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YouTube, the jewel of the internet

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Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson I get from all these replies is (shock & horror!): Kids are different . I hear of kids who are intelligent, energetic, curious... all those good things. Probably NURTURE (i.e. the parents) has something to do with that. But then: also NATURE. Not having any kids myself, I'm not going to preach.

The variety in temperament, interests and ability between even siblings varies greatly. The people most eager to share parenting advice is usually parents only one child who is calm and attentive :) I've seen several parents in that category have a second child and come out shocked. I'm believe that beyond a base level of food, clean clothes and love, your influence as a parent is marginal. It's also a wildly unpopul…

The heredity of intelligence actually depends on the environment. Those high percentages you mention only emerge in a 'stable' environment. That's not saying that people can grow (far) beyond their genetic makeup, but the opposite can happen.

If you think of (defending against) all those negative effects, I think the impact of a parent goes well beyond the basics you mention. That goes even further when you consider all other skills that one can foster that benefit a future member of our society.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#422
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am hooked as well. (But, please, stop with the YouTube Shorts, I'm just not that into you.)

I don't exactly know where this Shorts trend came from (I guess Tiktok?) but it really destroys the generation / has bad impact. My attention span is encouraged to shrink to only 15 seconds.

It comes from YouTube wanting to compete with TikTok, yes. And it's become so ridiculously common on YouTube because the platform pushes the hell out of shorts compared to normal videos; as a creator, I can get 10/100/1000 times more views from a short than a normal video covering the same topic. So a lot of creators ended up jumping on the shorts train as a gold rush.

Of course, it's probably not great in the long term since shorts viewers and longform content viewers are not the same and your CTR can be destroyed thanks to shorts subs not watching your longer videos, but the easy views and subs are still enticing nonetheless.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#423
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 continue to be impressed by their recommendation engine - and the very well executed niche channels. The latest example I’ve seen is Idaho Horseshoeing School which is some combination of woodworking, artisan craftsmen/women, animal welfare videos, etc. and that I had no idea I would enjoy but I can see why the algorithm figured out that’s in some Venn diagram for me

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#424
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…

Completely agree. You need to feed the algorithm the right data. Spend a little time to explicitly tell it to not recommend specific content and channels. You see a channel doing outrage porn (X destroys Y!) and clickbait thumbnails that tell you exactly zero about the content, shallow content mill: Right click -> Don't recommend channel. Completely ignore Shorts. Pay for youtube premium to get rid of ads. Add extensions: Sponsorblock and Video Speed Controller.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#426

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…

And YouTube shorts. It is shocking how addictive they are. I suffer it myself, and continually interrupt my son to ask him, "do you really want to run out your limited screen time on that garbage?" He agrees no, then is back on them 5 minutes later until his phone shuts him out. Thank god for parental controls.

The shorts are terrible, whereas my 'normal' home page is a combination of informative/hobby/tech related content and background music, the shorts are a bunch of useless crap that eat my time like nothing else without giving anything in return (apart from triggering of my reward systems I guess).

I just delete them from my homepage and they stay away for 30 days. If they return I only notice it because they sneakily start eating my attention again. Maybe there's a setting that doesn't make them return.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#427
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the original comment said Youtube can replace school. > 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 think you misunderstood the comment. It could be better written as "By the time they leave school they can already be..."

Right but hats the point im making - unless a kid is very strictly trying to actually learn a particular subject, no amount of edutainment is gonna give them any kind of professionally applicable skills.

Now if a kid watching videos that are long form treatments on specific subjects and are following allong with a pen and paper doing practice problems, sure, thats a case where youtube might give you some serious skills, but that is a tiny fraction of kids and those same kids would have been doing the same shit with textbooks at their local library. Youtube is waaaaaaaay closer to being purely a distraction than to being something we could consider "educational" in any serious sense.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#428
YouTube is by far the most reviled live streaming platform. Even if you ignore the insane automatic demonetization trap labyrinth and play perfectly by the books, the monetisation is slapped on as an afterthought, such that you have to already be a celebrity to make any real money out of it.

And as for the "how to fix my panasonic..." Style videos the article praises, unfortunately that video which could be 45 seconds and informative is 11 minutes padded in the first minute for keyword and adult filtering sorting terms, drawn out with filler to 10 minutes to get full ad revenue, and the video itself is interspersed with unskippable "sponsored content" detours because creators are forced to being their own ad agency on top of YouTube's ad system.

That is, if you got the right video in the first place and not a speech to text generated copy that utilizes a better subject and preview icon to steal traffic from a video that was found to be useful.

For all the things Meta is doing wrong, even THEY are creating a better curated video content and streaming platform than YouTube right now. One which supports legitimate creators and not algorithm miners.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#429
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> Those sorts of edutainment style videos are not ever going to compete against say, a college degree. They're totally different things, obviously... > 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. I disagree wi…

I agree with you entirely, but my post was in response to someone saying that a kid could finish high school with professional skills due to youtube... thats just not realistic. Sure it might pique their interest but so can books, television, talking with adults, school, etc. So I still do not think youtube is a particularly effective "professional skills education" tool

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#430
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a YouTuber with a moderate channel (60k subs). Bad comments are not magically shadow banned, they go into a queue that I have to moderate. The filtering is very good, I never get false positives. Even the really, really nasty ones are there, I just get a warning before I can see them. I can, of course, choose to delete those comments and/or ban that person from commenting on my channel again. I can also choose to…

I imagine most big YouTubers can’t moderate each comment like that though, so it’s effectively the same as a shadowban in that case

They have teams of people doing it.

Comments only go into that queue when certain words are used, and they have to be bad. Well reasoned disagreement never goes in there.

Even just “what you said is dumb, I know better that you” doesn’t go in there

It’s always comments like “f$&@ you, moron, “.

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