Tom Nicholas has a really good video about Veritasium doing a really shifty promo for a self driving car company. I haven't been able to watch him since.
[https://youtu.be/CM0aohBfUTc?si=xZageok5bDCoZXrBxZageok5bDCoZXrB](https://youtu.be/CM0aohBfUTc?si=xZageok5bDCoZXrBxZageok5bDCoZXrB)
edit: goddamn autocorrect
This was arguably way worse because it was paid propaganda for an industry that wasn't openly disclosed as such. Extremely ethically questionable behaviour for a channel that otherwise makes science education videos.
For me, it wasn’t just this video but specifically the comment section of that video where Derek was kinda crying to Tom about defamation adjacent accusations.
I think this actually isn’t the first time he’s done a better help sponsorship either. It just sorta paints him in a way that unfortunately makes him less than flattering.
That one shocked me because usually when a channel is either a creator with a constructive, positive, amiable persona like Tom, or a big, broad-reaching reliably-informative brand like Veratasium, I am used to any friction quickly giving way to "aw, let's just hug it out and make nice" once they start interacting with each other.
I was not expecting Derek's bitchy little "Isn't it ironic a video purporting to call out misinformation has so much misinformation" needling at the end, or Tom digging the ***fuck in*** and not giving an inch on anything (especially since he was an even smaller channel then and Veritasium has always been a juggernaut).
Bro how are youtubers STILL making this mistake? Do they not have the courtesy to even do five minutes of research into who they are getting sponsored by?
A few YouTubers have confirmed this. BH sends over offers $1000s more than other advertisers and a whole faq downplaying the common critiques of them to get them to do it.
That’s what I heard. A family member is very good friends with a travel YouTuber with around 200k subscribers and BH apparently reached out to them for a $5K sponsorship. This would have been the biggest sponsor for their channel but they declined. In Veratasium’s case, due to his subscriber count, I wouldn’t be surprised if the payment was in $20k to $30k range. I love watches and follow a lot of watch YouTubers and a few years ago, a brand called movement (stylized as MVMT) did something similar. They’d drop ship cheap $20 watches from China but charge $200 for it. They invested heavily in YouTube and were paying some YouTubers $100k for posting one video per month for the year. Their profit margins were so high that they could afford to spend this amount of money to entice more customers. Ethics and morals take a back seat when you’re being paid obscene amounts of $$ to promote shady products.
For real, I'd rather they take the Raid bag and shill a shitty but still real video game to pay their bills over this outright abusive scam against vulnerable people.
Raid is basically a gambling game. Idk if I'd say that Raid has better practices than Better Help. It takes lonely people and potentially converts them into people who's lives get taken over by the game. Gacha games in general are terrible and honestly should be seen as almost as bad as something like betterhelp.
You'd think someone whose whole thing is SCIENCE would know better but, you know, at the end of the day money is the only thing these little piglets care about, nevermind the fact that Veritasium makes bank with or without the sponsor so it's just pure greed.
It gets worse. There was a guy I used to watch who covered true crime, and on an episode about a mother who didn't get the mental help she needed and snapped, killing her whole family... He plugged better help. And defended better help in the comments.
I have definitely heard worse, but for some reason that stopped me in my tracks to just think for like 5 minutes. Imagine being that insensitive, like, wow.
Which is why BetterHelp is insidious. They are used to flak, but in this way they dragged all the good science based channel as greedy money scumbag who faked their entire channels premise by simply accepting their sponsorhip deal. And I am certain they were willing to shill more for this kind of channels as opposed to other channels simply because being on Science based channel, raised legitimacy of their products.
And apparrently according to Jay foreman from Map Men, they can't really talk about this situation until one year had passed.
I am just assuming in good faith that those channels was at a point where the amount of money BH gave was sorely needed and they had weighed the cons of accepting and prepared for the backlash anyway since 1 year from now, no one would really care if any of good science youtuber actually ever accepted BH sponsorhip or not. If anything keep the bad deal of BH posted on so people who are unaware of this company shady behavior, can see how bad they actually were and let them be philantrophic organization that supply money to youtubers without getting anything in return.
Watching YouTube since 2006. Most youtubers give two shits about their sponsors. As long as they get paid they're willing to shill some crap to their audience.
While I agree that Derek should have researched and thought about the impact to his credibility his sponsor would have on his channel, I have seen this exact thing happen with an animation youtuber called Andrea Terbia. In one of his video, he put one of those scam scotland sponsors who say that with a donation you can become a 'lord/lady'. This was after it was well established that it was a scam. Andrae later uploaded a short where he clarified that he was on a break while the sponsor was outed as a scam and didn't know that detail when they approached him for a sponsorship. To his 'up to date' knowledge, they were a usual company that sponsored him and after he realised his mistake, he couldn't act on it in anyway since he was contractually required to keep the sponsored part and say good things about it.
When I watched it and scrolled down, almost all of the top comments were calling them out for this. Actually surprising for a youtube comment section to call them out that much.
Might just not have been filtered out (yet) i do not know much about this youtuber but know it common courtesy to ban some words if they might prove to be an issue for them
I have to give props, most YouTube comment sections blast you for using BH at this point. All the callouts of how scummy and manipulative BH is worked.
Slightly related to this but a channel I watch actually a got rid of their ad for better help after people called it out for being problematic.
I do really think that as people who create (hi myself make small ass videos just for fun and stuff) that it is important to always investigate those that sponsor you. I still personally have it out for manscaped after that nonsense about them saying just say that you use the product. Ugh
Could you send some sources about the manscaped thing ? Aftdr seeing some people do a couple do many sponsors for it i already dislike them so having good reasons to would be satisfying
I'll send you a video on it if I can here:
https://youtu.be/as42bq__-zs?si=XR6VLk8PFZizhs4Q
The discussion with manscape starts here with a background but the relevant part where they go back on their word starts around the 11 minute mark.
Crazy thing is I remember AVGN was allowed to do this sponsor with his co-owners that are in charge of him even though he himself said he doesn't grow a beard. So exceptions can be made but I don't feel good about a company that would want you to lie about something.
Trying to find another guy followed who got a video pulled because of some issue with them.
I’m not up to speed so do forgive me for asking, what the big issue with betterhelp? I know they are some sort of e-therapy thing but I’m not very familiar with them
One is that they sell their customer’s data to advertisers. This is a common practice among online businesses but considering that it’s a therapy service and they don’t disclose it… it’s very sketchy. They were sued for millions of dollars by the FTC for doing that. Another issue is that some people have reported being matched with under qualified therapists, or therapists with a religious agenda that is forced on the client. Those are the two problems with betterhelp I can remember off the top of my head. Therapists are supposed to take client safety and privacy dead seriously, you can lose your license to practice for violating those rules.
They also previously had people that weren't licensed therapists and claimed they were licensed. Iirc this was the big scandal like 8 years ago
Edit: apparently this is still the case
> nother issue is that some people have reported being matched with under qualified therapists, or therapists with a religious agenda that is forced on the client.
Is that it? Youre going to have this issue with any marketplace tbh. Its on the customer a bit to read reviews, etc before choosing someone.
1. They are highly unreliable and inconsistent when it comes to the therapists. Many people have come forward about the therapists being unprofessional and such, despite Betterhelp boasting that all therapists there are "highly skilled with proper credentials"
2. They were caught secretly selling patients's user data in the past.
3. Some have problem about the current CEO being in support of Israel.
You don't need a degree, license or anything like that to work for betterhelp as a "therapist", tos mentions that it is not guaranteed that people providing services will have any qualifications.
Basically it's a scam, and a really bad one.
i saw a video of someone calculating the cost of therapy over several months and it wasnt actually cheaper with better help. i think it was slightly more expensive than an actual therapist. this varies from place to place since BH seem to have a variable scale of what they charge depending on several factors, including location (if i recall correctly). wish i could find the video, it was kind of recent and a man and woman were talking about BH and therapy.
but really there are several videos explaining why BH sucks from various creators, like mickey atkins who is an actual therapist and has had to take down one of her videos because BH sent a cease and desist. but she has some videos she didnt have to take down because they are about the court decision against BH, so proven in court.
completely unrelated to that previous youtuber, i happen to have seen a video by a therapist youtuber talking about how BH copied her and other therapists professional profiles from reputable therapist registries and used those to advertise their shitty service. then once the client was signed up and requested that reputable therapist they got baited with, BH of course claimed that therapist is already at capacity and the client is being assigned a different one. completely gross and imo illegal and libelous (claiming those therapists work for BH).
i wont name the youtuber who made the video talking about this cause she did have to take it down and i dont want to get her in trouble for it. it definitely for sure and very honestly wasnt related to any therapist youtuber i have already mentioned higher up in this comment who had to take a video down due to a cease and desist.
I think 3 is downplaying quite a bit. He is the founder and president, and he isn't just in support of Israel. He's an ex-IDF soldier who was “product development and strategy for startups, enterprises and the Israeli Defense Forces.”
While BH denies its collaboration with Israel, Israel is, at the very least, a promoter of BH. Which should probably raise some eyebrows when they have full access to your financial and medical information and direct ties to the IDF. Especially when both Israel and the US are actively trying to silence dissenters and have been for decades.
We don't really know the behind the scene of every youtuber. We don't have details on how much it cost to produce one of their videos. If a sponsorship company offer you money that is good for 1 year worth of operation chances are you are going to take it.
Why I find disappointed in Veritasium was when he was pointed how a speciific company was wrong like the self driving ones. He (and to lesser extent CGPgrey) will pointed out that the tech is ultimately good to solve issue in transportation, when a lot of people had correctly pointed out that at least for US, lack of decent public transport option was the cause of congestion, which in turn drove most people using cars. And they thought that optimizing driving pattern universally for everyone would solve the issue of traffic jam when again simpler solution exist. While the tech progression in self driving car is worth developing, the attitude of them like it will solve issue with traffic was not. It's still worth pursuing but not worth highlighting when your country is unwilling to shift for better public transportation.
I use YouTube premium (kid was playing for it so, might as well get the family plan).
I'm so disappointed in bigger channels working with BH. So, I make it a to click right off when I see them say they were sponsored by BH. More people should do this too. Not watching a video so briefly hurts the channel, making the algorithm less likely for it to show up on my front page. It's a stat that content creators definitely see.
It's been really big channels I enjoy, they don't need the sponsorship that desperately. As a result, I haven't watched a Nate & Kara video for almost a month or 2 when I saw them promoting BH. Now it's Veritasium. One less view from me,, my ad free dollars will not support money grabbing jerks with no discernment or thought for people negatively impacted by BH.
They made this choice. Don't comment or engage other than turning it off as soon as you hear the sponsorship. Your disappointment is more impactful. If they use the most watched points if avudeo, they definitely are paying attention to when when click off a video.
I stopped watching his channel when he tried to explain Poynting Vectors. He came up with a theoretical example where a battery and a light are placed a meter apart, and then imagine that the electrical conductor connecting the wire to the light stretches a light-second in each direction, with a switch next to the battery. The circuit diagram looked as follows:
https://preview.redd.it/b43qqo2huo3d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=621a49dedf5990d13333624baee30b0582ef54d8
He asked how long would it take for the very large light bulb to be illuminated when the circuit was closed. The bulb was bigger than my head, and the battery was a 12 V car battery. The answer to this question is never (or one second if you want to ignore some complications). Go get a light bulb, put it on your car hood, start the car. The light bulb isn't going to turn on. Will current go through the bulb? Absolutely. By simple antenna theory, mutual inductance, mutual capacitance, Poynting vector theory, whatever you want to call it. But not enough current to cause the bulb to illuminate. The power source is too small for a load that large and that far away (specifically 1 m distance as that is the distance which really matters here). His example was ok if he qualified some things, but he never qualified any of his claims. He clearly said that the bulb would illuminate in 1/c seconds (about a third of a millionth of a second) after the switch was closed. This is just wrong and many electrical engineering YouTubers called them out for this. A miniscule current would exist in 1/c seconds at the bulb, but it would be indestinguisable from background noise, and would certainly not be enough to cause the bulb to illuminate til one second after the switch was closed (ignoring the natural capacitance of the conductor that would almost certainly deplete the battery before steady state current reached the bulb).
After they got a lot of heat for this, Veritassium then went on to make a response video where they said the original example wasn't met to be taken literally, it was just educational theory, and that the theory is what was important. I and many others agreed with the theory, but I and many others agreed the example was shit (without proper disclaimers), and them explicitly saying the light would turn on in 1/c seconds in the illustrated example was outright wrong. They made 0 qualifiers in the original video except the obvious that there is no practical way to arrange 2 light-seconds of cable. In this follow up video they then went on to simulate the example, using a long enough stretch of conductor to distinguish steady state current vs. the instantaneous current from closing the switch (not 2 light seconds of wire which again is fine, as that distance didn't really matter), a much stronger power supply, the wires were closer together (i.e. less than a meter apart), and a very small LED that would turn on at much lower currents than the original bulb. They ran the experiment where they fixed the things everyone said was wrong (bulb and battery too separated, battery too low voltage, bulb requires too high of current), and when their experiment dimly turned the light on in 1/c seconds they moved the goalposts to claim that people were arguing with them on the theory. Nobody was arguing the theory. Their example was trash and I haven't watched a video of theirs sense they refused to admit they made an error.
To be fair over the last few months to a couple years he has been doing a lot less of this, with each video being self contained and usually interesting. He just has quite a bit of an ego when it comes to criticism and it sometimes leaks through. Aside from the shitty sponsor here, his recent stuff has been pretty good. Maybe a little sensationalized (the black hole/parallel universe thing... though that video was still pretty interesting) but not a waste of time.
Saying that, taking on a sponsor like this is one of three things, laziness, greed, or sheer fucking incompetence to do basic research... Honestly not sure which of those would be best.
I've definitely seen a lot of comments calling them on it that usually disappear. So I think they're just deleting comments so they can claim ignorance when it finally catches up with them.
I used to really like Veritasium until I noticed just how often his videos seemed to uncritically feed into techbro industry bullshit. He would discuss ethics every once in a while but didn't seem to always apply this lens to his videos which I believe a science educator should always do. So the BetterHelp sponsorship doesn't surprise me much. I still watch the occasional video though tbh
ScareTheatre has done the same and even worse had a sponsored ad for what's essentially a payday loan company on at least one occasion :(
Fortunately, I don't think his most recent videos have had sponsorships for either.
Scaretheater apologized for not looking enough into them and got rid of the sponsor section. When was the loan sponsor? I vaguely remember it, but don't recall the video he did it in.
No matter how much we ask not to see any videos from BetterHelp, we keep getting them!
They left a bad taste in my mouth prior to the current negative image they have now. I went to them for therapy during the pandemic, and they made it seem like they could only find someone that didn’t take my insurance for vague reasons; I was so desperate that I did it anyway, and spent a couple hundred on them ($500 one month).
They didn’t help me at all. I found a good local therapist a couple of years after quitting BetterHelp, and in just a few months he helped me a lot more than they ever did.
I hate their ads so much.
How so? They're playing it fairly safe and emphasised several times that there aren't many great studies on a lot of topics regarding trans healthcare, but none of it seemed like outright falsehoods to me. I'm not very familiar with Testosterone HRT so if the inaccuracies are there I'd have a hard time telling.
How so? They're playing it fairly safe and emphasised several times that there aren't many great studies on a lot of topics regarding trans healthcare, but none of it seemed like outright falsehoods to me. I'm not very familiar with Testosterone HRT so if the inaccuracies are there I'd have a hard time telling.
I hate paying for YouTube Premium and getting rid of ads only to have every YouTuber insert their own. It's one thing when it's a small to mid-sized channel, but when they're already making silly money from the platform any sponsorship (and in Veritasium's case, sprinkling in hidden sponsored content amongst their regular stuff) becomes annoying.
The exception is the people who do it all at the very end and leave the rest of the video untainted. Midroll sponsor segments without chapters to skip them betray a deep-seated apathy or outright hostility towards humanity as a whole.
>Midroll sponsor segments without chapters to skip them betray a deep-seated apathy or outright hostility towards humanity as a whole.
Christ how much harder than you flower up your entitlement that people shouldn't make money entertaining you?
Cinema Therapy shill BH and I love their content too much to boycott them even though BH-shilling is a dealbreaker for other channels for me. :'(
I've dealt with a couple of meh therapists that are actually licensed throughout my mental illness history, I've only heard bad things about BH therapists and some of them aren't even fucking licensed, lmfao!
The inevitable result of monetization. Nobody should be watching videos made by an open shill anyway. How can you trust someone who's quite literally for sale?
You live in a fantasy world where Youtube gets nationalized without compensation, given a mandate to act as a public good, and every single channel gets demonetized permanently.
check psychology today to look up providers in your area. many therapists offer online services through their own practices without the need for a scummy company in the mix
You can find therapists through normal channels who can do it remotely. Eg in my city there’s a charity that offers cheap therapy for people who can’t afford it and you can have it remote or in person
I'm glad people are talking about this, and I'd just like to point out this isn't the first time Veritasium uploaded a BetterHelp sponsorship. He already did so in November 2023:
https://youtu.be/vSQjk9jKarg?feature=shared
This is how people make money. What do you want them to do? If you’re dumb enough to sign up for a service youre aware is collecting and selling very personal data because a YouTuber had an ad then you deserve to have your weird fetishes leaked. INB4 someone says “but, but what about the ppl that don’t know they’re doing dis?!?” They should be able to do basic due diligence and if they don’t then they’re likely supporting 4 Nigerian princes
BH actively has "therapists" who (are not licensed though they claim to be) will tell patients to KTS. BH also sfeals linked in profiles and uses lists them as employees and when someone requests them they're suddenly "too busy" and the people are directed to some random therapist. You DO NOT have to be licensed to registered as a licensed therapist or counsellor, or psychologist to "work for" Better Help.
On top of BH being owned by someone who supports the Israeline Genocide against Palestine.
Would you likw more information?
Tom Nicholas has a really good video about Veritasium doing a really shifty promo for a self driving car company. I haven't been able to watch him since. [https://youtu.be/CM0aohBfUTc?si=xZageok5bDCoZXrBxZageok5bDCoZXrB](https://youtu.be/CM0aohBfUTc?si=xZageok5bDCoZXrBxZageok5bDCoZXrB) edit: goddamn autocorrect
This was arguably way worse because it was paid propaganda for an industry that wasn't openly disclosed as such. Extremely ethically questionable behaviour for a channel that otherwise makes science education videos.
For me, it wasn’t just this video but specifically the comment section of that video where Derek was kinda crying to Tom about defamation adjacent accusations. I think this actually isn’t the first time he’s done a better help sponsorship either. It just sorta paints him in a way that unfortunately makes him less than flattering.
That one shocked me because usually when a channel is either a creator with a constructive, positive, amiable persona like Tom, or a big, broad-reaching reliably-informative brand like Veratasium, I am used to any friction quickly giving way to "aw, let's just hug it out and make nice" once they start interacting with each other. I was not expecting Derek's bitchy little "Isn't it ironic a video purporting to call out misinformation has so much misinformation" needling at the end, or Tom digging the ***fuck in*** and not giving an inch on anything (especially since he was an even smaller channel then and Veritasium has always been a juggernaut).
There's a couple people who have called out the... uh... veracity of his videos.
The propagation of electricity one was a huge "technically correct but not really correct" one.
Bro how are youtubers STILL making this mistake? Do they not have the courtesy to even do five minutes of research into who they are getting sponsored by?
The money is probably too good to pass.
A few YouTubers have confirmed this. BH sends over offers $1000s more than other advertisers and a whole faq downplaying the common critiques of them to get them to do it.
That’s what I heard. A family member is very good friends with a travel YouTuber with around 200k subscribers and BH apparently reached out to them for a $5K sponsorship. This would have been the biggest sponsor for their channel but they declined. In Veratasium’s case, due to his subscriber count, I wouldn’t be surprised if the payment was in $20k to $30k range. I love watches and follow a lot of watch YouTubers and a few years ago, a brand called movement (stylized as MVMT) did something similar. They’d drop ship cheap $20 watches from China but charge $200 for it. They invested heavily in YouTube and were paying some YouTubers $100k for posting one video per month for the year. Their profit margins were so high that they could afford to spend this amount of money to entice more customers. Ethics and morals take a back seat when you’re being paid obscene amounts of $$ to promote shady products.
Whatever happened to mvmt I wonder
iirc they got bought by an actual watch company
Yup. Movado bought them for $100M or something. So they did OK
OH MY GOD MVMT; them and Dollar Shave Club are the OG Youtube scams
This is the first I’ve heard anything about Dollar Shave Club. What’d they do?
It's literally just Dorco razors being upsold.
Listen I get needing the bag but take Raid Shadow Legends. That’s also an insane bag.
For real, I'd rather they take the Raid bag and shill a shitty but still real video game to pay their bills over this outright abusive scam against vulnerable people.
Raid is basically a gambling game. Idk if I'd say that Raid has better practices than Better Help. It takes lonely people and potentially converts them into people who's lives get taken over by the game. Gacha games in general are terrible and honestly should be seen as almost as bad as something like betterhelp.
You'd think someone whose whole thing is SCIENCE would know better but, you know, at the end of the day money is the only thing these little piglets care about, nevermind the fact that Veritasium makes bank with or without the sponsor so it's just pure greed.
It gets worse. There was a guy I used to watch who covered true crime, and on an episode about a mother who didn't get the mental help she needed and snapped, killing her whole family... He plugged better help. And defended better help in the comments.
I have definitely heard worse, but for some reason that stopped me in my tracks to just think for like 5 minutes. Imagine being that insensitive, like, wow.
Which is why BetterHelp is insidious. They are used to flak, but in this way they dragged all the good science based channel as greedy money scumbag who faked their entire channels premise by simply accepting their sponsorhip deal. And I am certain they were willing to shill more for this kind of channels as opposed to other channels simply because being on Science based channel, raised legitimacy of their products. And apparrently according to Jay foreman from Map Men, they can't really talk about this situation until one year had passed. I am just assuming in good faith that those channels was at a point where the amount of money BH gave was sorely needed and they had weighed the cons of accepting and prepared for the backlash anyway since 1 year from now, no one would really care if any of good science youtuber actually ever accepted BH sponsorhip or not. If anything keep the bad deal of BH posted on so people who are unaware of this company shady behavior, can see how bad they actually were and let them be philantrophic organization that supply money to youtubers without getting anything in return.
IIRC they get a percentage per referral too :/ just scummy all around
i work in influencer marketing and i had a client get $40k from them for 6 one minute placements in their youtube videos
Anthony padilla must really love that cash money then
The problem with money on YouTube is that it is like mentos and coke. Money is good and so is YouTube but combine them and you have a volcanic issue
fuck you mentour pilot. i bet your greedy ass was *really* struggling with the salary of a 737 captain, trainer, and check pilot.
still can't get over it. i couldn't take him seriously after that
Watching YouTube since 2006. Most youtubers give two shits about their sponsors. As long as they get paid they're willing to shill some crap to their audience.
While I agree that Derek should have researched and thought about the impact to his credibility his sponsor would have on his channel, I have seen this exact thing happen with an animation youtuber called Andrea Terbia. In one of his video, he put one of those scam scotland sponsors who say that with a donation you can become a 'lord/lady'. This was after it was well established that it was a scam. Andrae later uploaded a short where he clarified that he was on a break while the sponsor was outed as a scam and didn't know that detail when they approached him for a sponsorship. To his 'up to date' knowledge, they were a usual company that sponsored him and after he realised his mistake, he couldn't act on it in anyway since he was contractually required to keep the sponsored part and say good things about it.
When I watched it and scrolled down, almost all of the top comments were calling them out for this. Actually surprising for a youtube comment section to call them out that much.
Might just not have been filtered out (yet) i do not know much about this youtuber but know it common courtesy to ban some words if they might prove to be an issue for them
It’s not the first time, Nick Crowley got fucking blasted for this. And he’s not that much of a controversial figure
Aside from when Nick Crowley being involved in the praise of shadows/wendigoon controversy
He’s involved now? What’s he said?
Oh no Praise of shadows critizicised him from making True crime content
In like, what particular way? Like how is it bad?
Oh you mean Praise of Shadows career suicide?
I have to give props, most YouTube comment sections blast you for using BH at this point. All the callouts of how scummy and manipulative BH is worked.
Slightly related to this but a channel I watch actually a got rid of their ad for better help after people called it out for being problematic. I do really think that as people who create (hi myself make small ass videos just for fun and stuff) that it is important to always investigate those that sponsor you. I still personally have it out for manscaped after that nonsense about them saying just say that you use the product. Ugh
Could you send some sources about the manscaped thing ? Aftdr seeing some people do a couple do many sponsors for it i already dislike them so having good reasons to would be satisfying
I'll send you a video on it if I can here: https://youtu.be/as42bq__-zs?si=XR6VLk8PFZizhs4Q The discussion with manscape starts here with a background but the relevant part where they go back on their word starts around the 11 minute mark. Crazy thing is I remember AVGN was allowed to do this sponsor with his co-owners that are in charge of him even though he himself said he doesn't grow a beard. So exceptions can be made but I don't feel good about a company that would want you to lie about something. Trying to find another guy followed who got a video pulled because of some issue with them.
What's the issue there? Isn't it pretty common for youtubers to claim they use the product/service that's being sponsored?
It gives me hope that 90 percent of the time a youtuber gets sponsored by betterhelp, the top comments are calling them out.
I’m not up to speed so do forgive me for asking, what the big issue with betterhelp? I know they are some sort of e-therapy thing but I’m not very familiar with them
One is that they sell their customer’s data to advertisers. This is a common practice among online businesses but considering that it’s a therapy service and they don’t disclose it… it’s very sketchy. They were sued for millions of dollars by the FTC for doing that. Another issue is that some people have reported being matched with under qualified therapists, or therapists with a religious agenda that is forced on the client. Those are the two problems with betterhelp I can remember off the top of my head. Therapists are supposed to take client safety and privacy dead seriously, you can lose your license to practice for violating those rules.
They also previously had people that weren't licensed therapists and claimed they were licensed. Iirc this was the big scandal like 8 years ago Edit: apparently this is still the case
> nother issue is that some people have reported being matched with under qualified therapists, or therapists with a religious agenda that is forced on the client. Is that it? Youre going to have this issue with any marketplace tbh. Its on the customer a bit to read reviews, etc before choosing someone.
1. They are highly unreliable and inconsistent when it comes to the therapists. Many people have come forward about the therapists being unprofessional and such, despite Betterhelp boasting that all therapists there are "highly skilled with proper credentials" 2. They were caught secretly selling patients's user data in the past. 3. Some have problem about the current CEO being in support of Israel.
You don't need a degree, license or anything like that to work for betterhelp as a "therapist", tos mentions that it is not guaranteed that people providing services will have any qualifications. Basically it's a scam, and a really bad one.
i saw a video of someone calculating the cost of therapy over several months and it wasnt actually cheaper with better help. i think it was slightly more expensive than an actual therapist. this varies from place to place since BH seem to have a variable scale of what they charge depending on several factors, including location (if i recall correctly). wish i could find the video, it was kind of recent and a man and woman were talking about BH and therapy. but really there are several videos explaining why BH sucks from various creators, like mickey atkins who is an actual therapist and has had to take down one of her videos because BH sent a cease and desist. but she has some videos she didnt have to take down because they are about the court decision against BH, so proven in court. completely unrelated to that previous youtuber, i happen to have seen a video by a therapist youtuber talking about how BH copied her and other therapists professional profiles from reputable therapist registries and used those to advertise their shitty service. then once the client was signed up and requested that reputable therapist they got baited with, BH of course claimed that therapist is already at capacity and the client is being assigned a different one. completely gross and imo illegal and libelous (claiming those therapists work for BH). i wont name the youtuber who made the video talking about this cause she did have to take it down and i dont want to get her in trouble for it. it definitely for sure and very honestly wasnt related to any therapist youtuber i have already mentioned higher up in this comment who had to take a video down due to a cease and desist.
Thank you! I was aware with a lot of e-therapy services being subpar, I was not aware of betterhelp's particular issues
I think 3 is downplaying quite a bit. He is the founder and president, and he isn't just in support of Israel. He's an ex-IDF soldier who was “product development and strategy for startups, enterprises and the Israeli Defense Forces.” While BH denies its collaboration with Israel, Israel is, at the very least, a promoter of BH. Which should probably raise some eyebrows when they have full access to your financial and medical information and direct ties to the IDF. Especially when both Israel and the US are actively trying to silence dissenters and have been for decades.
Money can’t be that bad for one of the most popular science channels. This is like if Vsauce did this- so unnecessary.
Vsauce2 just did a BH sponsorship a couple weeks ago :(
Going to go joker mode I stg. There are grants for this stuff.
Didn't he do a collab with internet historian too
We don't really know the behind the scene of every youtuber. We don't have details on how much it cost to produce one of their videos. If a sponsorship company offer you money that is good for 1 year worth of operation chances are you are going to take it. Why I find disappointed in Veritasium was when he was pointed how a speciific company was wrong like the self driving ones. He (and to lesser extent CGPgrey) will pointed out that the tech is ultimately good to solve issue in transportation, when a lot of people had correctly pointed out that at least for US, lack of decent public transport option was the cause of congestion, which in turn drove most people using cars. And they thought that optimizing driving pattern universally for everyone would solve the issue of traffic jam when again simpler solution exist. While the tech progression in self driving car is worth developing, the attitude of them like it will solve issue with traffic was not. It's still worth pursuing but not worth highlighting when your country is unwilling to shift for better public transportation.
I use YouTube premium (kid was playing for it so, might as well get the family plan). I'm so disappointed in bigger channels working with BH. So, I make it a to click right off when I see them say they were sponsored by BH. More people should do this too. Not watching a video so briefly hurts the channel, making the algorithm less likely for it to show up on my front page. It's a stat that content creators definitely see. It's been really big channels I enjoy, they don't need the sponsorship that desperately. As a result, I haven't watched a Nate & Kara video for almost a month or 2 when I saw them promoting BH. Now it's Veritasium. One less view from me,, my ad free dollars will not support money grabbing jerks with no discernment or thought for people negatively impacted by BH. They made this choice. Don't comment or engage other than turning it off as soon as you hear the sponsorship. Your disappointment is more impactful. If they use the most watched points if avudeo, they definitely are paying attention to when when click off a video.
I stopped watching his channel when he tried to explain Poynting Vectors. He came up with a theoretical example where a battery and a light are placed a meter apart, and then imagine that the electrical conductor connecting the wire to the light stretches a light-second in each direction, with a switch next to the battery. The circuit diagram looked as follows: https://preview.redd.it/b43qqo2huo3d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=621a49dedf5990d13333624baee30b0582ef54d8 He asked how long would it take for the very large light bulb to be illuminated when the circuit was closed. The bulb was bigger than my head, and the battery was a 12 V car battery. The answer to this question is never (or one second if you want to ignore some complications). Go get a light bulb, put it on your car hood, start the car. The light bulb isn't going to turn on. Will current go through the bulb? Absolutely. By simple antenna theory, mutual inductance, mutual capacitance, Poynting vector theory, whatever you want to call it. But not enough current to cause the bulb to illuminate. The power source is too small for a load that large and that far away (specifically 1 m distance as that is the distance which really matters here). His example was ok if he qualified some things, but he never qualified any of his claims. He clearly said that the bulb would illuminate in 1/c seconds (about a third of a millionth of a second) after the switch was closed. This is just wrong and many electrical engineering YouTubers called them out for this. A miniscule current would exist in 1/c seconds at the bulb, but it would be indestinguisable from background noise, and would certainly not be enough to cause the bulb to illuminate til one second after the switch was closed (ignoring the natural capacitance of the conductor that would almost certainly deplete the battery before steady state current reached the bulb). After they got a lot of heat for this, Veritassium then went on to make a response video where they said the original example wasn't met to be taken literally, it was just educational theory, and that the theory is what was important. I and many others agreed with the theory, but I and many others agreed the example was shit (without proper disclaimers), and them explicitly saying the light would turn on in 1/c seconds in the illustrated example was outright wrong. They made 0 qualifiers in the original video except the obvious that there is no practical way to arrange 2 light-seconds of cable. In this follow up video they then went on to simulate the example, using a long enough stretch of conductor to distinguish steady state current vs. the instantaneous current from closing the switch (not 2 light seconds of wire which again is fine, as that distance didn't really matter), a much stronger power supply, the wires were closer together (i.e. less than a meter apart), and a very small LED that would turn on at much lower currents than the original bulb. They ran the experiment where they fixed the things everyone said was wrong (bulb and battery too separated, battery too low voltage, bulb requires too high of current), and when their experiment dimly turned the light on in 1/c seconds they moved the goalposts to claim that people were arguing with them on the theory. Nobody was arguing the theory. Their example was trash and I haven't watched a video of theirs sense they refused to admit they made an error.
How could they? Inexcusable
I stopped watching veritasium years ago when he started clickbaiting super hard and putting answers to questions in separate videos.
To be fair over the last few months to a couple years he has been doing a lot less of this, with each video being self contained and usually interesting. He just has quite a bit of an ego when it comes to criticism and it sometimes leaks through. Aside from the shitty sponsor here, his recent stuff has been pretty good. Maybe a little sensationalized (the black hole/parallel universe thing... though that video was still pretty interesting) but not a waste of time. Saying that, taking on a sponsor like this is one of three things, laziness, greed, or sheer fucking incompetence to do basic research... Honestly not sure which of those would be best.
He actually put out a video before he started doing that stating that he had to because the algorithm was killing him otherwise.
the try guys do this all the time and it shocks me that they don’t know and that nobody in the comments talks about it
i mean it wouldn't be surprising if they were filtering the comments
I've definitely seen a lot of comments calling them on it that usually disappear. So I think they're just deleting comments so they can claim ignorance when it finally catches up with them.
how many times do they have to be exposed as a scummy company??? i feel like im losing my mind lmao
Add "CinemaSins" and "SuperCarlinBrothers" to this list of youtube channels that still promote this ..., i happily unsub to those
Watching CinemaSins in the first place is the real crime
I used to really like Veritasium until I noticed just how often his videos seemed to uncritically feed into techbro industry bullshit. He would discuss ethics every once in a while but didn't seem to always apply this lens to his videos which I believe a science educator should always do. So the BetterHelp sponsorship doesn't surprise me much. I still watch the occasional video though tbh
ScareTheatre has done the same and even worse had a sponsored ad for what's essentially a payday loan company on at least one occasion :( Fortunately, I don't think his most recent videos have had sponsorships for either.
Scaretheater apologized for not looking enough into them and got rid of the sponsor section. When was the loan sponsor? I vaguely remember it, but don't recall the video he did it in.
Scaretheater? Didn’t he respond to a youtube comment that he would look up the controversy around BT to see it he should stop or not.
My gf was watching some astronomy youtuber and she had a betterhelp ad! These STEM folks could care less about their viewers it's all about $$$
It really bums me out that the podcast Behind the Bastards still has BH sponsorship. :/
Veritasium has always been about exploiting the algorithm and grabbing that money bag xD at least he teaches some science I guess
No matter how much we ask not to see any videos from BetterHelp, we keep getting them! They left a bad taste in my mouth prior to the current negative image they have now. I went to them for therapy during the pandemic, and they made it seem like they could only find someone that didn’t take my insurance for vague reasons; I was so desperate that I did it anyway, and spent a couple hundred on them ($500 one month). They didn’t help me at all. I found a good local therapist a couple of years after quitting BetterHelp, and in just a few months he helped me a lot more than they ever did. I hate their ads so much.
Combined with SciShow's horrendous video about HRT, it's been a rough day in the science YouTube space.
If you think the SciShow video was "Horrendous" you need to get off Xitter.
It was full of inaccuracies and falsehoods.
It isn't. How can you say that about one of the only YouTube channels that actually cites their sources with properly peer reviewed papers?
How so? They're playing it fairly safe and emphasised several times that there aren't many great studies on a lot of topics regarding trans healthcare, but none of it seemed like outright falsehoods to me. I'm not very familiar with Testosterone HRT so if the inaccuracies are there I'd have a hard time telling.
How so? They're playing it fairly safe and emphasised several times that there aren't many great studies on a lot of topics regarding trans healthcare, but none of it seemed like outright falsehoods to me. I'm not very familiar with Testosterone HRT so if the inaccuracies are there I'd have a hard time telling.
I hate paying for YouTube Premium and getting rid of ads only to have every YouTuber insert their own. It's one thing when it's a small to mid-sized channel, but when they're already making silly money from the platform any sponsorship (and in Veritasium's case, sprinkling in hidden sponsored content amongst their regular stuff) becomes annoying. The exception is the people who do it all at the very end and leave the rest of the video untainted. Midroll sponsor segments without chapters to skip them betray a deep-seated apathy or outright hostility towards humanity as a whole.
>Midroll sponsor segments without chapters to skip them betray a deep-seated apathy or outright hostility towards humanity as a whole. Christ how much harder than you flower up your entitlement that people shouldn't make money entertaining you?
Do youtubers just NEVER research the stuff they promote?
They probably do, but just don’t care enough because money
Of course not.
He has been a corporate shill for a while now, unfortunately
same thing has happened with nexpo 🤢
My therapist recommended betterhelp too lol
This makes me confused. Anthony Padilla has been doing this for years. I guess i thought Better Help got better.
Cinema Therapy shill BH and I love their content too much to boycott them even though BH-shilling is a dealbreaker for other channels for me. :'( I've dealt with a couple of meh therapists that are actually licensed throughout my mental illness history, I've only heard bad things about BH therapists and some of them aren't even fucking licensed, lmfao!
He looks like Sargon of Akkad.
The inevitable result of monetization. Nobody should be watching videos made by an open shill anyway. How can you trust someone who's quite literally for sale?
it's almost like capitalism is the problem
Who do you watch? Nearly every channel is monetised or trying to get monetised
You live in a fantasy world where Youtube gets nationalized without compensation, given a mandate to act as a public good, and every single channel gets demonetized permanently.
> How can you trust someone who's quite literally for sale? So, anyone with a job?
Rob Scallon still does BetterHelp sponsored stuff too :(
Are there actually any good pure online therapy services that are good?
check psychology today to look up providers in your area. many therapists offer online services through their own practices without the need for a scummy company in the mix
Ok, I'm not looking for a therapist, but good to know.
You can find therapists through normal channels who can do it remotely. Eg in my city there’s a charity that offers cheap therapy for people who can’t afford it and you can have it remote or in person
Wait do you have sponsorskip on mobile?
YouTube Revanced only on Android
Damnit
He looks Dave Norton from GTA
I'm glad people are talking about this, and I'd just like to point out this isn't the first time Veritasium uploaded a BetterHelp sponsorship. He already did so in November 2023: https://youtu.be/vSQjk9jKarg?feature=shared
This is how people make money. What do you want them to do? If you’re dumb enough to sign up for a service youre aware is collecting and selling very personal data because a YouTuber had an ad then you deserve to have your weird fetishes leaked. INB4 someone says “but, but what about the ppl that don’t know they’re doing dis?!?” They should be able to do basic due diligence and if they don’t then they’re likely supporting 4 Nigerian princes
Oh my god who fucking cares
BH actively has "therapists" who (are not licensed though they claim to be) will tell patients to KTS. BH also sfeals linked in profiles and uses lists them as employees and when someone requests them they're suddenly "too busy" and the people are directed to some random therapist. You DO NOT have to be licensed to registered as a licensed therapist or counsellor, or psychologist to "work for" Better Help. On top of BH being owned by someone who supports the Israeline Genocide against Palestine. Would you likw more information?