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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?

#161

Post by Kye »

dorkwood wrote: post #133
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 actua…

This is one thing Google still does well.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+pronounce+foxes

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

#162

Post by mrweasel »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #134

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 r…

There was a Linus Tech Tips video where he admits that it's stupid, but sadly it works really well. It's a bit like when Wikipedia kept using Jimmy Wales' face in banners requesting donations. People claim to not like it, yet it's was what got the highest conversion rates.

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

#163

Post by throwaway4aday »

nbzso wrote: post #58

Rant/Starts Search is censored in a commercial and politically correct way. Started to happen in early 2020, to fight "conspiracy" COVID theories, which after a year become somewhat legitimate questions (still unanswered). Search is censored again now because "Russian propaganda". Tell me what you want, but the reality is that we are all doomed to follow politically correct decisions of the elitist's agenda. This is…

To add to the timeline, the recommendations got weird a few months after Trump was elected. During that time it seemed like everyone was blaming YouTube and Facebook for "radicalizing" half the US population. Their response was to heavily bias against recommending small channels. The "scandal" around ads showing up on inappropriate content made it worse. The weird kids videos fiasco strained it even further. I think COVID was the final straw that resulted in them pushing for complete commercial capture. It's probably the death knell for YouTube since other video platforms have started to take in creators and consumers repulsed by the drek being force fed by the new algorithm.

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

#164

Post by jeffbee »

maxdo wrote: post #135

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.

I haven’t seen a YouTube ad in over six years. Seriously the best couple of dollars per month you can spend.

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

#165

Post by izzydata »

twawaaay wrote: post #141

The answer is super simple. Wrong incentives + lack of mechanisms to find, navigate to and promote interesting content. Nowadays, people create content on Youtube essentially only for profit (be it actual profit from Youtube or promotion). That's it. That's what you are selecting from. There are of course exceptions, but these are rare enough to not dictate the general quality of content. And if you are dissatisfied…

Agreed. When passions turn into a financial obligations then it becomes really obvious.

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

#166

Post by adrianmsmith »

I remember around 2019 the suggestions got noticeably worse.

Before then, I remember just browse YouTube in the evening after work, I would find lots of interesting content from channels I didn't follow, it was really fantastic. I still follow many of the channels I found during that time and am thankful to the YouTube algorithm for allowing me to find them.

Suddenly the quality of the recommendations dropped. It was sudden and marked.

Around that time YouTube was getting a lot of criticism for e.g. keeping people in "bubbles", and for showing people who were into right-wing content right-wing content. I mean in a way I would say that sounds like the algorithm is doing exactly what it was supposed to do, showing people content they're interested in. I can only assume they take your preferences into account a lot less now, and show much more content that they consider harmless, so they get criticised less.

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

#167

Post by Kye »

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.

It's probably still in your watch history unless you clear it.

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

Of course, the actual history search box is confusingly smaller and off to the side of the much larger search box for all of YouTube.

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

#168

Post by kinduff »

Kye wrote: post #161
dorkwood wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actua…

This is one thing Google still does well. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+pronounce+foxes

Reminded me of this YouTube channel that started to pop out in my recommendations called PronunciationManual [1].

Trolling the algorithm seems fun, but I've had a few undesired encounters when trying to search for recipes for example.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/PronunciationManual

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

#170

Post by ugjka »

causi wrote: post #156
ugjka wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Afaik it downloads the highest quality by default
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