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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?

#91

Post by causi »

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.

Yes. God help you if you're looking for a video not made by a popular youtuber. Saw an amazing fried chicken recipe ten years ago and think you can just scroll the results until you see it? Ha, fat chance. You've got about five results and then nothing but whatever horseshit is trendy today.

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

#92

Post by peanut_worm »

I have also noticed this. Seems like over the past 2 months or so the suggestions got much worse. My front page is 80% garbage with like 800 views that is barely relevant to my interests now. I am logged in. A few months ago every video was a decent suggestion.

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

#93

Post by gherkinnn »

Beltalowda wrote: post #84
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…

> YT on a clean slate is horrendous. Give it a few days and it becomes bearable. I’m mostly impressed. This used to be the case, but starting a month or two ago I get lots of completely and utterly irrelevant recommendations for things like soccer, hip-hop, "vlog" twats, and other "popular" content that I have absolutely zero interest in and that I can guarantee are 100% unrelated to any of my previous history. I als…

Interesting how our experiences differ. It is true that I always watch videos that aren’t immediately related to what I want in my feed incognito.

Fuck these non-deterministic algorithms and the feeds they fill.

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

#94

Post by popcorncowboy »

This is almost boringly textbook late-stage "monopoly in practice" playing out. Start with an "edge". Get big because edge. Use "big" to sharpen edge further. Use big (and/or edge) to consolidate market. Once sufficiently consolidated and/or controlled, raise costs.

This is what costs getting raised looks like in a monopoly market. Who's gonna stop them.

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

#96

Post by grepfru_it »

causi wrote: post #91
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.

Yes. God help you if you're looking for a video not made by a popular youtuber. Saw an amazing fried chicken recipe ten years ago and think you can just scroll the results until you see it? Ha, fat chance. You've got about five results and then nothing but whatever horseshit is trendy today.

I started using a bookmark service because of this.

And after I wrote that sentence I found the original video I was thinking about with a google search. Welp.

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

#97

Post by JKCalhoun »

causi wrote: post #91
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.

Yes. God help you if you're looking for a video not made by a popular youtuber. Saw an amazing fried chicken recipe ten years ago and think you can just scroll the results until you see it? Ha, fat chance. You've got about five results and then nothing but whatever horseshit is trendy today.

Add it to a playlist (or bookmark it). I don't trust the videos to still be up when I might be interested in them so I've become a little bit of a data hoarder.

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

#98

Post by Asdrubalini »

It has been one year since I can't find interesting stuff in the recommended section anymore. I also thought about building my own recommendation system using YouTube's RSS feed for each individual channel, Telegram for notifications and some simple logic written in Rust and SQLite (of course) and always running on my VPS, where I manually add and remove the channels I like and I also give them a score to have a priority system. Will probably do this next week, when I'm at sea with my family.

EDIT: grammar

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

#99

Post by gtirloni »

azangru wrote: post #89

Odd, the suggestions I am getting from it are very relevant to my previous viewing history, both on my work account, which I use mostly to listen to music, and on my more personal account.

Same here. It seems to be working just fine and I always get relevant videos every time I open it. shrugs
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