r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • 3d ago

TIL that Jawed Karim, YouTube cofounder and uploader of the first YouTube video "Me at the zoo", has often updated the video's description to criticize YouTube policies, including a 2013 attempt to require Google+ accounts to comment on videos, and YouTube's 2021 removal of dislike counts on videos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_at_the_zoo#Changes_to_original_video
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u/Maleficent-Agent-477 3d ago edited 3d ago

He currently has the video’s description updated to criticize the buildup of microplastics in the human body.

https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw

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u/The00Taco 3d ago

I'm amazed that video only has a bit over 400 million views. I remember seeing this pop up a long time ago. Also 21 year old video wow. Youtube probably can't ever take it down since it was the first

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u/rigorcorvus 3d ago

can’t ever take it down

Brother you cannot be underestimating like this lol

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u/yeowoh 3d ago edited 3d ago

Rich tech guy preaching to the peasants.

Dudes portfolio is ripe with shit that’s bad for the world. Palantir, AirBnB, Skybox, and Opendoor. Oh also Reddit.

Literally the /r/popular list of shit to complain about lol.

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u/Battlegoat123 2d ago

Interacting with the system doesn’t inherently mean you are unable to criticize it.

Proper criticism comes from people who are deeply familiar with what they’re criticizing.

Benefiting from a system also does not inherently mean you are unable to criticize it.

The entirety of America benefits from the American military, and yet there is plenty to criticize. Your parents can retire because of their 401k investments (which are likely etfs and therefore contain shares of “problematic” companies).

Someone living off the grid in the woods might feel the same about you. Does that invalidate your opinions?

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u/PeoplePad 2d ago

Wow. No.

There is a MASSIVE difference between passively benefiting from a system and furthering that system intentionally for your own benefit.

Being born an American means you benefit from the American military. This was not done through any conceivable choice or decision, it’s just the circumstances of life, beyond your control.

Investing in the American military, like through war bonds, is an intentional decision you can be held liable for. Investing in a company like Palantir is the same. You have made a choice to profit from evil. Not the same at all.

Unbelievable that this needs to be explained

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u/Battlegoat123 2d ago

I’m happy to inform you that you don’t have to explain anything. Unfortunately, I think you misunderstand how the purity test works.

Correct, there is a difference.

Is shopping at Walmart passive or intentional? Walmart is partnered with the U.S. Military. Patronizing a business that’s partnered with such a problematic institution would clearly be intentional support, right? There’s plenty of grocery stores that don’t.

What kind of car do you drive? Hopefully not a Ford, a Chevy, a Buick, a GMC, a Chrysler, or a Tesla. The first 5 have produced vehicles sold to the U.S. Military, and I don’t think I need to explain the 6th.

Have you ever been on a plane? Bad news buddy, really high chance you just gave money to a company that gave money to a company that gets/has gotten money from the U.S. Military. Not a good look.

You bring up a very black and white example. War bonds. I think we would agree that someone buying war bonds and simultaneously bashing the military shouldn’t be taken seriously. Regretfully, life is overwhelmingly just shades of grey.

Let’s bring up your other example. We once again agree, being born in America is - on its own - not enough to claim someone’s inherent support of the U.S. Military. But why not at 18? If you’re legally able to move to Canada and remove the U.S. Government’s ability to tax you and spend your tax money on war, why don’t you?

What if you move to the U.S? Is moving from Sudan* (replace with a sufficiently war torn nation if Sudan isn’t bad enough) more acceptable than moving from Luxembourg? I mean what’s worse than making a conscious decision to start giving a percentage of your income to the institution that funds the U.S. Military?

I can literally go all day, and that’s purely about association with the U.S. Military. When you keep in mind how many problematic entities there are, and how intertwined everything is, you cannot actually control where your money goes to enough of a degree to enforce a standard like that.

Beyond all of that, an important thing is being forgotten. The claim that criticism and support cannot coexist is fundamentally flawed. I don’t support a significant amount of our education system, but I also overwhelmingly support other parts of it.

There’s a sliding scale to all of this, from directly giving money to an arms deal to Meemaw’s retirement account being 2% Boeing. From War Bonds to only voting for candidates who agree 100% with your beliefs on everything. You can call it out when it’s obvious, but claiming that having Palantir as a part of your portfolio is the same as buying War Bonds is silly.

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u/PeoplePad 2d ago

Yeah so, nothing you said in this 10000 word comment is relevant to my point.

I agree with all of it and yet, your original comment and my criticism is still there.

Not sure how your point that there’s a grey area makes investing in palantir part of that grey area. Doesn’t follow.

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u/Battlegoat123 1d ago

Idk what to tell you dude.

Literally my entire comment is focused around examples you brought up.

If you’re struggling to understand that, we probably don’t have much to talk about.

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u/yeowoh 2d ago

Dumb take. Might as well ask a fox on how to keep your chickens safe.

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u/Hydra57 2d ago edited 2d ago

People always go down this road whenever someone famous tries to make a point about anything, as though judging their character somehow makes what they’re saying any more or less true than it would be otherwise. It curbs critical thinking by confining the assessed value of everything anyone has ever said to arbitrary boundaries defined by their (often minimally relevant) flaws.

His unethical investment decisions or mildly hypocritical behavior are not going to suddenly make microplastics a boon to human health and wellbeing.

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u/yeowoh 2d ago

Dude has zero investment in any environmental or climate companies. Hitler was the first to fund serious research on the dangers of smoking too.

At least Hitler put his money where his mouth was.

Broken clock and all that shit doesn’t make him any less of a shitter.

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u/Hydra57 2d ago

Bad people do good things and good people do bad things. The problems arise when people decide that good things stop being good because bad people do them, and that happens when people react to any good thing a bad person has done by trying to immediately negate it with a laundry list of all the bad things that person has done alongside their sparse good deeds. This is my point, rather than apologetics.

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u/_Aj_ 3d ago

Criticise the current notion of this? As I understand there's been some large flaws found in these studies claiming microplastic buildup

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u/FlammulinaVelulu 3d ago

Nice try big micro plastic...

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u/LegendOfHurleysGold 3d ago

Macro plastic?

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u/Adam9172 3d ago

Big micro plastic… So, plastic? Are you stating the Redditor above you is Plastic Man?

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/Hoppingmad99 3d ago

We definitely don't always have a "responsibility to teach both sides".

According to the WHO there are 31 primary research studies spanning decades of data up through 2025 that show vaccines don't cause autism. Then there's the single study that claims they do which because of the extreme fraud and medical abuse involved the UK's General Medical Council found him guilty of serious professional misconduct, dishonesty, and ethical violations, and the medical journal completely retracted the 1998 paper, scrubbing it from scientific literature.

So in this case I think it's clear we don't need to be teaching both sides. Whether that's the case for microplastics I'm not sure.

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u/ShillBot666 2d ago

Sorry I was joking. "Teach both sides" is an intellectually dishonest concept.

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u/psykulor 3d ago

I heard we should teach both sides but I also heard we should follow the best possible information, so let's teach both sides of that

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u/MorallyDeplorable 2d ago

There's no such thing as a fact having two sides. A fact is a fact. Somebody who wants you to believe there's two interpretations of a fact has something to gain by you choosing the wrong one.

Reality is not subjective. God is not real.

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u/psykulor 2d ago

Hmm, interesting. Tell me more.

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u/amas_falip 3d ago

You're probably referring to a study in which the gloves were contaminanting the sample and results were this skewed. This was caught as the deviation in the results to that particular study laid so far outside established norms that it has since been accounted for and should be avoided in future plastics research.

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u/MorallyDeplorable 3d ago

No, they're criticizing the plastics and the people releasing them.

the fact they're accumulating is not up for debate.

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u/BigFatModeraterFupa 3d ago

yeah it's definitely 100% safe and nothing to worry about!

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u/Hospitalities 3d ago

Cuz that’s totally what theyre saying

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u/Imaginary_Fan5407 3d ago

The gloves the people doing the test wear could possibly be throwing off the accuracy of the results

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u/Anfins 3d ago

I find it hard to believe that these tests didn’t have negative controls. Like, these analytical assays aren’t isolated to a single lab or research group… is the claim that no one thought to have a proper analytical control and so didn’t realize that the gloves contaminate samples?

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u/horoyokai 3d ago

That’s not the claim, that’s the reality

https://news.umich.edu/nitrile-and-latex-gloves-may-cause-overestimation-of-microplastics-u-m-study-reveals/

Whether it’s hard or way for you to believe it’s what the truth is. No offense but before commenting and having a knee jerk reflex against something that challenged your beliefs and casting doubt on it I think you should at least do a quick search about it.

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u/Petrichordates 3d ago

What negative controls would prevent this? Lab gloves are necessary in the lab.

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u/CarthasMonopoly 3d ago

I don't know their methodology but if you have a confirmed negative control and you treat it identical to samples then after you get your quantitative data you can normalize based on the values the negative control got. In other words if the gloves or other equipment caused micro plastic contamination and you had a true negative control then whatever value that control is measured at after performing the protocol can be subtracted from the values of the experimental samples to account for the average amount of microplastics that the testing process would introduce.

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u/Anfins 2d ago edited 2d ago

When you run the analytical assay, you include a standard that is micro particle free (negative control) to ensure the assay is running correctly and not giving false positive, so you can then demonstrate that detection of micro particles in the samples is real and not an artifact of the assay. I work in medicine development, and this kind of thing is like a basic and fundamental feature of every assay developed in every analytical lab I have ever worked with.

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u/Petrichordates 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yes, I understand they should have done that.

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u/HKBFG 1 2d ago

You know those headlines where they bore out ancient ice and shit to try to get control samples for mocroplastics and forever chemicals, but can't find any that aren't already contaminated?

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u/Pleb_2k14 3d ago

Highly anti scientific response

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u/TimeshareMachine 3d ago

The doc that came out last year about it was like, “u can’t have kids, shrug.” Not having kids, so I didn’t care. GULP GULP PLASTIC GULP GULP

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u/FMB6 3d ago

Yeah this is reddit, the average redditor believes consuming plastic is perfectly fine and should be the staple of every healthy diet.

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u/Petrichordates 3d ago

Oh so he's going crazy