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YouTube, the jewel of the internet

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Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#121

Post by EGreg »

Kye wrote: post #107
EGreg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's promotion, though. It would be promotion if you didn't make it. I've been accused of being a shill for enough things I was enthusiastic about to be 100% sure of this. And since you did make it, it's hard to argue you don't benefit in some way from sharing it. That's why disclosure is good form.

I don’t think asking someone a question about their own specific opinion about whether a particular website could help their peers OR NOT, is the same as promotion. For example, earlier today I promoted a service that I built (see my comment history) and clearly disclosed that it’s mine.

In fact, sometimes you don’t WANT the person to know whether what you’re asking about is yours, so they can give a more honest assessment without worrying about hurting your feelings. It should not matter, and for some purposes it shoild be disclosed, whether you made it.

As for being accused of shilling… sounds like the crowd accusing you was pretty extreme. The definition of a shill from Wikipedia is indeed nefarious:

In most uses, shill refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers, participants or "marks" the impression of an enthusiastic customer independent of the seller, marketer or con artist, for whom they are secretly working. The person or group in league with the shill relies on crowd psychology to encourage other onlookers or audience members to do business with the seller or accept the ideas they are promoting. Shills may be employed by salespeople and professional marketing campaigns. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to a person who is secretly in league with another person or outside organization while pretending to be neutral or part of the organization in which they are planted, such as a magician's audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#123

Post by mchaynes »

irrational wrote: post #17
rcarr wrote: post #9

I agree with the author. I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix and Prime too and just take out the odd month subscription to a streaming service if there’s something I really want to watch. I’m probably better off watching some informative documentary on YT than I am watching Netflix anyway and if I want entertainment, the…

> 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…

Gen Z here. I grew up on YouTube. I’m 25 now, so technically a cusper but had an iPod touch and YouTube since third grade.

Videos of travel have a lot of value. I was stuck behind a desk for 4 years at my programming job. The last 7 months of travel has done so much for the rest of my entire human experience that I could never get from a textbook. Plus it’s fun to see people explore the world. We’ve been fascinated by this stuff since the beginning of humanity.

Reality videos and reality TV all show elements of how relationship dynamics work. They often are fraught with bad narratives, but they model conflict and resolution between people. This can be helpful as a guide to understanding human interaction.

I’m not saying that it is all bringing value to their lives, but there is something inherently interesting about the content they’re consuming. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be.

The challenge for you is to go into their world and understand what they value. You might even change your definition of the word “value”

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#124

Post by dkarl »

zh3 wrote: post #48

There is indeed great content on Youtube. It's just more than unfortunate that the algorithmic pull is towards the - shall we say - less informative end of the spectrum? Some people learn a lot from it. Most people just seem to gawp endlessly.

> less informative end of the spectrum

My experience is that my recommendations are 80% good but lightly sprinkled with random stuff that is known to addict and exploit people in my demographic. It reminds me of gambling and other businesses that make a disproportionate amount of their money off of a few "whales" who invest an unhealthy amount of their lives into it. They're happy to serve you and make a tiny bit of money off you, but their real goal is to turn you into a whale.

My theory is that some small percentage of my recommendations (2-3%) are dedicated to YouTube's best guess at, "What would this guy watch if he was miserable enough to watch YouTube 16 hours a day?"

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#125

Post by sebzim4500 »

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.

The real comments are wholesome but a significant portion of them are obvious scammers. It looks like such an easy problem to solve, they are by accounts that literally post exactly the same comment with a link on loads of videos.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#126

Post by EGreg »

froggit wrote: post #111
EGreg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not that I am not proud enough.

I was simply interested in the opinion of a thoughtful high schooler who is aware of what his friends are doing. I want to help fix society, including teenage education. This is how I do it — using software. I encountered an opportunity to ask an unbiased question and I took it — without biasing it with “Heey, what do you think of MY project that I clearly worked hard on?” That wouldn’t be neutral and thus defeat the purpose of asking the question. Reading into this that I am somehow looking to promote it is wrong. It would be a terrible way to promite, anyway. There can be other reasons for asking a question deep inside a comment thread that hardly anyone sees, than low key trying to draw attention to a project for purposes of promoting it. Besides, it isn’t even launched yet.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#127

Post by mastax »

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.

Yeah. They seem to have had problems recently with some very obvious spam bots, but other than that the quality is alright.

On some niche nerd channels the comments are often exceptional and informative. Usually they're at least pleasant or amusing.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#128

Post by sebzim4500 »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #58

YouTube will pull you towards controversial clickbaity crappy content since that’s what generated clicks. These days I just surgically search for what I need, watch that, then get out, ignoring all recommends because invariably they are crap. And YouTube is poison for young children who don’t know better than to follow what the algorithm tells you. You like super Mario? Here, 500 ways to die in Mario. And next - what…

Youtube only gives you what they think you will click on. If you don't click on the crappy content (or at least leave the video immediately) then they will stop recommending it.

I guess this advice doesn't apply if you are sharing an account with your kid, then you're screwed.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#129

Post by mastax »

ur-whale wrote: post #100
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'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. I agree with the minor caveat that I'd like a "broaden" button and a "change theme" menu. My search algorithm presents me with content that I find quite enjoyable, but I'd like to be exposed to a little more stuff that's outside of my bubble. It knows what I like based on what I've watched, but it doesn't know me and therefore can't infer…

On the top of the home page they have a category control that lets you look for different genres of stuff from your algorithm plus a "new to you" category. I think that's supposed to be what you're after. I hardly ever use it because I forget it's there or don't need it to steer the algorithm my way.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#130

Post by Kye »

EGreg wrote: post #121
Kye wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's promotion, though. It would be promotion if you didn't make it. I've been accused of being a shill for enough things I was enthusiastic about to be 100% sure of this. And since you did make it, it's hard to argue you don't benefit in some way from sharing it. That's why disclosure is good form.

I don’t think asking someone a question about their own specific opinion about whether a particular website could help their peers OR NOT, is the same as promotion. For example, earlier today I promoted a service that I built (see my comment history) and clearly disclosed that it’s mine. In fact, sometimes you don’t WANT the person to know whether what you’re asking about is yours, so they can give a more honest asse…

All you're doing here is turning what looked innocent and well-intentioned into something suspicious. I hope you learn to take feedback better before your app is big enough that handling it poorly does real damage.
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