this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Qualifying the author prior to blind posting a link is the point. YouTube is full of misinformation landmines and, as I mentioned, you already mentioned one source that would obviously have a conflict here.
I'm familiar with the youtuber and find him to be a pretty trustworthy science explainer, and he does acknowledge that one of the studies has a conflict of interest, but it appears to be in line with other studies that do not have that conflict (though he probably would've been better off not including biased studies at all).
But I am a rando on the internet, so my vouching for him to be fairly trust-worthy should not hold much weight. Ultimately people will need to take a look at the studies and determine for themselves if the youtuber is coming to a solid conclusion based on his arguments and interpretation of the data.
If you are concerned about potential misinformation being spread, then, if you happen to have the time and inclination, you yourself could investigate each source and its trustworthiness, watch the video, and come to your own conclusion as to the veracity of the youtuber's conclusion, and then detail your own conclusion in a comment here.
Internet trust is about stacking positive signals until you take a calculated risk to a degree. You providing context of your own history and trust, while not definitive, would have been a great push in the right direction, as you are on Lemmy. Which again, is not full qualification by any means, but says a lot about your general technical competency, analytical thinking and likely stronger relationship with reason compared to the general population.
So just try to give a little beyond a link is all.
You're doing good work, and it's largely thankless, I'm sorry. 🙇🏽♂️
From my perspective, someone declaring being familiar with and trusting a youtuber when posting their link does not appear to provide a terribly useful function, or add any positive signals.
To elaborate; If I am unfamiliar with a poster, their opinion is practically irrelevant, as I do not know their level of competency in the subject they are posting, their critical thinking ability, their research skills, nor their biases. If I find the subject interesting enough to click, I will still need to determine its merit through my own analysis.
If I am already familiar with a poster themselves and they have shown a history of posting good quality links, then declaring they trust a specific youtuber is now irrelevant for me, since I can already assume the poster is continuing their trend of sharing high quality information.
If someone added "I know this youtuber, he's legit" to their post body, and that altered my perception of whether the video is worth watching or how on-guard I need to be with the information presented without being familiar with the poster at all, then that would, in my opinion, just indicate that I am susceptible to suggestion. You would ultimately still need to determine the worth of the argument on your own, or defer to someone else doing that legwork, if they take the time to present a compelling case.
I do not think it unreasonable to expect others to determine the merits of a link I post for themselves.
I do think it unreasonable to expect someone to do a deep dive on every source referenced in a video and present their findings to a perspective watcher. If that was the standard we adopted here, it would absolutely have a chilling effect on people's incentive or inclination to post anything at all.