It's true... but such an awful double edged sword.
I have quite a bit of experience as an auto mechanic, and love using youtube to find footage of something I'm considering doing or some item I'm considering buying. Just the effort+time savings alone is a game changer. Previously I would download FSMs for something I was considering acquiring to see what it's really like to work on / maintain / something of the internals, to minimize risk of buyer's remorse.
However, most the videos I find of people DIYing things are utter trash when it comes to actual guidance. The readily available footage of internals and failure modes is super valuable, but most these videos will do more harm than good when actually listened to. It's a whole lot of the blind leading the deaf. And the youtubers generally speak authoritatively about things they're clearly doing incorrectly to anyone experienced.
We had the same problem in the web forums era, but the conveniently accessible instructional video format strikes me as far more problematic. At least in the web forums it was entirely a conversational text format, so you were already in the context of reading comments, and the discussion would usually call out idiots immediately front and center. In the youtube videos, especially viewed on mobile, the comments are something you must seek out past the ads, must mode switch from watching tv to reading something, and are usually filled with morons anyways.
The major problem with relying on YouTube content for general automotive diagnosis and repair is that it doesn't tend to be general purpose. It's always "how this one guy fixed this one problem on this one car." A video could have a title like "Fixing a 2002 Toyota Corolla that won't start" but all it shows is the guy jumping right into replacing his fuel pump. There can be many other reasons that a 2002 Corolla won't start, but you're going to have to search through 100s of other videos to find the one that exactly matches your car's root cause, which you don't know until you diagnose it yourself.
The repair steps tend to range from so-so to excellent. The diagnosis steps are almost always very lacking.
Or they "fix" their issue by replacing the fuel pump, but totally neglected to point out what actually fixed their problem was the clogged pick-up sock they incidentally replaced while replacing the fuel pump. And never even looked inside the tank to address, let alone identify, their real problem.
Seen this kind of thing play out on YT too many times to count.
I could see that. Some times I'll also use it to gain consensus from a few different creators. The best ones will show when they fail so its a learning experience for everyone.
I have quite a bit of experience as an auto mechanic, and love using youtube to find footage of something I'm considering doing or some item I'm considering buying. Just the effort+time savings alone is a game changer. Previously I would download FSMs for something I was considering acquiring to see what it's really like to work on / maintain / something of the internals, to minimize risk of buyer's remorse.
However, most the videos I find of people DIYing things are utter trash when it comes to actual guidance. The readily available footage of internals and failure modes is super valuable, but most these videos will do more harm than good when actually listened to. It's a whole lot of the blind leading the deaf. And the youtubers generally speak authoritatively about things they're clearly doing incorrectly to anyone experienced.
We had the same problem in the web forums era, but the conveniently accessible instructional video format strikes me as far more problematic. At least in the web forums it was entirely a conversational text format, so you were already in the context of reading comments, and the discussion would usually call out idiots immediately front and center. In the youtube videos, especially viewed on mobile, the comments are something you must seek out past the ads, must mode switch from watching tv to reading something, and are usually filled with morons anyways.