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> I searched for a software tutorial on Youtube and 90% of results are talking heads. What else did you want on a video site? You just think they should not include their faces in the videos?
Yes? Heads add no value to a technical video, they function as a distraction at best.
The drive for monetization certainly shows in the form of needlessly, absurdly long videos. I recently came across a "How to Make the Windows 11 Taskbar Completely Transparent" tutorial (I had a whim to do just that). The whole content boils down to "install such-and-such app". Length of the video? 5:50 :) (And the narrator calls it a "real quick video" by the way, so apparently that passes for being rather brief). Y…
There's a variety of youtube "creators" that I follow as I have the same interests or hobbies, okay, I'm an aviation nerd, and the videos from the same creators have over time morphed from ad-hoc, homemade, quicky explainers into very professional looking videos clearly put together by a team. And they are longer. And they are selling their merch. And they are all cross-promoting each other. And they are all advertis…
The whole Internet hat peaked due to monetization. Very little content is created because somebody is passionate about something and wants to share. Almost all content is created to either directly make money or to collect enough followers to eventually start making money. Everything is fake and optimized to grab attention. What organic content remains is drowned out by the firehose of monetized content.
When r/gonewild (NSFW!) is about the only source of genuinely non-monetized content on the Internet remaining... sigh
>It used to be index of useful organic information,
To be honest - no. It became an index of useful information not so long ago. It used to be just a site for funny videos, homevideo often and things like that.
[^1]: To name a few:
https://www.youtube.com/c/athleanx
https://www.youtube.com/c/Strengthside
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA
https://www.youtube.com/c/LetThemTalkTV/
Maybe in some areas (software) but I'm finding YouTube a goldmine for my current interest - learning to drive in the UK When I was 17 I started learning for about 8 months but then stopped due to various reasons. I'm 35 now and picking it back up again and the most mind blowing aspect of it is how much content there is on YouTube to help learner drivers, compared to back then! There are loads of creators (usually dri…
I'm glad someone else has noticed this. There are tons of good vids showing mock driving exams with the faults highlighted and explained which I found really useful. It's mostly good marketing for the instructors, I think - you get to know their personality and chops before you put down the quite large amount of money required for a full suite of lessons. And it's just good PR - adding value and all that...
If you only ever look at the front page of Reddit, you're going to be fed memes and outrage. If you go and subscribe to a few small, focused subreddits, you're going to see things that are relevant to you.
Same with YouTube. If you watch a lot of junk content, that's what it's going to feed you in recommendations. If you focus on some specific segment of content, it'll give you that instead.
For example I watch a bunch of creators that build stuff (e.g. Tested, ThisOldTony, AvE) and as a result I get recommendations for other relevant creators, like Alec Steele, James Bruton, Tom Stanton and Colin Furze.
When I see recommendations I don't like, I flag them with "not interested" or "don't recommend channel".
There's definitely still organic, passion-driven content out there, especially with new fan-funding mechanisms like Patreon, you just need to focus on it, because it's really easy for YouTube to shovel junk down your throat, if you give it the chance.
I'm split between agreeing with you, and that Youtube is no longer a thing for me. Probably it's my forties talking here, but I am under the impression that the content and the format (including the length) is being leaned towards the 15-25 years old range. For (our) work stuff, it's all 30 minutes "learning tutorials", for a kid getting hands on a programming language or tool, or the couch-video-watcher-curious. I h…
Check out Pat Finnerty, he does a series called “Why does this songs stink” and he really has an axe to grind with Beato: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWfMI4CVFI