Fake Restoration Videos Are Ruining YouTube | Internet Anarchist

0:00The YouTube community is no stranger to staged or highly scripted content, from staged pranks to over-dramatic challenge videos. Everyone is used to creators being a little over the top, and that's generally okay for the most part. However, there is a growing category of content that from the outside is wholesome and seemingly innocent, but in reality thrives on outright lying to viewers, destruction, and often even going to extreme lengths of cruelty in order to harvest more clicks and add sense revenue. Hi, I'm the internet anarchist, I create weekly YouTube documentaries, and today we'll be investigating the cruel world of fake restoration and animal rescue content. Around two years ago, I made two videos covering the disturbing wise behind fake restoration and animal rescue channels. Thankfully, multiple of the channels I discussed were terminated after my videos release. However, the situation has only got worse, as my original video

1:03was falsely copyright claimed, resulting in half the video being cut out after uploading, and ultimately being no longer recommended to anyone. And since then, this problem has only seemingly got worse. Restoration videos have been a viral staple on YouTube for over three years, with anish having several subcategories that most common variant involves creators discovering rusty, aged, or seemingly naturally damaged items, and then documenting the steps of restoring it back into its intended form. The content grabs viewers by showing a thumbnail featuring an extremely corroded and damaged item, begging the question of what it would look like if it were brand new. While their restoration process might seem incredibly effective at returning these damaged objects into their original form, a closer look yielded some very apparent issues. From artificially aging metal with fake rust to intentionally mangling electronics, these channels were willing to do anything to manipulate viewers into thinking these items were being authentically restored. This got so bad that it began to affect real restoration channels who would suffer on YouTube due to not being able to keep up with the competition of the

2:05fakers, who can pump out more dramatic restorations more often. This resulted in real restoration expert backyard ballistics creating a video educating his viewers on how to spot the phonies. Another thing that could give away one of these fakes is the presence of uncovered areas that have been missed during the application of fake rust. For example, as links weaver could leave a shadow during spraying and there's no natural process that would leave such an appearance, so we can conclude with high confidence that we're looking at some form of fake rust. Backyard ballistic separates fake restoration videos into two categories, mild fakes and strong fakes. Mild fakes are when an object in good condition is intentionally damaged, using natural processes to make it look more aged or corroded. For example, the crater might bury the item, expose it to water, or place it in a humid environment to speed up the rusting or decay. The damage is real and so is the restoration process. It's just that a K was deliberately caused for the sake of the video. Mild fakes can still be valuable because the techniques used in the restoration process are genuine. Backyard ballistics has a good job

3:08explaining how to spot mild fakes. First of all, corrosion that happened over many years looks different, look for these lamps. They are very hard to crystal to corrosion products and they take very long to form. This one was under K98KR restored, another one where you can clearly see them is the Modern 91 Carcano and also the Staya 1912 that I did last. In order to cause this rusting on purpose I would have needed to start doing it before I even thought of doing YouTube. So if you see these, the decay was probably genuine. Strong fakes on the other hand are completely staged. The object wasn't damaged naturally or even through realistic processes. Instead, the crater uses materials like paints, dyes or fillers to make it look rusted or decayed. Essentially it's all for sure and the restoration process is more about theatrics than actual skill. Strong fakes often have little to no educational value because the problems they were fixed were never real to begin with and backyard ballistics explained it best how to spot these. You can usually spot these kind of scummy content quite easily just by looking carefully.

4:11For example, there is no reason for a plastic rubber piece to become rust coloured, nor for a steel object to develop green or bluish corrosion products. If you see a steel object with green stuff on it, then what you're looking at is more certainly fake. By the start of 2023, more and more fake restoration channels had stopped trying to repair the electronics in their videos and just got to the point where they destroyed items on camera. Following this, they'd use editing tricks to make it look like the item was being restored by adding reassembly clips from when it was brand new. Look at this! That is a new circuit board that he's putting in there. If you remember, some of those elements there had heavy rust on them. Now they're perfect from just soapy water. The red flaps, that looks like new plastic. If we go back in the video, just have a look at them here. Now let's go back here and have a look at what they've turned out like. So from this dirty looking flap to this flap which looks pristine and new. As if needlessly breaking consumer electronics

5:14wasn't bad enough, these channels would scale up their destructive strategy to whole motorcycles. While a majority of viewers didn't notice the inherent problems with cleaning engine parts this way, there were a few members of the audience willing to point out this floor. With a comment stating, this is not how you restore a motorcycle. Frame not entirely dismantled before paint removal or painting. Painting over steerer bearings and initial barrel, fill it over the top of primer, what looked like soapy water clean engine block and components, the worst painting technique I've ever witnessed. As deceptive and destructive as fake restoration might seem, that is only truly the tip of the iceberg and actually looks completely innocent and harmless when you look on the darker side of the niche. With cute animal content being a staple on YouTube, these depraved craters quickly figured out that restoring or rescuing animals would generate exponentially more views. Fake animal rescue videos would revolve around craters encountering animals in supposed distress or danger and then saving them. What seems to the unsuspecting viewer as wholesome content

6:15that is worth supporting. Unfortunately, many of these channels were doing anything but helping these defenseless animals. Often times putting them in real danger and harm's way, just to play the hero when they are quote saved. One of the most common and unexpected forms of fake animal videos involves freshwater totals and barnacles. What are barnacles you may be asking? While barnacles are tiny sea creatures that naturally stick to things like rocks, boats and sometimes even sea totals, they generally don't harm sea totals and it's a normal sight in the ocean. However, with the rise of oddly satisfying videos on YouTube, barnacle removal videos started trending. But since sea totals are rare and often hard to come by, many craters have found a way to fake this content by using freshwater totals instead. These YouTubers go as far as actually glowing barnacles, shells and dirt onto freshwater total shells, making it look like they need cleaning. Then,

7:18they film themselves saving these totals by scraping the glued barnacles off. What many viewers don't realise is that this process causes real pain for the totals. Their shells have no vendings so they can fill every scrape, leading to not only damage to the outer shell, but also internal trauma. It's a terrible form of animal abuse that from the outside, viewers don't really know what's actually going on. Investigations done by YouTube channel New England Reptile reveal that there are a few individuals behind most of these videos, and that they keep using the same freshwater totals over and over again. So after downloading and scrubbing through nearly 200 barnacle removal videos, I've come to the conclusion that 99% of these videos are made by the same person. There's just one creep doing this. I've spotted about 6 different species of totals used in these videos. After a while I started to notice something truly, truly disturbing, and I wasn't at all surprised. They're using the same totals over and over again. And with comments on these videos such as, it's so nice to see kind people like you helping out these little totals. It's obvious

8:22that most people don't seem to realise just how disturbing and to crawl the content they're watching truly is. Happily watching these freshwater totals have tons of dirt and barnacles glued to their shells just to be satisfiely scraped off with sharp metal tools to create viral content. I ain't barnacles, are you serious dude? These are literally rocks. I didn't watch this dude's channel yet. Look that one's falling off because you just glued it. Look you can see the super glue coming off. You can see the super glue on the side of the turtle. You can see that. That's not even super glue, that's hot glue. So you put hot burning hot glue which is basically melted plastic to the shell of the turtle which can feel all of this. This is the worst offender I've seen. This channel rescue sea turtle. This dude sucks. The worst part about these channels is that even after they are terminated they simply create new channels and repost the same content, creating an endless cycle of harm and viewership. Whilst fake animal rescue and restoration channels come in many forms, there are some underlying principles that are common to all of them. First of all,

9:24putting items and animals into real or staged danger. Second of all, they frame human intervention as the only way to make the situation better. And then finally, they have a massive list of uploads with almost identical restoration or rescue formats. Often times with the same item or animal being rescued or restored several times. An often overlooked aspect of fake or staged content is just how much misinformation they sprint. Anyone watching these videos without restoration experience could try and replicate these hazards cleaning methods and severely damage the item they restoreing or injure themselves. And it only gets worse when you apply this to videos involving living creatures. One could only imagine the number of people being fooled into thinking or moving barnacles from total shells is a good idea. You would think having the entire YouTube community being aware of fake videos would make them less common. But you'd be wrong. Stage content keeps evolving to hide its more apparent flaws and developed new ways to manipulate viewers into engaging with their content. Thankfully, there are still professionals out there making

10:24efforts to educate fans about these insidious tactics. On the 3rd of November 2024, a marine biologist and YouTube by the name of K-Pasionate would upload a video titled How to Spot Fake Animal Rescue Videos. While the video was primarily meant to expose the dubious sides of animal rescue content, K-Pasionate would go beyond that, highlighting the danger these types of videos could have on both people and animals. The sea otter fled in haste to a fishing boat to escape from the killer whale. Once aboard, the otter appeared visibly panning, continuously scanning the water's surface as if searching for something. This video claims a distress sea otter mom was separated from her pup. It actually says children multiple times, but that's fine. The video has four million views and is entirely fake. K-Pasionate would go on to explain that while the two sails in the video were indeed rescued, the narration around the video was a complete lie. Ration in this video is completely fictional, however. The otter was not searching for her own child. It was just escaping the

11:27orcas. In fact, we don't even know if it's a female. We then cut to a rescued baby sea otter. Fun fact, I used to work at this facility and I know the people seen caring for this otter who was separated from her mother and flown to a rescue facility. But that rescue story is nothing like the one that the video is telling. But likely, very hungry, having finished a whole bottle of milk. The staff showed immense compassion, purchasing many cute toys for the little ones. They were so young. Being so young, they would cry. They couldn't find their mother. We then cut to a video showing a completely different species of animal in an entirely different facility. The previous clips showed sea otter pups and this is a river otter pup. A adorable, but unrelated. As if the story around the otters wasn't wild enough already, the AI narrator, which claimed that the two otters later had a hot-women reunion. Fortunately, two weeks later, the people on the boat managed to contact the rescue center. Finally, the mother and her children were reunited. The sea otter excitedly embraced her recovered

12:30child, tears of gratitude streaming down her face. Oh, that was horrible. None of which ever happened. Joy was deemed non-releasable by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and you can see him today if you visit Vancouver. Along with this rescued pup seen earlier. Without any additional context, someone watching this film would video might assume that the otter was genuinely separated and unknowingly share a completely fabricated story across social media. Fortunately, K-Pasinot had ways to get around this. Well, it might seem harmless to like and share a feel-good story like this. It can actually be pretty dangerous if the video is fake. One of the first questions I ask when I see one of these stories is who posted the video. Is it from a trusted source? There are a lot of really incredible people and organizations out there rescuing animals and sharing their stories on social media. To cover their tracks, these fake animal rescue pages will frequently use positive sounding names for their pages and try to use disclaimers to hide copyright abuse. But I'm always suspicious about videos from

13:35anonymous accounts with names like heartwarming animal rescues or animal kindness, especially ones that use text-to-voice narration. A dead giveaway is a disclaimer in the descriptions that will look like this. Contact the owner first to use this photo. All rights are reserved and belong to this photo's owner. Please DM for credit or removal or no copyright infringement intended. In addition to this, K-Pasinot would point out the lack of continuity as another telltale sign of fake animal rescue videos. The next thing I look for is continuity. Are we seeing the same animal or are they cutting back and forth between different animals or even different species? Do we see the same people from one clip to the next? Finally, K-Pasinot advised people should fact check the supposed age to animals before jumping to conclusions. Which brings to the next thing that I look for when I see an animal video. Does it seem remotely plausible based on what we know about the animals involved? This video claims the whale is in pain from these barnacles and the

14:37humans are helping it by removing them. When you get a chance, Google our barnacles bet for whales. You'll quickly learn that whales and barnacles have a symbiotic relationship that can be mutually beneficial and that barnacles do not harm the whales in any way, shape or form. It goes without saying, but fake animal rescue or restoration videos rely on manipulating viewer emotions to go viral. And this often has serious consequences for everyone. A prime illustration of this is how these videos encourage people to disturb animals in the wild, while giving them the worst advice on how to handle that properly. And worst of all, the continued success of these videos on YouTube only encourages people in a financially desperate position to put animals in harm's way in order to get some extra money. At the end of the day, the most effective way of dealing with this ongoing issue is by raising awareness and reporting the content when you come across it. As viewers, we need to make it as difficult as possible for creators to profit from this harmful content, as this is the best we can do until YouTube develops a stronger solution to address the issue. To help this video reach as

15:39many people as possible, make sure you like, comment, subscribe and share it around with your friends. The first way of combating this problem is by making people more aware of it.