I’ve never been super-impressed by Rob Braxman. I mean he’s never truly wrong in what he was saying in his Youtube videos, but his explanations are over-simplistic, a bit of a shortcut (but fair enough to reach a wide audience I guess), and mostly designed to sell his meh deGoogled cellphones and equally meh privacy services. But all in all, he’s somewhat watchable and sometimes informative after I’m done watching all the new videos from the other, more interesting channels I follow.
But lately, his videos seem to have shifted markedly toward unhinged rants and sensationalist conspiracy theory. His latest video for instance is utter nonsense:
Skynet 2024: The Infrastructure is Complete!
I mean yeah, okay, technically he’s talking about a real thing. But Skynet? And doomsday Terminator imagery from 1984? Really?
I’m pretty sure the man doesn’t have all his fries in the cone anymore. This can’t possibly be a conscious strategy to win more Youtube subscribers: this sort of video is going to lose him the part of his audience that has a genuine and technically-informed interest in privacy, and I doubt he’s ever going to become a favorite of the sort of crowd who likes conspiracy theories.
Either that or Youtube is a lot stupider than I thought and he noticed an uptick in subscribers when he makes videos like that. At any rate, I really hesitate to click on any of his new videos now.
Sometimes it’s easier to sell solutions to the problems that you describe versus problems that are real. I’ve gotten that sense with his videos from the beginning, even the less extreme ones I’ve been recommended in the past. At some point you need to cut your losses, and at this point I think Braxman is more unhelpful than helpful in the tech space.
Have you considered the possibility his whole YouTube gig was always a scam? Look at how 1995 his website is. Has ever done a video teaching how to do anything technical so viewers can do something themself? He’s a talker. There’s no evidence of having IT skills.
His audience is the uninformed, don’t know any better. All he does is talk. People are better search videos and watching a random person showcase how the work is done for people to follow along and teach through examples. Rob doesn’t show anything, only talks about it.
For all viewers know, all of his videos might be his opinions based of what others say, but give him a terminal or a shell and a keyboard, he might not know how to do anything.
I wouldn’t say he’s alone in this regard, the privacy community has always attracted extremely paranoid, conspiracy-driven types.
I find most of his videos to be conspiracy ridden and mostly fluff. As with a few other creators, he talks a ton but doesnt say much. The things he says distract from where we can actually obtain privacy in 2024 - limiting 3rd party collection and sales of our data.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Skynet 2024: The Infrastructure is Complete!
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
