3 ms·
I think the article is overthinking it a little bit, and I think it comes down to accessibility, enthusiasm, and to a certain degree a rapid pace in terms of co
by polygotdomain 5y ago
I think the article is overthinking it a little bit, and I think it comes down to accessibility, enthusiasm, and to a certain degree a rapid pace in terms of content.
There's no doubt that YouTube has made a number of these topics far more accessible. The inclusion of videos along side typical text searches means that it's just as easy to click on an article as it is one of those videos. There's also typically a multitude of options that each might cover the same topic from certain angles and varying degrees of overlap.
These videos are typically uploaded by creators who are passionate and incredibly enthusiastic to share a key aspect of their lives. Many of the popular educational channels have a passionate creator behind them, rather than a flatter more lecture based approach like you might get in typical coursework (which is also on YouTube, but isn't nearly as widely consumed).
Lastly, I can find a 5, 10, or 20 minute video that's focused on a specific subject or topic on YouTube as opposed to going through 60 or 90 minutes of coursework/lectures that are predefined. I can jump from video to video, carving out my own path to learn what I want, rather than sit through a lecture that may not be discussing something particularly of interest.
The Tacit knowledge that's referenced in the article is certainly there in many of the videos on YouTube, but is not the main driver behind this "revolution". It's the ability for anyone in the world to dive nearly as deep as they want, lead by content creators that are genuine passionate about the subjects they cover.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoYoutube deserves no credit: they do nothing to make educational videos more discoverable, they cannot even categorise them properly! My 'feed' is filled with videos I already watched and typically the only way I discover new content is linked from HN or other sites. Neither does Youtube treat their educational creators well - as far ad they are concerned, 'influencer' reviewing funny viseos has more value than educational content.
- scrollaway 5y agoYou're using YouTube wrong. I dunno. For me, YouTube serves me up so much educational content i want to watch that there is over 100 hours of content in my Watch Later. And i do very often go through the videos it gives me but it never ends. YouTube is a tool, you have to do a bit of curation so it learns what you like and dislike, and then it just delivers an unending firehose of content matching that. And if what you like is educational content, boy is there a lot of it available.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoI dunno what i am doing wrong, but my youtube feed is a barrage of things I've already watched, the only way for me to get something new suggested that's not garbade is to spesifically search for it.
- michaelt 5y agoThe secret to operating youtube is to ignore the homepage and video recommendations and disable autoplay - instead what you want to do is:- Stage 1: Follow channels you like. Stage 2: Visit https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
- scrollaway 5y agoIn my experience, youtube recommendations are stellar for educational and long form content, so i would absolutely recommend looking at them if that is your focus. I've discovered a lot of cool channels this way.
- scrollaway 5y agoDo you have watch history turned off maybe? YouTube extremely rarely recommends videos I've already watched (and usually, it's explicitly a suggestion to rewatch something that might actually be cool to rewatch)