[ffsm8]

YouTube has almost no original knowledge.

Most of the "educational" and documentation style content there is usually "just" gathered together from other sources, occasionally with links back to the original sources in the descriptions.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of the platform, it's just inherently catered towards summarizing results for entertainment, not for clarity or correctness.

[adrian_b]

YouTube has a lot of junk, but there are also a lot of useful videos that demonstrate various practical skills or the experiences of using certain products, or recordings of certain natural environments, which are original, in the sense that before YouTube you could not find equivalent content anywhere, except by knowing personally people who could show you such things, but there would have been very small chances to find one near you, while through YouTube you can find one who happens to live on the opposite side of the World and who can share with you the experience in which you are interested.

[GorbachevyChase]

This is basically my only use for YouTube. “How do I frame my carport” and such where visuals are crucial to understanding. But commentary or plain narrative? It’s painful.

[danudey]

It's difficult for an AI to tell what information from YouTube is correct and reliable and which is pseudoscience, misinformation, or outright lies.

In that context, I think excluding YouTube as a source makes sense; not because YT has no useful content, but because it has no way of determining useful content.

[IsTom]

Hey, but at least it will know that Raid: Shadow Legends is one of the biggest mobile role-playing games.

[al_borland]

This argument can be used for excluding 90% of the Internet from training data.

[al_borland]

While there is a lot of low-effort content, there is also some pretty involved stuff.

The investigation into Honey’s shenanigans[0] was investigated and presented first on YouTube (to the best of my knowledge). The fraud in Minnesota was also broken by a YouTuber who just testified to Congress[1]. There are people doing original work on there, you just have to end up in an algorithm that surfaces it… or seek it out.

In other cases people are presenting stuff I wouldn’t otherwise know about, and getting access to see it at levels I wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, like Cleo Abram’s[0] latest video about LIGO[1]. Yes, it’s a mostly entertaining overview of what’s going on, not a white paper on the equipment, but this is probably more in depth than what a science program on TV in the 80s or 90s would have been… at least on par.

There are also full class lectures, which people can access without being enrolled in a school. While YouTube isn’t the original source, it is still shared in full, not summarized or changed for entertainment purposes.

[0] https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk (part 1 of 3)

[1] https://youtu.be/vmOqH9BzKIY

[2] https://youtu.be/kr3iXUcNt2g

[3] https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/learn-more

[sidewndr46]

I've noticed that the YouTubers I enjoy the most are the ones that are good presenter's, good editor's, and have a traditional text blog as well.

[Aurornis]

I'm not looking for original knowledge when I go to YouTube to learn something. I just want someone who's good at explaining a math concept or who has managed to get the footage I want to see about how something is done.

I think that's the wrong metric for evaluating videos.

[jeffbee]

You are being dismissive, though. There is no "original knowledge" anywhere. If the videos are the best presentation of the information, best suited to convey the topic to the audience, then that is valuable. Humans learn better from visual information conveyed at the same time as spoken language, because that exploits multiple independent brain functions at the same time. Reading does not have this property. Particularly for novices to a topic, videos can more easily convey the mental framework necessary for deeper understanding than text can. Experts will prefer the text, but they are rarer.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If the videos are the best presentation of the information, best suited to convey the topic to the audience, then that is valuable

Still doesn’t make them a primary source. A good research agent should be able to jump off the video to a good source.

[contagiousflow]

I think you've never read real investigative journalism before

[sylos]

We live in an era where people lack the ability to read and digest written content and rely on someone speaking to them about it instead.

[contagiousflow]

It's a step beyond that. Where people who only consume the easily digestible content don't believe there is a source to any of it

[Bluecobra]

But it has electrolytes!

[jeffbee]

Imagine claiming that video has not historically been a medium of investigative journalism.

[contagiousflow]

If your takeaway from my comment was "this guy thinks investigative journalism must be written" I would suggest reading the comment again.

[danudey]

How does the AI tell the difference between trustworthy YouTube postings, accidental misinformation, deliberate misinformation, plausible-sounding pseudoscience, satire, out-of-date information, and so on?

Some videos are a great source of information; many are the opposite. If AI can't tell the difference (and it can't) then it shouldn't be using them as sources or suggesting them for further study.