David Allen Posted November 11 Share Posted November 11 I want to share something which has been bothering me for some time now. I shared on the Facebook group but want to be sure it is also here since not everyone uses Facebook. This is not specific to fan collecting, but a great amount of our members' time is spent doing restoration work. Therefore, I believe it is very relevant content for AFCA members to read. Many here are excellent at what they do and have a reason to be proud of their expertise. There are quite a few of us who enjoy restoring and repairing our fans, as well as other very old mechanical and electrical things. Some of us like sharing the repair journey on YouTube in the hopes that it provides entertainment and some guidance to others. If you search for restoration videos on YouTube, you generally won't find content from one of us. You will find numerous fake restoration videos from the Far East. It was immediately obvious to me that 'something' was wrong with these videos, but it took a while and viewing many of them before figuring out what they were doing and what the motivation was. The sad fact is, there are more people gullible enough to fall for this and watch it than there are people who see through it. For that reason, they get massive numbers of views. Below, I will share a link to a video where Simon Whistler explains in detail what is going on. I want to warn you, his documentary style may be a bit annoying at times. However, if you can look past the intro he explains quite well what is going on. I know this is nothing new and it's been bothering me for a long time. Comments? https://youtu.be/ENzgxXXGEcA 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Michael Posted November 11 Share Posted November 11 12 minutes ago, David Allen said: I want to share something which has been bothering me for some time now. I shared on the Facebook group but want to be sure it is also here since not everyone uses Facebook. This is not specific to fan collecting, but a great amount of our members' time is spent doing restoration work. Therefore, I believe it is very relevant content for AFCA members to read. Many here are excellent at what they do and have a reason to be proud of their expertise. There are quite a few of us who enjoy restoring and repairing our fans, as well as other very old mechanical and electrical things. Some of us like sharing the repair journey on YouTube in the hopes that it provides entertainment and some guidance to others. If you search for restoration videos on YouTube, you generally won't find content from one of us. You will find numerous fake restoration videos from the Far East. It was immediately obvious to me that 'something' was wrong with these videos, but it took a while and viewing many of them before figuring out what they were doing and what the motivation was. The sad fact is, there are more people gullible enough to fall for this and watch it than there are people who see through it. For that reason, they get massive numbers of views. Below, I will share a link to a video where Simon Whistler explains in detail what is going on. I want to warn you, his documentary style may be a bit annoying at times. However, if you can look past the intro he explains quite well what is going on. I know this is nothing new and it's been bothering me for a long time. Comments? https://youtu.be/ENzgxXXGEcA I don't find myself 'searching' for any such videos, but love when I am prompted to watch a REAL restoration/repair video on various groups or by friends, such as your refrigeration videos... I tried to watch this "", but had to stop just after 3 minutes. Yes that guy is very annoying and full of himself, like many of the video 'content stealers' he is ranting about. I just ignore it all. I guess the main issue I would have, is if the YouTube search algorithms prevent people from finding the actual aim of their search, that's a shame. Same thing happened with the Amazon search, at least from my perspective. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Allen Posted November 11 Author Share Posted November 11 9 minutes ago, Paul Michael said: I don't find myself 'searching' for any such videos, but love when I am prompted to watch a REAL restoration/repair video on various groups or by friends, such as your refrigeration videos... I tried to watch this "", but had to stop just after 3 minutes. Yes that guy is very annoying and full of himself, like many of the video 'content stealers' he is ranting about. I just ignore it all. I guess the main issue I would have, is if the YouTube search algorithms prevent people from finding the actual aim of their search, that's a shame. Same thing happened with the Amazon search, at least from my perspective. You have a great point about the search algorithms being altered and made less useful. Have had some issues with Amazon as well. It used to be easier to find obscure electrical parts and hardware there, but as with the YouTube video search, the signal to noise ratio is getting worse there. I read an article about how the Google Search algorithm also is manipulated to promote irrelevant content; when Google is paid by advertisers. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevor Andersen Posted November 12 Share Posted November 12 (edited) Yes I was a computer component dealer and heavily into hardware repair decades ago. I watch videos on occassion and so much of it is faked and just nonsense. Fans aren't quite as plagued by this but it is getting worse. Any time I see a fan video and I can tell it is from somewhere in Asia I just skip it. There's some good ones about electric motor repair and theory from India but 99% of them are fake or clickbait garbage. Edited November 12 by Trevor Andersen 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Levi Mevis Posted November 14 Share Posted November 14 I have several electronics repair video channels bookmarked on YouTube that I follow because I also repair/restore antique and vintage electronics. I know those videos are reputable becase of the fact that they discuss stuff local to their area that they are unhappy with either politically or business wise and a couple of the repair video channels I watch the guys doing the videos are from Southern California, around the LA, and San Diego areas and they will often times mention in their videos about how they dislike how busy the freeways are, or often times air planes will be flying over head while they are filming and they will point out the air planes going by over head or they will even talk about ambulances going by or even car alarms going off randomly and then bring up about why the car alarm is going off (apparently certain Nissan cars from the early 2000s had issues with the car alarm modules shorting out because of faulty capacitors on their boards and so the alarms would go off randomly and can't be turned off with the remote), and even just venting their frustrations about local politicians that they don't like for various reasons, and they've even been known to rant about the Big Tech Censorship Stuff every so often. So there are definitely real repair video channels out there on youtube you just have to know what you're looking for and make sure your search settings are limited to the US only. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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