Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann
Reardon and in this episode we're going to be debunking something which i have
been fooled by so many, many times and I did
not even realize it was fake! Now that I've seen it now that I've
figured it out I'm like of course it's fake, why didn't I pick
this up sooner? And once I've told you about it it is going to
change everything you're going to be mind-blown and go
oh my goodness why did no one notice this before?
But before I get to that first of all let me take you on the journey of
how I discovered this ... well lots of you had been sending me messages saying
could you please look into the channel Mr Cakes.
Now if you haven't seen any of their videos recommended
then basically they are just another channel that is making lots and lots and
lots of fast-forwarded sped up content of making cakes and chocolate things to
music and they've got quite good production
value, their things at least make sense they're not
like they don't need debunking in terms of their recipes actually do follow
logical steps and they actually do seem to make sense you would do those
steps to get to the end product. Now they're not giving you recipe
quantities so you can't actually follow their recipes so they're just
pretty to look at ... nothing dangerous there, nothing out of the ordinary.
What is extraordinary though is their views.
The views on their videos are huge. Let me show you ... if we sort their videos by
most popular, this one from seven months ago
is on 77 million views! One month ago 41 million, 39 million.
Crazy right!? Like that's huge view counts and if we sort their videos by
oldest to newest so we can see how old the channel is,
it says their oldest video was uploaded only 11 months ago
and it's currently getting 222 million views a month. You heard that right
222 million that's like two thirds of the U.S. population
in their view count last month. That's crazy huge.
So who is Mr Cakes? They are this phenomenally successful
channel on YouTube, who are they? Well the youtube channel says that they're
located in the USA and then if we follow the link to their
Facebook page and then to their website this website says under the about us
section that they're a bakery making things from scratch. Their team
is Richard Smith, he has a true passion for baking and that's why he has been
our founder and head baker since day one. Susan Anderson who bakes cakes decorates
and heads up marketing and Steve Ruffalo a lead cake designer.
Now I did a quick reverse image search on the photos they had of each of these
chefs and let me just show you here we have
Susan from a stock photo site there she is and
allow me to introduce you to Richard from Shutterstock and Steve, the lead
cake designer, is also on a free image site.
So then I wondered well if the photos are faked up,
which other websites do that as well sometimes they just
put a model in there rather than their actual person,
but it made me wonder are the words real or are the words faked up too. So then
I put the quote in from their website he has designed beautiful cakes
for various occasions including weddings parties showers anniversaries and more
and i searched for that quote and lo and behold
it's from a website design template page. So you're supposed to take that template
and put in your own words and your own photos but if we look at it,
it looks very familiar ... it's a bakery that makes fresh goods from scratch
and here's the team Susan, Steve and Richard.
They did however change some things on the website not much
but if you scroll up they've changed what we offer
to what we offers. They obviously thought there was an error there
so that was an interesting dead end. Then I went on and managed to find if
you look on YouTube it says that all of their videos are created by
YumUp limited, so I looked up YumUp and found their website
and if we go there now we can tell we're in the right place
because it's the exact same website template as we had for the other one,
they even have what we offers there instead of what we offer
but they have customized a few more things so by comparing from the template
to what they've actually written we then know what I guess they think is
important to tell us. What it says is they have 245 million
subscribers more than 100 channels on youtube,
500 million video views and more than 50 Facebook pages. Well sounds like we have
another content farm either that or a hugely successful production company, you
can make a decision on that and let me know
in the comments as we go along. Now I did send them an email via their contact
email asking if they could send me a list of
their channels but they didn't reply so I just hunted for them instead. These
are the channels that I have found on youtube that belong to YumUp.co
there is delicious cakes, my cupcake notice the name similarity to existing
channels there like my cupcake addiction she was an individual creator who's no
longer creating 😔 Yummy Plus, everything is very chocolate
themed here, Tasty choice this one also looks very
similar to the last channel, Chocolate Plus it's really hard to tell
these apart from their videos Easy Cake Decorating Ideas this looks
very very similar, I'm leaning towards content farm rather
than production company Top yummy, Mr Chef
and of course there's Mr Cakes that's what started this whole journey.
There's also a whole heap more channels I'm not going to show you the individual
channel they're all very similar I'll just run you through the names
so you know. There is easy plus hair inspiration pretty hair so tasty easy
chocolate lux beauty beyond tasty cake junkie tasty plus cake lovers top
hairstyles yummy cookies amazing cookies top tasty cookies inspiration how to
cake not how to cake it top yummy japan voguish hairstyles
master cake delicious superior craft ideas, which is not craft it is cake,
tiny cakes so girly yum up extreme cakes ... you get the picture,
there's a lot! And I only found 28 of them
they say they have a hundred channels that was only 28 and of those 28 just
looking at them guess how many video views they had in
the last year? Take a guess ...I would say write it in the
comments but you're just going to listen and then write that in the comments, it
was 2.5 billion video views! 2.5 billion video views and
most of their audiences in the USA, they are doing a great job of this they are
winning! The sheer number of youtube channels
that they have would really help them to be able to cross promote it's a bit like
when a youtuber does a collaboration with another youtuber but in this case
they don't have to even bother they've got a hundred channels
that they can just cross collaborate between.
I did notice on some of their channels that the top commenters
were in fact other YumUp channels so they're not individual people, they're
they're employees commenting so it makes you wonder do they also
share it? Do they also do all those things it makes the
algorithm go wow this is a really good channel, really good video we should show
it to more people. Now when i looked into it a bit more
their website actually did give us an address,
so if we follow that and put that into Google Maps
it takes us here to a building in Vietnam,
where as well as making lots of videos they do unboxings ...
of YouTube play buttons! YouTube's own website
says that they don't just send out play buttons to everyone who reaches the
milestones. The milestones if you don't know is you get a silver play button at
100,000 subscribers, a gold play button at a million subscribers and a
diamond one at 10 million subscribers. Now youtube says
they don't just send them to everyone who reaches the milestones they only
send it to recognize creators that are 'playing by the rules'
and if we have a look here it says: channels are subject to review before
rewards are given and only creators that keep their accounts in good standing
will get them. Now YumUp's website says that they have become
a very popular branding with more than 100 golden buttons on the youtube
platform! As I said you get a gold button for one
million subscribers. I have nothing against people in Vietnam
creating successful channels and doing amazingly well
but i do think that the repetition of content across a hundred different
channels is just negative for the platform and I
am surprised that it keeps getting rewarded with views and that it's
allowed to work. Now youtube does have a policy if you
look here about spam and deceptive practices and under
an example of video spam it says posting the same content
repeatedly across one or more channels is not okay
but as you know we have raised this with youtube on behalf of other channels and
they have said as long as it's your own content
and not someone else's content it doesn't count as repetitious content.
I would think it would be a good thing to update that policy but
they haven't so they're obviously happy with the amount of money that
these content firms are making youtube is also making money.
You might also have noticed something that caught my attention and I'd be
interested to know, so let me know in the comments if you noticed this,
and that was the same thumbnail again and again and again. Let me go back to Mr
Cakes for you so you can see. So if we focus just for example sake on
the heart with a knife about to cut into it ...
it's there and there's another one and another again and again
oh and there it is again and there's two there again
and this one we're up to 10 ... 11 ... 12 ... 13. you get the picture!
It's the same thing again and again but what blew me away
was when I actually watched one of the videos which was called 'perfect
chocolate heart cake decorating ideas' and it had that picture on the thumbnail ...
well let me show you and fast-forward and you can see for yourself.
Here's the thumbnail for your reference, we have a cake
and another cake, a round cake, a slice, another cake,
a cookie cake, a dessert, fruit kebabs, macarons,
some weird thing in a cup they didn't even tell us what that whipped stuff was
some bit confused what that was yet another cake and finally a meringue
cloud with my invention of a sugar balloon bowl sitting on top,
that just doesn't look good together but anyway let's not get distracted...
the point is there was no chocolate heart in that video.
There was nowhere that a knife was cutting through a chocolate heart and
neither was the other dessert on the thumbnail,
they're not in the video! There's a knowledge gap there's something you see
and you go I want to know that so you see the heart with the knife on it you
go I want to know what's inside that heart, what happens when they cut into it
and then that releases a dopamine thing which is a hormone in your brain
which then makes you want to take an action in this case the action is click
on the video to watch it so then you can see
what happens with that heart and usually then if you then see it you get
some level of satisfaction but if you're not seeing it,
there's then that seeking is still there it's like a dopamine loop there was no
satisfaction so you want to click again. It's like having an itch that needs
to be scratched but you don't actually get to scratch it
and then the next time you see that thumbnail you still don't know
and you go huh I wonder what is inside that heart and you
click again on the same thing and of all the videos
that were on mr cakes with that thumbnail I couldn't find
them cutting into the heart anywhere in any of the videos that had that on their
thumbnail. Now they have a hundred channels, that's what
they tell us, and so it's quite possible it is in one of their videos
somewhere a chocolate heart with a knife cutting through it but it's not in the
videos here that i can see where it's on the thumbnail. So the
thumbnails are fake! They're not even real of what's in the
video at all which is really interesting. That made me
look into clickbait a little bit more and there
was this fascinating thing by Nathalie Nahali she's the author of the
book Webs of Influence and she said there's a formula to the
titles which when you hear this you are going to laugh and go oh I've seen those
before... but she says you use a number or a
trigger word followed by an adjective followed by a keyword
followed by a promise. So for example let's look at
Five-Minute Crafts because they follow this formula a lot.
A number say 28, an adjective 'simple', keywords 'hacks' and then the
promise: 'that will change your life' and now you
read every one of their titles you're going to go oh they're all
following the clickbait formula. That together with the thumbnail makes
you want to click on it and find out what that hack is for and another one ...
we've got a number 11 an adjective cool a keyword life tips and promise
that will save you a fortune. Now if you have a clickbait title like that
combined with a clickbait thumbnail in this case the thumbnail is
of a broken phone it's completely cracked and shattered
and they're putting toothpaste on it to fix it,
that creates the dopamine hit because who of us haven't had a broken phone in
your household and you've gone and got a quote for
getting it fixed and it is going to cost you a fortune.
So you would like to know you probably if you're like me thinking toothpaste
isn't going to work but i'd like to see them try
you'd like to know if there is a way of fixing your phone. So
you and millions of other people 21 million
other people in fact, might click on that video to find out.
Now if we watch that video together and i'll put it in fast forward of course ...
they make a cushion for their dog a collar for another dog
a box for a cat, a cat scratching pole, a pillowcase a bath mat
cutting up a tank top mittens for couples,
a work belt or i guess you could have just worn the jeans instead of cutting
up the jeans? Polishing boots using oil and leather
conditioner mixed together, sewing yourself a travel holder for
toiletries that's not waterproof so if it spills it's going to go all through
your luggage, cleaning the bottom of a saucepan ... have
you ever cleaned the bottom of your saucepan?
I don't tend to do that. Cleaning your extraction fan filters
they can go in the dishwasher by the way. Cleaning jewelry,
wasn't this supposed to be 11 hacks? we've had 14 already clearly the number
can just be a random number when you're doing clickbait it doesn't have to
relate to the video at all and using a Pringles tube to make a
light with a torch and a light with string lights and
there's a money tin to save money in so that I can save a
fortune. Now did you notice there was no iPhone
and there was no toothpaste in that whole video.
I was just amazed when i saw that you get so distracted by the incredibly
boring hacks that aren't useful and won't save
you a fortune that you forget why you actually clicked
so you don't even notice that it was a fake thumbnail,
that it's not even in the video and that thumbnail was so powerful that
if we look up how to fix a cracked iPhone with toothpaste ... look at that there are so so so many videos saying can you fix it
with toothpaste and it was just the thumbnail it wasn't even in that video.
Now of all the videos that have got many many million views on that thumbnail
the one that was the most honest was Mr Beasts. He at least
smashes a phone: "Disclamer the microphone on my camera didn't work while I was
recording so I'm gonna have to make all the sound effects manually with my
mouth... now we just rub it on the phone and it
should fix the cracks I mean it worked for this YouTuber and
this one and this one and this one, I mean it's gotta work
and now we just rub a dub dub dub dub it off..." I'm not actually gonna show you
what happens when he wipes off the toothpaste you're gonna have to go and
watch the video on his channel for that because he's a genuine creator and I
want you to watch some of his videos because he
really needs some more views ... no seriously he does he gives away so much
money he probably does need some more views so that he can pay for it.
Have a look at this other one that I showed you before: the 28 simple hacks
that will change your life. Wear wet socks to bed it says on the
thumbnail. Now I've cut this up here for you so that you can see all the hacks
quickly... in this video there are not 28 hacks
there are 66 and not one of them is about wearing
socks to bed. In fact, there is not one video hack
in there about bed or about socks and definitely not
wet socks ... so the thumbnail which is completely
fake got you to click ... well not necessarily you,
you may not have been fooled but lots and lots and i'm talking millions of
other people have been fooled by this. So the combination of the clickbait title
with a clickbait fake thumbnail that isn't even in the video
gets millions of people to click and is working for these content farms. Now
amazingly this happens again and again on the channel. This video
does not have anyone putting an iPhone anywhere near a watermelon ...
even in simple things like 28 summer desserts for your family,
it doesn't have the dessert that's on the thumbnail in the video anywhere.
Now I found this interesting because I've been saying to youtube for years
since they changed the artificial intelligence algorithm
it really favors clickbait and compilation and now years later
this is what we're seeing clickbait and compilations! That's
all we're seeing, that's all that the algorithm is pushing in front of
everyone but they do actually have a policy
ruling against fake thumbnails. You're not allowed to do the bait and switch
but obviously nobody's noticed it because youtube's been reviewing these
channels and they've said they're playing by the rules.
I'm a bit unsure what rules you're supposed to be playing by here but
remember they also do have a policy against dangerous content and they don't
think encouraging people to put strawberries
in bleach to make them white or pouring boiling
hot molten sugar on beaters so it flicks around
is dangerous so there may be a reason why this
isn't fake thumbnails and this is okay for them too
because money's involved. But anyway you let me know if you think maybe I'm just
looking at the wrong place for the rules that we're supposed to be playing by
as youtube creators let me know in the comments if I've got that wrong.
I want to say thank you so much to my patrons for allowing me to keep doing
this channel, seriously without the people supporting
me on Patreon I would have stopped uploading videos
a year and a half ago. You guys are what kept the channel going so I want to say
thank you so much for allowing me to do that I really appreciate it. You can
watch some more of my debunking videos here, click on the merch link
and some more non-clickbaity titled normal creative videos here obviously
i've been doing it all wrong 🤣 Make it a great week and I'll see you on
Friday.
I did not expect to watch that whole video and I did. It’s was really interesting. I’ve noticed that a lot of YouTubers start by making content but often eventually get wrapped up in making content about how YouTube works.
On top of all the things discussed in the video, one thing she did not mention is how these videos are mostly made with algorithms.
Sure, there's a content farm somewhere that actually films all these little clips, but there's reason that every single video has, like, 5-50 different clips (no matter whether it's "life hacks" or cake or haircuts) cut together.
Essentially, these clips are endlessly repeated. Just like the thumbnails repeat over and over again, the clips themselves repeat over and over again in the videos. The content farms have a gigantic library of those cute short clips and every new video is just an (essentially) random selection of clips.
That way, they can upload a new, unique (technically speaking) video every single day or even more often, without technically breaking the rules of uploading the same content.
Also, this allows them to essentially fully automate the process: Have an algorithm pick a bunch of random clips, edit them together, add a soundtrack, add a semi-randomized title, and upload it. You do not need a single human being in this entire process, it's fully automated.
Similarly, I bet you that the thumbnails chosen aren't just random, but that there's algorithms behind those videos that looks at which thumbnails gets the most clicks, and which then use those thumbnails more often in future videos.
TL;DR: On top of everything, these channels require a lot less human interaction than you think. It's almost all fully automated.
Why are so many people watching soundless videos of cakes being made? Is it just people bored at work watching videos on their phones? Stay at home parents with nothing better to do?
Ann Reardon is amazing, I love her content. Her and her husband should have their own show on Netflix or Hulu.
I always like this lady's videos when I see them, she does a good job explaining the point she's trying to make.
That being said, isn't it pretty common information that Youtube is full of these massive content farms? Youtube clearly doesn't give a shit because they bring in a lot of money, and I highly doubt they're going to do anything about it.
Clickbait is profitable, there's no doubt.
When I was in middle school, we were told about sensationalism in media, credibility, the tricks that marketers use in advertisements, substance addiction, sex, and how to eat healthy. I wonder if it's been upgraded to place more focus on clickbait and these positive feedback dopamine loops and how to live a mentally healthy life in the midst of all of these addictive social media platforms which are all running on algorithms which search for the strategy that maximizes clicks and watch time.
I wonder why these clickbait channels don’t show up on my YouTube feed. Do I use YouTube differently ya think?
Exposing 8 (number) viral (adjective) video tricks that will blow your mind (promise)
This lady has a bunch of videos about various 5 minute easy recipe delicious stuff, debunking all of it.
I particularly like when she tries something that isn't pure death poison and makes her husband eat it.