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Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

Youtube was, is and will forever be for cat videos, not for serious information - or so at least the moderation policy makes it out to be. There are plenty of alternative video distribution channels out there which don't have this problem, the only thing which needs to be solved is video discovery. It is quite possible to use Youtube for this purpose with a link pointing at the real content, a short clip will do for that purpose. Once enough serious channels start using Youtube as a programming guide they will probably start blocking that type of clip but hopefully by then the cat has been let out of the bag and there will no longer be a need for using Youtube for video discovery since people will know they have to look elsewhere for their non-cat-video needs.

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> Youtube was, is and will forever be for cat videos, not for serious information - or so at least the moderation policy makes it out to be.

The problem isn't the moderation policy, it's the medium. It encourages easy passive absorption of anything presented in a slick matter by people who barely know what they're talking about.

Take for instance this slick video talking about VHS capture by Technology Connections, which I used to have vaguely positive feelings about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC5Zr3NC2PY

The people on a forum with really deep knowledge on the subject have poor things to say about it: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/10059-modern-a.... They say he only has a poor gasp of the subject, and half the time sounds like he's just reading off of Wikipedia.

> There are plenty of alternative video distribution channels out there which don't have this problem, the only thing which needs to be solved is video discovery.

No, those "alternative video distribution channels" are usually far worse, precisely because of that lack of moderation. Except in a very few cases (specifically some gun videos, and Serikzhan Bilash), most of the original content that has to flee to them is garbage.

The medium online video does not necessarily encourage passive absorption, that is more due to the recommendations system combined with autoplay which is tuned to keep viewers stuck to their tubes for as long as possible. Take away the recommendations and disable autoplay and what you're left with is just a way to show video content, with all the pros and cons of such. While I prefer textual content over video I know that this is not a universal and as such there certainly is a place for those videos describing how to tune a guitar, how to floss the cat and how to bake hamburger buns.

As to alternative video distribution channels being "worse" than Youtube, well, yes, the average quality of the content "relegated" to alternative channels is bound to be lower than that on Youtube simply because they apply both legitimate as well as illegitimate (political, commercial or otherwise) reasons to ban content. The value of the alternative channels lies in their willingness to distribute videos which were banned for illegitimate reasons, not in their use by those who were banned from Youtube for legitimate reasons. You can simply ignore the thrash content when using these alternatives just like you (hopefully) ignore the thrash on Youtube et al.

other distributions don't have those problems because they have no where near the user base.

serious information is for people who crosscheck their information, academically through books or through additional research. No place on the Internet is for serious information on it's own.

Several of the alternative video distribution systems can be self-hosted since they are based around P2P video distribution (PeerTube uses webtorrent, odysee uses LBRY) so it will be possible to get around censorship as long as the network providers keep from colluding with the censors to keep out content which does not fit the desired narrative. Even if they do there are ways to get around this censorship but this makes it harder for normal users to access the content.

That bit about serious information being for people who cross-check information etc. would work if they were allowed to access all sources, something which is made difficult by certain viewpoints being blocked by several of the largest distribution platforms.

What you say about "no place on the 'net being for serious information on its own" is not necessarily true, as long as the above conditions are met - i.e. no network-level censorship - it is possible to present an overview of the current level of understanding on a subject. This used to be the case in scientific journals, nearly all of which are available online. The SARS2-pandemic made short shrift with this reliability when many of the journals started to align with the desired narrative, sometimes by simply refusing to publish studies which went against the narrative [X], sometimes by actively publishing false studies [1,2].

[X| here there would be links to papers on the seemingly proven efficacy of Ivermectin, the potentially useful nature of Hydroxychloroquine, the "statistical certainty" of the virus having escaped from the Wuhan institute of virology, etc. Alas, there are no such links since the journals refused the articles even though they were written by people with a proven scientific background and came with a bevy of evidence. Had the articles been published they could have been discussed in the open and their contents thereby proven or disproven without fear of retribution or cancellation since the works appeared in well-known and -respected journals. Now this is impossible, those who try to bring up articles published in less well-known journals or aggregators like arXiv often find themselves accused of quackery - which was the purpose of forcing those articles to be published there. For the respected journals this is a case of 'mission complete but reputation tarnished'.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007621

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