YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#131

Post by sp332 » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

pmuk wrote: post #130

I’ve been uploading more content to YouTube recently and I noticed that their AI automatically picks the video frame that has the most exaggerated facial expression and uses this as the default thumbnail. This is probably why YouTube face appears to be everywhere! You can see it on this video: https://youtu.be/qhV4xCmPy4g I didn’t upload this thumbnail, YouTube picked it. If you looked through the video manually you…

Since you can't actually see the thumbnail on the video page (at least not on the desktop version): https://imgur.com/a/ohmLc

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#132

Post by jxramos » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #18

taneq wrote: post #8

Reminds me of the 'Dreamworks Face' that you see on so many animated movie posters. ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamWorksFace )

Wow, it has a name. I have noticed that stupid expression is basically the cover of every kid's animated movie for the last decade.

I love it when people articulate/identify a pattern and coin it with something. "Dreamworks face", works for me.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#133

Post by PeanutNore » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #31

Nition wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the unfortunate part is that the most visibility-optimised content isn't often the same thing as the best content. So if you just set out to make a Good Thing it gets lost, unless you also do other things that are seemingly unnecessary (like adding a silly face to your YouTube preview).

I feel like the unfortunate part is that my kids are far more certain that "YouTuber" is a viable career than "physicist".

"Mechanical Engineer" is going to remain a viable career for any kid interested in physics for the foreseeable future.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#134

Post by jxramos » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

"""Taken cumulatively, there’s a surreal, Lynchian quality to the images. Few things could ever be exciting enough to elicit these kinds of reactions, and no one could possibly be this expressive. So what’s wrong with these people? Were their brains tenderized?"""

This is a message I'm always teaching my kids "these are actors, they don't act like normal people, they exaggerate and pretend, are fictional, etc". They've seemed to pick up on the fact that these strange creatures before them are truly out of our everyday experience and are treated accordingly rather than taken as an actual subpopulation of folks they just haven't met yet.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#135

Post by jstandard » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

et-al wrote: post #60

mattbierner wrote: post #30

This post made me want to re-read "You Are Not a Gadget." One of Lanier's points in that book is that technology can both augment expression and bound it. The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up, whereas a simple textbox would let you note whatever you want about the content (text is also harder to monetize and analyze and…

> The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up People do write replies, but I feel the conversation is much terse these days. I enjoy HN because in general the crowd here is more mature and willing to invest in an informative thoughtout reply instead of just witty one-liners for karma (which I'm glad people here downvote). But y…

> People do write replies, but I feel the conversation is much terse these days.

I'm not sure how recent that phenomenon actually is. I think it's more that the social tools where people congregate made it easier and even incentivize responses.

A larger number of people with less to say will respond because these systems are designed to cultivate response.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#136

Post by kwoff » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

kelukelugames wrote: post #33

I hate that face so much. I always assumed it appeals to a younger crowd but then I have friends my age who use similar profile pics on facebook.

That was my assumption, too - cartoon, exaggeration, caricature, baby talk.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#137

Post by jstandard » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

mattbierner wrote: post #30

This post made me want to re-read "You Are Not a Gadget." One of Lanier's points in that book is that technology can both augment expression and bound it. The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up, whereas a simple textbox would let you note whatever you want about the content (text is also harder to monetize and analyze and…

> The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up

This is an interesting thought. It does simplify expression, but in sum I don't think it's that much different than life before the like button.

We press the like button all the time in real life. Giving thumbs up, a quick nod of the head, or clapping.

From that standpoint, the like button is just the digital manifestation of how we showed engagement with "content".

Where I see we run into problems is that a "like" has different meanings depending on the person and context. Unfortunately algorithms aren't able to fully understand these nuances yet, so we end up with the same stream of youtube videos in our feed or the same 5 songs in our pandora playlist. Which means on the backend we're stuck with a certain set of "almost-but-not-quite-right" labels in a system which will then make "almost-but-not-quite-right" decisions.

Folks at the edges may get incorrectly lumped into the wrong group and, in milder cases, receive content they aren't interested in, in extreme cases, be flagged as a "potential terrorist".

It's tough. I do think my life is generally better off with intelligent algos removing friction, aiding in discovery, and anticipating my needs. But to do so, those same algos need an almost infinite amount of info about me to be able to infer context and nuance.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#138

Post by lossolo » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

jackgolding wrote: post #16

Has anyone else noticed how much this min-maxing is effecting all different areas of the world? I played the last World of Warcraft expansion and got to the stage where I could start raiding (Blizzard is trying to make this easier to break into for casual players) and 95% of raiders only wanted to raid with those who had already done the raid before and had an item level higher than anything the raid drops! I find th…

> I played the last World of Warcraft expansion and got to the stage where I could start raiding (Blizzard is trying to make this easier to break into for casual players) and 95% of raiders only wanted to raid with those who had already done the raid before and had an item level higher than anything the raid drops!

I was Raid Leader and Guild leader (my guild was second on the server) in WoW and it was always like that. It's about time optimization, raids are really hard for newbies, they stand in shit and some of the raids on early stages are for example DPS oriented (kill the boss before he enrages etc) so you need to have good gear and know your rotation. When raid wipe because of you after 10 minutes of boss fighting and then again same thing on same boss happens, people get angry because you are holding them down, the whole team. If someone has 60 minutes that day to clear whole raid then he wants to play with experienced people and not to wipe very often.

You should do LFR first couple of times, all dungeons and special daily quests to get around your BiS gear from non-normal+ raid sources. You should watch on youtube guides to know how to fight particular boss too, you should come prepared for raid.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#139

Post by wadkar » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

jstandard wrote: post #137

mattbierner wrote: post #30

This post made me want to re-read "You Are Not a Gadget." One of Lanier's points in that book is that technology can both augment expression and bound it. The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up, whereas a simple textbox would let you note whatever you want about the content (text is also harder to monetize and analyze and…

> The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up This is an interesting thought. It does simplify expression, but in sum I don't think it's that much different than life before the like button. We press the like button all the time in real life. Giving thumbs up, a quick nod of the head, or clapping. From that standpoint, the like…

> > The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up

> We press the like button all the time in real life. Giving thumbs up, a quick nod of the head, or clapping.

Oh no, I don't think real life expressions can be summed or approximated into a binary thumbs up vs no thumbs up (there's no thumbs down). For example, we express a lot more by how eagerly we raise our hands while giving a thumbs up, or how our eyes approve (or disapprove) while giving the quick nod, or how hard (or sarcastically mild) we clap.

I think there is always an amount of uncertainty in real life expression that gets lost the moment we transform them into certain form.

Re: YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form

#140

Post by jstandard » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 8:30 PM UTC

wadkar wrote: post #139

jstandard wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up This is an interesting thought. It does simplify expression, but in sum I don't think it's that much different than life before the like button. We press the like button all the time in real life. Giving thumbs up, a quick nod of the head, or clapping. From that standpoint, the like…

> > The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up > We press the like button all the time in real life. Giving thumbs up, a quick nod of the head, or clapping. Oh no, I don't think real life expressions can be summed or approximated into a binary thumbs up vs no thumbs up (there's no thumbs down). For example, we express a lot mo…

Agree! A lot of nuance can be lost in when converting to digital.

My point is more about the way people use the like button has corresponding actions in "real life".

A thumbs up can be used to convey a variety of emotions. Happiness, irony, and other meanings depending on culture.

However on FB, the like button has an implied set of narrow usage. You use it to acknowledge, approve, like things. It's not as useful as in real-life because you can't as easily interpret context or add accompanying signals like a furrowed brow or a smile.

The usage set is more narrow/different and I think most people recognize that when they give a thumbs up on FB vs. when they do so in real life.