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YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

engadget.com

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#11

Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

Agreed, but this move seems like a grab at Patreon and self promotion in general. Users can still put obnoxious annotations up.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#12

An important note here, if you cannot enable monetize videos, YouTube will not allow you to link to patreon or other sites. https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg Its not enough for Google to ban you from ads, they have decided to cut off any other funding source aswell...

I really don't understand how they have made it to this point.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#13

Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

Also the ability to illustrate a video with an image that's not part of the video, has become a click bait paradise.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#14

Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

It seems like a better approach would be to just get rid of those annotations. I don't know how anyone ever thought that was a good idea. But YT should let them link externally. Site's like Patreon are beneficial to everyone involved.

I've been watching tutorial videos on software packages recently, and one really nice use case for annotations is that if there is out of date information in a specific sentence, they can just annotate it with the newer info instead of redoing the entire video.

It's also helpful when they use the links as intended, like the video links to its own follow up video at the end.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#16
From the article it sounds like it's more cracking down on people who rip off other people's content and then use the link cards to get referral traffic to their own properties.

I don't think legitimate creators need to be concerned. From the article, the minimum requirement to be a partner is 10K public views. That's a relatively low bar, and you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of a view count anyway.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#17

Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

install ImprovedTube Plus, turn off annotations in the extension, problem solved

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#19
post #18

Was youtube always tracking links in Video description? I dont remember ever noticing it, spotted it yesterday, every non google link is redirected with https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencod... link+video title

Think this happened within last 6-12 months. Not long ago it wasn't possible to see referral data from YouTube in something like Google Analytics without manually adding utm's. I noticed the data coming in automatically sometime in that period.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#20

Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

There's a (fake) setting to globally disable annotations? Even if it doesn't work as Google describes it, I'm interested.
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