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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?

#51

Post by coopierez »

avian wrote: post #25
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.

Bad search that tries hard not to actually show you search results is another one of those dark trends I see everywhere. Have you seen Twitter search lately? The search tab in the app doesn't even have a text field visible by default. It's all just unrelated popular garbage. You have to swipe down to reveal the text field where you can enter your search term. Then you get more unrelated garbage in the "top" result ta…

Search on the iOS app store is awful too. You type in the exact name of the app you are looking for and have to scroll through 10-15 vaguely related results before you get to the one you actually want.

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

#52

Post by Larrikin »

ricardobayes wrote: post #42
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).

Google has seemed to have taken the line of pretending to not care about ad blocking web extensions in favor of aggressively making sure the mobile and casting experience has them.

When there are extensions that actively fight profiling like Ad Nauseum they've abused their dominant position in developing a web browsers to block the extension on Chrome.

But when you don't have an easy ability to block ads like casting to a TV on their app on Roku and Apple TV or when using an iOS device they aggressively push the ads. On Android where there is an ability to block ads, they aggressively pursue apps like Vanced.

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

#53

Post by greenknight »

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 google the video that i want now, instead of using the youtube search

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

#54

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

irusensei wrote: post #38

I keep reading they are an ad company and that’s fair except they are doing a really bad job. I keep seeing the same ad over and over and over again. Those are annoying loud ads that are more region than preference based. You don’t need some personalized ad system to find out what kind of ad a person watching a video game video would be interested. Skipping a video to look for a certain scene will trigger double ads…

They're a monopoly, so they abuse their advertising clients as much as they abuse their users.

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

#55

Post by lloydatkinson »

lrem wrote: post #49
lloydatkinson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Other than navigating to say the “Subscriptions” page where you’re just given a different set of videos, there’s no other way of changing what you get on the home page. If the home page is caching it’s doing it too very aggressively - it never used to be like this and I’ve seen it across multiple devices.

The home page used to be a way to find new videos but now you just have to wait a few hours and try again.

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

#56

Post by gherkinnn »

JetAlone wrote: post #26
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…

So, your mind wandered to giving up peanut butter? For me it'd be something like... Uh, Tomatoes. I had to really think about it, but yeah, I'd give up tomatoes to not live in that world, which is saying something because tomatoes in one form or another tend to help keep my morale up through many, many meatless days.

Onions, however, I can’t give up. What is life without onions? One sssniperwolf vid per large onion is fair.

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

#57

Post by JetAlone »

gherkinnn wrote: post #56
JetAlone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, your mind wandered to giving up peanut butter? For me it'd be something like... Uh, Tomatoes. I had to really think about it, but yeah, I'd give up tomatoes to not live in that world, which is saying something because tomatoes in one form or another tend to help keep my morale up through many, many meatless days.

Onions, however, I can’t give up. What is life without onions? One sssniperwolf vid per large onion is fair.

Man, I hadn't thought of onions. They go well with tomatoes. Layers, donkeh.

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

#58

Post by nbzso »

Rant/Starts

Search is censored in a commercial and politically correct way. Started to happen in early 2020, to fight "conspiracy" COVID theories, which after a year become somewhat legitimate questions (still unanswered).

Search is censored again now because "Russian propaganda". Tell me what you want, but the reality is that we are all doomed to follow politically correct decisions of the elitist's agenda. This is the future which we will live from now on.

Internet is tied to the masses. Internet is the "reality" for many people. It is like a TV Programming in the 60-70. I don't like Telegram, but I have a complete picture of the events because of the countless channels, which give a completely chaotic and hard to control information bits. In a way, Russia has no serious investment in the tech and "information narrative" machine.

Some people still believe that Ukraine (which before this, everyone agreed upon "is the most corrupt country in European continent") is winning on the battlefield.

I am amazed how easy it was for everyone to accept cancelling not Putin's regime, but everything Russia related. From food to classical music. And I am ashamed of the Western media, which has conformed to political correctness and sensationalism. There is no investigative journalism. Under the old "Cold War" narrative, we again find ourselves in a pit of disinformation. And the big tech companies are the main outlet for this dystopian future in which people must conform and obey the new Gods without the option of questioning the powers that be.

Why not optimize for profit in the meantime? It is only logical.

Rant/Ends

Use RSS and VPN to optimize your UX when using YouTube. Search YouTube outside Google ecosystem.

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

#59

Post by superchroma »

timrichard wrote: post #47
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.

Sure, but I like not having every email I've archived since 2004 scraped for keywords :)

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

#60

Post by RL_Quine »

deepdriver wrote: post #48
RL_Quine wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why manually scrub through videos when there's a tool to do it automatically for you and re-cut the video into a seamless block of content?
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