[jppope]

Naïve question here... personally, I've never found Webmd, cdc, or Mayo clinic to be that good at fulfilling actual medical questions. why is it a problem to cite YouTube videos with a lot of views? Wouldn't that be better?

[xracy]

Medical advice from videos is frequently of the "unhelpful" variety where people recommend home cures that work for some things for absolutely everything.

Also people are really partial to "one quick trick" type solutions without any evidence (or with low barrier to entry) in order to avoid a more difficult procedure that is more proven, but nasty or risky in some way.

For example, if you had cancer would you rather take:

"Ivermectin" which many people say anecdotally cured their cancer, and is generally proven to be harmless to most people (side-effects are minimal)

OR

"Chemotherapy" Which everyone who has taken agrees is nasty, is medically proven to fix Cancer in most cases, but also causes lots of bad side-effects because it's trying to kill your cancer faster than the rest of you.

One of these things actually cures cancer, but who wouldn't be interested in an alternative "miracle cure" that medical journals will tell you does "nothing to solve your problem", but plenty of snake oil salesman on the internet will tell you is a "miracle cure".

[Source] Hank green has a video about why these kinds of medicines are particularly enticing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC9glJa1-c0

[Aurornis]

Medical topics are hard because it's often impossible to provide enough information through the internet to make a diagnosis. Although frustrating for users, "go see a doctor" is really the only way to make progress once you hit the wall where testing combined with years of clinical experience are needed to evaluate something.

A lot of the YouTube and other social media medical content has started trying to fill this void by providing seemingly more definitive answers to vague inputs. There's a lot of content that exists to basically confirm what the viewer wants to hear, not tell them that their doctor is a better judge than they are.

This is happening everywhere on social media. See the explosion in content dedicated to telling people that every little thing is a symptom of ADHD or that being a little socially awkward or having unusual interests is a reliable indicator for Autism.

There's a growing problem in the medical field where patients show up to the clinic having watched hundreds of hours of TikTok and YouTube videos and having already self-diagnosing themselves with multiple conditions. Talking them out of their conclusions can be really hard when the provider only has 40 minutes but the patient has a parasocial relationship with 10 different influencers who speak to them every day through videos.

[RobotToaster]

>it's often impossible to provide enough information through the internet to make a diagnosis

Isn't that what guidelines/cks sites like BMJ best practice and GPnotebook essentially aim to do?

Of course those are all paywalled so it can't cite them... whereas the cranks on youtube are free

[biophysboy]

The core reason why medical advice online is "bad" is because it is not tailored to you as an individual. Even written descriptions of symptoms is only going to get you so far. Its still too generic and imprecise - you need personal data. Given this caveat, the advice of webmd, cdc, or mayo is going to be leagues better than YouTube, mostly because it will err on the side of caution, instead of recommending random supplements or mediocre exercise regimens.

[yakattak]

Those sites typically end with “talk to your doctor”. There’s many creators out there whose entire platform is “Your doctor won’t tell you this!”. I trust the NHS, older CDC pages, Mayo clinic as platforms, more than I will ever trust youtube.