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I agree with the author. I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix a

by rcarr 3y ago

I agree with the author. I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix and Prime too and just take out the odd month subscription to a streaming service if there’s something I really want to watch. I’m probably better off watching some informative documentary on YT than I am watching Netflix anyway and if I want entertainment, there are millions of hours of TTRPGs, stand up comedy and web series to watch that are often of a really high quality (e.g Critical Role, Ari Shaffir, Wayne). It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. You were limited by your parents bank balance or the resources of your local library.

mkaic 3y ago
As a Gen Z-er who grew up learning as much as I could about my passions, mostly on YouTube, I hope you're right about us! I'm really hopeful that my generation can go on to do some pretty great stuff. We do have a patently odd sense of humor, though...
coliveira 3y ago
This assumes that this generation will spent its youtube time learning something useful. While this will be true for part of the population, most people are just wasting their time and, in aggregate, it may happen that this generation will have even lower skills than the previous generation that had access only to a local library.
irrational 3y ago
> they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I have children between the ages of 9 and 26. You know what they are passionate about? Minecraft, Mr Beast, Travel vlogs, mommy vlogs, “reality” videos, etc. I’ve tried to introduce them to science, space, programming, history, math, finance, nature, etc. content and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. They are passionate about cheap mindless entertainment. I see the same things in their friends and classmates. You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I’m sure there are a few youths who are using their time productively and it will pay dividends for them. But, from what I’ve seen, the vast majority aren’t interested.
- radicaldreamer 3y ago
  A lot of that stuff is going to be AI generated in the future and it'll hit those dopamine circuits better than human generated content ever could
  - api 3y ago
    Now we know what all the Borg were doing in their cube ships. Between occasional bouts of conquest and assimilation they were all frying in a sizzling bath of repetitive dopamine triggering meme soup created by AIs and other members of the hive mind. Maybe they lurched out and attacked or assimilated someone when a new trending channel appeared that urged such activities. I joke but it really is a bit spooky how plausible the Borg are today to the point that I can imagine what it would be like to be part of them. It’d be like scrolling TikTok but with Neuralink.
    - hydrok9 3y ago
      That explains the skin conditions and baldness (of the Borg, though I see a lot of hair loss among under-30s)
- SnowHill9902 3y ago
  It’s your responsibility to guide them.
  - djaychela 3y ago
    If only it was that simple. In my experience (with four step kids aging from 23 down to 16, and I've been in that position for over 13 years), I'd say my input has had maybe 5-10% influence, if that. If they're not interested in that area (and mine aren't), then there's not much you can do, even if you spend a lot of time and effort trying.
  - irrational 3y ago
    Like I said, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. Agency is a double edged sword.
yodsanklai 3y ago
> They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I really wonder about that. Learning anything requires active participation and motivation. YouTube provides great content, but I'd say it's the easy part. BTW, public libraries existed before youtube. My personal example, I graduated in maths 20 years ago and spent countless hours solving problems. Nowadays, I'm a youtube addict, I casually watch lots of videos, but I have very little attention span left, and don't build serious knowledge about anything. But your hypothesis could be assessed based on data. I may be wrong, but I suspect students math proficiency has declined in most western countries.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  School is less about learning a subject to any serious degree, and more about socialization and exposure to a breadth of subjects. I am suspect of people who view school purely as an educational experience.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Is "calculus" a hard core counterexample?
    - TobTobXX 3y ago
      I think parent speaks more about younger people. By the time you get to calculus, you're probably expected to be mature and somewhat independet.
  - inkywatcher 3y ago
    You say "socialization" but I think the real word is "conformity".
    - dmreedy 3y ago
      Yes, societal institutions have a flywheel effect of normalization on those who pass through them. This is foundational to a cooperative society. They provide a background context to evaluate actions within, and define oneself in, or against. Consider your Shannon Information. Meaning does not exist without context.
submeta 3y ago
> just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium Did this some time ago. Never looked back.
- alphabetting 3y ago
  It took me a while to cancel spotify even though YT music came free with YT premium. I assumed the algo would be on par given the quality of the video recommendations but it took months for my YT music recommendations to get close to Discover Weekly.
flandish 3y ago
My problem with yt music is that certain albums will ask you if you approve playing, even with age and content restrictions off. Rage Against The Machine’s first album has “disturbing” album art. It asks for EVERY song. Song in a playlist? Playlist stopped waiting for you to ask. Terrible UX, imho.
- porkbeer 3y ago
  Its soft censorship, yt is famous for it.
noloblo 3y ago
archive link unpaywall : https://archive.is/20230422002004/https://www.ft.com/content/c57e3503-6fc0-44dc-9d50-35f8f9da25d2 https://archive.is/20230422002004/https://www.ft.com/content...
ZephyrBlu 3y ago
YT helped me learn a lot about software engineering before I had a professional SWE job, but it was nowhere near a replacement for a bit of experience. My first 6mo at a good company was very formative.
- hiepph 3y ago
  It's a supplementary, I'd say. From my experience, I learn more from a structured material (aka courses, books) and structured process (aka working in a company). But I often get the motivation and knowledge from unstructured material like YouTube.
NickBusey 3y ago
> I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. I’m a millennial and I spent my youth learning everything there is to know about my passions for free. YouTube is not they only avenue of free online education.
waboremo 3y ago
The resources that makes someone professionally competent are gatekept until you enter the industry and no amount of video content will change this. This means that despite a hire potentially being extremely competent in the subject matter, everything else around that is likely to be a "red flag" in the hiring process and prevent them from gaining that professional competency. Which I hope changes, I suppose we'll see if millennials-as-managers can change enough about the process to find and hire these talents to nurture their professional competency. MAM's also generally will also be less strict about traditional processes which is exactly the type of environment these talents need.
wolverine876 3y ago
> They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. Do you have evidence for that? No training makes someone professionally competent, only being a professional does. Even people who go through intense years of law school or medical school, studying directly and interactively with world-class scholars and peers, in actual labs and courtrooms, are not professionally competent lawyers or doctors. People with PhDs are not professionally competent professors. But focusing on training: I don't just accept any training when hiring. What evidence do you have that videos on YouTube provide a similarly high level of training? The Internet is filled with nonsense, misinformation, and disinformation, and it's clear that people don't make the effort to discrminate between that and truth, and between just any truth and the best knowledge and training. I'm certainly not giving someone or YouTube the benefit of the doubt. A strong counter-signal is someone saying they learned from "YouTube", which is like saying they learned from "a book", and demonstrates a lack of discrimination or even an awareness of it - here is someone who lacks even the awareness that it's problematic. And learning from a video or a book has never been a high standard of training; it's been a pejorative - 'they learned to be a doctor from a book'. It's just not the same at all as interactive learning with an expert (a professor), with peers, with a diverse cirriculum, resources such as labs, an institution geared toward creating effective learning programs. Again, it shows a lack of discrimination and judgment, and of even enough thought and skepticism to be aware of the issue. People like YouTube because it's convenient, and because it's trendy they can get away with not questioning it (and dismissing these issues). I hire people who are committed to being the best, who think deeply, skeptically, and insightfully. I don't want to hire those who make serious decisions - such as their career preparation - based on convenience and who turn over analysis and decisions to the Internet crowd-think. Anecdotally, I've had people assert that to me how informative certain YouTube videos are and show me them. When I take the time to research it, most are nonsense - I just lack expertise in the field and couldn't tell by watching (research establishes that people are very poor at that, and I'd guess that the obviously false ones don't get views). I have sought and used some videos from specific sources, but then I'm not learning from YouTube, I'm learning from that person. YouTube as nothing to do with it; the medium has nothing to do with it; if they wrote a book or article I'd have used that. One way of thinking about the problem: Why is learning from YouTube any better than learning from a book before YouTube?
liendolucas 3y ago
I can't understand people paying for streaming services like Netflix & competition, where all their catalogs are region-locked and every single one of them producing mostly crappy shows/movies (at least that's the Netflix I experienced last time I was able to use someone else's account on someone else's computer many years ago, so I must assume as everything else, things get worse, not better). What would I pay for? A good streaming service where I can choose movies that at least for me are worth watching: good stories, classics, italian, french, spanish movies, independent productions, low-budget productions and non-mainstream gargantuan productions. Definitely not a service that literally invites you to consume whatever crap they produce and put in front of your screen to keep people paying for subscriptions. What I would also pay for? A service that after watching a movie allows me to actually purchase a digital DRM-free copy of the movie for some extra few bucks. Any suggestions? I've heavily switched my screen habit, now I find myself most of the time reading books, as my father used to say: "You produce your very own version of the film in your head". I used to read regularly as a kid, then there's a huge gap where I haven't touched books for years. The only regret I have is that I haven't kept this habit all this time. Edit: Some corrections.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  My local cinema does that DRM-free movie on USB key thing... even if you do not watch the movie first ! (As you can imagine, it doesn't show any Marvel movies or the like...)
- schrectacular 3y ago
  You might like the Criterion Collection streaming service. Not a customer but love their movie collection.
  - liendolucas 3y ago
    LOL. I'm currently in Italy and I'm getting: "Sorry. This is currently unavailable in your region. Type in your email below and tell the producers you want it in your country!" (when trying to sign in, don't know if it's worth trying with a VPN service tough)
- 3y ago
pcthrowaway 3y ago
> It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I don't follow this. I'm a millennial, graduated university 10 years ago, and by my estimation, that was the golden age of MOOCs (many of the courses available for free back then require payment now, and several of the MOOC platforms have shut down) I don't consider bespoke youtube videos to be as rigorous with regards to structuring a topic
- raincole 3y ago
  Youtube videos are good for "fixing your own pipelines" kinda of problem. I don't think they're good for, for example, programmering.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Yeah, including Wikibooks... and why hasn't anyone brought up Wikipedia yet ?! It's when I discovered it in 2006 when it really dawned on me just how immense the potential of the Internet was !
- rcarr 3y ago
  A guy a few years older than me at school was massively into maths and took out every book he could find from all the local libraries. When he finally arrived at Cambridge University to study, he ended up going to third year lectures because he already knew all the material in the first and second year classes. He went on to do a Phd in maths there. Imagine if he had access to YouTube. He probably would have ended up being capable of jumping straight into the Phd on arrival.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    I've heard that reading about a subject for 30 minutes a day will, in six months, make you among the world's experts.
jjtheblunt 3y ago
> They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. How? (I'm misunderstanding.)
- rcarr 3y ago
  Well for starters, you have courses on the freecodecamp channel which will literally teach you everything you need to know to get AWS DevOps qualifications. But you can teach yourself literally anything. MIT has seven thousand videos on its MIT OpenCourseWare channel. 3Blue1Brown and Khan Academy can teach you maths and science. If you want to be a repair man, or a mechanic - you can find a video of how to do it on YT. Design circuit boards, make movies, learn instruments - all on YT. It's not that university degrees don't work. But there are other ways that self motivated people can learn and there are currently very few paths for those people to get recognition for their learning other than coughing up thousands for a piece of paper from a university and jumping through hoops. Personally I think we should have a lot more universities like WGU where you can just go and test out of exams immediately if you can demonstrate you already have the knowledge.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
menzoic 3y ago
> No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. I'm a milllenial that learned how to code at 14 using the internet. To be fair to your point about "free" I did use pirated software and a few pirated video courses
- makapuf 3y ago
  At 14 I learned to code for "free" - minus very expensive computer m y parents bought and a pirated copy of turbo pascal and computer magazines. Magazines and books were not as good but remember Internet made some other resources disappear or rendered them less visible.
bmitc 3y ago
> It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. I'm not convinced for YouTube. For the most part, I just see Gen Zers teaching other Gen Zers. It is very rare to find someone older on YouTube with actual, professional, real-world experience, and if you do, the channel is not popular and is thus buried in search results.
tinyhouse 3y ago
> Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix and Prime too No one is paying Prime for their video services...
- gniv 3y ago
  Most of the world outside US is paying for Prime Video. Here's an article on their video library size (and costs) in various parts of the world: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/amazon-prime-video-cost/ https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/amazon-prime-vi...
Barrin92 3y ago
>I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials No. Youtube is not a replacement for rigorous training and that in and of itself isn't the actual purpose of higher education, which primarily functions to create life-long lasting networks. Gen Z'ers who think they can replace an education with Youtube and college networks with Discord will, and already have, ended up as permanent gig workers with no social capital at some NFT firm. It's worth noting the complete decline in highly valued tech ventures started by very young people from 2010+ onwards. There is no Gen Z Zuckerberg or Facebook, and they're already into their mid-twenties. Gen Z is caught up in influencer and hustle culture.
russellbeattie 3y ago
Not just GenZ. I spent most of my 51 years of life having zero idea how my car or engines in general worked. Then my son got into eBikes and then motorcycles and I helped him along, now I know how to wire up a 3 phase motor and rebuild a carb, among various other skills like bleeding brake lines and even welding. This wouldn't have happened without the loads of tutorial videos out there. I'd watch and think, "Oh, I see. We can totally do that." Not to mention all the other great stuff I watch like Baseball highlights, chess, science and technology, travel, history, etc. YouTube has turned out to be the best thing on the internet since the web. A Premium subscription is well worth the benefit I get out of it.
mammalianz 3y ago
You know I was about to do that but I noticed a few quality of service issues with the music I wanted to listen to. You of course were talking about YouTube Premium and I am referring to YouTube Music which also charges a monthly premium. I wanted to point out that previously there was an abundance of ripped albums at high quality that were obscure (it seems to depend on genre). I noticed some records from larger acts sounded pretty bad for some reason if you are speaking about quality. My sample size is still small and I am referencing a popular RHCP record but than I tried another funk track that should bump in my car as they have previously and I was disappointed. I think we take for granted something about signal chain and someone is trying to capitalize on that or the algorithm. I guess with good enough equipment anything should sound good I mean you can really mess stuff up with gain or normalization. Now I have been tremendously pleased with other larger obscure records I have learned about from wwww.rateyourmusic.com as there music has consistently been available on YT Music which is awesome. Some of those artists are not represented anymore and not available on Spotify or were not initially. If you are talking about quality what I am saying is that you can't just pick any upload from algorithm.
qudat 3y ago
I only sub to YouTube premium and have never used Spotify because yt music is awesome.
throwaway675309 3y ago
"an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it" You're not thinking it through, because that always on ubiquitous nature is very much a double edged sword. There has never been a time when the youth has been so incredibly targeted to hijack the release of dopamine with doom scrolling endless entertainment. A child who is constantly inundated with passive entertainment never has the opportunity to cultivate their own voice.
layer8 3y ago
> I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. What’s great about YouTube Music is that it includes user uploads, meaning that you get tracks (e.g. video game music) and versions/recordings of tracks (like old 12" versions and remixes, or live recordings) that you are unlikely to get on a purely commercially-sourced music service.
- rcarr 3y ago
  I cannot agree more. In my opinion it's the only music platform that hasn't been entirely captured by the mainstream record labels. I get all kinds of cool DIY bands recommended through it. I got more good recommendations from using it in a couple of hours than I got in the last few years via Spotify.
zelphirkalt 3y ago
> It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. You were limited by your parents bank balance or the resources of your local library. I am not against gaming, play and fun. Far from it. It is probably a necessary part of our lives. I myself put in countless hours of play into a few games that I mastered (and sometimes wish I had achieved something else instead in that time). However, I would argue, that, while there is more educational content available at no cost (besides our privacy), there is also a lot more trash, that makes it difficult to find the really good content, that does not teach things wrong. Furthermore, there is probably no generation before Gen Z, that wasted more time with stuff that does not result in learning anything valuable. (Take for example, how many more people are using computers (in any form) and how much bigger the ratio of people is, that still don't know how to use their machine properly. Well this is of course subjective, as I am talking from a sotfware developer perspective.) Ultimately, only few are able to take advantage of what is available, because of mind set, motivation, and other issues in life.
dfxm12 3y ago
As a Millennial, I can confidently say this is not true. I learned LAMP architecture as a kid by reading tutorial webpages and following along. No bank account or library card needed. Wikis and how to's were updated regularly, were uninterrupted by ads and were easily searchable! I learned SQL on a dynamic website where I could write code and see results (or errors) instantly! If I needed help, message boards were there. Even today, I learn things way more quickly from a stack exchange post than a YT video. Anyone can be motivated to learn something on their own, but if they are successful, it's not going to be because of YT.
- rcarr 3y ago
  Well as the Millennial who wrote the comment, I can confidently say that it is true. Just because you preferred to learn programming through reading tutorials doesn't mean that the same is true for everybody else or that text is the best medium for the majority of skills out there. I'm pretty sure the majority of mechanics and construction workers would prefer to see videos of a repair over a text description.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    Just because you preferred to learn programming through reading tutorials doesn't mean that the same is true for everybody else or that text is the best medium for the majority of skills out there. It's a shame this isn't what I said. I'm pretty sure the majority of mechanics and construction workers would prefer to see videos of a repair over a text description. Ah, so your source is "trust me, bro"? OK... Also, don't just completely forget other methods of learning, some of which I brought up, like hands-on/experiential learning or learning from interacting with others. Good luck getting getting your ASE certification from just watching YT videos.

by rcarr 3y ago

mkaic 3y ago

As a Gen Z-er who grew up learning as much as I could about my passions, mostly on YouTube, I hope you're right about us! I'm really hopeful that my generation can go on to do some pretty great stuff. We do have a patently odd sense of humor, though...

coliveira 3y ago

This assumes that this generation will spent its youtube time learning something useful. While this will be true for part of the population, most people are just wasting their time and, in aggregate, it may happen that this generation will have even lower skills than the previous generation that had access only to a local library.

irrational 3y ago

> they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I have children between the ages of 9 and 26. You know what they are passionate about? Minecraft, Mr Beast, Travel vlogs, mommy vlogs, “reality” videos, etc. I’ve tried to introduce them to science, space, programming, history, math, finance, nature, etc. content and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. They are passionate about cheap mindless entertainment. I see the same things in their friends and classmates. You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I’m sure there are a few youths who are using their time productively and it will pay dividends for them. But, from what I’ve seen, the vast majority aren’t interested.

radicaldreamer 3y ago
A lot of that stuff is going to be AI generated in the future and it'll hit those dopamine circuits better than human generated content ever could
- api 3y ago
  Now we know what all the Borg were doing in their cube ships. Between occasional bouts of conquest and assimilation they were all frying in a sizzling bath of repetitive dopamine triggering meme soup created by AIs and other members of the hive mind. Maybe they lurched out and attacked or assimilated someone when a new trending channel appeared that urged such activities. I joke but it really is a bit spooky how plausible the Borg are today to the point that I can imagine what it would be like to be part of them. It’d be like scrolling TikTok but with Neuralink.
  - hydrok9 3y ago
    That explains the skin conditions and baldness (of the Borg, though I see a lot of hair loss among under-30s)
SnowHill9902 3y ago
It’s your responsibility to guide them.
- djaychela 3y ago
  If only it was that simple. In my experience (with four step kids aging from 23 down to 16, and I've been in that position for over 13 years), I'd say my input has had maybe 5-10% influence, if that. If they're not interested in that area (and mine aren't), then there's not much you can do, even if you spend a lot of time and effort trying.
- irrational 3y ago
  Like I said, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. Agency is a double edged sword.

yodsanklai 3y ago

> They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I really wonder about that. Learning anything requires active participation and motivation. YouTube provides great content, but I'd say it's the easy part. BTW, public libraries existed before youtube. My personal example, I graduated in maths 20 years ago and spent countless hours solving problems. Nowadays, I'm a youtube addict, I casually watch lots of videos, but I have very little attention span left, and don't build serious knowledge about anything. But your hypothesis could be assessed based on data. I may be wrong, but I suspect students math proficiency has declined in most western countries.

wildrhythms 3y ago
School is less about learning a subject to any serious degree, and more about socialization and exposure to a breadth of subjects. I am suspect of people who view school purely as an educational experience.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  Is "calculus" a hard core counterexample?
  - TobTobXX 3y ago
    I think parent speaks more about younger people. By the time you get to calculus, you're probably expected to be mature and somewhat independet.
- inkywatcher 3y ago
  You say "socialization" but I think the real word is "conformity".
  - dmreedy 3y ago
    Yes, societal institutions have a flywheel effect of normalization on those who pass through them. This is foundational to a cooperative society. They provide a background context to evaluate actions within, and define oneself in, or against. Consider your Shannon Information. Meaning does not exist without context.

submeta 3y ago

> just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium Did this some time ago. Never looked back.

alphabetting 3y ago
It took me a while to cancel spotify even though YT music came free with YT premium. I assumed the algo would be on par given the quality of the video recommendations but it took months for my YT music recommendations to get close to Discover Weekly.

flandish 3y ago

My problem with yt music is that certain albums will ask you if you approve playing, even with age and content restrictions off. Rage Against The Machine’s first album has “disturbing” album art. It asks for EVERY song. Song in a playlist? Playlist stopped waiting for you to ask. Terrible UX, imho.

porkbeer 3y ago
Its soft censorship, yt is famous for it.

noloblo 3y ago

archive link unpaywall : https://archive.is/20230422002004/https://www.ft.com/content/c57e3503-6fc0-44dc-9d50-35f8f9da25d2 https://archive.is/20230422002004/https://www.ft.com/content...

ZephyrBlu 3y ago

YT helped me learn a lot about software engineering before I had a professional SWE job, but it was nowhere near a replacement for a bit of experience. My first 6mo at a good company was very formative.

hiepph 3y ago
It's a supplementary, I'd say. From my experience, I learn more from a structured material (aka courses, books) and structured process (aka working in a company). But I often get the motivation and knowledge from unstructured material like YouTube.

NickBusey 3y ago

> I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. I’m a millennial and I spent my youth learning everything there is to know about my passions for free. YouTube is not they only avenue of free online education.

waboremo 3y ago

The resources that makes someone professionally competent are gatekept until you enter the industry and no amount of video content will change this. This means that despite a hire potentially being extremely competent in the subject matter, everything else around that is likely to be a "red flag" in the hiring process and prevent them from gaining that professional competency. Which I hope changes, I suppose we'll see if millennials-as-managers can change enough about the process to find and hire these talents to nurture their professional competency. MAM's also generally will also be less strict about traditional processes which is exactly the type of environment these talents need.

wolverine876 3y ago

> They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. Do you have evidence for that? No training makes someone professionally competent, only being a professional does. Even people who go through intense years of law school or medical school, studying directly and interactively with world-class scholars and peers, in actual labs and courtrooms, are not professionally competent lawyers or doctors. People with PhDs are not professionally competent professors. But focusing on training: I don't just accept any training when hiring. What evidence do you have that videos on YouTube provide a similarly high level of training? The Internet is filled with nonsense, misinformation, and disinformation, and it's clear that people don't make the effort to discrminate between that and truth, and between just any truth and the best knowledge and training. I'm certainly not giving someone or YouTube the benefit of the doubt. A strong counter-signal is someone saying they learned from "YouTube", which is like saying they learned from "a book", and demonstrates a lack of discrimination or even an awareness of it - here is someone who lacks even the awareness that it's problematic. And learning from a video or a book has never been a high standard of training; it's been a pejorative - 'they learned to be a doctor from a book'. It's just not the same at all as interactive learning with an expert (a professor), with peers, with a diverse cirriculum, resources such as labs, an institution geared toward creating effective learning programs. Again, it shows a lack of discrimination and judgment, and of even enough thought and skepticism to be aware of the issue. People like YouTube because it's convenient, and because it's trendy they can get away with not questioning it (and dismissing these issues). I hire people who are committed to being the best, who think deeply, skeptically, and insightfully. I don't want to hire those who make serious decisions - such as their career preparation - based on convenience and who turn over analysis and decisions to the Internet crowd-think. Anecdotally, I've had people assert that to me how informative certain YouTube videos are and show me them. When I take the time to research it, most are nonsense - I just lack expertise in the field and couldn't tell by watching (research establishes that people are very poor at that, and I'd guess that the obviously false ones don't get views). I have sought and used some videos from specific sources, but then I'm not learning from YouTube, I'm learning from that person. YouTube as nothing to do with it; the medium has nothing to do with it; if they wrote a book or article I'd have used that. One way of thinking about the problem: Why is learning from YouTube any better than learning from a book before YouTube?

liendolucas 3y ago

I can't understand people paying for streaming services like Netflix & competition, where all their catalogs are region-locked and every single one of them producing mostly crappy shows/movies (at least that's the Netflix I experienced last time I was able to use someone else's account on someone else's computer many years ago, so I must assume as everything else, things get worse, not better). What would I pay for? A good streaming service where I can choose movies that at least for me are worth watching: good stories, classics, italian, french, spanish movies, independent productions, low-budget productions and non-mainstream gargantuan productions. Definitely not a service that literally invites you to consume whatever crap they produce and put in front of your screen to keep people paying for subscriptions. What I would also pay for? A service that after watching a movie allows me to actually purchase a digital DRM-free copy of the movie for some extra few bucks. Any suggestions? I've heavily switched my screen habit, now I find myself most of the time reading books, as my father used to say: "You produce your very own version of the film in your head". I used to read regularly as a kid, then there's a huge gap where I haven't touched books for years. The only regret I have is that I haven't kept this habit all this time. Edit: Some corrections.

BlueTemplar 3y ago
My local cinema does that DRM-free movie on USB key thing... even if you do not watch the movie first ! (As you can imagine, it doesn't show any Marvel movies or the like...)
schrectacular 3y ago
You might like the Criterion Collection streaming service. Not a customer but love their movie collection.
- liendolucas 3y ago
  LOL. I'm currently in Italy and I'm getting: "Sorry. This is currently unavailable in your region. Type in your email below and tell the producers you want it in your country!" (when trying to sign in, don't know if it's worth trying with a VPN service tough)
3y ago

pcthrowaway 3y ago

raincole 3y ago
Youtube videos are good for "fixing your own pipelines" kinda of problem. I don't think they're good for, for example, programmering.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Yeah, including Wikibooks... and why hasn't anyone brought up Wikipedia yet ?! It's when I discovered it in 2006 when it really dawned on me just how immense the potential of the Internet was !
rcarr 3y ago
A guy a few years older than me at school was massively into maths and took out every book he could find from all the local libraries. When he finally arrived at Cambridge University to study, he ended up going to third year lectures because he already knew all the material in the first and second year classes. He went on to do a Phd in maths there. Imagine if he had access to YouTube. He probably would have ended up being capable of jumping straight into the Phd on arrival.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  I've heard that reading about a subject for 30 minutes a day will, in six months, make you among the world's experts.

jjtheblunt 3y ago

> They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. How? (I'm misunderstanding.)

rcarr 3y ago
Well for starters, you have courses on the freecodecamp channel which will literally teach you everything you need to know to get AWS DevOps qualifications. But you can teach yourself literally anything. MIT has seven thousand videos on its MIT OpenCourseWare channel. 3Blue1Brown and Khan Academy can teach you maths and science. If you want to be a repair man, or a mechanic - you can find a video of how to do it on YT. Design circuit boards, make movies, learn instruments - all on YT. It's not that university degrees don't work. But there are other ways that self motivated people can learn and there are currently very few paths for those people to get recognition for their learning other than coughing up thousands for a piece of paper from a university and jumping through hoops. Personally I think we should have a lot more universities like WGU where you can just go and test out of exams immediately if you can demonstrate you already have the knowledge.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

menzoic 3y ago

> No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. I'm a milllenial that learned how to code at 14 using the internet. To be fair to your point about "free" I did use pirated software and a few pirated video courses

makapuf 3y ago
At 14 I learned to code for "free" - minus very expensive computer m y parents bought and a pirated copy of turbo pascal and computer magazines. Magazines and books were not as good but remember Internet made some other resources disappear or rendered them less visible.

bmitc 3y ago

tinyhouse 3y ago

> Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix and Prime too No one is paying Prime for their video services...

gniv 3y ago
Most of the world outside US is paying for Prime Video. Here's an article on their video library size (and costs) in various parts of the world: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/amazon-prime-video-cost/ https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/amazon-prime-vi...

Barrin92 3y ago

>I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials No. Youtube is not a replacement for rigorous training and that in and of itself isn't the actual purpose of higher education, which primarily functions to create life-long lasting networks. Gen Z'ers who think they can replace an education with Youtube and college networks with Discord will, and already have, ended up as permanent gig workers with no social capital at some NFT firm. It's worth noting the complete decline in highly valued tech ventures started by very young people from 2010+ onwards. There is no Gen Z Zuckerberg or Facebook, and they're already into their mid-twenties. Gen Z is caught up in influencer and hustle culture.

russellbeattie 3y ago

Not just GenZ. I spent most of my 51 years of life having zero idea how my car or engines in general worked. Then my son got into eBikes and then motorcycles and I helped him along, now I know how to wire up a 3 phase motor and rebuild a carb, among various other skills like bleeding brake lines and even welding. This wouldn't have happened without the loads of tutorial videos out there. I'd watch and think, "Oh, I see. We can totally do that." Not to mention all the other great stuff I watch like Baseball highlights, chess, science and technology, travel, history, etc. YouTube has turned out to be the best thing on the internet since the web. A Premium subscription is well worth the benefit I get out of it.

mammalianz 3y ago

You know I was about to do that but I noticed a few quality of service issues with the music I wanted to listen to. You of course were talking about YouTube Premium and I am referring to YouTube Music which also charges a monthly premium. I wanted to point out that previously there was an abundance of ripped albums at high quality that were obscure (it seems to depend on genre). I noticed some records from larger acts sounded pretty bad for some reason if you are speaking about quality. My sample size is still small and I am referencing a popular RHCP record but than I tried another funk track that should bump in my car as they have previously and I was disappointed. I think we take for granted something about signal chain and someone is trying to capitalize on that or the algorithm. I guess with good enough equipment anything should sound good I mean you can really mess stuff up with gain or normalization. Now I have been tremendously pleased with other larger obscure records I have learned about from wwww.rateyourmusic.com as there music has consistently been available on YT Music which is awesome. Some of those artists are not represented anymore and not available on Spotify or were not initially. If you are talking about quality what I am saying is that you can't just pick any upload from algorithm.

qudat 3y ago

I only sub to YouTube premium and have never used Spotify because yt music is awesome.

throwaway675309 3y ago

"an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it" You're not thinking it through, because that always on ubiquitous nature is very much a double edged sword. There has never been a time when the youth has been so incredibly targeted to hijack the release of dopamine with doom scrolling endless entertainment. A child who is constantly inundated with passive entertainment never has the opportunity to cultivate their own voice.

layer8 3y ago

> I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. What’s great about YouTube Music is that it includes user uploads, meaning that you get tracks (e.g. video game music) and versions/recordings of tracks (like old 12" versions and remixes, or live recordings) that you are unlikely to get on a purely commercially-sourced music service.

rcarr 3y ago
I cannot agree more. In my opinion it's the only music platform that hasn't been entirely captured by the mainstream record labels. I get all kinds of cool DIY bands recommended through it. I got more good recommendations from using it in a couple of hours than I got in the last few years via Spotify.

zelphirkalt 3y ago

> It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. You were limited by your parents bank balance or the resources of your local library. I am not against gaming, play and fun. Far from it. It is probably a necessary part of our lives. I myself put in countless hours of play into a few games that I mastered (and sometimes wish I had achieved something else instead in that time). However, I would argue, that, while there is more educational content available at no cost (besides our privacy), there is also a lot more trash, that makes it difficult to find the really good content, that does not teach things wrong. Furthermore, there is probably no generation before Gen Z, that wasted more time with stuff that does not result in learning anything valuable. (Take for example, how many more people are using computers (in any form) and how much bigger the ratio of people is, that still don't know how to use their machine properly. Well this is of course subjective, as I am talking from a sotfware developer perspective.) Ultimately, only few are able to take advantage of what is available, because of mind set, motivation, and other issues in life.

dfxm12 3y ago

As a Millennial, I can confidently say this is not true. I learned LAMP architecture as a kid by reading tutorial webpages and following along. No bank account or library card needed. Wikis and how to's were updated regularly, were uninterrupted by ads and were easily searchable! I learned SQL on a dynamic website where I could write code and see results (or errors) instantly! If I needed help, message boards were there. Even today, I learn things way more quickly from a stack exchange post than a YT video. Anyone can be motivated to learn something on their own, but if they are successful, it's not going to be because of YT.

rcarr 3y ago
Well as the Millennial who wrote the comment, I can confidently say that it is true. Just because you preferred to learn programming through reading tutorials doesn't mean that the same is true for everybody else or that text is the best medium for the majority of skills out there. I'm pretty sure the majority of mechanics and construction workers would prefer to see videos of a repair over a text description.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Just because you preferred to learn programming through reading tutorials doesn't mean that the same is true for everybody else or that text is the best medium for the majority of skills out there. It's a shame this isn't what I said. I'm pretty sure the majority of mechanics and construction workers would prefer to see videos of a repair over a text description. Ah, so your source is "trust me, bro"? OK... Also, don't just completely forget other methods of learning, some of which I brought up, like hands-on/experiential learning or learning from interacting with others. Good luck getting getting your ASE certification from just watching YT videos.