Plagiarism and You(Tube)
hbomberguyCited 3× on HN, 2023–2026
commentary · general · evergreen · 2023–2026 on HN
A nearly four-hour video essay by hbomberguy on plagiarism on YouTube, centered on specific creators who copied other people's work. It examines what plagiarism is and how it went unaddressed.
Used as a reference example of blatant plagiarism, including in debates about AI training and academic plagiarism.
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3 comments from Hacker News
For those that don't have 4 hours to spare: ▶ this video > But it turns out writing a good review is really difficult. For example, I use the phrase "it turns out" more than once every video by accident because I'm bad at it. I'm not even joking. I've written "it turns out" in the next section without realizing it. That's how fuckin' bad I am. > Being able to write a good review is a unique and difficult skill. Creative people often have trouble recognizing their skills as skills because eventually they feel like second nature, and they don't feel real and practical like building a house or domming. But it turns ...in... that this stuff actually is valuable. If it wasn't, people wouldn't be stealing it.
>Presuming the allegations are true, I find it interesting that it went unaddressed for so long. The matter was seemingly systematically ignored for almost 30 years until [...] If the recent youtube plagiarism drama[1] is anything to go by, you can do blatant plagiarism for years, get called out by randoms, and still get away with it. [1] ▶ this video [2] link
It's plagiarism ( ▶ this video ). It's not the same situation. You can't possibly expect someone to be exposed to the entirety of the internet like ChatGPT is. It is a matter of scale. If you still think they are the same thing, the industrial revolution was about scale and had transformative impacts in the society.