YouTube has helped to improve the product, but I am of the opinion that the most of the best YouTube channels are produced by a single person who post weekly at most. They seem to have struck a good balance between audience
engagement and information value. Consider Ben Eater or Technology Connections videos. The former may be more education oriented while the latter is well geared towards my quirky tastes in entertainment, yet both of these are producers who clearly respect their audiences by being interesting and to the point.
In contrast, the channels that have large production crews and publish more regularly usually feel thin on content. There is either very little value to the information or the density of information is incredibly low. There are exceptions. Vox comes to mind because they clearly respect their audience, has many more people involved in production, and produces more polished videos.
Yet those exceptions feel rare. More often than not I find new channels through those small time producers, either directly from the creator or through YouTube's automated recommendation while watching an interesting channel.
Now Google is sanitizing educational hacking videos, which is disconcerting because a lot of those videos are either lectures or produced by small producers. Google is probably doing that to protect their reputation, and there are likely cases when I would agree that it is a good thing. On the other hand, hacking is filled with a lot of grey areas. I enjoy some of those educational videos because it offers a glimpse into how hardware and software works, or demonstrates some interesting uses of everyday software. (At least for a Unix user, The other day, I was watching a video on reverse engineering firmware where I have regularly used all but one of the Unix utilities in the demonstration.) If Google takes that option away one of the best avenues for discoverability disappears. That hurts audiences and producers.
> In contrast, the channels that have large production crews and publish more regularly usually feel thin on content. There is either very little value to the information or the density of information is incredibly low. There are exceptions. Vox comes to mind because they clearly respect their audience, has many more people involved in production, and produces more polished videos.
Are you familiar with the youtube channel Kurzgesagt?
That's an exception to the rule - a rare case of people with enough integrity to not sacrifice quality and accuracy, while having a distinct and approachable enough style to attract a wider audience. And still, I'm not sure if they've reached "financial independence" point yet. Yes, there's Patreon (and I send them money there), but last I checked (roughly a year ago), they still funded it in big part from the money they make commercially as a creative agency.
In contrast, the channels that have large production crews and publish more regularly usually feel thin on content. There is either very little value to the information or the density of information is incredibly low. There are exceptions. Vox comes to mind because they clearly respect their audience, has many more people involved in production, and produces more polished videos.
Yet those exceptions feel rare. More often than not I find new channels through those small time producers, either directly from the creator or through YouTube's automated recommendation while watching an interesting channel.
Now Google is sanitizing educational hacking videos, which is disconcerting because a lot of those videos are either lectures or produced by small producers. Google is probably doing that to protect their reputation, and there are likely cases when I would agree that it is a good thing. On the other hand, hacking is filled with a lot of grey areas. I enjoy some of those educational videos because it offers a glimpse into how hardware and software works, or demonstrates some interesting uses of everyday software. (At least for a Unix user, The other day, I was watching a video on reverse engineering firmware where I have regularly used all but one of the Unix utilities in the demonstration.) If Google takes that option away one of the best avenues for discoverability disappears. That hurts audiences and producers.