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YouTube, the jewel of the internet

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Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#141

Post by deepzn »

WanderPanda wrote: post #99
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…

Watching one „wrong“ video can mess everything up for a couple of weeks though, which always gives me some level of anxiety :D

true, I have to say "Not interested" a couple times

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#142

Post by timbit42 »

xrd wrote: post #27

I'm troubled by YouTube. There is absolutely incredible content there. And there is so much shit in between the good stuff. Does anyone run a frontend that offers control over the shit? I want my kids to have autonomy in viewing interesting things there, but I don't want to YouTube algorithm attacking their developing brains. Maybe a browser plugin?

The following are all web browser add-ons:

"Unhook" hides the related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending tab and other distractions on YouTube pages.

"BlockTube" lets you block channels or videos by ID, title keywords, or comment content.

"Channel Blocker" puts an X next to the channel name on each video. Clicking the X instantly and permanently removes the channel from search results.

"uBlock Origin" removes ads from the beginning and within videos.

"SponsorBlock" skips over a variety of uninteresting sections of videos via crowdsourcing. You can choose which types of sections you want to skip.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#143

Post by asdfman123 »

I couldn’t agree more. Most of my other “social media” consumption involves either low effort humor or getting mad at strangers.

I’m constantly learning stuff from YouTube. I’m watching chemistry channels, DIY channels, history channels, etc. It’s an amazing learning tool.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#144

Post by snug »

petilon wrote: post #72

A major fail, in my opinion, is YouTube TV. The user interface is horrendous. YouTube TV's UI is mostly images (video thumbnails) and it is hard to see what the currently selected item is. A mostly-text UI, with thumbnail only for the currently selected item would have worked much better. I tried to switch to YouTube TV as soon as it launched, but canceled because of the horrible UI. Recently I tried again — surely t…

As someone that only uses YTTV to watch sportss, pecifically NFL Redzone, F1, and baseball/basketball playoffs, I really enjoy YTTV interface because it always knows what I'm going to YTTV for. Very rarely do I need to click more than 2 buttons to get to the thing I'm trying to watch

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#145

Post by raincole »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #40
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…

> It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I don't follow this. I'm a millennial, graduated…

Youtube videos are good for "fixing your own pipelines" kinda of problem.

I don't think they're good for, for example, programmering.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#146

Post by BlueTemplar »

liendolucas wrote: post #41
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…

I can't understand people paying for streaming services like Netflix & competition, where all their catalogs are region-locked and every single one of them producing mostly crappy shows/movies (at least that's the Netflix I experienced last time I was able to use someone else's account on someone else's computer many years ago, so I must assume as everything else, things get worse, not better). What would I pay for?…

My local cinema does that DRM-free movie on USB key thing... even if you do not watch the movie first !

(As you can imagine, it doesn't show any Marvel movies or the like...)

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#147

Post by timbit42 »

1023bytes wrote: post #115

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

Yes, I often now use another search engine, such as DDG, to search YouTube.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#148

Post by fsckboy »

Waterluvian wrote: post #116
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.

this is how low we've sunk, you don't even say that youtube is adequate, you say it's the most adequate

Just to add my anecdata to the mix, I'm waist deep in logging-in to gmail and workplace apps, etc, but to compensate have abandoned android for iPhone, and I never use google search, and while I watch plenty on youtube, it's never required me to log in so I've never logged in, I don't even have any idea how much it "integrates" with other google logins or not at all. Am I missing out on something, is there some benefit to logging in?

My main complaint about youtube is that it used to be fun and quirky and have lots of "raw" content, and now everything is overproduced, festooned with graphics and clickbait. So many channels I would like to blacklist but nothing like that is possible. Technologically it works well, and I know there's content out there that I'll like, but unless I have a link to it or know exactly what to search for, it's very hard to find things. If there are channels I like and watch regularly, I sure don't need the algorithm showing them to me, but any sort of "maybe you'd like this too" seems totally broken, or at least completely lowest common denominator.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#149

Post by deepzn »

mastax wrote: post #117
robinsonb5 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i had this happen to me. ive lost videos I wanted to see when i clicked one instead of another.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#150

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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