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YouTube, the jewel of the internet

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Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#201

Post by j-bos »

brewtide wrote: post #26
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…

I have a 9 and 7 year old and we are constantly enjoying such YouTube channels as "smarter every day", "veritasium" (spelling?), "Stuff made here", to some extent Colin furze, "technology connections", and other such edutainment. Not sure it speaks about differences in kids, in ages, in households, or likely a combination of sorts. Also, not a judgement on your kids, just a counterpoint about the resources available…

>"veritasium" (spelling?),

Close, V E R I S T A B L I U M

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#203

Post by jsnell »

alonsonic wrote: post #101
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'm fascinated by this. I feel the same way. Do we know if The YouTube team if ordering comments using some sort of sentiment analysis? This might be the key to moderating social media. Is almost like negative/toxic comments are shadow banned and relegated to the bottom of the comments section.

There was a HN submission on this a while back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151021

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#204

Post by tomrod »

tomcam wrote: post #193

I pay happily for YouTube, but just so you know... if your politics are considered wrongthink they will happily delete accounts or apply repressive algorithm changes to search results. For example, they kicked well-intentioned people off for suggesting that Covid might have been caused by the Wuhan lab until the New York Times finally published an article suggesting exactly that. This comment will be downvoted and fl…

I wonder if your concern that your opinions will be downvoted and flagged are misplaced. The rest of the commentariat may prove me wrong. But Hacker News tends to be more open to real discussion than most pubs on the internet.

During the COVID period (which I consider functionally complete Fall 2022 with Omnicron's cycle completed), there was a need for keeping the channel from being flooded. The academic discussion of potential counterfactuals, usually to be found in conferences and certain blog webs, were often misconstrued by content producers, conspiracy mongers, and others driven by less-then-truthful motives to convince the gullible or distracted. As this causes very real harm [0], quelling the contrarian-without-evidence voices was important in the short term. We will see regarding the long term impacts as acts of governance are often seen as tyranny by the same groups that push contrarianism for their personal profit.

[0] https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/09/22/kicked-in-the-ribs-haras...

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#205

Post by cubefox »

> If the tone of Twitter is a twee leftism, parts of YouTube are conducted in the register of the aggrieved alt-right. There is lots of dating advice on there of the me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind. But these flaws — arbitrary power, weirdo politics — afflict lots of platforms.

This quote says more about the author than about YouTube. It seems obvious that YouTube is much more centrist on average than Twitter, where political polarization is stronger than anywhere else.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#207

Post by balaji1 »

sgu999 wrote: post #55
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?

That's my problem with it as well... I keep on clicking "I'm not interested" for all kind of clickbait brainless content, but they keep on coming back.

recently, I started getting videos with less than 500 views from tiny channels. I guess YT is trying to be fair and send traffic to those channels. But I felt those videos were just clickbaits. That's one problem with the algorithm.

Positives of YT, mentioned in other comments also: Algorithm is very good in general. Quality of content is good lately (or at least you can stick to such content). Easily replace Netflix time. Comments section is also good. YT Premium is worth it.

YT almost got beaten by Insta and TikTok but survived. And the YT app on a smart TV is much better than Netflix and others.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#208

Post by tomrod »

crop_rotation wrote: post #87
skywal_l wrote: post #19

HN is the jewel of the internet. Youtube might be the amethyst maybe?

HN is too small to be the jewel of "the internet", and irrelevant compared to YouTube for impact.

Man, I dunno. If you're only looking at hype cycle peak, maybe. But discussions on HN are what become the buzz-worthy products after 5 years or so.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#210

Post by sixothree »

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…

YouTube Premium and F1TV are my two subscriptions. I watch more YouTube than anything else. By far. My algorithm is filled with creators I admire.
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