Techquickie and Misinformation

[LAwLz]

I unsubscribed from Linus a long time ago, but every now and again I end up watching a video because it's linked on this forum.

I think it is worrying that his videos contains such a huge amount of misinformation. I get that on the main channel, LinusTechTips, it's suppose to be goofy and not so serious content. I believe Linus once described his vision as "the Top Gear of Technology" and I can kind of see that.

However, Techquickie seems to be marketed as a source of information, and from what I have seen it's more like a source of misinformation.

 

Here are two videos I have seen recently. The video about VPNs, and the video about MAC addresses (both networking related because I often browse that subforum).

 

 

Both of these videos, are wrong on several major points which will mislead people greatly.

In the VPN video for example, Linus says that the VPN tunneling protocol detects intrusions and chooses different routes to avoid compromised links. That is not the case at all.

In the MAC video they talk about how MAC addresses are used to keep track of NAT rules, which is also completely wrong.

 

If I watched more TechQuickie then I am sure I would find more examples (I have more examples from within these two videos as well) but I don't think that's the point.

My point is that LMG should not produce videos that give the illusion that they are educational, when neither the writers nor the presenters has even a basic understanding of how the things they are addressing in the videos work.

I believe this is an issue on their main channel as well, but it is a bigger issue on Techquickie since the excuse that "it's an entertainment channel" doesn't hold up as strongly.

 

For that reason, I genuinely think that TechQuickie does more harm than good to the viewers. It is better to have your viewers know that they are ignorant about something, than to feed them misinformation and thus giving them a false sense of understanding. The viewers deserve better than this.

The way I see it, LMG has four options.

1) Continue as they do right now, spreading misinformation to their viewers.

2) Stop making videos that appear educational.

3) Only make videos they have a deep understanding about (right now that seems to be a very small minority of the videos they produce).

4) Spend more time and energy researching the subjects they make videos about. My guess is that they just do some light reading on Wikipedia for a lot of these videos, and it clearly doesn't cut it.

[Lord Nicoll]

*grabs popcorn* 

[DrMacintosh]

Maybe you should be a writer for them........

[Enderman]

8 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

4) Spend more time and energy researching the subjects they make videos about. My guess is that they just do some light reading on Wikipedia for a lot of these videos, and it clearly doesn't cut it.

Yeah that's what they do, just give a limited time for the video script to be written since they make so many videos a week.

 

You can also tell from their custom desk and PC builds that they cut tons of corners just to save time.

[JoostinOnline]

When you're trying to make daily videos, it's not at all surprising that they don't delegate as much time into research. Linus is definitely much smarter and more knowledgeable than me, but from time to time I notice what I'm positive are mistakes in his videos. 

 

Nobodies prefect. 

[Vigilante505]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

Nobodies prefect. 

Hard to read. Made me laugh

[Paddi01]

I made a similar thread about this without criticizing anything some time ago but people seem to agree with this

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

News outlets are full of fake news.

Youtubers are full of misinformation

Wikipedia is just Wikipedia. 

 

Sometimes I equate these people who always bang on these things to Lisa Simpson. 

[LAwLz]

9 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Maybe you should be a writer for them........

I would decline if they asked me. I don't have time for another job, and I don't want to spend my free time working for free in order to make them money.

 

 

13 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

When you're trying to make daily videos, it's not at all surprising that they don't delegate as much time into research. Linus is definitely much smarter and more knowledgeable than me, but from time to time I notice what I'm positive are mistakes in his videos. 

 

Nobodies prefect. 

I agree that nobody is perfect, but I don't think "we don't have enough time" is an excuse for not properly researching the subjects you are making educational videos about.

Imagine if someone published a school text book and it was full of incorrect information. I don't think "well I didn't have time to research the subject so I just made some stuff up" would be a valid excuse.

If they don't have time to make well researched videos at the phase they are trying then they need to change strategy. Here are some examples:

1) How about releasing fewer videos? To me it's better to post one or two good videos, with proper information, rather than three bad ones. Your viewers deserve good videos.

2) What about letting some forum members get access to script drafts so that they can proof read it and hopefully correct mistakes? Linus had this idea before but it seems like it never went anywhere.

3) Maybe try and focus on subjects you do understand, and stay away from ones where you feel the need to do research to understand the basics?

 

Just some examples of things that could be done.

[Sauron]

I think it's a bit unfair to expect them to be experts in most of the things that are featured in techquickie and, while there are errors sometimes, the core information that their target audience is looking for is there. They should do their best to inform themselves while writing the video, for sure, but I don't think we can blame them if their sources are incorrect - it's techquickie, not computerphile where everyone is a literal professor.

 

They can definitely improve on a few aspects, namely citing their sources in the description of the video ( @LinusTech get on it pls), but the "misinformation" here is pretty minor and, if at any point the audience will be required to know these things well, the information in the video wouldn't be sufficient anyway. Nobody is preparing their university finals by watching techquickie. The format is good for quick introductions to a topic for people who are hearing about it for the first time.

[asus killer]

i guess someone from LTT will make their defense. I don't know enough about the subjects to know if they are wrong or it's the OP that's wrong, but they can't know about everything or bad sources are no excuses. A good rule of thumb is if you don't know shut up.

I really saw the videos under the assumption they knew what they are talking about and prefer to believe so, because the alternative is really bad. These aren't fake news that go away, this are videos that stay up for years perpetuating possible mistakes. 

[JoostinOnline]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Imagine if someone published a school text book and it was full of incorrect information.

So my A+ Certification textbook at school.

[Mihle]

50 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Yeah that's what they do, just give a limited time for the video script to be written since they make so many videos a week.

 

You can also tell from their custom desk and PC builds that they cut tons of corners just to save time.

Well, those errors mentioned in OP, I can not find on Wikipedia, so they must use something else. Or they just go by their own memoy or something.

[Enderman]

8 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Well, those errors mentioned in OP, I can not find on Wikipedia, so they must use something else. Or they just go by their own memoy or something.

I wasn't talking about the wikipedia part, just the quick internet research in general.

[Sauron]

31 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Imagine if someone published a school text book and it was full of incorrect information.

You'd be surprised, almost all textbooks contain some sort of mistake in them since the writers and publishers are ultimately human. Even very highly regarded volumes are revised every so often to correct mistakes that weren't caught in the previous edition. They can range from typos to straight up missing or incorrect information.

[LAwLz]

33 minutes ago, Sauron said:

the core information that their target audience is looking for is there

I would disagree. At least from some of the videos I have looked like.

Someone who wants to know what a MAC address is and what it does, and finds that video will not get the information they were looking for. The majority of the information in that video is completely wrong, and it is clear that the person who wrote the script does not even understand the basics of the ISO or TCP/IP model.

 

33 minutes ago, Sauron said:

but I don't think we can blame them if their sources are incorrect

I don't believe the problem are their sources. The problem seems to be that they don't have the knowledge necessary to understand the sources.

So when they don't understand something, they make stuff up to fill in the gaps.

That's what it seems like to me at least.

 

33 minutes ago, Sauron said:

the "misinformation" here is pretty minor

I strongly disagree. I think a lot of the misinformation in their videos are major issues which will cause people to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how things work.

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Well, those errors mentioned in OP, I can not find on Wikipedia, so they must use something else. Or they just go by their own memoy or something.

Like I wrote earlier in this post, I think they do some quick google searches, read a little bit and then fill in the parts they didn't understand or find info about with things they assume are true.

An example of this would be in the MAC video where they say the MAC address changes for each hop. That is true. Then they go on to say it changes each time it passes through a device. This is false, because "hop" has a very specific definition. The article they read wrote hop for a reason, but when writing the script they felt like changing the wording and as a result it becomes misinformation.

Then they probably filled in the gaps themselves, by thinking "hey, if a MAC address changes each time it passes through a device, it must be used for determining the next hop!" which seems like a logical assumption, but is actually wrong.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

You'd be surprised, almost all textbooks contain some sort of mistake in them since the writers and publishers are ultimately human. Even very highly regarded volumes are revised every so often to correct mistakes that weren't caught in the previous edition. They can range from typos to straight up missing or incorrect information.

Yes but we're talking about like 30-40% of a video being incorrect here, not some minor issues here and there.

Imagine if your math textbook had an entire chapter dedicated to how 1+2=6. Page after page with incorrect arguments for why it is true. And on top of that, it's in almost every single book released by that specific publisher.

Anyway, let's focus on the videos and not nitpick some analogy.

[Sauron]

30 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Yes but we're talking about like 30-40% of a video being incorrect here, not some minor issues here and there.

Imagine if your math textbook had an entire chapter dedicated to how 1+2=6. Page after page with incorrect arguments for why it is true. And on top of that, it's in almost every single book released by that specific publisher.

Anyway, let's focus on the videos and not nitpick some analogy.

I'm not sure one statement counts as 40% of the video being incorrect, at least as long as what you pointed out is the only thing wrong with those videos. Besides, in a 5 minute video the total amount of information is pretty limited anyway, so the potential harm is pretty low. At absolute worst, the viewer will end up with a vague misconception in a field they know nothing about.

[LAwLz]

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm not sure one statement counts as 40% of the video being incorrect, at least as long as what you pointed out is the only thing wrong with those videos. Besides, in a 5 minute video the total amount of information is pretty limited anyway, so the potential harm is pretty low. At absolute worst, the viewer will end up with a vague misconception in a field they know nothing about.

So do I understand you correctly, you don't think LMG should do any of the things I suggested, and keep producing videos full of misinformation because:
1) They don't contain much information anyway.

2) People watching them will just get a vague misconception about something they didn't know anything about anyway, and this is somehow acceptable.

Correct?

 

If those are your arguments then I would say shut down the channel completely. If it doesn't provide viewers with a significant amount of information, and the little it does contain might be completely wrong, then it does more harm than good.

When your videos gets millions upon millions of views each month, and masquerade as educational, then you should be rather careful with what you tell your viewers.

TechQuickie could be a great channel, but because of the sloppiness it seems to me like it's legitimately making the world dumber.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So do I understand you correctly, you don't think LMG should do any of the things I suggested, and keep producing videos full of misinformation because:
1) They don't contain much information anyway.

2) People watching them will just get a vague misconception about something they didn't know anything about anyway, and this is somehow acceptable.

Correct?

 

If those are your arguments then I would say shut down the channel completely. If it doesn't provide viewers with a significant amount of information, and the little it does contain might be completely wrong, then it does more harm than good.

When your videos gets millions upon millions of views each month, and masquerade as educational, then you should be rather careful with what you tell your viewers.

TechQuickie could be a great channel, but because of the sloppiness it seems to me like it's legitimately making the world dumber.

I'm saying mistakes can happen and they don't necessarily mean they haven't put in the effort of researching the topic, or that the videos are harmful.

[LAwLz]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm saying mistakes can happen and they don't necessarily mean they haven't put in the effort of researching the topic, or that the videos are harmful.

I wouldn't call making videos about subjects you don't understand, make stuff up and don't research properly a "mistake". It seems like their video creation process is sloppy which leads to bad videos.

 

In the case of the videos I linked earlier, they give a lot of completely false information about how the things they are talking about works, and what they do. If a video is meant to explain something, but gives incorrect information about both the purpose and how it works then I'd say it does more harm than good.

Not only is it feeding the viewers misinformation, there is also a risk that it will cause people to not look up the correct information. If someone wants to know how a VPN works and finds that video, chances are they won't keep looking up other sources which will explain it in a proper and correct way.

 

But you did not answer any of my questions. Do you not think LMG should do one of the things I suggested, which would could improve the quality of their videos? You as a viewer should be pushing for better videos.

[Misanthrope]

Citing sources would help a lot I'd be for that. Yes even if your source is "I asked some guy" it helps to point out who are you getting your information from to clarify or bring up grievances more efficiently.

[Sniperfox47]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

In the MAC video they talk about how MAC addresses are used to keep track of NAT rules, which is also completely wrong.

How exactly is this wrong in a home consumer, or even most business applications, an internal NAT tracks the various network adapters through their MAC addresses. I mean that's a huge part of the reason why MAC spoofing attempts can be so disastrous on a home network.

 

Am I missing something here?

[wasab]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Snip

It is typical. These youtubers are more entertainer than technical experts. Have you watch jay2cents channel? He butchers technical terms like IPC left and right. E.g. overclocking a fx so the cpu gets more  ipc. That is ridiculous...

 

there is a talk show video I seen between 4 tech reviewers(tech yes city and others I think) One is extremely knowledgeable. While other 3 talks about ryzen coolers and frequency ect, the last one talked about technicalities like branch misprediction, pipelining instruction, superscalar design ect, instantly, he became the only person talking.

 

Bottom line, these people aren’t scientists or engineers. Talking about gpu in general sure, they can be knowledgeable but VPN, networking protoclas and Mac addresses? That’s pushing it. They are NOT the authority on the subject matter.

 

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I would decline if they asked me. I don't have time for another job, and I don't want to spend my free time working for free in order to make them money.

 

I agree that nobody is perfect, but I don't think "we don't have enough time" is an excuse for not properly researching the subjects you are making educational videos about.

Imagine if someone published a school text book and it was full of incorrect information. I don't think "well I didn't have time to research the subject so I just made some stuff up" would be a valid excuse.

If they don't have time to make well researched videos at the phase they are trying then they need to change strategy. Here are some examples:

1) How about releasing fewer videos? To me it's better to post one or two good videos, with proper information, rather than three bad ones. Your viewers deserve good videos.

2) What about letting some forum members get access to script drafts so that they can proof read it and hopefully correct mistakes? Linus had this idea before but it seems like it never went anywhere.

3) Maybe try and focus on subjects you do understand, and stay away from ones where you feel the need to do research to understand the basics?

 

Just some examples of things that could be done.

Yep. I always treasure quality over quantity. Many youtubers just like to spam hastely made video daily because they bring in more revenue. LTT, please don’t do that!

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Nobody is preparing their university finals by watching techquickie. 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

 

But so many people had done it with great result. Just look at the happy students in this thread 

[Taja]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

 

1) How about releasing fewer videos? To me it's better to post one or two good videos, with proper information, rather than three bad ones. Your viewers deserve good videos.

2) What about letting some forum members get access to script drafts so that they can proof read it and hopefully correct mistakes? Linus had this idea before but it seems like it never went anywhere.

3) Maybe try and focus on subjects you do understand, and stay away from ones where you feel the need to do research to understand the basics?

 

 

Well, about that sugestions:

 

1) I dont think that fits their bottom line, so I dont see that happening.

 

2) Really good ideia. Just like books are read by beta-readers, editors and etc, I guess this system would make a lot of sense. Like a program for volunteers that may have knowledge in specific areas and could be extremely helpful.

 

3) Dont agree with that one. Many quality educational videos are made by people that didnt understood something, but did research and provided amazing content. Vsauce is the best example of that I can think of.

 

I quite like techquickie, but for the more complicated subjects... Yeah, maybe the videos are not good. I could not judge that, as im no expert, but for more basic concepts I think this format is really good.

[LAwLz]

43 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

How exactly is this wrong in a home consumer, or even most business applications, an internal NAT tracks the various network adapters through their MAC addresses. I mean that's a huge part of the reason why MAC spoofing attempts can be so disastrous on a home network.

 

Am I missing something here?

NAT (or more specifically, NAT overload aka PAT) does not use MAC addresses, at all. It works entirely based on IP and port numbers.

 

Here is an example of what a NAT table might look like inside a router:

Quote

Router# show ip nat translations
Pro  Inside global                   Inside local                  Outside local               Outside global
udp  200.200.0.100:5066      100.100.0.56:5066      200.200.0.56:5060     200.200.0.56:5060
udp  200.200.0.100:1025      100.100.0.57:10001    200.200.0.57:10001   200.200.0.57:10001
udp  200.200.0.100:10000    100.100.0.56:10000    200.200.0.56:10000   200.200.0.56:10000
udp  200.200.0.100:1024      100.100.0.57:10000    200.200.0.57:10000   200.200.0.57:10000
udp  200.200.0.100:10001    100.100.0.56:10001    200.200.0.56:10001   200.200.0.56:10001
udp  200.200.0.100:9985      100.100.0.57:5066      200.200.0.57:5060     200.200.0.57:5060
Total number of translations: 6

 

 

Or if you want more info, you can read this superuser thread which explains it in slightly more details.

Here are the important parts (removing all the stuff about DHCP):

Quote

NAT is a layer 3 networking effect - it happens when packets are routed, whereas MAC addresses are a layer 2 network aspect - they are only meaningful on the local network. So to answer your question, you cannot NAT to a MAC address - the notion of NAT cannot work across layers.

Quote

NAT works on the IP layer. NAT is not aware of MAC addresses.

Quote

NAT is an TCP/IP (OSI Transport) layer phenomena, so MAC is not sufficient for its purposes. remember, TCP/IP runs on networks other than just ethernet, which may not use MAC addresses at all. Since its implemented above the Internetwork layer, you need to account for the ability to route NAT forwarded traffic to systems that are not on the same LAN as the NAT gateway (for instance you use VLANS and have a router to route between them, or multiple subnets). you need an IP address to route between networks.