one of the largest (if not the largest) crises in human history is an appropriate place to draw a line.
Kurzgezagt is a slop channel too you know.
Eww Bad Empanada? That guy is unreasonably gross.
Reasons ? Oh wait you hate him. Me too but that doesn’t mean his points are invalid.
Tell me you live in an internet echo chamber without directly saying it…
If echo chamber means I can criticize your gurus, then so be it
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