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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?

#71
I feel like search as declined too. Still leagues ahead of bing.

Obviously, it sin't solely google's fault. They are exploited by content creators (and i will count geekforgeeks and other copycats as content creator there) and with the space those takes, it is now way harder to do an accurate selection.

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

#72
All creators are hacking the algorithms. More subscribers, more views, more comments, more like etc.

As the hacks get more open , Youtube needs to include more granular details from user perspective. Like community subscribers, comments, retention cohorts for the channel etc.

Also, feel that youtube is pushing monetization a lot.I am seeing every creator putting 3-4 ads in good videos.

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

#73

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…

> YT on a clean slate is horrendous It makes me worry about the future of humanity, as the clean slate is what is popular in your location. > open mouthed dweebs on a rainbow background for thumbnails Dont forget to add a large amount of money to the title my $$$$250,000 computer . But it f'ing works - I am really not sure what is wrong with people. Oh and now I get 2 ads every single video, its barely worth it ...

> It makes me worry about the future of humanity

I have the impression that most of it is geared towards children and teenagers. So of course it seems abhorrent to us oldies. Teenagers are stupid. Always were, always will be. I know I was.

And yet here we are. Alive and well.

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

#74
post #10
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 noticed this with Google, too. Particularly when searching for things in the past, it's like they adamantly don't want 3+ months ago to exist. I now have to archive news articles and the like because I know that I'm going to have an extremely hard time finding them later.

It used to be that I could find 5 to 10-year-old articles quickly on Google. Now it’s much harder.

I’ve started keeping a log of every interesting article I find since I know I won’t be able to find it earlier.

I’m also seeing a trend where they try and answer question and will pull from any source. The answer often being wildly wrong.

Saw one of “people also ask” where the source was some dudes fanfiction so the suggested question and answer were complete non sense.

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

#75
Delete all your search and watch history, and perhaps all your comments and likes. After a hard refresh, you should see the algorithm suggest something new again. Also, whenever you see a bot/spam channel or a channel with robotic voice, click don't recommend channel again.

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

#76
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

Interesting since they are managed by the same company. But I'm not even sure Google is the best search engine for Youtube or video content in general.

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YT on a clean slate is horrendous It makes me worry about the future of humanity, as the clean slate is what is popular in your location. > open mouthed dweebs on a rainbow background for thumbnails Dont forget to add a large amount of money to the title my $$$$250,000 computer . But it f'ing works - I am really not sure what is wrong with people. Oh and now I get 2 ads every single video, its barely worth it ...

> It makes me worry about the future of humanity I have the impression that most of it is geared towards children and teenagers. So of course it seems abhorrent to us oldies. Teenagers are stupid. Always were, always will be. I know I was. And yet here we are. Alive and well.

I worry for teenagers just as I do for the adults if we don't curb everything stealing our sleep and concentration. I don't think it's the same old "young people are lazy" trope, it's significant.

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

#78

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.

That's a good thing in my book, that's a feature.

Recommendations are made, and they are random in some sense.

But an interface needs a certain persistence to be user friendly. Too annoying to glance something, try to go back, and it's gone. Some persistence creates an environment that is a bit more spatial and nicer to my brain.

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

#79
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google Play app store is similar IME; also, it doesn't even let you sort by ratings, like, isn't that the very first thing people want out of a curated store?

It's like Amazon's search, it's ridiculous how bad it is.

A quick glance at these shows Western Capitalism fails to optimise the market and instead optimises profit.

Google's shopping search is definitely not designed to help one shop.

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