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YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

engadget.com

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Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#51

Post by james-skemp »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #50

You know what I want YouTube to "crack" on? Assholes that say "But, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments section bellow." Any video of those should be immediately demonetized. This is a half serious rant, but seriously, video quality has gone so low over the last few years. There is practically a format that all those "professional" assholes follow. Does it really help them get more cash?

I believe number of minutes viewed, number of comments, and number of likes and dislikes all have a part in the algorithm for how well a video does in YouTube's eyes. So yes.

Of course source: professional YouTubers who have talked about the changes to the algorithm over the years.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#52

Post by delroth »

glogla wrote: post #42
throwaway2048 wrote: post #8

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...

Yep. This move is about removing "advertiser unfriendly" content from YT, nothing else.

My understanding is that demonetization for "advertiser unfriendliness" is per-video. It doesn't influence the capability of linking to external websites, since this is an account wide capability.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#53

Post by Shivetya »

andyjsong wrote: post #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 co…

the sad part is how much some smaller posters have to fight to keep hold of their own videos. challenges are rife at times and during the challenge period there is no monetization and worse it can start all over immediately after proving it truly is your video

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#54

Post by LeoNatan25 »

james-skemp wrote: post #51
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #50

You know what I want YouTube to "crack" on? Assholes that say "But, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments section bellow." Any video of those should be immediately demonetized. This is a half serious rant, but seriously, video quality has gone so low over the last few years. There is practically a format that all those "professional" assholes follow. Does it really help them get more cash?

I believe number of minutes viewed, number of comments, and number of likes and dislikes all have a part in the algorithm for how well a video does in YouTube's eyes. So yes. Of course source: professional YouTubers who have talked about the changes to the algorithm over the years.

I am not talking about the algorithm. I am asking whether saying "leave a comment" actually makes people leave a comment? For me, that acts as a detergent and an automatic down-vote. Are people that gullible that they subscribe when told to, comment when asked, etc?

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#55

Post by Fnoord »

anyfoo wrote: post #31
CaptSpify wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can echo what the others have already commented, which is that in the overwhelming majority of videos from channels that I have subscribed to, the annotations have been useful. Getting rid of them entirely would get rid of an easy and much needed way for the uploader to add corrections and other additions after the fact. I do see videos where the annotations are rather annoying, but I don't think it's so often that…

How to add corrections to post? Well, reply to your own video with a blank post so its top post and reserved. Edit it to add corrections.

I just regard annotations and commercials (which aren't blocked by uBlock Origin) as part of a video. If you (or I) don't enjoy a video (for whatever reason), stopping watching it is always an option to consider.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#56

Post by philfrasty »

Mithaldu wrote: post #30
manigandham wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with links in the description box in that case?

Many people ignore them and on mobile viewers need to do extra steps to even be able to see the description.

Even on mobile CTR for Description-Links is by far higher than for dynamic annotations.

Source: myself (approx. 80%+ mobile viewers on my channel)

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#57

Post by taneq »

Mithaldu wrote: post #36
colmvp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, good riddance. It added so much clutter to videos that I explicitly hid them any chance I got. I'd rather content creators just use the video description to communicate or edit their videos so that annotations would not be necessary.

So you read the entire description of a video before watching it and remember every word of it, including timestamps with comments to note corrections, even when there's 10 of them for a half hour video?

Annotations (in the sense of small snippets of text that display briefly to add info) are fine. What YouTube had in many cases was a poorly implemented MySpace page overlaid on the video. And as one of the parent posters said, the setting just kept turning itself back on no matter how many times you turned it off (on the video, or in your settings page).

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#58

Post by Mithaldu »

philfrasty wrote: post #56
Mithaldu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people ignore them and on mobile viewers need to do extra steps to even be able to see the description.

Even on mobile CTR for Description-Links is by far higher than for dynamic annotations. Source: myself (approx. 80%+ mobile viewers on my channel)

What exactly do you mean by dynamic annotations?

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#59

Post by Mithaldu »

taneq wrote: post #57
Mithaldu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you read the entire description of a video before watching it and remember every word of it, including timestamps with comments to note corrections, even when there's 10 of them for a half hour video?

Annotations (in the sense of small snippets of text that display briefly to add info) are fine. What YouTube had in many cases was a poorly implemented MySpace page overlaid on the video. And as one of the parent posters said, the setting just kept turning itself back on no matter how many times you turned it off (on the video, or in your settings page).

"Many cases" is subjective and anecdotal. Maybe my set of youtubers i followed was particularly high quality, but almost all uses of annotations i have seen were to provide corrections to information found wrong in the video, or additional information learned after the video.

In some cases such things were applied quite heavily too.

And thus the point of my previous post is that for people doing serious work with their youtube videos providing corrections and such via the description is entirely untenable.

I'm sorry you've only seen spam, but cutting off another's tool because some people can't use it correctly is a severe case of FYGM.

Re: YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

#60

Post by james-skemp »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #54
james-skemp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe number of minutes viewed, number of comments, and number of likes and dislikes all have a part in the algorithm for how well a video does in YouTube's eyes. So yes. Of course source: professional YouTubers who have talked about the changes to the algorithm over the years.

I am not talking about the algorithm. I am asking whether saying "leave a comment" actually makes people leave a comment? For me, that acts as a detergent and an automatic down-vote. Are people that gullible that they subscribe when told to, comment when asked, etc?

I wouldn't consider myself a normal user, so I don't know.

"Like, comment, and subscribe" also was once a popular thing to say at the end of videos too. I'm sure for some individuals this would be beneficial to reinforce. For some it had no impact. For others (myself included) it would be mocked.

I guess the question is, does less than five seconds of text at the end of a video (which some people may not even see) hurt more than it could potentially help? My search terms don't seem to find such research, if it was done.

My assumption, however, is that there are plenty of people out there that will do it, and might look at the comments to see what others have discussed. And some just have to comment on everything.

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