Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#1

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 8:46 AM UTC

It feels like the majority of content is no longer organic or passion driven. It is now monetisation driven content.

It's similar to Google. It used to be index of useful organic information, created for practical reasons (regardless of Google). Now it is just an index of adverts and spam created for Google monetisation.

Even some famous tech review channels just seem like marketing/pr product shills to me now.

--

I searched for a software tutorial on Youtube and 90% of results are talking heads.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#2

Post by Mizza » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

It's really awful. The worst are those short vertical videos with a robot voice and dramatic music laid over a short clip from another video. It must be what a lobotomy feels like.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#3

Post by dudus » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

YouTube is amazing. YouTube search is good but has some bad spots. Software is one of them, a lot of bad quality content. Luckily you can be creative with the filtering and sorting to cut out the low quality content by views

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#4

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:13 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#5

Post by bluGill » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

Search has never been good, and the algorithm seem to prioritize things that make YouTube money, but it is still where all the good passion generated stuff goes if you can find it.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#6

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#7

Post by ellieh » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:15 AM UTC

I feel like this is just the way the Google-owned web is going at the moment. Every Google search is filled with e-commerce and ads. It's all just selling you stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#8

Post by open-source-ux » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:15 AM UTC

I don't think YouTube has peaked. It is as popular today as it as ever been. It's not surprising monetisation is more prevalent when channels grow. I remain impressed that among the staggering quantity of content there is plently to watch and find. I rarely watch the most popular tech channels.

The trend I dislike is 'shorts' which are encouraged by YouTube. An obvious nod to TikTok, which ironically now allows longer videos - a maximum of 10 minutes.

So to sum up: yes, there is lots of rubbish on YouTube (as to be expected), but there is also plenty of watchable content - whether it's silly, informative, education, music or a myriad of other types. Is it unhealthy to consume too much? I guess that's a question for a different discussion.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#9

Post by danpalmer » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

I'd say that the quality of the best content on YouTube is still fantastic, and those creators are often able to bring in more and more money, allowing even more improvements.

Looking at the sorts of channels represented by Standard, they're at the top of their game and doing better than ever. - https://standard.tv/

Yes there's a ton of crap too, but I think this is just a symptom of YouTube being truly mainstream now. There are areas that do better and worse on this. I'd agree that programming tutorials aren't good, but I've never found YouTube to be good for programming tutorials. Conference talks tend to be much better.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#10

Post by azangru » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

I wouldn't use the word "peaked". It may be hard to discover useful content; but if you know the channels that you are interested in, then youtube is fantastic compared to the alternatives (vimeo, odysee, rumble, peertube).