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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?

#231

Post by solarkraft »

jaarse wrote: post #171

I consume a lot of YouTube content. I have also been a full time content creator for the past decade (so I consider myself a dinosaur in social media land). I have noticed significantly less interesting content on YouTube over the past 2 years, but I attribute most of it to a lack of small creators on the platform now. It takes a ton of time and effort to even make a good 10 minute video. This is a big time commitmen…

> It takes a ton of time and effort to even make a good 10 minute video

Does it?! I know some creators (MKBHD) obsess over cinematic videos and insanely expensive equipment to film in 8K and whatever ... but I kinda don't care and I think most people don't. I'm certainly among the millions of people who enjoy penguinz0's shittily produced one-take rants about as much.

I don't disagree that making a good video depending on the subject takes a lot of planning, writing, setup, multiple takes and editing - but that's not new.

In fact it seems like smaller creators are still very much around - they're just drowned out by the bigger ones being heavily promoted.

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

#232

Post by jfoster »

ChrisRR wrote: post #188
antioppressor wrote: post #145

Recommendation 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…

If you're not looking for recommendations and just your subscriptions, then you should be checking the subscriptions tab, not the home page. You'll always have all uploads from subscribed channels listed there

Shouldn't they be able to detect your preferred behaviour and put that on the homepage? They seem to be focused so much on creating magical AI that they're missing some fundamental easy stuff.

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

#233

Post by Robotbeat »

They got rid of the visibility of downvotes. They rewarded longer viewing times (stuff that used to be 5-10 minutes is now 20-30 minutes, sometimes longer).

And part of it is just spammers learning to hack the recommendation system that already existed. And without the negative feedback of downvotes, people watch spam content for long enough that the spam content gets recommended to others.

Shorts hasn't been around for very long, so it kind of always was terrible.

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

#234

Post by sharikous »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #226
ravenstine wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are other things that drive me nuts about YouTube's recommendations, like the fact that they will never recommend me the next part of a n-part video. If I'm watching part 2/3 of something, please show 3/3 in the side bar, YouTube! It used to do that, though! They should at least allow it up to a limit or something rather than making it just that stupid. My other biggest complaint really is the recommendation…

The x/n videos are mostly - not all obviously but mostly - pirated copyrighted content in shortened clips, reversed or mirrored, shrunk, made more high pitch, or something to beat the algorithm. I agree it would be nice but I see why they broke that functionality.

Still, the title can easily be an indicator.

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

#235

Post by _w8pc »

ChrisRR wrote: post #192
o_m wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deleted my youtube/google account and started using RSS feeds instead.

Why not just use the subscriptions tab and ignore the home page?

For what it's worth, can't organize that subscriptions tab by any meaningful way. At least none that I know of.

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

#236

Post by metadat »

andsoitis wrote: post #184
antioppressor wrote: post #145

Recommendation 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…

It sounds like you find near-zero value from YouTube, so you might as well stop using it?

I have stopped.

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

#237

Post by solarkraft »

arnold_palmur wrote: post #215

I've actually really enjoyed some of the recommendations I get - my homepage is usually videos on Java, networking, DCS related content and for some reason last week I got a recommendation for a video by this channel that recreates historic life and the video was how to make a typical dinner as if it were 1820 - it was so random but awesome.

I too enjoy finding new stuff - Imagine being able to tell the algorithm that!

I'm baffled by tech companies taking highly complex recommendation engines with tons of tunable parameters and exposing literally 0 of them to the user. I don't want to see the same things all the time. And I especially don't want to keep seeing that one video all the time!

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

#238

Post by Balgair »

dereg wrote: post #210
mrweasel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a clear example of penny-wise but pound-foolish. At no point in a product's lifetime does should machine learning obviate the need for good taste.

I'm not going to argue that, but that ship sailed back in ~2014. All the FAANGs do live A/B testing like this.

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

#240

Post by solarkraft »

deepdriver wrote: post #18

Aggressively clicking the drop-down and "Not interested"or "Don't recommend channel" on bad recommendations has significantly improved my YouTube suggestions.

Didn't feel like it at all when I did it.

Maybe they didn't understand the reasons - I hate clickbait thumbnails and titles.

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