Stay away from the crap, remove it from your recommendations, subscribe to some good channels. It’s that simple.
Don’t if that’s not your thing but you’re missing out. If you change your mind here are a few exceptional channels to get you started, they should cater well to a HN style audience:
Technology Connections (misc tech)
Wendover Productions (Logistics)
DefunctLand (Documentaries on old defunct stuff)
Not Just Bikes (Cycling, public transport, urban design, walkability)
Practical Engineering (civil engineering)
3Blue1Brown (Math)
Cathode Ray Dude (really obscure 90s tech nostalgia)
Techmoan (obscure old tech nostalgia)
Jeremy Fielding (engineering)
Hand Tool Rescue (antique restoration)
Machine Thinking (history of technology/industry, especially pre-1900)
Usagi Electric (vacuum tubes, minicomputers, etc.)
Definitely worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4njCTv7IRbyf3XfhUcp_...
I'd also like to throw
- My Mate Vince (Tries to fix electronics, older toys etc)
- Wristwatch Revival (Very long, very well narrated watch repair videos)
in the ring.
Tom Scott (basically the human version of Atlas Obscura)
SmarterEveryDay (Former missile flight test engineer who does deep dives into science topics he's curious about)
ThinMatrix (indie game developer who's building a custom game engine and game from the ground up)
Adam Neely (music theory)
Jan Misali (linguistics and obscura)
Numberphile (math)
PBS SpaceTime (physics)
Simone Giertz (engineering)
Journey to the Microcosmos (microbiology)
Cody's Lab (all sorts of stuff, but he's currently in the multi-year process of building his own freaking Mars habitat)
Ian Hubert (indie filmmaker who creates better work than most of hollywood, including absolutely massive CGI projects)
Matthias Wandel (wookworking) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCckETVOT59aYw80B36aP9vw
Patrick Boyle (markets) is criminally undersubscribed IMO.
That the narration is good quality is a bonus. Calling it shallow and "one google search away" (parent) is absurd, his videos take weeks of research.
It's okay not to like the channel but know your criticisms.
He released a behind the scenes about his process on Nebula. Oh let me guess, he's making this up for clicks too?
And i could reimplement Dropbox in a weekend with curl and SFTP.
Between Wendover and HAI, they crank out content at a pace that hardly suggests "weeks of research". What's truly absurd is suggesting anything to the contrary.
Not Just Bikes is extremely opinionated and is frequently swept up in emotional arguments and comparing apples to oranges. Shame really. But it definitely gives people the ammunition to pretend to fight for change (where in reality they are fighting for unrealistic expectations and to get their oranges into apples) and this leads to a feel-good feeling.
The rest of the list are extremely informative and interesting to many with next to no bias.
That you don't like the fact it gives cyclists "ammunition" sounds like a You problem :-)
Yes it is opinionated though. I don't think it's possible to talk about what he talks about without being opinionated, because there is such a large section of the population that blindly loves cars to the point that it's become a religion, so everyone talking about improving things for bikes and public transportation looks like... Ammunition for attacks, right?
But he doesn't compare apples to oranges. He compares how different cities function. He showcases how things can work. The potential every city and country has with some better planning.
It's a shame (and a little telling) you don't like him. If you want less opinionated channels about urban planning there is City Beautiful for example. I don't think the production quality is as high, even if the guy is an actual city planner.
You can have high quality whilst also realising that the video is not made to be purely informative or educational.
>That you don't like the fact it gives cyclists "ammunition" sounds like a You problem :-)
??? Why are you talking about cyclists? I never mentioned cyclists.
>I don't think it's possible to talk about what he talks about without being opinionated
It is, and that's the crux. Though it's a lot more boring and harder.
>But he doesn't compare apples to oranges.
He very much does. I don't even need to argue on this point, it's that visible.
It's a shame indeed, but I have good reasons.
Being engaging is a requirement of being high quality. Someone who isn't engaging, even if their videos are very informative, will quickly lose his viewers. This is a problem because quality of the research isn't enough if nobody makes it to the end of the video.
And no, once again, he doesn't compare apples to oranges. He shows how things can work. He shows the potential. His channel is essentially just an opinionated tour of how urban design works in the Netherlands.
It's not like he says "Phoenix AZ should work exactly like Amsterdam and be designed exactly this way".
OP's argument hinges on "vast majority of content" and then you rebute it with the narrowest possible list of examples. You just made a strawman of OP's claim.
Once you do subscribe and watch good channels and subscribe to them, you will find that the recommendation engine is extremely high quality and will do the rest of the work.
There is basically zero crap on my YouTube homepage. It's all high quality now. I often get recommended videos and immediately subscribe to their channel. It's nice not to be afraid of clicking on videos on my homepage because I know all of it is great!
If you use Piped [0] you can only watch the updates from channels you are subscribed to without ads, intro, sponsors/promo etc.