Tell HN: YouTube prioritises health-related searches 'From health sources' | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: YouTube prioritises health-related searches 'From health sources'

8 pointsvanilla-almond2 comments

I only recently noticed this. It may be country-specific. Try searching for a medical condition or health issue. The YouTube search results are labelled 'From health sources'.

I'm not sure what to think of this change. Is it right to remove or deprioritise popular videos from search results if those videos come from unqualified "Doctors". I presume this also applies to anyone discussing a health topic who is not a health professional.

On the other hand, I understand why YouTube has taken this approach. There is a lot of misleading health advice too - it's impossible to police it all. YouTube's approach is to populate search results from health professionals or "credible health sources".

It's a difficult problem to tackle. What do think of this change to YouTube search? Do you think health videos should be unfiltered in search results - no matter the content, or who it comes from?

-----

Some links from YouTube:

Authoritative health information: https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/product-features/health-information/

Introducing new ways to help you find answers to your health questions: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/introducing-new-ways-help-you-find-answers-your-health-questions/

It looks like they also prioritize health/medical YouTubers, even if they're not doctors if they're big (i.e. with the verified checkmark). Given that this seems to be the case, I think this is a pretty reasonable approach to soft moderating.

I don't want YouTube to purely filter out potential health remedies because layperson experimentation is sometimes how medical "truths" of the day advance (e.g. doctors used to love spouting nonsense about how "diet doesn't affect acne" and with n=1, laypersons pushed back enough that new research showed that to not be the case). I think giving the floor to "credible" YouTubers and institutions is a fair balance.

1) Personally, I'd say that the search algorithm chosen should be customizable (there may be times you're looking for official sources AND times that you're looking for alternative ideas). At the very least, the algorithm should be very transparent. In my book, this isn't too transparent because the commentary on their algorithm is hidden away in some blog post that maybe less than 0.1% of YouTube's visitors would ever see without purposefully seeking it out.

2) On medical videos, to cover their butt from liability and also tell people to seek verification of information, I think warning labels on the page advising people to also seek help about medical problems through official sources and also their doctors would be a good idea. It's sort of weird to me that Google doesn't already have warning labels on medical related videos: the only thing they actually do is try to shill the vaccine on Covid-19 videos.

3) Google is not a medical institution with perfect knowledge of reality in the realm of health. They shouldn't be the arbiters of truth, only the platform that delivers ideas. Hell, even the best doctors in the world do not have perfect knowledge of reality and their fancy titles are not necessarily proof that their ideas are true.

4) What really bothers me is that progress beyond officially authorized medical ideas can be stopped by these efforts. Every good and valid idea is "unsupported by official sources" until it suddenly is. We've all heard stories about about the era when surgeons washing their hands was outright scoffed at by the medical community. If YouTube was around hundreds of years ago, they'd probably be calling the people who told surgeons to wash their hands conspiracy theories and cranks. There may be hundreds of nuggets of wisdom in unofficially sanctioned sources that would do the world good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com