YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#41

Post by meetingthrower » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #36

rickcarlino wrote: post #28

My biggest concern about Youtube is that they do not truly have a competitor. They just raised premium prices again making it one of my most expensive entertainment subscriptions.

I suspect they're going to soon do what Amazon did as well, where they start putting ads into the regular YouTube Premium service, and charge an extra $3 a month for a completely ad free experience. I have the family plan shared across six accounts, and it went to $26, which really isn't that much but I'm not entirely sure why they're doing it.

This has happened to me btw. I can only suspect they are "testing" the reception.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#42

Post by rambambram » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

Youtube must know better than me what to recommend me out of all the videos... still, I get presented the same shite again and again.

To be fair: not everything is shite and Youtube is my favorite social media (especially for discovering new music), but I noticed a big drop in quality videos from one day to the other a couple of years ago. Just opening up Youtube one day and seeing all kinds of thumbnails with people with their mouth open, very 'colory' thumbnails (more childlike), channels that I would never watch being presented... I should have noted the exact date, but I didn't. I guess it was around two years ago.

Even searching for specific topics is hard. I just know there's enough material on the platform, but in my search results I get so many doubles and channels that I already know. I can keep scrolling, but to no result.

If anybody knows some good DIY or woodworking channels, let me know!

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#43

Post by loevborg » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #25

squigz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Click History on the homepage left sidebar > Comments on right side of History page https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

And now try to find the comment someone replied to

I agree. I wonder how people are motivated to comment if they can't even track replies or check likes. It certainly completely kills motivation for me

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#44

Post by parasti » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #31

Honestly, I'm not at all surprised. In many ways, YouTube (and other content creation platforms in general) are just a better deal for many people than traditional forms of entertainment. The thing with traditional media is that it's all about limits and compromise and trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The TV and radio airwaves are limited, as is the schedule. Cinemas and screening times are limited.…

The world's greatest library of knowledge is owned by a private US company. For some reason I am reminded of this more often than I care to admit.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#45

Post by stronglikedan » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #30

[flagged]

proportionally the same as everywhere else, so insignificant for comparison

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#46

Post by ndriscoll » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

jjice wrote: post #22

nothrowaways wrote: post #16

Could as well eat Spotify in a snap, just has to comment out that stupid disable_minimize()

That one is behind the `hasPremium` feature flag

Or just install Video Background Play Fix (which should just be the default, or at least in settings, but at least it seems to be a Mozilla repo).

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#47

Post by tombert » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

arccy wrote: post #37

tombert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been getting off of YouTube more because now creators censor themselves even more than network TV does. You can't say "kill", you have to say "unalive" or "took their life" or shit like that. You can't say "rape", you have to say "SA". You can't say "porn", everyone called it "corn". Apparently you can't even say 16, because I saw a YouTuber say "61 backwards" when talking about a creep on the internet. I rememb…

the problem is these "creators" want to get paid by generic advertisers, so they have to conform to the clean standard. if they just wanted to express themselves, they could.

Yeah but then discoverability becomes an issue, I think. YouTube obviously wants to push things that will make them more money, and I suspect popular channels that can have regular ads are more profitable, so they are incentivized to push those.

I grew up as a guy with stairs in my house and part of why I got into the internet pretty early is because I found the fact that people were willing to express themselves using non-sanitized language to be appealing. I liked Something Awful, I liked Newgrounds, I liked YTMND, and I liked them specifically because they weren't safe for TV.

Different time I suppose. At least Something Awful is still around.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#48

Post by pyreko » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #13

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #2

It genuinely disgusts me that the world's largest media company shoves addictive, short form content down users throats (especially young people). Anyone working on it at Google should be ashamed of what they're doing.

Where is it being shoved down anyone’s throat? You literally have to intentionally click a short video or use the shorts tab to see any YouTube short.

Ehhhh not recently. They have an entire shorts section on my subscription page now, and shorts are _heavily_ pushed on my home page feed despite me trying to dismiss them multiple times.

Like yes I can hide them all using ublock on desktop and morphe on Android, but that the fact I have to do it to avoid them is because they're pushing shorts harder as of late, it used to also be pushed but not as much from my personal experience.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#49

Post by pcurve » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

rickcarlino wrote: post #28

My biggest concern about Youtube is that they do not truly have a competitor. They just raised premium prices again making it one of my most expensive entertainment subscriptions.

they're competing against themselves to essentially not screw up.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#50

Post by thundergolfer » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #29

lemonish97 wrote: post #3

I always see it as more of a social media company rather than a media co.

Just anecdotes, but I feel YouTube comments are the bottom of social media. Even Twitter and Reddit are better. But if the 99% garbage is the price of the emerging of channels like 3B1B, I think it's still a pretty good deal.

Their algorithm has a toxic positivity problem where they weight positivity so much the most moronic, saccharine crap sits at the top and you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the comments from LLM slop.