I would say the funding model is what makes the difference.

Wikipedia sells information (in the form of "Donate or this could all go away") and is financially incentivized to make that information comprehensive and high quality. YouTube sells influence, and it is precisely that practice I object to.

Think about the videos on your homepage, in your recommended videos, which publishers you hear from immediately and which disappeared. I can see it trying to manipulate me.

You can download the entirety of Wikipedia. YouTube is blocking YouTube downloaders. It's a crime against humanity that they lured people into to contribute videos to this platform. By losing money for years before being acquired, they ensured nobody could possibly compete with their own video platform. Its not a nonforprofit or library. They can freely censor, restrict, and edit videos as they please, especially for deceased accounts.

Except it's also a battleground for a ton of insidious recommendations that now distract you instead of educate you.

I know many people who spend 10 hours+ a day just listening to inflammatory content

It's also not just the consumers. So many great educational channels have been forced to appeal to click bait or lower quality content because of the nature of the platform

> Seems like a mistake to rely on it for anything other than entertainment

I disagree, shouldn't be used even for entertainment. Going to YouTube for entertainment and relying on it to guide you is how you end up being radicalised on certain topics.

The idea of downvoting channels or videos like this is to punish the channel / poster.

I assume the end game is youtube will eventually almost entirely be their own slop

at which point they won't have to pay pesky creators

Before you used to manage your own subscriptions or communities to join. That was enough. My suggestion would be just having a whitelist for the channels or sources you want to follow that push non-slop content.