Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 550 posts

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#241

Post by pitaj »

Steltek wrote: post #190
mkaic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I am a massive fan of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. While I am a bit nervous because major change like this could lead to those products getting worse, I'm also hopeful that it could lead to them getting better! So in general I'm just eager to see what happens next, come what may.

YT Premium, definitely yes. However, YT Music is hot garbage. The UI is utter crap and the mixing of video and music is awful, especially playlists. Why the hell would I want my regular YT and music playlists mixed up together anyway? It gets worse with kids, as some video-songs (randomly!) trigger the inability to play in the background.

If you haven't already:

Disable Settings > Recommendations > Show your liked music from Youtube

Enable Settings > Data saving > Don't play music videos

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#242

Post by justapassenger »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #140
joegahona wrote: post #56

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

Same, huge youtube premium fanboy. YouTube has pretty much replaced Netflix and all the other streaming platforms for me, the content it has is more varied and interesting than yet another generic new IP play. Although it doesn't have classic time-tested movies, so that still requires a subscription somewhere.

Premium moved me from being a consumer of a content made by big companies (including movies, and most of the shows) towards more independent content creators. I couldn't be more happy about it.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#244

Post by ThaDood »

gardenhedge wrote: post #189
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, huge youtube premium fanboy. YouTube has pretty much replaced Netflix and all the other streaming platforms for me, the content it has is more varied and interesting than yet another generic new IP play. Although it doesn't have classic time-tested movies, so that still requires a subscription somewhere.

It also doesn't have TV shows like Game of Thrones, House, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc etc

It did, but it wasn't a huge success. Cobra Kai was actually a YT OG, it was a gem among a lot of duds.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#245

Post by moremetadata »

moffkalast wrote: post #150
neosat wrote: post #94

YouTube has been riding it's content momentum for too long. It really needs a change of leadership to continue to innovate. For some searches, it's baffling that the top results are clearly intuitively wrong (e.g. showing videos where dislike to like ratio is very high, compared to clearly better alternatives that you can find if you wade through the results)

> to continue to innovate Like they innovated by blatantly ripping off tiktok and added "shorts"? Yeah best if they just stay exactly what they are.

I'm noticing that traditional media & news outlets are getting their idea's from what is popular on social media outlets like Youtube.

Example: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-piano

https://youtu.be/ljjWeHmeVE8?t=157

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pub+piano+playi...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shopping+mall+p...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=public+piano+pl...

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#246

Post by xxpor »

dmonitor wrote: post #197
progbits wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everything have to keep innovating? Youtube was fine years ago. People make stuff, I subscribe and watch it. Sure throw in some algorithmic discovery on the side. Bring back dislike count. Other than that I don't care for any innovation. Just keep the lights on.

The nature of The Algorithm and its tendency to decide who gets to be a millionaire leads to a TON of metagaming. I think the algorithm needs to be non-static just so content on the website doesn’t homogenize. They often make subtle tweaks to the website for seemingly no reason, but I think a lot of it is just to prevent metagaming.

There's no incentive there (until users start leaving)

The algorithm's goal is to maximize revenue or profit, and what does that doesn't change that dynamically. This means the metagame is inevitable. You're essentially asking for YouTube to cut their goal for an unclear long term benefit, and we all know how those conversations tend to go.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#248

Post by gjsman-1000 »

pradn wrote: post #202

Positives: * Presided over a vast increase in revenue, from $4 to $29 billion * Steered the ship through a number of content controversies * Anecdotally, the brand value of YouTube remains good * YouTube Premium seems to have good uptake * Presided over enormous cost savings with custom encoder hardware * Few major technical outages, good streaming performance generally * Relationships with advertisers and content cr…

Just discovered something very interesting: She is resigning one day after Google received a subpoena from the U.S. House of Representatives demanding answers to questions on censorship of conservative voices, and specifically on content moderation decisions.

Yes, just yesterday. Subpoena to resignation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-republicans-subpoena...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/15/house-r...

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3859762-house-gop-subp...

That's actually a really bad look (pro PR tip: Don't resign immediately after bad press - delay your resignation to avoid association if possible - or, if you know a certain political group doesn't like you and you're planning to retire, maybe resign before they get into power). Particularly important because Twitter is all over that "connection" right now that was pretty unnecessary. It appears that the subpoena was directed at Google, but her resignation means she may not have to personally have to personally testify, as Google could send the new CEO in.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#249

Post by killingtime74 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #248
pradn wrote: post #202

Positives: * Presided over a vast increase in revenue, from $4 to $29 billion * Steered the ship through a number of content controversies * Anecdotally, the brand value of YouTube remains good * YouTube Premium seems to have good uptake * Presided over enormous cost savings with custom encoder hardware * Few major technical outages, good streaming performance generally * Relationships with advertisers and content cr…

Just discovered something very interesting: She is resigning one day after Google received a subpoena from the U.S. House of Representatives demanding answers to questions on censorship of conservative voices, and specifically on content moderation decisions. Yes, just yesterday. Subpoena to resignation. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-republicans-subpoena... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/…

It's interesting timing but she will still have to testify about all the time she was in charge, resigning doesn't really change anything.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#250

Post by blululu »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #191
ignoramous wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought YouTube did really well under Wojcicki's leadership.

Well.... not really. - Why does seemingly every channel I follow, whether it be JCS Criminal Psychology or The 8-bit Guy, have to mention the YouTube Algorithm, Content ID, Copyright Strikes, or Community Guidelines? If almost every creator is struggling and not just the fringe and edgy, you've screwed up big time. - Removal of the dislike count. Extremely unpopular decision. Also YouTube's API is still answering dis…

FWIW I think there are more or less two very distinct experiences/use cycles of YouTube. There is the one where people get to it from outside (mostly Google Search) and the one where people get to it from within YouTube itself. As someone who falls into the casual Google search category the latter class of serious YouTube user is just alien to me. The 2018 Rewind video was pretty bonkers stupid to me, but, to me, it also looks more or less the same as the 2017 rewind video. How you feel about YouTube is probably a function of how you use it.
Post reply on HN