Obligatory mention of Newpipe, an Android app where you can choose to just show new videos of subscribed channels as your front page. Makes youtube so much more bearable nowadays and you dont miss all the content of older subscriptions yt just doesnt show you anymore after a while. Would be great if it were available on desktop too.
Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
151–160 of 309 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#152You 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…
>As a result what would have been a 2-minute video becomes a 20-minute video
Or shouldn't have been a video at all.
Lots of people come up with some schtick they don't give a damn about because they see (or think they see) all these other people getting rich on YouTube and TikTok.
And recommendation engines are awful in general. It's a problem that even those genuinely trying to solve it really haven't.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#153Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these creators make. So that means I want the new stuff from the frequented ones on my front page ASAP. Yet, it's a hit and miss. From the remaining 90 channels I never get anything recommended. Why? If I subscribe to a new channel it gets recommended like hell, then…
That's not what the recommendations are for. There's a separate page that list all posts by your subscriptions in chronological order, you can find it in the sidebar, IMO it's the only way to use YouTube.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#154Earlier 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.
The most irritating thing about App Store search is that the text field doesn’t get focus by default. I hope it’s an unintentional mistake but as it’s never been fixed I have my doubts…
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#155The main reason is because TikTok is the dominant homegrown short-form platform for videos now. YouTube is more for longform, highly produced content.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#156Earlier 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
Does yt-dlp support downloading a whole channel at the highest available resolution when that might be different for every video?
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#157Machine 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 r…
Yes. Canva even has templates for clickbait, including "passive income" scams which have taken over YouTube.
https://www.canva.com/p/templates/EAFBCRpOy3g-yellow-black-e...
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#158Granted I'm mostly using YouTube on the AppleTV, and it may be something that it being rolled out selectively and just haven't reached my yet, but quality seems the same as ever.
The shorts are a bit weird. It's clear that it's to counter TikTok, but it's a little weird that they are on YouTube. I get why, Google is afraid that TikTok is stealing users, and stuffing the shorts into YouTube means not having to launch an entire new platform and try to make it take off.
The recommendations on the "Shorts" is broken. I have no idea why, but tries to push four things: Two military analyses channels, which I do enjoy, so good job. The it tries to push random influencers which seems to be aimed young women. Finally YouTube have decided that what I really need is Jordan Peterson clips. That seems like a really weird mix. The first two makes complete sense, based on my history. The other two, no idea, and they even sort of goes in opposite directions.
For the normal videos, I'd say recommendations are fine. Subscriptions seems to weirdly enough not to matter much. You can subscribe to channels and YouTube will still not show you new videos from that channel. Again this might be an issue with mainly using the AppleTV app.
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#159[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
#160You 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…
>As a result what would have been a 2-minute video becomes a 20-minute video Or shouldn't have been a video at all. Lots of people come up with some schtick they don't give a damn about because they see (or think they see) all these other people getting rich on YouTube and TikTok. And recommendation engines are awful in general. It's a problem that even those genuinely trying to solve it really haven't.
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