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YouTube, the jewel of the internet

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Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#221

Post by dbtc »

kibwen wrote: post #175
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…

> 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. I resonate with the "a bit too good", so much so that I exclusively use YouTube in incognito mode because the recommendation algorithm is too addictive, and the content that it causes me to consume doesn't really do anything but waste my time in the long run. I also se…

I started using an extension that blocks all recommendations. I have my subscriptions and I have the search. Of course, I'm missing out on all that new and undiscovered content... but what I get instead is life, so I think it's a fair trade.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#222

Post by exo-pla-net »

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.

They shadow ban ~100% of comments, unless they detect positive sentiment. If you express any nuance or criticism, poof, your comment is disappeared. What remains is a sea of positive, fully vapid, fully useless comments: an authoritarian dream of milquetoast public discourse.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#223

Post by fancy_pantser »

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've been trying out an extension to hide the thumbnails to see how it changes what I wind up clicking. The problem with my little experiment is I don't go back to see what they would have been afterward to record an observation, so I'm not meeting the Adam Savage criteria for doing science.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-youtube-thumb...

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#224

Post by the_only_law »

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.

> 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.

What videos. I can certainly say some YouTubers attract much better comments, but on average YouTube comments still strikes me as one of the dumbest places on the internet.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#225

Post by hydrok9 »

api wrote: post #119
radicaldreamer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plau…

That explains the skin conditions and baldness (of the Borg, though I see a lot of hair loss among under-30s)

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#226

Post by DontchaKnowit »

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…

But those channels you listed are not educational, theyre "educational" e.g. you may learn some factoids about physics are learn about some cool experience but in no way will they impart to you a deep understanding of any subject. Those sorts of edutainment style videos are not ever going to compete against say, a college degree.

Now there is excellent serious educational material on youtube, stuff like khan academy, etc, but thats not what people are watching for leisure.

If youre going to learn something useful, it is going to be difficult - e.g. it requires work on the part of the watcher. Gen z isnt just learning physics by idly watching veritasium videos.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#227

Post by dagorenouf »

bdangubic wrote: post #79

My kid is 9 - YouTube is her search engine. All my efforts to explain that is what Google is for have failed. Every time I use Google she laughs at me and calls me old :)

Doesn't that make her slower? Youtube has better quality results most of the time, but it takes so long to watch the video and get to the information I want... I always start with a google search for that reason.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#228

Post by sylware »

wowowow, hold on.

Where is my noscript/basic (x)html interface with a nice html element.

And do we finally have a standard way to select a streaming location in a big video file and get the full time of the video? That for proper video seeking from the "video player" and displaying a consistent progession bar.

For instance https://cdn.net/uhentouhognagna/signed_end_time_ms?t=signed_...

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#229

Post by rcarr »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #46
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 can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. How? (I'm misunderstanding.)

Well for starters, you have courses on the freecodecamp channel which will literally teach you everything you need to know to get AWS DevOps qualifications. But you can teach yourself literally anything. MIT has seven thousand videos on its MIT OpenCourseWare channel. 3Blue1Brown and Khan Academy can teach you maths and science. If you want to be a repair man, or a mechanic - you can find a video of how to do it on YT. Design circuit boards, make movies, learn instruments - all on YT.

It's not that university degrees don't work. But there are other ways that self motivated people can learn and there are currently very few paths for those people to get recognition for their learning other than coughing up thousands for a piece of paper from a university and jumping through hoops. Personally I think we should have a lot more universities like WGU where you can just go and test out of exams immediately if you can demonstrate you already have the knowledge.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#230

Post by tambourine_man »

ur-whale wrote: post #106
tambourine_man wrote: post #64

Why didn’t the author linked to the examples he cites? It’s almost cruel.

> Why didn’t the author linked to the examples he cites? And generate traffic and revenue for another company without getting a cut? You gotta be kidding, right?

I know you’re jesting, but he’s singing the praises of those channels in specific and YouTube in general.

Unless the author meant or even linked in the original but the editor cut it out, which is actually probable, considering it’s the financial times.

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