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Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

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Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#41

Post by russellbeattie »

I can't say I love it when I view one video about some random topic (or worse, my son does - we watch a lot on the living room TV), and then I'm spammed for the next month with related videos. You can tell when the server process is run, as it'll be a day or so later and suddenly everything recommended to me is about (just checked) Chess, for example. Just because I checked out a couple chess videos does not now mean I need 500 Magnus Carlsen clips recommended to me. It's insane.

To anyone complaining about ads, FFS, just pay the money for the subscription. Life is too short. I haven't seen an ad for years.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#42

Post by ricardobayes »

Larrikin wrote: post #32

At some point during Covid they seemed to just decide they wanted to abuse users and its been a steady decline since. My largest use cases were watching DJ sets, music videos, stand up comedians, instructional videos, and life of (random career) videos Music videos have multiple ads before and after now. The music videos are still watchable but it sucks to put youtube on at a party now. Life of videos from channels w…

I use adblock plus, and don't remember the last time I watched an ad on youtube (website, not app of course).

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#43

Post by bobthepanda »

JetAlone wrote: post #37
deepdriver wrote: post #18

Aggressively clicking the drop-down and "Not interested"or "Don't recommend channel" on bad recommendations has significantly improved my YouTube suggestions.

This helps. It can be a real damn chore though.

also, it feels like this stops working after a while. I sure as hell remember doing this to as much sports content as I possibly could, and it worked for a while, but now it's coming back.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#44

Post by smcl »

labrador wrote: post #31
smcl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help feeling this is a modern day repeat of JWZ's old aphorism on regexes, and the root cause of quite a lot of user frustration with Google products: > Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use AI." Now they have two problems.

I don't know what you call a tool that ranks text by grammar complexity and word obscurity so I called it AI or just "text analyzer"

Ahh I see what you mean, sorry HN has broken my brain a little around the word "AI". Here when it's proposed as a solution to something is often used like "unspecified magic", but the application you have in mind is quite specific and reasonable :)

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#45

Post by criticism010 »

Larrikin wrote: post #32

At some point during Covid they seemed to just decide they wanted to abuse users and its been a steady decline since. My largest use cases were watching DJ sets, music videos, stand up comedians, instructional videos, and life of (random career) videos Music videos have multiple ads before and after now. The music videos are still watchable but it sucks to put youtube on at a party now. Life of videos from channels w…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#46

Post by CommanderData »

dageshi wrote: post #7

Their search has got pretty bad I've noticed. They've changed it to start showing random shit you might want to watch instead of the thing you actually searched for after the first 10 or so videos. They seem to repeat videos they think you ought to watch quite often in search results as well. Significant downgrade on what it used to be.

I've stopped using search as it's filled with non relevant content, great job messing with one thing the company was known for, search.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#47

Post by timrichard »

superchroma wrote: post #2

Because they don't care? They're an ad company and seem more interested in their bottom line than what users feel about their services or having a consistent portfolio. I think right now they're trying to ensure tik-tok doesn't eat their lunch by promoting shorts, whilst also still trying to get youtube to make a profit. I can't think of a single google service they offer that I really like, they all kind of suck in…

I like being able to search every email I've archived since 2004 on any device I have to hand.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#48

Post by deepdriver »

RL_Quine wrote: post #36
nullandvoid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only sane way to consume YouTube these days. I also just manage a curated list of channels and consume via RSS, with YT perpetually blocked, short of a few re-review days per year.

Youtube is also basically unwatchable without both adblock and sponsorblock. At this point most videos are are at least 1/3rd clipped by the latter.

I subscribe to YouTube Premium to skip all interstitial ads. It’s absolutely worth it to me. I like to think I’m helping someone at G make the business case for subscription-based, ad-free products and services.

Sponsor segments are easily skippable with a few fast-forward fingertaps, or right-arrow taps on a keyboard.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#49

Post by lrem »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #39
gherkinnn wrote: post #19

YT on a clean slate is horrendous. Give it a few days and it becomes bearable. I’m mostly impressed. Though there is a growing number of anecdotes surrounding (niche|not palatable to SV) channels who’s subscribers don’t get notified despite the bell thing being on, new videos no longer in feeds, and even people getting unsubscribed for no apparent reason. This is a problem, as I’d sooner give up peanut butter than on…

I can refresh the home page a hundred times in a row and the exact same videos in the exact same order get displayed. It never used to be like this. I have no idea what the hell is going on at YouTube head office.

I work in a different part of Google... But getting the same result when refreshing page sounds like getting served from a cache, which doesn't sound that weird. Isn't there a button to show something else?
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