YouTube, the jewel of the internet • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#111

Post by froggit » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:11 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #95

Kye wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good form to say you're the person behind the thing you're recommending. Making stuff to solve problems is the point of most of the domain this little website is under, so self-promotion is fine, but not saying that's what it is looks bad.

Right. But I'm not promoting it. I am definitely NOT recommending it. It isn’t even launched. I was attempting to ask in an unbiased way whether it would help. That would require one person (the one I am asking) to go and check it out. Yes, I omitted saying it's mine, not because of any nefarious reason. Just didn't realize it was necessary to simply ask an opinion of one person about whether it would have the intend…

Nah, no one is saying you're being nefarious. We just don't understand why you aren't proud enough to openly declare that's your work that you're not not promoting.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#112

Post by sebzim4500 » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

robinsonb5 wrote: post #98

mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

I do have some admiration for the algorithm - but I also wish that refreshing the home page would show me some more of the many thousands of videos that I'd likely find interesting, rather than the same 20 just in a different order.

I think I'd be anxious then that if I saw two videos that I really wanted to watch I'd have to one in a background tabs, rather than just trust that the other one will almost certainly be recommended again.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#113

Post by kccqzy » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

robinsonb5 wrote: post #98

mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

I do have some admiration for the algorithm - but I also wish that refreshing the home page would show me some more of the many thousands of videos that I'd likely find interesting, rather than the same 20 just in a different order.

That is not what I want. There should be an explicit button to refresh the recommendations. What I hate is a recommendation page that displayed what I liked but made them disappear just because I temporarily navigated away.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#114

Post by MichaelZuo » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #108

mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

Yup, I'm the same. I've totally given up on navigating anything except my home page, I'm actually astonished at how good it is. The newest videos from my favorite channels are always listed first, and then it's a smattering of older popular ones from the topics and channels I watch the most, and a handful of things "adjacent" to those that are sometimes not for me but sometimes become my new favorite rabbit hole, so…

> I know there's supposed to be a bunch of clickbait garbage on YouTube but I just wouldn't know, because I literally never see it.

Just sort by view count for any common english word and filter out the music videos.

Well, even including music videos there appear to be several dozen or hundred accounts dedicated to reposting the exact same Indian music videos, film trailers, clips, etc...

Not even small variations of the same content, the exact same video.

Some of the accounts look like plausible media distributors/producers in India but quite a large fraction seem to be bots or individuals spamming.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#115

Post by 1023bytes » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

I need to mention how terrible YouTube search has gotten.

Instead of giving you actual search results, it only gives a 2-3 relevant videos and then some random recommendations that are often completely unrelated to the query

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#116

Post by Waterluvian » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

Yeah, I really have no complaints. Of all “we feed you content” thingies online, YouTube has been the most adequate.

The only complaint I have is what human behaviour forces even the intelligent creators to do: have a title card with an excited looking person.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#117

Post by mastax » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:16 PM UTC

robinsonb5 wrote: post #98

mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

I do have some admiration for the algorithm - but I also wish that refreshing the home page would show me some more of the many thousands of videos that I'd likely find interesting, rather than the same 20 just in a different order.

I'm glad that the home page is semi-stable because I'll often click on a video and then go back and want to queue up another that looked interesting but if it were gone it might be hard to find again. (Yes there are strategies to work around this but I don't always use them).

They do have the "New to You" category on the home page now which you might find useful.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#118

Post by jasmer » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:17 PM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #70

Another great thing about YouTube not mentioned is the quality of comments. Something happened in the last 5 years or so that changed them profoundly. Once the laugh of the internet they are now one of the most wholesome in it. Almost unbelievable for a public site.

I see masses of bots and dregs in support of authoritarian states.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#119

Post by api » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:17 PM UTC

radicaldreamer wrote: post #23

irrational wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I have children between the ages of 9 and 26. You know what they are passionate about? Minecraft, Mr Beast, Travel vlogs, mommy vlogs, “reality” videos, etc. I’ve tried to introduce them to science, space, programming, history, math, finance, nature, etc. content and they don’t want…

A lot of that stuff is going to be AI generated in the future and it'll hit those dopamine circuits better than human generated content ever could

Now we know what all the Borg were doing in their cube ships. Between occasional bouts of conquest and assimilation they were all frying in a sizzling bath of repetitive dopamine triggering meme soup created by AIs and other members of the hive mind.

Maybe they lurched out and attacked or assimilated someone when a new trending channel appeared that urged such activities.

I joke but it really is a bit spooky how plausible the Borg are today to the point that I can imagine what it would be like to be part of them. It’d be like scrolling TikTok but with Neuralink.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#120

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:18 PM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #14

Or it was, anyway. Youtube's choice to tune its algorithm for profitability rather than things I'm actually interested means my home page and "related videos" are almost entirely useless. Youtube's strict search limits also make it very hard to find anything obscure, and impossible to find every video on a particular topic. Maybe it's not the most intellectually healthy thing in the world, but if I want to watch ever…

YouTube's search is pretty much horseshit now. Trip off any wrongthink keywords and it will give you nothing but CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR. I wrote an add-on that blocks all these channels by filtering out anything with the verified checkmark, and it's pretty revealing as to how much content YouTube suppresses. It's pretty clear who's buttering their biscuits.