There is a massive YouTube and Instagram industry of outright faking craft and cooking tips. They're not just bad or a stretch, they're intentionally fabricated, made at scale by TheSoul Publishing with 550 employees. That's because making cool things looking surprisingly easy goes viral way better than actual reality-grounded instructions, and for the adtech giants nothing matters except the number of clicks.<p>Before people realize that they can't really make a 3-layer cake in a toaster, the fakers already cash in on the views. Usually the risk of these faked craft hacks is just cut fingers and kitchen fires, but the "just grab 2000V, it's so easy!" videos take it to another level of lethality.
YouTube's moderation is ridiculous, and it demonstrates the problem Google has in general. They don't like paying actual people to moderate their sites, and rely on automated systems and bots to do everything for them. So, if there's ever an issue (or you have a bunch of scammers mass reporting you because you debunk their 'work'), then YouTube/Google seems to think you're the problem instead of the scumbags.<p>We need things to change here. We need Google to moderate their services properly, and we need these scammers to get arrested/sued/whatever for misleading info, and putting people's lives at risk.
Big Clive has a good video on why this is dangerous and how to make it more safe. Note: not safe safe, just more safe.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBeSKL9zVro" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBeSKL9zVro</a>
It's terrible how little basic electronic safety is practiced in virtually all of these videos. When we handled high amps in university, we had 3 hours of lecture first simply explaining safety precautions and how to handle accidents.<p>Not to mention, the burnt wood looks so gaudy and uninteresting. I would hardly call it fractal as it only goes 2-3 levels usually, and artistically doesn't usually make sense on furniture etc.
When I was young and stupid, I did this. Suddenly felt some tingling sensation in my fingers, threw the leads away and jumped back. Most certainly saved my life and drilled in my head how dangerous it is.
Still get a sinking feeling in my stomach whenever I am at some switching station below the 380KV leads, remembering that day. Especially after knowing people who got into 120KV, and what happened to them...<p>Electricity is dangerous. In every form. Period. Keep your fingers away from it when you don't know what you do. Household appliances can not only kill you on the mains side. Microwave transformers, flyback circuits, burner igniters, HV Car Ignition Systems...
Playing with microwaves carries many risks. Even without getting electricity involved, the magnetron contains beryllium oxide which can be fatal to humans if it gets into the lungs. Just to disassemble one, you need to know what the magnetron looks like and not try to disassemble it.<p>Like many other appliances, it has capacitors, which may remain charged for a long time too. Those are dangerous too.
I'm only now leaning of this phenomenon, and I'm absolutely floored that something like fractal wood burning has claimed the lives of 34 people (known), and there's a general laisse-faire attitude around it.<p>By itself this is close to the deadliest mass shootings in the history of the United States in terms of human casualties, even though the emotional impact is not the same.
At scale, whack-a-mole take-downs and trying to idiot-proof the internet just feel kinda futile.<p>A suggested (<i>IANAL</i>) alternative, for "dangerous ways to maim or kill yourself" YouTube content:<p>- A "Report Being A Dangerous Thing To Try" YouTube page - with a few drop-downs, to summarize why it's dangerous. (High Voltage, Poison, Explosive, Fire Hazard, Dangerous Animals, Motor Vehicle Stunts, etc.)<p>- Verified-as-dangerous videos stay up, but get a few seconds of skull-and-crossbones warning. With a death count, and "report yet another death" link. That last has a high enough bar ("crippled-for-life doesn't count, include official death certificate <i>and</i> certified police or medical report, ...") to make it clear that there are real dead bodies behind that body count.<p>Unstated goal: Encourage less-stupid people to realize that following cool-sounding directions from the internet could maim or kill them. <i>Whether or not</i> anyone has yet gone to the effort required to get a specific video flagged as deadly.
Imperfect moderation is inevitable at the massive scale of social media companies. YouTube receives an enormous quantity of video every day and it’s clearly impossible to have humans review all of it. If we humans did review every single minute of video, the subjective element of moderation would still lead to headlines like this where someone could identify instances of inconsistencies.<p>Given that she re-uploaded the video and I’m watching it on YouTube right now, I assume the initial moderation strike was more of a mistake. Or more likely, maybe it was reported by a number of people who were upset by it for some reason and it entered an auto-moderation queue.<p>I have a hard time getting too worked up about news stories of singular moderation mistakes. Does anyone realistically expect YouTube to have perfectly consistent moderation? Even HN, a significantly smaller community, has very uneven and inconsistent moderation due to the user-influenced flagging features.
I noticed I feel literally unsafe watching any DIY video on there now that the dislikes are gone. I realize I'm proceeding in a place where I relied on a warning system that has been taken away.
> <i>It is extraordinarily dangerous, and dozens of people have been killed following instructions contained in viral videos.</i><p>Thought this might be an exaggeration (classic “well <i>I’ve</i> never heard of this” brain), but here’s a case that happened just a few months ago:<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna26109" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna26109</a>
At what point do we say, "automation as a reason for failure is no longer acceptable"?<p>Edit: That is, when the published information is wrong, false, and was not taken down, or was taken down...
BigCliveDotCom has an excellent video about this:<p>"The most deadly project on the Internet"
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBeSKL9zVro" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBeSKL9zVro</a>
Never trust corporations (or anyone for that matter), even the most well intentioned of ones, to <i>always</i> make rational decisions, even when they hire rational people and write down rational policies.
The whole point of the <i>'trusted news initiative'</i> [0] is to combat the so called 'fake news', and disinformation and to replace that (or at least flag these videos as 'misleading') with actual fact checked articles, videos, etc.<p>What is happening here is the direct opposite of the TNI [0] and especially YouTube is removing videos unveiling the dangers in these fractal wood-burning videos and are instead promoting these absolutely hazardous and high risk videos whilst still aiding and <i>'sharing dangerous falsehoods.'</i>.<p>This isn't the only occurrence but it's quite clear that YouTube as well as the rest of the TNI is a giant failure in stopping disinformation and are instead doing the exact opposite.<p>The TNI should not be trusted in the first place and is now a disinformation source.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/beyondfakenews/trusted-news-initiative/about-us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/beyondfakenews/trusted-news-initiative...</a>
They can auto generate warning messages on every video even tangentially referencing the c-word for 2 years, but they let this kind of thing slide for years and years.
Someone made a commercial fractal wood burning device years ago. It had very long handled probes (1-2 ft.) and a pedal for switching on the power (there might have been a main power switch inline on the device itself.) It had a dial to let you crank up the amperage. I think someone did get hurt using it. Reputable art/woodworking events and people do not allow or use fractal wood burning because the inherent risk is so high.
I am sorry but I strongly disagree with most comments here.
I do a lot of things potentially extremely dangerous, like burning wood with a microwave, or driving a motorcycle, or playing with hydrogen and oxygen in stoichiometric ratio, I tried to melt a wrench with a 12V battery, and all that makes me a better engineer and a better person, more aware of the weakness of flesh and how reality is scary and how it dont care about our stupid meaty body.<p>I feel I see a lot of class contempt here, "those stupid people dont know that it's dangerous, they should stick with devices conceived by us. We educated people put stupid warning labels on it just for them". Of course, those poor soul should have been more aware of the danger, but censuring those video, or forbidding them to play with microwave, is that really what we want ? Anybody should be aware about the basic physics, that's the real problem here. I dont want to see moral video "dont do that because it's wrong", I would more video like "look at that how dangerous it is, and also, how cool is that".<p>About electroboom, I am the only one to think that being zapped again and again does a really poor job at passing the message "electricity is dangerous and can kill you"? If some people dont understand the dangerousity of electricity, maybe they just learnt from electroboom.
I much prefer the channel "diode gone wild".
I was considering searching for and reporting all "Fractal Wood Burning" videos.<p>But you need to be signed in to flag a video, and there's no way I'm polluting my viewing history (and thus what YT thinks I like) with such shit.
Is there any way to filter out certain Youtube channels such that they cannot be viewed in your house? My kids like some of TheSoul channels and I'm not particularly happy with them watching content created by Russians.
Censorship sucks but when its it YouTube's responsibility to protect idiots from themselves? If they removed these videos are they still responsible for people attempting the stunt because they heard about it there six months ago?<p>I demand the freedom to suffer the consequences of my own actions.
It could easily be the case that a popular channel warning 'DON'T DO THIS' could make the situation worse by telling more people about an idea they would never have heard of otherwise.<p>The fact that some (presumably less seen) videos haven't been removed (yet) doesn't change this calculus.
We really need to finish with this content removal business and simply hold people accountable for the content.<p>In other words, YouTube or any "utility level" platform should not have the right to remove content by its own and just request information to protect itself. For example, if someone is posting about something harmful the videos should remain and the person who does that should face the consequences.<p>It's not just that the platforms suck in judging the content, the more important aspect is that this content is also part of historical record. I would like to be able to watch and examine content from criminals, from fraudsters or pranksters.<p>For example, it's fascinating that Heaven's Gate cult website is still alive and kicking[0]. I'm glad that I can take a look at the real thing but if their mass su*cide happened today, I'm sure that all kind of materials about them would be promptly removed and we will be forced to accept only the official narrative(which might be or might not be correct on this case but that's not the point). None of us would be allowed to read their texts, listen to their conversation and judge it by ourselves.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.heavensgate.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.heavensgate.com</a>