Live data from Hacker News

The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

blog.youtube

171–180 of 304 posts

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#171

I produce Music Tech-based educational content on YT. It started as a hobby and sideline to my main work (which at the time was classroom teaching of the same content). While I'm no longer working in classrooms (pandemic plus other reasons led to this), I'm still producing content, which I think is of good quality and worthwhile. The issue I have with it is that I refuse to produce attention-grabbing clickbaity title…

Take a look at Veritasium's perspective on this issue [1]. Veritasium reflects on clickbait thumbnails from the content producer perspective, and balances that against the motivation behind YouTube's algorithms. His final conclusion is that cilckbait isn't all bad, and that it serves an important purpose for both viewers and content creators. His classification of clickbait into different types is also fascinating.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#172
post #129

Yeah, I don't need details and we don't need this. The real issue is, the world loves and perhaps needs "universal video hosting," something like "the open web" but for video. Right now, "Youtube" is that. And they're not a completely awful steward of it, but we need better. The for-profit model is not ideal.

how can it be free and not for profit at large scale?

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#173

I produce Music Tech-based educational content on YT. It started as a hobby and sideline to my main work (which at the time was classroom teaching of the same content). While I'm no longer working in classrooms (pandemic plus other reasons led to this), I'm still producing content, which I think is of good quality and worthwhile. The issue I have with it is that I refuse to produce attention-grabbing clickbaity title…

There is certainly slimy YouTube tactics for attention and clicks, but not all successful YouTubers are doing slimy things. If your videos are genuinely interesting and / or useful, you need to be able to convey that fact to users, before they watch it. It isn't too much to ask. Just imagine a viewer asking you the question, "ok so why should I watch your videos over someone else's?". It is a fair question. And reply…

Matthias Wandel comes to mind as exceptional here - almost 2M subscribers as I recall, a popular 'second channel' too, and way against 'youtube scream face' and similar nonsense. He's done a few 'shorts' since initially saying he didn't (as I don't) see the point, but other than that, standout top of class etc.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#175

Maybe just me, but I'm not really excited for established YouTubers to sell more stuff and expand their empires. It's already a winner-take-all game of attention. The beauty of YouTube is finding like a retired professor who puts up their lectures on an account with a couple thousand subscribers. It is not having a click-bait worthy thumbnail, over-produced video, and barely learning anything while being mindlessly e…

> YouTube will kill many services in the process like skillshare, udemy, etc.

Honestly I can't get over a cynical impression that the announcement is basically: "brilliant and skillshare are getting a bit too popular, we need to do something about it".

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they're useful for making a catchy address, like me.ga (which wasn't hosted in Gabon)

Many region level tlds require a legal presence. .au requires you to provide an Australian Business Number to register. It’s mostly the tiny islands that decide to cash in on fancy tlds who don’t care so much about providing them as a service to the small population.

It's pretty much never checked. You can search for a random name on https://abr.business.gov.au/ and use it.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#177
I am creator of online programming courses (notably the ones on Khan Academy), and I would not feel comfortable delivering a programming course where the sole form of assessment was a quiz. A quiz format can be used to check on some kinds of knowledge, but a programming course requires coding exercises (like the challenges and projects used on Khan). That being said, for other domains, quiz-style assessment can get you quite far, depending on the sophistication of the quiz software. I like quizzes with multiple answer types, per-answer feedback, spiral assessments, etc.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#178
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bothers me that we still have those useless suffixes attached to domains. What does „org“, „com“, „net“ even mean to the average user? Nothing. It’s nothing but a pointless ritual at this point, and after ICANN chose to add thousands of generic domains, they don’t have any significance left at all, except that nice names are very expensive now. It would be easier for everybody if we simply removed that extra step…

I still don't know why ICANN gets to tell people what they can or cannot have as their TLD name. It's just a string, it doesn't cost anything more to compare on the DNS server if it's custom or standard.

There's still a need to limit the TLDs. In small increments it doesn't matter if we add another one. But fully opening the floodgates? I don't think the root server operators would be happy about the load.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#179
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Click bait isn't different than wearing a funny hat to engage students in class. what are you talking about? a student gets stuck going to class regardless of how goofy the teacher dresses, whereas I feel an extreme sense of revulsion when I click on a YT link with a meme-thumbnail or a clickbait title. your analogy fails since in this instance the 'student' gets to decide whether or not they participate in the cou…

You’re baking in the assumption that goofy hat is 100% correlated with bad content, but I’d say 30% of my YouTube subscriptions do the goofy hat thing (usually just having somewhat baity thumbnails / titles) yet deliver great content. And honestly? I don’t care. The content is good, and if the hat gets them more viewers then all the better.

I'm not who you replied to, but I do care, I don't want to be made to feel stupid, I don't want to think that people are stupid, I want things to be presented as they are even if not immediately understands them.

In the UK we see this with nonsense talk of 'the [energy] price cap' being some £ figure per year - when it's not, it's a £/kWh cap, but the media can't cope with that, we're stuck with what it means for 'the average household'. Even comparison sites refuse to compare what you actually pay, £/day and £/kWh, and instead insist on asking you about number of bedrooms etc.

I'm sick of everything being dumbed down.

Re: The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube

#180
post #79

> Every day, people come to YouTube to learn something new. True. > shows content on commonly used education apps without distractions like ads, external links or recommendations External links seem important on educational files, and I kind of like recommendations when I'm browsing educational stuff, but whoo, no ads on educational stuff? That's great! > Next year, qualified creators can begin offering free or paid…

Many creators of educational content on Youtube already have paid content alongside their free. Except, the paid is currently hosted on other platforms like Udemy and Patreon. As long it's not an exclusive deal which forces them to only use YouTube, I don't really see that many problems with it. In the end, it will likely draw in more creators, which translates to more educational content, both free and paid, and hop…

I’m curious whether Patreon’s security team leaving will play in that dynamic.
Post reply on HN