Youtube "how to" videos are mostly useless

[Ian.M]

And then there are also a ton of howto videos like this, Russian Roulette via Table Saw (trigger warning for woodworkers), which demonstrate pretty much everything you can do wrong when using one.

Ah yes, the excuse being "I haven't had any problems therefore it is OK".

That happens too often on this forum, my triggers being floating scopes and using solderless breadboards

I'm with you on floating scopes, but its fairly difficult to kill yourself with a solderless breadboard . . .

[tggzzz]

And then there are also a ton of howto videos like this, Russian Roulette via Table Saw (trigger warning for woodworkers), which demonstrate pretty much everything you can do wrong when using one.

Ah yes, the excuse being "I haven't had any problems therefore it is OK".

That happens too often on this forum, my triggers being floating scopes and using solderless breadboards

I'm with you on floating scopes, but its fairly difficult to kill yourself with a solderless breadboard . . .

I've an example where using one might cause an innocent bystander to want to kill you

[soldar]

That reflects more on Google than on Youtube. That Google search didn't only get you a lot of dodgy Youtube videos. It got you a variety of non-video junk too. 10 years ago a Google search was a pretty effective way to find things. Now its complete garbage. They improved i a bit over the low point maybe 5 years ago, but they seem incapable of undoing the damage they have done.

Youtube IS Google. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. They are one and the same.

Google's search logarithm has evolved over time and gotten better in some ways, sort of like using AI to guess what might be what you are looking for, so it might work if you have a very vague idea, but it has gotten worse if you are looking for something more precise and you get suggestions for things that are only very distantly related.

But the worst search logarithm of all time has to be Amazon. You can search for something with very precise words and get all results which do not include those words and are not even related. I have no idea what reasoning is behind this. But that is another rant for another day.

EBay's search engine is not bad in general terms.

[soldar]

I'm with you on floating scopes, but its fairly difficult to kill yourself with a solderless breadboard . . .

Idea for YouTube video: how to cure upset stomach by swallowing a solderless breadboard. The secret they do not want you to know!

[coppice]

That reflects more on Google than on Youtube. That Google search didn't only get you a lot of dodgy Youtube videos. It got you a variety of non-video junk too. 10 years ago a Google search was a pretty effective way to find things. Now its complete garbage. They improved i a bit over the low point maybe 5 years ago, but they seem incapable of undoing the damage they have done.

Youtube IS Google. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. They are one and the same.

WOW. That's amazing. I had absolutely no idea. I thought it was November 2006.

These two businesses may both be part of the same Alphabet soup, but they function very differently when you search.

Google's search logarithm has evolved over time and gotten better in some ways, sort of like using AI to guess what might be what you are looking for, so it might work if you have a very vague idea, but it has gotten worse if you are looking for something more precise and you get suggestions for things that are only very distantly related.

I don't know what Google looks like when you use it. It presents itself very differently to different people who are logged in. They've been doing politically motivated searches for quite a long time. The Arab spring highlighted this, with some truly bizarre search results. Something like 5 years ago it descended from there to utter garbage, in ways that were clearly as politically motivated as their recent Gemini screw up. They seem to have been struggling to retreat from that ever since. Not all that successfully. Whether I look for something very specific, or search with a vague idea of what I am looking for, its still very bad.

[Buriedcode]

This thread is very reminiscent of an Eti thread.

I don't like x.  I expect x to do this. but x doesn't do this, and people should make x do this for me.

Viewing youtube videos is optional.  And if you are complaining that many - perhaps most - are "useless" to you then I'm not sure what you expect anyone to do about it - or care.

I disagree. The article tggzzz posted matches my own experience. There is a lot of fake AI generated content on Youtube. For example, I'm looking for a new bench DMM at the moment. When going on Youtube to find reviews, the results are swamped with videos called '5 best bench multimeters'. None of those videos is real as in somebody went through the trouble of actually reviewing 5 multimeters. It is just chat GPT selecting 5 random DMMs and repeating the manufacturer's marketing wank. In the end those videos are just useless noise and Youtube should do something about it.

So you found out that youtube reviews aren't particularly reliable.  Surely its been that way for the past 5 years?  My point was, youtube has never really been a reliable source of "good" information, and I'm surprised people are only now coming to realise this.  Just like everything on the internet, since the bar for posting content/opinions/views/reviews is so low, its diluted so the price we pay for the convenience of having access to vast amounts of free information is that one has to sift through a lot of crap.  Nothing wrong with watching youtube videos, but it seems the OP was complaining that they spent lots of their time wathcing them - then complaining that they weren't what he wanted.  Surely the simple answer is.. don't watch them?

[soldar]

it seems the OP was complaining that they spent lots of their time wathcing them - then  complaining that they weren't what he wanted.  Surely the simple answer is.. don't watch them?

How you get that interpretation is beyond me. You might want to try reading the OP again. Others seem to have no problem understanding what I mean to say.

[IanB]

So you found out that youtube reviews aren't particularly reliable.  Surely its been that way for the past 5 years?  My point was, youtube has never really been a reliable source of "good" information, and I'm surprised people are only now coming to realise this.

I think this is not true, but the good information may need some searching.

You can tell if a review is worthwhile by watching it, but this takes some discernment. It is not that hard to see if someone properly understands the product and is evaluating it critically, and is not just describing it.

[tggzzz]

So you found out that youtube reviews aren't particularly reliable.  Surely its been that way for the past 5 years?  My point was, youtube has never really been a reliable source of "good" information, and I'm surprised people are only now coming to realise this.

I think this is not true, but the good information may need some searching.

You can tell if a review is worthwhile by watching it, but this takes some discernment. It is not that hard to see if someone properly understands the product and is evaluating it critically, and is not just describing it.

I have sufficient discernment to evaluate 10 sources.

I don't have time to evaluate 10 videos, but text takes much less time to evaluate.

Hence I don't watch random videos, only those recommended by other people with sufficient discernment.

[CatalinaWOW]

So you found out that youtube reviews aren't particularly reliable.  Surely its been that way for the past 5 years?  My point was, youtube has never really been a reliable source of "good" information, and I'm surprised people are only now coming to realise this.

I think this is not true, but the good information may need some searching.

You can tell if a review is worthwhile by watching it, but this takes some discernment. It is not that hard to see if someone properly understands the product and is evaluating it critically, and is not just describing it.

In the days before internet when you considered doing or purchasing something you either looked in a printed resource or went to a local expert.  The printed resources were (depending on your location) hard to access in both time and money, but quick to evaluate.  For this reason meta evaluations were common.  That is you developed trusted sources and didn't often chase other sources. 

Local experts basically were either people who sold the service or product your were interested in, or someone who owned or had done what you were investigating.  When buying a product these sources sometimes gave you nothing worthwhile.  The most common and slightly better situation was to be able to see all that came in the packaging, and maybe to handle and operate the product.  Less frequently, but not uncommon you could find people who owned or used the product and could tell you if they were happy, perhaps throwing in a couple specific raves or gripes.  And rarely you got someone truly expert with the product who could succinctly identify all the strengths and weaknesses of the product and offer comparisons with other similar products, perhaps including a recommendation based on expected usage.

YouTube (and the internet in general) provides analogues for all of these situations.   The descriptive YouTube unboxing video is very much like seeing the floor display at a store staffed by clerks who know nothing about the product (except perhaps which one is being flogged by the sales manager).  The strategies for dealing with the problems are also very similar.  You don't return to retail stores that aren't helpful, and the same for YouTube channels. 

For those of us not living in a megalopolis with free access to a major university library and a huge variety of retail outlets the advantages of the internet versions easily outweigh the disadvantages which are mostly low entry barriers resulting in lots of low quality content and the data which is the most ephemeral in human history.  Those with better access to the traditional sources may easily find the opposite to be true.  Unfortunately the loss of the hinterlands market has drastically hurt the viability of the traditional resources so they are going away for everyone.

[IanB]

I have sufficient discernment to evaluate 10 sources.

I don't have time to evaluate 10 videos, but text takes much less time to evaluate.

Hence I don't watch random videos, only those recommended by other people with sufficient discernment.

I can appreciate that, though I have developed a tendency to jump through a video to the middle or the end to start making an evaluation. I can quickly reject videos if I don't see any meat several minutes in.

By the way, an amusing case of honest and critical reviews is Matthias Wandel reviewing a Vevor metal lathe. He said it had poor tolerances, mechanical problems, poor finish and inaccurate documentation. He asked Vevor if they were going to be upset with his review? They said, "No, not at all, keep being honest. We are selling at a price point, and all of the imperfections you report are to be expected at this price. We are not pretending anything different."

[tggzzz]

I have sufficient discernment to evaluate 10 sources.

I don't have time to evaluate 10 videos, but text takes much less time to evaluate.

Hence I don't watch random videos, only those recommended by other people with sufficient discernment.

I can appreciate that, though I have developed a tendency to jump through a video to the middle or the end to start making an evaluation. I can quickly reject videos if I don't see any meat several minutes in.

Strangely I can't. Well I can quickly jump to a random spot, but then it takes too much time to figure out the current context and listen to several sentences. Maybe 1 minute each time I skip. That's doubly true where you skip to a visual of a datasheet or slide, with a talking head explaining the relevant bits of the data sheet or slide. Better to just read the damn data sheet!

Even in a good video I would need to do that several times to find the nuggets that make the rest of the video worthwhile.

There's a lot to be said for formal scientific papers, which have an explicit abstract at the front, and conclusions at the end. You only have to read the middle if they contain something interestinfg or surprising.

[jonovid]

I find interesting is the unauthorized use of electronic components video posts.
for example 555 timer as a AM radio  it works  TubeTimeUS

[coppercone2]

that just means someone knows analog

[armandine2]

just watched (usefully) w2aew on panel meters / d'Arsonval  - however I didn't use his test method or get the round numbers he did? 

[soldar]

just watched (usefully) w2aew on panel meters / d'Arsonval  - however I didn't use his test method or get the round numbers he did? 

That is a well done video. I would have added a couple things and possibly made it unnecessarily more complicated for beginners.

I have a crate full of old instruments of that type... which will probably never see use again.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/show-your-multimeter!/msg5401139/#msg5401139