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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?

#131

Post by mbg721 »

xnx wrote: post #118

Videos that should be 45 seconds get stretched out to 10 minutes because of the monetization limit. Some we execs at YouTube have been trying really hard to turn YouTube into the wasteland that TV is. This is why TikTok is kicking their ass.

TV has been a wasteland as long as it's existed, because it's an advertising medium pretending to be an entertainment medium. The S.S. Minnow on Gilligan's Island was even named as a dubious tribute to Newton Minow, an FCC head who famously referred to television as a "vast wasteland" in the early 60s.

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

#133

Post by dorkwood »

ddmichael wrote: post #107

You 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…

I looked up how to pronounce a word the other day and found a 30-second YouTube video. I expected it to be a looping track of someone saying the word over and over, but what I got instead was 25 seconds of someone describing the word's origin (without saying the word itself), and explaining how many people want to know how to pronounce it. Only as the thumbnail overlay popped up at the end of the video did they actually say the word.

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

#134

Post by c7DJTLrn »

Machine learning probably had something to do with it. It notices videos with thumbnails of people with their mouths and eyes wide open doing some kind of shocked expression with red arrows pointing to something perform better than average. Then it starts recommending videos with thumbnails like this preferentially. YouTubers take notice and start producing thumbnails like this for every video.

Go to the front page right now with clean cookies and you'll see most of the thumbnails have "reaction faces" in them for no apparent reason, usually pulling some kind of exaggerated expression.

Clickbait used to mean that you baited the viewer into clicking, now it means you baited the algorithm into recommending you.

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

#135

Post by maxdo »

Youtube start reminding me a video platform from 3rd world country. There was this "look&feel" difference where you have more expensive less-adds and good quality. That was their competitive advantage. Right now everything desperately optimized for money. That's how platform dies. They don't know how to grow organically. They become no different. Just another video hosting.

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

#136

Post by Rastonbury »

Yeah suggestions have got worse. Shorts are shit. There is still great stuff but they bury it. I rely on subscriptions and blocking crap channels that is repeatedly suggested. Gone are the days the optimise for best recommendations, now its about ad revenue. Adblocking youtube apps on Android TV are a godsend.

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

#137

Post by spurgu »

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.

True. I have a hard time coming up with a dish that doesn't work (or is improved) by onions, and how many dishes would completely suck without them.

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

#138

Post by throwaway4aday »

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…

This is only the case if you subscribe to channels that churn out content on a daily or weekly basis and have no interest in finding tangential content by new creators. I've given up on using YouTube for discovery, I have to actively fight the search in order to find anything remotely useful and the main feed is just the same crap repeated over and over again no matter how many I mark as not interested. Whatever happened to it several years ago has completely lobotomized the recommendation engine, it's just trash now. I'm hopeful that content creators will continue to trend towards uploading to multiple video platforms so I can find new stuff.
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