The quality of youtube videos when it comes to content that does not waste your time is so low, that I must oppose this only based on principle and not the merit of the platform.
The quality of youtube videos when it comes to content that does not waste your time is so low, that I must oppose this only based on principle and not the merit of the platform.
I don't get this view.
Yes there is a lot of crap because it's both easier to produce than quality content, and has higher incentives to keep making more of it.
But that's the same with eg. books. Aside from small curated book stores, pick up a random book. Most likely it's not worth to cut down the tree it was printed on.
It's very easy to watch only quality content and there is an incredible amount of it on youtube. I've learned lots of electronics, CAD work, mechanical engineering, watched tons of lectures from amazing professors...
It's bimodal. YouTube has both the worst and the best content on the internet.
I'm not willing to give up the latter to save the masses from the former.
The thing about YouTube is that it's so large. Even if only 1% of it is good, it's still more than any other platform by far. I've spent years curating my YouTube experience. I still regard yt premium as the best value subscription I have.
seconding this. there's a lot of housekeeping and esp now with content-free AI slop arriving in waves it's difficult to weed out but if you stick to your subscriptions rather than just letting the algo dump stuff on you there's a lot of really good content. YouTube has helped me get fit, helped me learn how to cook, helped me fix my air conditioner, helped me replace the fuel pump in my car, and provided me with fun and insight into a lot of hobbies and communities I'd normally be unable to dive into. I'd guess that your "1%" estimate is several orders of magnitude higher than the real ratio but I still agree with your core point: there's tons of great stuff out there, it's just under gigatons of crap.
YouTube is a mirror. If you don't like what it's showing you, it's generally your own fault. Stop clicking on clickbait slop and it will stop showing that to you.
That advice is for adults BTW. Kids don't have the requisite developed tastes and self control, so YouTube's algorithm will almost always send them into a death spiral of brain rot. Kids shouldn't have unsupervised access to this kind of system.
> Stop clicking on clickbait slop and it will stop showing that to you.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. YouTube doesn't recognize "clickbait slop" as a topic of its own; it's a type of content which can be associated with many different topics. For instance, let's say that a child is interested in cats. They will probably be recommended a lot of horrible AI slop videos about kittens, even if they never click on any of them.
As I said, it won't work for kids. It does work for me, it demonstrably works. And yes, I sometimes watch cute animal videos. I watch some videos from the guy who brings his pet duck places, and the Japanese otter videos too. My recommendations stick with those and I don't get any AI slop or any of the fake sob story slop or any of that. It's a matter of exercising discipline about what videos you interact with. Turn off autoplay (no account needed), don't click or even mouse hover any slop in related videos or the end cards, and it will keep your front-page clean. The front-page really does reflect what you interact with.