The only problem with YouTube is that it's not organized. It's not indexable or printable. Videos are on Google's servers - here today and gone tomorrow. Videos are GREAT for stuff that you can't put into text, and YouTube excels at getting info out there from people who aren't that good with computers :)
What I'm thinking is a real-life open-source "tech tree".
Yep, efforts to replace Youtube (and the rest of BigTech) should be spend on building better search and cataloging of videos across all the Web instead of focusing all effort on one specific hosting technology that nobody uses. I'd be much more inclined to use a service or software that improves on Youtube by including other sources of videos, then one that tries to replace Youtube with their own set of (drastically inferior) videos.
Miro[1] tried that a long while ago, but I haven't really seen much else going that direction since then.
I've been doing lots of research on video games and some other niche areas, it's staggering how much information is on YouTube and only on YouTube. There are millions of hours of super high quality user-generated content locked up in videos that can't be (or aren't) indexed properly, all of which are effectively owned and maintained by Google.
The number of alternatives to youtube is approximately zero. No one wants to upload to a new platform because it's a lot of work and you don't get paid for it (once you hit a certain number of YT views you start getting paid and there's real incentive there, you can potentially get relatively wealthy from it).
Perhaps peertube will be the solution, but I suspect we need something groundbreaking to conquer the monopoly here.
I generally give YouTube the company a lot of grief when I talk about them but this article is true, the availability of information on YouTube (and the internet in general) is outstanding. I have learned most of what I know using the internet, much of it on YouTube. I mostly learn through reading but tons of things like gardening or working on my car I could not have easily learned without YouTube
> Because of this intensely local nature, it presents a uniquely strong succession problem: if a master woodworker fails to transmit his tacit knowledge to the few apprentices in his shop, the knowledge is lost forever, even if he’s written books about it.
There was an article I saw on HN the other day about organizational decay on the internet, in particular, dead hypertext links, and a big example given was a significant number of citations in court rulings go nowhere. With this in mind, I don't believe the problem of losing this knowledge is solved, unless you trust that YouTube won't purge data ever or won't ever cease to exist.
I think we need a good YouTube alternative. Sure, there are lots of them out there. But one people actually use. YouTube is the best place to find so many things: creator videos, music, clips from TV shows, and years and years of videos to build up an immense library.
Any YouTube alternative needs to take one of these niche areas and pick at it.
I’m not sure YouTube is the place for this content. Google does not seem to have any intention of providing ways to verify your credentials or providing references/facts.
It’s clear YouTube is not the place people should be relying on to share this type of information or really share anything knowledge based.
I would love to see almost a Wikipedia version of YouTube, where videos could be submitted by anyone and facts/references could be linked at any point of the video.
I think the Youtube comparison is a good one up to a point. It's a niche product. Everyone wants to be part of it, competing for a very very limited resource which is our attention. While with technologies like GPT or whatever comes next we empower anyone to excel in any area and create whatever (for now non-material things).
I watch some youtube channels regularly. Broadcast TV and Netflix have economics that don't really allow for niche content.
For example, if you want to to watch someone take oscilloscopes apart [1] or tell you the amount of glass fibre reinforcing in different brands of electric drill [2] or pick hundreds of specially made locks [3] or watch hundreds of performances from a serious ballet competition [4] Youtube can provide that. Content like this wouldn't have any chance on Netflix or broadcast TV*
Of course, 99.9% of the content on youtube is absolute junk, and they do an awful job of highlighting stuff, the logged out homepage is full of absolute dreck, and so on. And I certainly don't see the creators I follow posting a video every day or any of that stuff.
I'd like someone to implement a wrapper for youtube that makes using the website better.
There are lots of things you could do, from watching all of the videos since the one you last viewed, to a better way of editing playlists than the current one.
They should also make a way to preview videos, like hovering over the image of the video and you see a 15 or 30 second preview that you can choose from a part of the video.
There should also be a way to instantly switch from computer to phone/tablet, just like chromecast.
If you just open up YouTube right now you can see how many links you can choose, there is way too much clutter on the front page.
YouTube has a great opportunity to distinguish themselves from traditional media, but they keep making design choices that prevent this. YouTube has become the leading video service because they created a platform that differentiated from traditional media, yet the current trajectory doesn't fit with that.
Chad Hurley is also one of the few notable alumni from the Technology Student Association, an organization I am a current member of that has not benefited from the recent increase in STEM funding. It is quite unfortunate, because they have a much more diverse offering than other stem organisations, even having an open source software competition!
Arguably, YouTube (YT) is the best education technology platform on the internet, yet it is just a non-creative successor of the VHS/TV and not even CD(which had the menu, breaking the linearity of the frames). The bits are transmitted over switches and routers instead of a cartridge with a magnetic tape, improving the latency for the end-user and YT also has the recommendation system which is usually a hit-or-miss. YT has definitely the largest educational content to offer, though it can be difficult to find or even search for it. And it's lacks interactivity, has the comment system of 1990s. Khan Academy overcomes some of YT's deficits, but adds too much friction to the user interface and user experience and is a one-man show. Is there any innovation happening in this field, and what is your opinion on the future of this education technology?
YouTube is the most accessible place for content like this. They may be running the site into the ground lately but the initial implementation of a site that allows easy uploading, sharing and discovery of video content still has a lot of merit and is miles beyond anything else if only for the fact that it has the largest market share.
What I'm thinking is a real-life open-source "tech tree".
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