What Can You Trust On The Internet?

I’m not gonna lie, all the difficult stuff going on in the world right now has me STRESSED OUT! And when I get stressed out, I bake. 🍪🍰

Cookies. Pies. Tarts. All was going well with my stress-baking until a coworker sent me this video. It’s from YouTube baker Ann Reardon, who runs the channel How to Cook That. Cool!, I thought. Another fun recipe for me to try out. WRONG! Instead, it was Ann breaking down how one of the most viewed cooking channels on YouTube was all lies, lies, and more lies. Whaaat?! 😩 Go watch Ann’s video and then come back here because I have more to tell you. I’ll wait…

Is So Yummy the WORST baking channel on YouTube?

Not inclined to watch the video? Here’s a tl;dr. Baker makes good baking videos. Sketchy thing called a content farm pumps out low-quality baking videos designed to game YouTube’s algorithm for profit, but with questionable recipes. Bad content farm videos get a lot more views and subscribers than legit baker. Legit baker exposes sketchy content farm’s laughably bad recipes. Calls for people to support better baking content creators before they get pushed out of existence.

Good, you’re back. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

This story picks up with me sitting in my kitchen, wondering what kind of world we live in where even my happy baking videos are trying to manipulate me so someone else can make money. STRESSFUL!

Look, I wasn’t born yesterday. I know not to trust everything I see on the internet. Lots of sketchy people have figured out how to game the algorithms on places like YouTube and Twitter to manipulate people. It’s a big problem all over the internet.

But my cooking videos are deceiving me?! If I can’t trust cooking videos, what can I trust? Now, rather than stress-baking, I’m stress-googling everything I can find on this topic.

The good news is, my stress is your gain. I may not be able to share my cookies and pies with you. I can share all the great things I read on this topic to help you spot and avoid online manipulation. Here is a reading list to help you start to understand the problem of online manipulation. I hope you enjoy it with a cookie or maybe even a cupcake. 🧁

Yes, we’re being manipulated on the internet. Yes, it’s an alarming problem. Yes, there is something you can do about it. Step One: Educate yourself. Step Two: Help educate others. Feel free to share this reading list with your friends and family.

Thank you,
Jen Caltrider, Stress Baker
Mozilla

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What Can You Trust On The Internet?

What is Online Manipulation?

How Can Online Manipulation Personally Affect Me?

How Does Online Manipulation Work?

What Are Social Media Platforms Doing About It?

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