That are great news! It's about time that YouTube focus more on learning content! I'm building a platform where people can connect who consume the same YT videos. I fell like the comment section is a horrible place for educational content. Would love to hear your thoughts on my project. It's https://www.baselog.co
The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
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Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#282> Every day, people come to YouTube to learn something new. True. > shows content on commonly used education apps without distractions like ads, external links or recommendations External links seem important on educational files, and I kind of like recommendations when I'm browsing educational stuff, but whoo, no ads on educational stuff? That's great! > Next year, qualified creators can begin offering free or paid…
You can expect YouTube to take a fat percentage (30%?) far beyond what alternative monetization methods like Patreon. Good revenue stream, especially if they can get partnership deals with schools or other educational institutions. Imagine YouTube getting this sort of "guaranteed" revenue, like publishers do from textbooks, but getting schools to foot the bill instead of students; great business model.
Yes, from what I heard, YouTube is looking at a 70/30 split with creators.
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#283I produce Music Tech-based educational content on YT. It started as a hobby and sideline to my main work (which at the time was classroom teaching of the same content). While I'm no longer working in classrooms (pandemic plus other reasons led to this), I'm still producing content, which I think is of good quality and worthwhile. The issue I have with it is that I refuse to produce attention-grabbing clickbaity title…
There are some examples in fitness-educational content, say Jeff Nippard and Athlean-X, that use some clickbait tactics in terms of thumbnail choosing, titles, and editing, but then nonetheless delivery high-quality educational content that doesn't seem like it should have been behind clickbait.
But even if you feel like that's a betrayal of your integrity and you just want to produce something like MIT OCW, well, there are other examples from fitness content, say Stronger by Science, Sigma Nutrition, Iron Culture, where they either make enough to get by but not a ton, or even in Iron Culture's case lose money from the social media ventures but do it anyway. If you want to use MIT itself as an example of something that can be legitimate, high-quality education, but still make money, you can consider that universities operate as non-profits and rely on charitable donations to amass the wealth they have.
I don't think the phenomenon you're getting at here is limited to YouTube or even to educational content on any platform. Sellers of junk food make more money than sellers of high-nutritional, better quality food, and the most profitable sellers of high-nutrition content, high-quality food are even still using clickbait-like tactics of misleading marketing and overselling what their products can really do. The most boring fruit and vegetable stands in the world selling basic nutrient-dense, really good products but not lying about what it can do for you, are just getting by and not getting rich.
Sometimes, that has to be enough. If you believe in what you're doing, do it, even if you're not going to get rich.
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#284I had no idea .YouTube was a top-level domain.
Cloud giants get whatever they want.
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
The alternative isn’t these creators giving their content away; the alternative is these creators using one of the dozens of paid-video-course hosting platforms that have sprung up. This isn’t going to put a paywall in front of any content that didn’t already have a paywall in front of it.
Yes, but you as a consumer choose youtube, because you pretty much know that all the content there (from your home feed to search result, to related videos) is free. You start with a soldering tutorial, then click on the related video on how to solder SMD components, then a related video about how transistors work, then you find a nice documentary about the history of computing, about enigma, etc... so you click thro…
Anybody who has used YT for learning purposes will have quickly realized the limits of "free".
There are numerous channels with click bait titles that are little more than upsells to their paid courses. Quality courses (not referring to pre-recorded uni lectures) are not given away for free.
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#286Maybe just me, but I'm not really excited for established YouTubers to sell more stuff and expand their empires. It's already a winner-take-all game of attention. The beauty of YouTube is finding like a retired professor who puts up their lectures on an account with a couple thousand subscribers. It is not having a click-bait worthy thumbnail, over-produced video, and barely learning anything while being mindlessly e…
I found channels with 10k-100k subscribers to be extremely high in quality and... bespoke. Just these days, I am learning a lot about OpenWRT while I wait for my router to arrive, and there was one channel with near 30k subscribers run by an amazing person, as he shares quite detailed information about routers, even the ones that are less exciting. This was such a fresh breath from Linus Tech Tips style "we upgraded…
Agreed, some of these smaller channels still carry the spirit of public access TV by attempting to be informative first rather than going straight to growth hacking.
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#287Does it bother anyone else that YouTube has its own TLD (.youtube)? TLDs used to carry a lot of weight, and used to signify something besides individual entities/companies... but it feels to me like that designation is becoming rather diluted.
It bothers me that we still have those useless suffixes attached to domains. What does „org“, „com“, „net“ even mean to the average user? Nothing. It’s nothing but a pointless ritual at this point, and after ICANN chose to add thousands of generic domains, they don’t have any significance left at all, except that nice names are very expensive now. It would be easier for everybody if we simply removed that extra step…
It helps identify scammy low-effort sites. Too cheap to spring for the .com, and went for .news instead? Pass.
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#288[deleted]
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same way the internet, email, bittorrent and even cryptocurrencies are?
Most people have to pay for their internet connection. Gmail used to be ad-supported, but is now just a loss-leader for other Google products. Bittorrent is built on top of people's paid-for internet connections and cannot scale to anything like the size of YouTube. Cryptocurrencies have transaction fees.
"No one will ever write an encyclopedia for free"
Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube
#290I produce Music Tech-based educational content on YT. It started as a hobby and sideline to my main work (which at the time was classroom teaching of the same content). While I'm no longer working in classrooms (pandemic plus other reasons led to this), I'm still producing content, which I think is of good quality and worthwhile. The issue I have with it is that I refuse to produce attention-grabbing clickbaity title…
I find this thread interesting because the 10-or-so comments I've read are all discussing the merits and necessities of 'salesmanship' for this kind of work and throwing their hands in the air for 'What could be done' (maybe not literally but by omission of engagement with that part of the topic).
From my perspective, there are viable 'solutions' to this problem; Patreon, Curiosity stream, Coursera, etc.
I suppose those solutions, Direct Pay or Subscription, require more from individuals compared to youtube, 'free but with ads'. So the problem here is , "Is there a solution to the ad-revenue-based-on-views approach that keeps the content free for viewers"? When you identify it like that, I don't think there can be. I think the model demanding as many views as possible is a feature not a bug even if the outcomes are less than desirable. And now, in my view, we're talking about failures of Capitalism and this is just one example, Teachers being another.
So maybe the solution is community willpower.