[eganist]

youtube consistently steers everyone who touches it to more and more extreme content with the passage of time. It's not unique, and often times that content tends to be anti-science.

I'm not the OP but youtube is tainted for anything other than entertainment and a few select channels like the ones by PBS e.g Space Time.

[screye]

That's in stark contrast to my opinion about YouTube. I have a huge list of highly trust worthy subscriptions / reference channels and no other social media platform comes close. If you live on your subscriptions channel, you never need to worry about content being thrown at you, or radicalization rabbit holes.

I can easily find upper graduate university lectures for complex topics. YouTube makes it easy to link first sources unlike other image/video platforms. Also, since they appear on official pages of reputed sources (conference channel, university channel) there is a certain level of reliability irrespective of who the speaker is.

Lastly, search for any popular video on YouTube and you will see just as many 'response' videos. While not intentional, it helps avoid echo chambering as the counter argument is readily available .

[eganist]

> If you live on your subscriptions channel, you never need to worry about content being thrown at you, or radicalization rabbit holes.

Ok, but you understand why someone might be weary that the most common first hit for someone might be an arbitrary youtube video given your premise is living on the channels you've subscribed to.

The bulk of youtube's content is garbage. You have to go sifting through the content over time, suffering through the recommendation engine (or a shortcut - ask friends who've already lived through that nightmare) to find the geese who lay the good eggs.