YouTube’s Reused Content Trap

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A channel can do everything “right” and still wake up demonetized. That’s the nightmare behind reused content strikes, especially for Twitch clip channels that exist with full permission from the original streamer. We walk through the Josh Strife Hayes clip-channel situation, how YouTube Partner Program enforcement can cascade across multiple channels tied to one email, and why the appeals process can feel like you’re talking to a wall. When the outcome decides whether someone can pay rent, “just file an appeal” is not a real safety net.

Then we pivot to the messier question: AI and trust. Hank Green’s recent controversy becomes a jumping-off point for what viewers actually fear, not a single suspicious phrase, but the possibility of shaky facts, diluted voice, and creators leaning on tools so much they can’t clearly explain their own process. We share where we think AI research tools can help, where they can quietly harm, and how creators can keep their work unmistakably human.

We also tackle creator mental health and platform design: should YouTube let people hide view counts and subscriber numbers to reduce obsession, while preserving social proof for those who want it? Plus, a strange edge case where a major channel’s livestream views seem to be hidden at all.

If you care about YouTube monetization, creator support, AI in content creation, and the future of trust online, listen through and join the conversation. Subscribe, share the episode with a creator friend, and leave a review with the one rule you wish YouTube would make crystal clear.

Transcript

Livelihoods And AI Fatigue

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If a channel is making a certain amount of money, I think YouTube has a responsibility to assume that maybe this person is feeding themselves with the platform we've created for them.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

By the time you've lost yourself, you've lost half your audience. The audience will keep you in check.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

I'm very scared that I'm getting tricked into watching AI output because I don't want to see AI output. Because if I wanted AI output, I'd go ask an AI to make AI output for me.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

At some point, a video gets enough views that it doesn't get watched because of the content. It gets watched because why does this video have 99 million views?

Welcome And The Big Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that has a different intro every time, and I have no idea what I'm gonna say anytime I'm gonna say it. I'm Travis and I'm here with very special guests. Of course, Dan, I don't even know if you're getting a guest anymore. I think you're just like a co sometimes, whatever. Special guest? Something like that. I don't know what you are. But if you're new here and you don't know who I am, well, I'm here to help you grow your YouTube channel. And today we're gonna talk about some very important things in YouTube. Uh, one is uh uh the the demonetization, not so much what you've seen before with like AI and stuff, but more like where the line is for that, like what's going on there. And then also we're gonna talk about AI, but in a way that hits a very popular YouTuber and what his thoughts are and what our thoughts are on where the line is of when you should use this tool and when you shouldn't.

Josh Strife Hayes And Clip Channels

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Let's just get started with this first one. Josh Strafe Hayes is someone you know, you've actually uh dealt with quite a bit. Talk to them a little talk to us a little bit about who that is, who that creator is, and then we'll get into what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, uh Josh uh was very kind a few years ago. Came on the channel for I did this annual video, how to start a gaming channel, and uh I reached out and he agreed to do it. So it was really awesome. He he gave a ton of insights, and he's somebody who's primarily, I I would say, primarily a YouTuber who Twitch streams quite a bit, right? And and depending on the time period, you know, you might consider him a streamer or a YouTuber. Anyway, someone who plays games on the internet, but he also does like a lot of video essays and things like that. The channel you have up right now is uh is obviously his main channel, and his his breakout series is worst memo ever, where he like plays an MMO you may or may not have heard of and asks the question, is this the worst MMO ever? And it's always a lot more nuanced than just you know a guy bashing in MMO. But he does all kinds of stuff. He's very well spoken and you know very well respected in the community.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

I think it's also interesting that you look at his his channel. We have it up here. If you're listening to Audio Only Podcast, just to let you know, there's a one million subscriber channel. Uh, he has a lot of long forms that are doing really crushing long form, but he doesn't upload that often. Like, for example, his last long form was two months ago with over 380,000 views. The one before that, two months ago, 700,000 views. Like he crushes it long form, but he doesn't upload long form very often. His short form, again, barely ever does that. Um, and then like uh live streaming six months ago. So like he's not super active on YouTube, like you say, he's more on Twitch. That's weird. I should just get him on it to be like, bro, you have this super successful YouTube channel that you're doing nothing with. What's going on?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Uh you know, it'd be a fascinating conversation. Uh, yeah, that would that'd be fun, that'd be a fun one. So Josh has gotten himself not even really himself, he's gotten into a situation that uh he didn't really have that much to do with. It's very interesting. So a lot of streamers do this, they will have clip channels of their Twitch streams, and a lot of times those clip channels are actually not run by the streamer themselves, it's usually somebody they hire, or it's like a fan who has permission to actually make the clips of this streamer. And it's a mutually beneficial kind of agreement where the clips are being made, which makes the streamer more popular because they're on YouTube getting very popular, and then people are like, I want to see them live, and then they go to Twitch and watch them live. And oftentimes the deal is that the creator making the clips maybe gets to keep the ad revenue from the channel, or maybe they work out some kind of other financial incentive or whatever. So Josh's clip channel has been around for some time, and I would say a lot of people have probably discovered him from this because it's not really about games. Usually the game is in the background and he's talking about something that someone asks him about in chat, and it became like a whole 15 to 20 minute conversation, right? And uh, some of the videos that I remember from him like the most would come from this channel, like this just this clip channel. A lot of really interesting conversations there about all kinds of topics.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Which, by the way, is if for the people who are listening, the channel that we're talking about specifically now is Josh Strife says it's 300,000 uh subscribers, um, uh, you know, 1600 videos. Like this is a legitimate channel. Uh, most popular video has three million views on it. Some of the more recent videos are over a hundred thousand. So, this is a very legitimate channel, which by the way, like you said, it even says here the official chip uh clip channel for Josh Strife Hayes. So the question is okay, so this guy has a uh clip channel. Who doesn't have one of those? What's the big deal?

Reused Content Strikes The Clip Editor

SPEAKER_00 4:27

What happened? So what happened, Dan?

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Well, his latest video is called I Need Your Help to Unsuspend This Channel. And basically, what happened is this channel, the clip channel in particular, was suspended from the YouTube partnership program for what YouTube calls reused content. And the person who's talking is actually not Josh. It was kind of weird because you almost think you clicked on the wrong channel. You never hear the editor speak, but uh, this is the one time they they basically come out of hiding and say, Hey, I run this channel, and it we're we're kind of in a situation right now. And what he explains is very, very, very interesting. So he actually clips for multiple streamers. And at one time he was clipping for a streamer called Bodhi. This is, I believe, someone who's really popular in the RuneScape space. Bodhi was, you know, the same kind of arrangement, right? Bodhi has clips going on this channel from this editor and everything. And eventually they stop for whatever reason. The the you know, the editor moves on. I can't remember the reasoning. But not that long ago, a couple months ago, the Bodhi channel gets removed for monetization, and the editor misses this email from YouTube because they're not uploading clips to it anymore. They didn't know. And right after that, maybe a month or so later, boom, the Josh Stripe says channel gets hit, which is uh has been up to this point actively posting. And that's when he realizes oh, both channels under this email address have been hit with reused content by YouTube, meaning they are now demonetized. And this is a very interesting and confusing thing because this content, like I said, is existing on Twitch at first. These are Twitch streamers on a different platform playing a game, and the clips are being uploaded to YouTube. I'm not uh sure that Bodhi was streaming on both uh platforms simultaneously. I'm pretty sure Josh Drive Hayes is not. I think he only streams on Twitch, and uh the clips are from Twitch brought over to YouTube. So there shouldn't be a system in place that is detecting the content on Twitch and then saying, well, you can't have this on YouTube because that would be, I don't I don't think they'd have access to that information. But here we are.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that, let's break this down a little bit. So the the clipper, again, is not the creator of that channel, but they have the approval of the creator in whatever deal they have. The that clipper also had another channel which got demonetized for some reason, which I don't know if it's the same reason or not. They missed the email. And then because it's related, and this is something you should know if you ever get a channel that's like demonetized or suspended or whatever, they will look to see what other video channels you have and shut those down as well because it's part of the TOS. Um, and you know, now they're like, well, wait a minute, what do I do? I didn't miss that email because I don't look at that channel anymore. Which, so I think about this a couple different ways. Number one, you need to be able to pay attention to everything you're doing. If if that's that's their fault for missing the email, they shouldn't have missed it. And yes, by virtue of that, this channel should get shut down too. However, let's go back to why this thing is shut down in the first place. We again, I don't know. Do we know specifically why that first channel was shut down? Was the same reason they say it was reused content? Okay, according to the yeah, so what is reused content? Typically, when you think about this in the monetization circles, they're talking about taking someone else's content and then just uploading it and not adding anything to it. But this is, by all intents and purposes, the own creator's content and saying, yeah, this is basically my channel. They even have the name of the person. And as if this doesn't, if you just thought, okay, well, maybe that makes sense. Hold on a second. If you go into YouTube Studio, there's literally a clipping option for podcast long-form videos that does the same thing. So, in what universe does it make sense that clips from a live stream aren't on a different platform on a different platform, which uh you would think that they would want that that footage on the platform in some way, as long as it didn't point you back to Twitch. Like, in some way, how is that not good? Is it because it's from the other platform? Is that the reason? If that's the case, half the videos on YouTube probably shouldn't be up because half of them have all that stuff from other platforms on. It's kind of crazy. I I think very likely this is a situation where it was an automated thing. Uh, it got shut down, and the only thing they're looking at is, oh, well, you're a vate, you're ban evading, which is something that um other platforms use. Amazon uses it. Like you're ban evading because you were banned on the other thing. They're not really thinking through why it was banned in the first place or why it was uh demonetized in that first place. So now you're stuck in this web of I need to get this uh re-monetized, but they won't let me because I have an old channel that shouldn't be demonized, that's demonetized, but maybe shouldn't be demonetized because I need to root cause back to that. But the problem with that is you would think, okay, well, why doesn't he just go back and apply back on that other channel and you know, and uh, you know, say, hey, we this shouldn't be demonetized. Well, it's too late. I think that's the case, right? Like it's too late.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

It it's a little confusing because he does talk about that a little bit. Basically, if I understood him correctly, the Bodhi channel first needs to basically reapply for monetization. And if the Bodhi channel can get remonetized, then that unlocks the Josh Strife Hayes channel to for monetization again. Because they're both under the same email. I'm guessing the Bodhi one was made first, and so maybe that's like the parent account. I don't really know how YouTube does this, I'm just assuming. So I think after an exchange with YouTube uh customer support, uh or would you call it creator support? Yeah, there there was that conclusion of like, okay, this is gonna take me at least 115 days because I have to basically reapply for monetization, which means I have to make clips for the Bodhi channel again. And that's this is just my interpretation of the video. I was taking notes and I was kind of like frantically trying to get ready for this show, and then also I do think that the way it was worded was a bit wonky, so I will encourage people to go and watch this video for like a more concrete explanation from the the creator behind that video or that channel, but that's what I understand, and it's very odd that YouTube would say, Oh, yeah, no, we we could maybe reinstate that channel, but first go back and prove to us it deserves monetization, then we'll talk.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

That's kind of how I'm taking that. It's very odd. The problem sometimes with YouTube is when they try to explain something, they make it a little bit

Why YouTube Rules Feel Unreadable

SPEAKER_00 10:40

more confusing. I'm gonna give you an example of this. I'm gonna pull this up again. If you're on uh if you're on YouTube, you're gonna see this. Uh, this is a help page about embedded third-party sponsorships and ads in YouTube content. I'm gonna read this to you, then it's gonna sound really weird. This is what it says YouTube creators cannot include promotions, sponsorships, or other advertisements for third-party sponsors or advertisers in their videos where YouTube offers a comparable ad format, including, but not limited to video ads, pre-mid or post roles, and video bumpers. This is a violation of our terms and service. And we become aware of it, YouTube reserves the right to disable monetization or remove videos. Now, when you read that, you're like, wait a minute, am I not allowed to have sponsors? Like, is that what it's saying? Because again, the wording, if you read it, YouTube creators cannot include promotions, sponsorships, or other advertisements for third-party sponsors, which by the way, that's the only type of sponsors there are, or advertisers, which is, I guess, the other type of sponsor, in their videos where YouTube offers a comparable ad format. Now, when I read that part, I think ad format. Okay. Uh, you mean like like the the interstitial ads of five second ads? Well, but how would you do that in your video anyway? You can't do that anyway. So, what are they talking about? So they go, terms of service. So you click on this this link for terms of service, and then you look for like the the part about um monetization, which I have another link here for this. I believe it's uh this right here. You may include paid product placements, endorsements, sponsorships, or other content that requires disclosure to your viewers. You have to let them know, use this bike. But wait a minute, didn't you just say you can't? Like when you read these help pages, it drives you insane. You're like you don't know as a human being, unless you're a lawyer, what any of this means. So I can understand why you know we're seeing um this creator who's doing these clip channels kind of bounce back and forth because if you're a uh a help person that's not AI, you like actually work for a YouTube, you might not know what the hell the answer is.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

If you uh know like of the creator Asmungold, for example, uh this is somebody who is massively famous uh on Twitch and YouTube. This is a great example of someone who also has a clipper who's like running the clipping channel for them. And apparently their channel hasn't been taken down, but you know, this Josh Trive Hayes' channel and other channels. There's been other clippers associated with this like sudden like whatchall it uh ban from YouTube uh demonetization? Yeah, they've been demonetized. So like I the way I interpret that is okay, so it's happening to like mid-tier like streaming uh like clipping channels, but not like the most famous ones. That's always very interesting to me. Uh it does feel like an automated system going haywire until you realize that the largest channels have not gotten the same treatment, and that could be a parameter in the automated system to try to be like, hey, if it's like a really big channel, you want to go to a human. Like the human has the keys to that kingdom. If it's like a channel with a few hundred thousand subscribers and you think it's doing something nefarious, you go ahead, automated system. You do whatever you think you need to do. I think that might be what's going on. Of course, we don't work there, we don't know, but whatever is going on, we kind of need some clear lines from YouTube. I don't personally think this is reused content. This is the creator behind the channel saying, Yes, other person, you have permission to start a channel in my name and post my clips for me. It is it is an arrangement, it's a business arrangement that a YouTuber has made with a video editor in this case. That should not be a problem, and it never has been a problem. And I think if if a human was looking at this, they would probably tell us, Oh, yeah, no, that was our bad. But it's annoying because we're now in the situation where now we have to wait for that response.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

If that's considered reused content, then using the clipping tool in studio is reused content and it can't be monetized, which we know is not.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I mean, because this channel should be struck for that because we're taking clips from this show and putting them back on this channel through shorts, and that is reusing the content, literally, it's happening all in the same channel, and it obviously is us doing it, so it shouldn't be a big deal. And I think even YouTube would say, Yeah, go for it. More shorts, great, but because they they have to use these this language that protects them legally, it's really hard to get them to nail down the actual rules. And you pointed out like a great example with the advertisers thing, because I think what that's for is say a cable news network wants to do a live stream of their broadcast and it has commercials baked in because it's on cable news. What they'll have to do is turn off the commercials for YouTube. And it basically just a screen pops up that says, We're in a commercial break because they're not allowed to have advertisements. But if you do a sponsorship, you're allowed. Uh YouTube doesn't want to single out those examples because that leaves holes for other people to do things we can't even fathom, and they can break the rules in ways we weren't even expecting. So that I get it. I get it from YouTube's perspective. Why we can't have, you know, nice, even rules that are simple to understand. But at the same time, if your automated systems are going to be tripping over people like this, we should have stronger ways to like say, hey, you made a mistake, your system made a mistake. You know, not trying to be a jerk, YouTube. Your system made a mistake, I think. Can we please talk about it? Of course, he shows in that video he gets responses and it does, it doesn't feel like YouTube is even watching. They they have him make a video to prove, okay, this is my channel, and he posts it unlisted and the video is zero views. Did an automated system watch the video and attribute zero views to it? Did anything or anyone watch

Automation Versus Human Creator Support

SPEAKER_01 16:20

it at all? We don't know, but it is kind of a signal that like humans are not involved enough when livelihoods are on the line here.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is, uh, back to those help pages, the once upon a, and maybe it's still somewhere, but they change the help pages all the time. They used to specifically call burn-in uh commer uh ads as one of the things you can't do, which is what you just described. Like, so for those who don't know, let's say, for example, I wanted to do an ad for like a sponsor, but instead of making my own content version of that, I just took like a video of theirs off their website and said, here's an ad for them. Like, they don't want you to do that. They want the creator to be a part of that process. And that part made a lot of sense. But the way they're wording it is very legal ease and is definitely what you're saying, trying to cover all the things they can't think of, which is what it is. Unfortunately, it makes it incredibly confusing for those who are not trying to break the rules. So, yeah, I, you know, listen, by the way, their platform, if they think that it shouldn't be monetized for whatever reason, that's fine. But it needs to be clear and it needs to be even. If you're allowing us to take clips from our own content and make shorts out of them and make shorter form content with your own tools and have that monetized, then we should be able to do the same thing and not have some type of controversial thing. Now, I do want to just couch this with everything. We're taking this at the creator's word, which is not always every single detail. That first channel that got demonetized is the crux of this whole thing. So we're taking their word that the reason that that first channel got demonetized is because of the same thing the second one is. We don't actually know that for sure. However, even with that being the case, I've seen lots of channels in very similar situations where you're like, yeah, YouTube, what happened? Like no one watched it. And then they tweet to team YouTube, and then somehow magically, after three months, it magically gets fixed. So I'm not coming down on YouTube because to be honest, for me, the hundreds of thousands or millions of requests a year they get for things like this, you gotta you have to have it automated. There's there's not enough people that you can hire to help everyone with their problems. You're not gonna get everyone right. I get it. They strive to be excellent, and I take my hat off to them. However, there's enough of these situations, like Dan said, that maybe at a certain channel size or a certain amount of money that comes in per month, even if your channel, what if your channel size isn't that big, but you make a lot of money per month? Um, those maybe should be, because we do know they have partner managers, maybe those should be shifted off to someone when they are about to get demonetized or something, for them to then look through it and go, hey, reach out to your creator. Like I think if you have a partner manager, you should they that should go to the partner manager first before it ever just happens. And then they can they can liaise with the creator. But I don't know if we'll see that happen.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

I don't know either. I I think literally, if you wanted to benchmark if you're YouTube, I would say, at the very least, if a YouTube channel is making the American equivalent of like federal minimum wage, right? If if a channel's making $7.25 an hour, assuming like a full full week of work, right, for a YouTube channel, like try and benchmark it based on that if you want to. If you want to like weasel your way out of not helping literally every person that has a problem, but it should be, yes, like you said, it should be based on money. If a channel is making a certain amount of money, I think YouTube has a responsibility to assume that maybe this person is feeding themselves with the platform we've created for them, and therefore we should probably take this a little more seriously than just letting them get stuck in chatbot heck all the time. Because it a lot of times these chatbots, both on Twitter, which I highly suspect those are bots a lot of times, and through email, they don't they they it's there's like nothing you could say to them to signal them that, like, no, I need a human right now. Please, like, please get a human to look at this. And it stinks that like what we have to rely on. Pretty much everyone agrees on this. The only way to really fix this is to have some kind of kerfuffle happen on Twitter specifically. That one platform seems to be the only time people actually pay attention, and it's we need that over here. If YouTube wants to give us all these features to help compete with platforms like that, give us whatever that is. Whatever magic sauce is getting people to see those situations, put that here, please, so we can like just uh I get it. I want to appreciate the automation because of the amount of complaints they're gonna get, but we gotta do something about livelihoods being put on the line like this.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

I guarantee there's a lot of people that can't wait to type in the comment section on YouTube. So please do let us know your feedback. Uh, it's always a great place to let people know what your uh thoughts are on this. Maybe you think completely opposite from us. Maybe you think YouTube's being fair, and that's fine. Uh put it in the comments below, and uh we'll we'll of course see you down in the comment section.

Hank Green And Audience Trust

SPEAKER_00 21:05

So that is YouTube enforcing, right? Some aspect of the platform, but YouTube is a very interesting platform in that there's not just the one thing, it's not just the platform that is uh enforcing things upon a creator, it's also the audience in a weird way. Like, not like, oh, you can't make this video because your audience says you shouldn't make this video, but like in different ways. Although sometimes that's sometimes that is true. Uh this next uh thing I want to talk about just came up in the last couple of days, depending on when you're watching the watching or listening to this. Uh, there's a longtime YouTube creator called Hank Green, and uh he's very well beloved and has been around for a long time. And he came into some controversy regarding AI. I'm gonna read, for those who don't know what happened, I'm gonna read like a little uh summary from TechCrunch, and uh we'll get we'll get caught up on what happened, then we're gonna talk about what we think about that. Hank Green. A novelist, comedian, and YouTuber with 3 million subscribers recently apologized to his audience for his growing reliance on AI chatbots. I think they just mean AI in general. The controversy started when, in the middle of a video posted on his educational channel, Green incongruously used the phrase, I appreciate the pushback, leading viewers to speculate that he had written the script with a chatbot, and in the process accidentally included his response in one of the prompts. In a response to the now deleted post on X, Green acknowledged that he had produced the video under a ton of pressure and used ChatGPT for research on the script. At the same time, he said put the pushback line, the line that everyone thought that, you know, he was using a chat box for, was actually a response to the episode's guest. Green then offered a more in-depth apology, which I'll bring up on Reddit, where he said he was mortified that he had let so many people down and that he plans to reduce his video production as a result, which is maybe not what viewers want, but okay. He says that he only used ChatGPT to locate papers and other resources for learning about topics, and that the words and the takes have still been his. And at the same time, he admitted that it's fair criticism for because he's been deluding himself, he says. He's not a pure AI hater, and he lists a number of concerns about the technology, uh, including climate change and the speed at which these companies are trying to consolidate economic power. Ultimately, and this is his quote what I'm scared of most is ruining myself for people, but I've not been able to manage the impulse as well. You need to know that my words are mine. I don't think that hasn't been true, but I've been moving so fast that my processes isn't even clear to me. And I want it to be guaranteed moving forward. All right. So that's kind of both sides. There's it's and then since then, tons of people and tons of uh even like we see Reddit here, uh responding to like his AI usage is not healthy, I guess was one of the quotes he said. Um, and then here's like the post where he actually replied to it. So there's all this stuff is on. I'll try to remember to put these links in the description. I'll try to do that. Um, so all that to say, he, like everyone else, uses AI, which is a tool, but he feels like he's losing himself in it. The irony of all of this is he got called out on using AI for using a phrase that had nothing to do with him using AI, which is kind of ironic. I know you have lots of thoughts, Dan. Spill the tea.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

It's been tough, man. So I I watch Hank Green now and again, right? He's not someone I watch regularly, but when I do watch him, and I know he's been around for a very long time, the one thing that sticks in my brain is like this is somebody who he gets stuff wrong, okay? Don't give me like I know he's just a person like everybody else. He gets stuff wrong sometimes, but this is a person who I trust believes the things that he's saying. And I trust that when he talks especially about like a scientific topic, he's coming from a place of like deep knowledge and understanding, way more than I would have. And so when you learn that somebody you trust who has, you know, really like strong uh opinions and facts about things that you want to understand better, is using and leaning on AI to the point where they're saying perhaps they're saying something they've seen their AI chatbot say so many times, they're slipping into conversations now, or maybe again, that was just an innocent comment, but to the point where he's saying uh he is like alluding to having an unhealthy relationship with it, you start to worry about where those facts are coming from. I don't really care that he said, I appreciate the pushback. I I don't care if people use an M-dash. I know those are things people did, and that's why AI is doing it, right? People did that so much that AI uses those regularly, and now we're all like AI does that. Oh well, we did that first. So the that whole argument aside, the the as a viewer of his, an occasional viewer of his, my fear is like, are you getting your facts right? How much are you relying on this stuff? And now I'm I'm gonna have to just take him at his word. As somebody who uses the internet regularly, I am forced, whether I like it or not, to use AI in like my searches, for example. Unless I like go well out of my way to avoid that. Um, I'm starting to finally do that because I'm getting really frustrated by it. But like Google's own AI can't get basic things right that it's pulling from the internet. It's supposed to be reading the page for me and summarizing it, and it can't even do that. So now my science YouTuber is taking that output and saying it back to me. How much fact checking did he do? Why do I have to ask these questions? Is my big thing. I don't want to think about this. I just want to watch YouTube. That's what I'm mad about. That's why I'm mad at this whole situation. I don't want to think about this stuff, man. I just I wish it didn't happen, but we only know about it because he got caught and he admitted to it, and or in a roundabout way, he got caught. And now we all talk about it. And I'm glad we know because it's good information to have as a viewer of his, but I'm I'm upset. But I may not be upset for the reasons other people are upset.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah, I think it's um uh I think Hank is overly apologizing for things he doesn't need to apologize for because he even says I've been relying too heavily on AI as a research aid. It that's actually the purpose, that's a really good use of AI. It is not to just take it 100% as factual because you do have to double check it or have it, double check itself. And usually it's pretty good about that. So I've gotten to the point now where I have different uh chatbots and stuff that I use that I have uh fundamentally changed the way they operate when they communicate back to me because I know the holes that they tend to leave. So I've I've glued those together, so to speak, in prompts that I've started way back when that are fundamental to the way they work. Does that mean they still get it right 100% of the time, even? No, but it's a lot better than it was. Um, for me to not use AI for research would put me back again, and this is the thing. There are people that are using it that are gonna be ahead of me if I don't use it. So I have to be okay with that. If I'm okay with that, okay, fine, don't use it. But if you're not okay with that and you have everyone else a leg up on you, then you have to consider, okay, well, then where's my line? And that's probably where we're gonna spend the rest of the time here. Where is your line for this tool? For me, uh, I'm definitely gonna use it to help me find research and all that stuff. And then I'm gonna double check the facts and then I'm gonna have it help me figure out, okay, well, what way do I want to talk about this and stuff? And then from there, like give me an outline of what I'm supposed to say or what I should talk about, and then let me just take care of the rest. I'll take care of the rest, right? To me, that's fine because it's gonna take me too long to research those things and to hopefully get them right myself because I'm human. I can get them wrong, by the way. Let's just be clear, I can still get them wrong. Just because a human looks over them doesn't mean they get it right. Uh, humans invented wrong way before AI was ever invented. Let's just start there. Um, but then I need to know that like that time spent is time well spent. Am I gonna get a better output from my time spent doing the same work than I will in the two minutes it'll take AI to do the same thing, much better and faster than me? Me personally, most times, not all the time, most times the answer is no. It's not gonna be better. So, in those instances, I will use that tool for those things to bridge that gap. I know that's not everyone's workflow, and not everyone agrees with that. I'm not talking about gen AI. I want to be very clear about that. I'm not talking about it making art that I would have made myself. I'm not talking about any of that. We're talking about what Hank is talking about, which is the research part. And I think he, one of the things he was worried about was it's diluting him. He said he's diluting himself. What do you think he means by that?

SPEAKER_01 29:28

I think he might be referring to what I've been seeing, and it's like, you know, there's there's been people smarter than me talking about how AI can like affect you cognitively. Like you, like your brain is like a muscle that you, you know, would normally not have to think about working out because you don't have AI, but now that you have AI, you're starting to like those those neurons aren't being triggered as much, right? Because a machine is just doing all the thinking for you to the point where like you might find yourself at like a deficit. And now I I'm not a scientist, I don't know. Like, do I fully agree with that? No, it's something to chew on for sure. Like, the more you use AI, do you rely on it more, right? And when I was using it heavily back in the day, like when it was you know, first coming out, and we got GPT three and four and stuff, I was finding those issues with me. I'm like starting to open Chat GPT more instinctively when I had a question or whatever. And I got to a point where I'm like, whoa, like, because it's good getting stuff wrong and frustrating me. I'm like, wait a minute, I didn't even need to use it for this. I already know that I where to find this information on Wikipedia or whatever it was. And I felt those effects of it very early on. And so I believe those reports that are coming out now when they're testing people on this, that like it can probably have an effect on your brain. And when he says diluting himself, I think what he's really talking about is his trust with his audience. But that's kind of what it reminded me of is like it also may be diluting, but he says he's not using it that much, so I don't know. That's kind of a stretch. Yeah, to answer your question, I think he's probably talking about his audience. But that's how I, when I heard that word, that's how I interpreted it.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

So

AI Dopamine And Bigger Ethical Concerns

SPEAKER_00 31:02

here's what he said in his Reddit uh thing that he wrote. Uh, and he goes, but mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LOMs and doing more and more and more and more is not healthy for me or for the good of the world. It is careless and has disconnected me from where people are on this. I was talking to this with Catherine last night, I guess that's his wife or something, and she did not pull any punches. Frankly, neither did John. Neither of them think I've been healthy. I need to readjust. That's interesting. That's an interesting thing. That means something. I would point to what I was saying, basically. Yeah. Yeah. That I think he's admitting to the point where, and the fact that he said dopamine hit is very interesting. Because in some ways, you do sometimes get this really cool, like, oh my gosh, I just learned a bunch of stuff, or I just was able to do a bunch of stuff in a very short amount of time. And that thing can be addictive, especially as a content creator, to save time to be able to do more. As a content creator, you usually want to create content. So if you can do more content in a short amount of time, oh my gosh, that's exactly what I always wanted. Like that feels a certain way. Because you're not looking at it as a tool in that moment. In that moment, he's treating it something different. And I wonder, it'd be interesting to see how his conversations with uh different AI models, what they look like. Is he having like a person-to-person conversation? Is that why? Or is he just purely getting so much information that as someone who loves information and stuff, it's just so much, it's like this orgy of information. I just, oh my god, it's so much. I just I love it. It's like, I don't know. So is that what it is?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

So hard not to make like a drug reference when you were. I was about to say you went for orgy.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Well, I was about to say drugs too, but regardless of what it is, it appears that like he at the very least that knows that there are addictive personalities and it personalizes people who get addicted to things. And maybe this is his thing, maybe this is his drug, and that that type of thing is too much for him. That's a step too far. For me, it's not like I'm so sober on AI. Like, I use it for specific things, I don't use it for everything. Every once in a while, there's this new product I'm kind of testing out on my channel, and I'll I'll it'll do some things that I'm like, oh, that's really cool. That's really that's very neat. And I'm I'm re-excited about the potential of the technology, but I'm super aware of how how what's the words I want to use here. I'm gonna be very careful in what I say here because I don't want to say dangerous, although anything can be taken to be dangerous if put in the wrong hands. We just need to be very careful with the technology. As creators, I think there's a great opportunity here. We also need to be careful that we don't um change the our creations into something that they're not supposed to be. But I believe in the end, the viewer won't allow that anyway. So I think as long as you keep yourself in check, it doesn't matter how much AI you use. If you use too much, your audience will let you know. You it's not like you're gonna go overboard and people are gonna be like, I love this so much, I just watch anything. Oh my god, I've lost myself. No, by the time you've lost yourself, you've lost half your audience. So I don't think that's gonna be a problem. The audience will keep you in check, which is what's going on here.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I I think there's been a lot of people, you know, saying, like, if you can't tell, then that's probably the line, right? Like if you can't tell that someone used AI, then the they can't they can't get mad at you, right? Um, then there's the moral conversation of it all. Like it's it's tearing through communities, data centers. There's the fact that it was allowed to scrape everything on the internet to train, and you know what I'm doing? I'm keep saying it. And uh the bigger thing I want to talk about is that we can attribute all of this to actual people. The we're fighting amongst ourselves in the Hank Green situation, right? Like, I can't believe Hank Green used AI when in reality, do you really want to sit and spend your time figuring out where your line is? Like, okay, if someone did it for this, I'm okay with that, but I'm not okay if it goes to this direction. Or do you want to ask yourself, well, why am I not okay with that? For me personally, I'm not okay that it was able to scrape all the work on the internet with no attribution or anything like that, and all these people now their livelihoods are at stake. I'm not okay with the amount of destruction that it's doing to local communities all across the country. And I'm certainly not okay with what's happening with the economy and how I can't even buy a stick of RAM anymore. And those are just some of the big things I can think of. So, why am I not okay with that? It's because these companies are allowed to just do it. And I know that's because reasons. But that's that's who I'm really like frustrated with. I'm frustrated, especially too, because these companies are the ones who unleash this on us, and they have a responsibility, in my opinion, to make this stuff, if we're stuck with it, fine. Make it better, make it run more effective effectively. When someone says AI is getting better, what they're referring to is the outputs look more human, right? Better is always attributed to looking more human. I disagree. I think AI would be better if it didn't use as much power, if it didn't use as much water to cool the systems. That is an improvement. That's how you improve AI. You don't make the output, I don't care about the output. I want it to not destroy everything. And that's my interpretation of what it's doing in certain categories. It's destroying a lot of things right now. If we want it to be better, that's what we should be pushing for. Hey, you made some cool technology. And I do think it does really impressive things. The technology itself is impressive. It's the way it works that I have a problem with. This is the way it was trained that I have a problem with. And that's what a lot of people I think would agree with. I think a lot of people are mad for those reasons. And it's a lot easier to go on social media and point the finger at someone like Hank Green or anyone else you discover who's using it and you don't agree with that, than it is to say, well, hang on, maybe there's something I can do to help this on like a grander scale. Because right now, I think just because it's a new technology, it's moving way too fast for government to keep up with. This is what we're going to see. And that's kind of like the reality I've settled into is like that's that's really the problem. This isn't going to be solved because we get Hank Green to say, sorry, I used AI. It's going to be solved when you know more forces like that society's kind of in control of as a collective, come together and say, Hey, this is how we want to, you know, embed this into our society. But so far, because it's so new, we haven't really had that chance to do that yet. We'll we'll get there, I think, just to put this on a positive note. I think eventually we get there. But that's where I'm at. I'm I don't want to sit here and talk to you about my lines. You know what I mean? I don't want to draw lines in the sand. I just I'm tired of doing that. I I shouldn't have to think this hard, man. I I you know what I do? I watch stuff that's made by humans when they say it's made by humans. And I watch other stuff made by creators I watch prior to AI. And if I watch something new, I'm very scared that I'm getting tricked into watching AI output because I don't want to see AI output. Because if I wanted AI output, I'd go ask an AI to make AI output for me.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Pretty much, right? Uh, what do you guys and gals think? Leave us a comment below. Let us know what you think about this subject. Finally, we have uh one email.

Turning Off Views And Sub Counts

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Um, we don't really do emails very much anymore. You if you really want to send us an email, send us uh an email to the boost at vidaiq.com. I got one from here for Chris. I've passed 10,000 subs. Hey, congrats, Chris. Hey, and uh, I have an overwhelming feeling of wanting to turn off the sub and view numbers. Oh, I I could talk to days about this. I want to make what I want to make and enjoy the whole thing without seeing the number ending with an ending with a nine to become a zero, as it drives me crazy, refreshing every hour, only to have a new pursuit to get another major zero number. I believe he means like from 100 to 10,000 to 100. I think that's what he's talking about. Like 999 to 10,000. Yeah. The likes and comments thrill me in a much better way, and that's the world I'd rather live in. Thank you, Chris, for saying that. So would you flick a switch and turn that off? 100% I would turn off views, uh, view numbers. Um, and it's something that I think YouTube would love to do. I think that they have inched towards it on multiple occasions and they do it in different platforms. Uh, it's sometimes harder to see views on like maybe like a television and stuff like that. But I don't I don't think they'll be able to get rid of it or subs. I would love to give rid of subs. I'd love to get rid of all that to not not get rid of subs, but like get rid of it so people don't assume that the video isn't good because the subscriber count is smaller or view count doesn't matter. Because at some point, a video gets enough views that it doesn't get watched because of the content. It gets watched because why does this video have 99 million views? Let me click on it just because I'm curious, right? At that point, it has nothing to do with if the video is good. It's like, oh, this is a curiosity. So what Chris is saying here is I've long felt this thing uh for a very long time. I kind of wish we could just turn that stuff off. Um, I think that too many people would push back on that, but it's something that I I practically guarantee YouTube would love to be able to do. What do you think, Dan?

SPEAKER_01 39:31

I would hate if those went away. I like we we're already missing enough signals without the dislikes. Uh, you know, these days we really need signals to like that social proof is helpful, I think. Unfortunately, I'm kind of that person. However, um, if you want to see what this looks like in practice, you go to any other platform like like Netflix, like the gate kept platforms, and they don't there's no views underneath the movies on Netflix, you know, and I'm and there's a reason for that. There's a lot of reasons for that. Like, especially like if the if if you saw a big movie on Netflix and it had like 5,000 views or something, you'd have questions. You'd have questions about the amount of money that was spent on that movie and what happens in that movie. Like, why why is this Ryan Reynolds movie doing so poorly, you know? We we would immediately associate value uh with views, and I think that's the argument for turning them off. But I I just I think that information is helpful. I think it's just kind of a shame that we've attached so much like self-worth to that information, you know. It stinks that like seeing data is and I'm I relate to this too. Don't get me wrong, like I've definitely been this guy, but like seeing the data makes me feel a certain way about myself. And I don't want YouTube to be the ones to like solve that. I'd rather just kind of try and figure out how to solve that for me. You know what I mean? I I want uh maybe here's what I would like if YouTube gave the individual user a choice, I just don't want that choice made for everybody. I would like it to if if dislikes, for example, are being used to brigade and and it they're a real problem in terms of bullying, then I would like uh the choice to be on the viewer and/or the YouTuber to say, I don't want to see this metric. I want you to hide this from me to the point where I have to really dig for it to find it again. And that could be views, like give me the option to curate YouTube's dashboard the way I want. And I think that's really the best thing, right? If it's if we're just talking a mental health thing, I think that's what's best for everybody. And listen, to Chris's point or to Chris, like you could like try to find or even code yourself an extension that hides that stuff for you if you really, really want to try life without those numbers.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Well, they used to be a remember they used to allow you to hide your subscription uh feed or subscription, subscriber. Subscriptions, yeah, but not not views. No, no, no, never never views, but although there is this channel that somehow is doing it, and I've brought this to the attention of um of Renee Ritchie before, and I've never gotten a good answer. I'm gonna actually pull it up. Uh and the reason I know this is because it's not a small channel, it's actually like a legitimate channel. It is a uh it's called one FC Champion, one championship. Uh, it's like kickboxing, MMA, and stuff like that. And um you can't see their views on their live streams. And when they're live, you can't see how many people are watching, which is something that's always shown. I'm gonna show you here on the share of my screen. So, like here, this usually tells you how many views there are. And if you click into it, it usually tells you how many views there are. It just says streamed one month ago. It always tells you views here, it always tells you views here. But even when you're watching it live, you don't know how many people are watching. You can't see how many views are here. I've asked about this, I've never gotten an answer. Now you can see views on their on their normal content, but on their live stream stuff, you can't see it. On their shorts, you can, but on their live streams, you can't. Why? I don't know why. I've never seen let me show just for an example, I'll show you what vidIQ looks like. VidIQ. We'll show you what vidIQ normally looks like on a live stream because we do a lot of live streams, which by the way, come through on Tuesdays. And you can see our views here. Wednesdays. Oh, right, we're doing Wednesdays now. You can see views here. This is exactly what you should see. Views, views, views, views, views. Any channel, views, views, views, views, views. That channel has never had views on live streams, and I don't know how they're doing it or or or if it's been done, if it's an accident. I don't know, but it's been going on for a couple years now. Very strange stuff.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

It was really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Yeah.

Final Takeaways And Goodbyes

SPEAKER_00 43:15

Anyway, uh, we hope that this has been helpful. And I've been getting a lot of feedback that you guys like this. Uh, again, tell me if you like this form. And if you do, we'll keep doing it. Just throw it in the comment section so I can go, okay, well, we need to do more of these. Uh, and by the way, I got another great video for you. And YouTube tells me that you should probably watch this one right here. I'll see y'all in the next one. Uh oh. Bye.