4 ms·

No its not. You are making a bad strawman. YT content creators are financially incentivized to exaggerate things to generate user engagement. This is a conflic

No its not. You are making a bad strawman. YT content creators are financially incentivized to exaggerate things to generate user engagement. This is a conflict of interests. A good source would be something that has its own sources cited or directly comes with evidence.

mikhailfranco 3y ago
That might be an appropriate threshold for Wikipedia, but not for HN.
- hnbad 3y ago
  To that point, HN commenters are also directly incentivized to say certain things because of the way the voting works. You can get a lot of upvotes just by seeming profound (especially if you have a reputation) or "rational" without being either of those things because few people have the time and energy to dissect comments beyond first impressions. Bonus points if you can cite a study even if it does not actually say what you claim or is otherwise dubious (because after all, dismissing it based on the author would be an "ad hominem", right?). The problem HN has with YT content creators being motivated by certain factors is not that they're less trustworthy but that they're tacky. Like Reddit (a social link sharing site with commenting and a heavily polarized community) which is nothing like HN (a social link sharing site with commenting and a heavily polarized community).
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"financially incentivized" -> Welcome to the world. You can search HN and find plenty of arguments that scientific reporting by all major journals are biased and no longer factual and are just clickbait. Researchers have 'clickbait' studies because they are "financially incentivized" to get funding. You are drawing the line at YouTube, others draw the line at CNN, others draw the line at freaking 'Nature'. Now AI is generating scientific papers, I think we should be worried about how we determine 'factual' sources across the board.
- blueflow 3y ago
  That argumentation does not work out - arguing that "proper science" is not much better does not make that YT video any more reliable.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Not 'science', our reporting of science. We no longer have trusted sources for 'facts'. Lots of science is reported on YT and it is fine. You can't take a study in 'Nature' and say it is fine, but then if that study is reported in a video on YT, now it is in question. The video on the flood above was fine, there was nothing incorrect in it, why is it 'wrong' by being on YT? Maybe a % of garbage rating? But who does the judging?

mikhailfranco 3y ago

That might be an appropriate threshold for Wikipedia, but not for HN.

hnbad 3y ago
To that point, HN commenters are also directly incentivized to say certain things because of the way the voting works. You can get a lot of upvotes just by seeming profound (especially if you have a reputation) or "rational" without being either of those things because few people have the time and energy to dissect comments beyond first impressions. Bonus points if you can cite a study even if it does not actually say what you claim or is otherwise dubious (because after all, dismissing it based on the author would be an "ad hominem", right?). The problem HN has with YT content creators being motivated by certain factors is not that they're less trustworthy but that they're tacky. Like Reddit (a social link sharing site with commenting and a heavily polarized community) which is nothing like HN (a social link sharing site with commenting and a heavily polarized community).

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

"financially incentivized" -> Welcome to the world. You can search HN and find plenty of arguments that scientific reporting by all major journals are biased and no longer factual and are just clickbait. Researchers have 'clickbait' studies because they are "financially incentivized" to get funding. You are drawing the line at YouTube, others draw the line at CNN, others draw the line at freaking 'Nature'. Now AI is generating scientific papers, I think we should be worried about how we determine 'factual' sources across the board.

blueflow 3y ago
That argumentation does not work out - arguing that "proper science" is not much better does not make that YT video any more reliable.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Not 'science', our reporting of science. We no longer have trusted sources for 'facts'. Lots of science is reported on YT and it is fine. You can't take a study in 'Nature' and say it is fine, but then if that study is reported in a video on YT, now it is in question. The video on the flood above was fine, there was nothing incorrect in it, why is it 'wrong' by being on YT? Maybe a % of garbage rating? But who does the judging?