My dad has been watching bad youtube since they funnel people to bad content— he likes political news and to keep up with the war in Ukraine— what are some better youTube channels I can subscribe him to to clean up his feed? now it has that guy who always lies saying Russia is about to win on it — I showed him how he has said the same thing for two years and I think he’s ready for new stuff.
@randahl has a YouTube channel, i haven't watched any of it, but his posts on here are always pretty on point and he's just uploaded a video on how the conflict is going for Russia.
@futurebird
The Sky News channel on YouTube has been my main source for Ukraine. They have analysis from Prof Michael Clarke and other respected experts.
Thick german accent. Ex military. He does not hesitate to point out bad news while openly stating that he supports ukraine actively. He is cautious with his statememts, and often redirects his viewers towards @anderspuck or other subject experts.
@futurebird I like Dylan Burns’ Ukraine coverage. He was a very political debate-focused young streamer, but mostly left that behind to go to Ukraine to cover the war. His opinions are informed by being there and talking to Ukrainians.
@futurebird I use a browser extension to block recommended videos and the home page, and follow channels via RSS so that I can avoid youtube as much as possible. Bad ranking algorithms enrage me at this point XD
He's a professor who's written a few books on the Russia/Ukraine war and I think he's even published a paper about it. Despite his academic background I think his videos are pretty easy to digest.
@futurebird my son and i watch TedEd videos, minute earth, smarter every day, etc. There are a bunch of interesting makers and science content.
For history, oversimplified taught me more about world history than i learned in school. We are currently enjoying Yarnhub that covers exploits of various wwii folks.
Chef John is great if he has any interest in cooking.
And Taskmaster is delightful. Start with the British ones.
The Young Turks have their heart in the right place.
And some of their journalism is good too.
(most of it is too heavy on commentary and consequently superficial, though)
If his french is good, Frank Lepage's "Incultures" is great (as is the hors-serie.net website, BTW) but it's not "political news", more deep analysis.
FD Signifier makes too long videos for my taste but what I watched was quite interesting.
For political news, nothing beats the Juice Media anyway.
The person on YouTube I like for War-in-Ukraine news is Anders Puck Nielsen. He has a distinct pro-Ukraine position (he technically works for the Danish military, he's a professor at a naval college or something) but he stays objective about the facts and is upfront enough about his personal positions they're easy enough to factor out. He's good at citing his primary sources.
TLDR News is dense but clear deep dives on world politics. I like just reading Google News better, but…
@futurebird He’s Ukrainian himself and is open about being pro-Ukraine, but he’s balanced and fact based about the situation on the ground. I would say no, but it kinda depends on want you mean by “rah rah”. There is the occasional Putin joke
@futurebird@jess Denys is Ukrainian, and believes strongly in their fight for freedom. Definitely not "objective", but he is grounded in reality, and is not shy about criticizing the Ukrainian government and generals.
He also liked Anton Petrov’s space news so that’s an improvement. I don’t think he’d like anything from a big network like MSNBC. (he also hates fox, so that’s fine with me)
Fraser Cain’s YT channel is an excellent source of space /space science news, very similar to Anton Petrov in the type of coverage but he also does fantastic deep dive interviews with the scientists behind the news.
One thing I have noticed with YouTube is that turning off watch history vastly improves my experience as it limits the algorithm’s tendency to recommend extremist content to me. It severely limits organic discovery too but that’s something I’m happy to go with.
I endorse only watching YouTube with history disabled and while blocking what tracking can be blocked.
Otherwise "watching space news videos" turns into "get recommendations for ancient alien conspiracists and flat earthers", with more actively dangerous disinformation channels one click beyond that.
@michael_w_busch@helvick@futurebird can I just tell you the NUMBER of offers I have gotten (with money thrown at me) to host ancient alien-type shows on networks has been appalling. it's kind of horrifying.
@ViolaB
He was pretty disgusted watching older videos from Ritter who looks very foolish if you go back even a few months. I think he just wants to feel like he’s getting “the inside story” but youTube is bad for that.
@ViolaB Ritter is an embarrassment of a Russian shill. A goofy man who is often wrong— but millions of 60+ US men watch him for some godforsaken reason.