Answer: did you visit your mother recently and leave your YouTube account logged into her TV, by chance?
Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
121–130 of 309 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#122I 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.
I don't know if abuse is the right word considering that youtube most likely just breaks even.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I usually get the result I want in the second slot. The first slot is always wrong because it's always an ad.
Ads should never be above perfect matches, this is misleading.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Archive everything you like with tools like yt-dlp
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#125It drives ad revenue. Content quality doesn't matter, only you watching as much ad's as possible.
I've switched to using Yewtu.be, it's a proxy where you can have subscriptions and, for instance, only see new content, chronologically, from your subscriptions. Does make it a bit harder to find new stuff, but at least no spam.
And the search seems less spammy too, not sure.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#126Censorship has removed much of the good content.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#127You asked about bots and spam but I want to talk about the content degradation. YT has been heavily commercialised and lots of people are trying to make a living out of it. Most videos are about keeping viewers for as much time possible watching your content. As a result what would have been a 2-minute video becomes a 20-minute video with introductions, discussions about the weather and silly sales/crowd manipulation…
The sad thing is, this is the same problem TV has had for a long time that YouTube was solving. TV programming will take 10 minutes of content and stretch it into 40 minutes of filler with 20 minutes of commercials. YouTube used to have a much better content to filler ratio in general. "It was said that you would destroy the TV producers, not join them."
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#128Counter argument: YouTube has been absolutely great for me. Spend at least 2 hours a day on it and YouTube knows me.
On my desktop it shows me action sports and high energy stuff. While in bed on my phone it's mostly science and documentaries and historical boxing fights. It doesn't ever recommend me anything mainstream.
Sometimes YT treats me on some really good gems as well.
The biggest problem is, the first 1-2 rows are mostly videos I haven't clicked on. Have to scroll more down to get to the good stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#129You asked about bots and spam but I want to talk about the content degradation. YT has been heavily commercialised and lots of people are trying to make a living out of it. Most videos are about keeping viewers for as much time possible watching your content. As a result what would have been a 2-minute video becomes a 20-minute video with introductions, discussions about the weather and silly sales/crowd manipulation…
What you experience as short videos turning into long ones was to me the addition of ads inside videos everywhere.
SponsorBlock has saved my enjoyment of YouTube and allowed me to subscribe to channels I never would have watched because of their constant self-promotion.
With an adblocker stopping the ads outside the video, and SponsorBlock to stop the ads inside, I enjoy YouTube like never before.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Archive everything you like with tools like yt-dlp
Its ability to use cookies from your browser is so much better than the original yt-dl it’s not even funny.