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

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

#151

Post by rambambram » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 8:59 PM UTC

gritspants wrote: post #118

rambambram wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't talk to me like that. My post does not invite this kind of reaction. > Turn off the feed and turn on your brain. Don't suggest I don't use my brain, please. For this purpose I built my own feed reader (as part of all kinds of social functions for my website system, link in bio), which I also use to scan for new videos on Youtube's channels that I follow. It works great. Sometimes I want to discover new channels…

Then... why are you using it? I used to get some degree of infotainment out of it but then it became this. Here's an idea: I had a need for some custom metal machining (aluminum). I just looked up some local companies and found a guy who was happy to work it into his shop. I've had some other needs, and just wound up hiring some guys to teach me (stick welding). It's not free, but there is incredible value doing it t…

I use it as tv, but then topics I like that are not on tv.

You must be reading my mind, because I recently let some lasercutting shop make some aluminum for a hardware project that I'm doing. I have all kinds of projects on https://www.theredpanther.org - partly (or should I say mostly) inspired by Youtube.

So for me it works both ways, I get inspired, make something of my own, share it on Youtube. That's why it is such a nice platform. I even meet people through Youtube (fawowa scene is big in neighbouring Germany, for example) and I regularly leave comments and get comments.

On the other hand, the algorithm pushes me certain ways that I don't like. And it makes me sad knowing there are thousands of people making nice videos that I want to see but will never see, because Youtube's algorithm favors what they want to show, not what I want to watch (although their algo must be more than smart enough to give me hours and hours of good content). I have to take the bad with the good, I think.

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

#152

Post by paul7986 » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

Only streaming app I use and always have used. I have subscribe to the others yet always canceled even at $3 a month. They are not worth it compared to YouTube that's free and for me the best using my Mac Mini connected to my TV (wireless mouse as remote).

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

#153

Post by Gander5739 » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

biggestfan wrote: post #136

Gander5739 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They play on app startup on the android app, at least for me.

That happens if you close the app while on a Short. Otherwise it opens to the homepage.

I don't watch shorts. I have them disabled via morphe.

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

#154

Post by rambambram » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #73

rambambram wrote: post #42

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…

> If anybody knows some good DIY or woodworking channels, let me know! A woodworker and former RIM engineer -- if you don't already know his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Matthiaswandel

Thanks! Familiar face, I have seen videos from him.

Now I have to give one back... Maybe you don't know Marius Hornberger, I really enjoy his maker videos.

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

#155

Post by pyreko » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #105

pyreko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 person…

>They have an entire shorts section on my subscription page now Because the people you subscribe to are making those shorts. Your subscription page shows you all the most recent videos from the channels you’re subscribed to. That in no way is shoving anything down your throat. You’re just supposed to watch what you want to watch. You’re not expected to click and watch every video in your subscription feed.

Right but before they _didn't_ have an entire dang section for shorts lol. It's near the very top too, so I literally could not avoid seeing it. If they treated it as a normal video I wouldn't care as much.

And unfortunately many YouTubers who do make normal, good content also make shorts because it's incredibly algorithm-friendly, so there's no avoiding it unless you blacklist every creator that dares make shorts.

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

#156

Post by tshaddox » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

rambambram wrote: post #42

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…

The recommended videos next to the current video and generally awful now. But my YouTube usage almost exclusively starts on the first row of videos they show when I'm logged in. They're almost entirely recent uploads from the channels I subscribe to and what most often. I subscribe to too many channels to keep up on the full feed of uploaded, but YouTube seems to do a good job highlighting the subscriptions I'm most interested in.

Admittedly, I rarely "browse" YouTube looking for new things. I typically find new channels either from other sources (reddit, Twitter, etc.) or because one channel mentions another channel.

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

#157

Post by doublerabbit » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #61

tombert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have a very strong, borderline-irrational distaste for ads. I hate advertising, I hate having to watch advertisements, I will go out of my way considerably to avoid ads. I have over 400 blu-rays specifically because I wanted to guarantee that I don't have to risk seeing ads in my media. I liked YouTube Premium because it was an ethical way to avoid ads on YouTube; there's alw…

I gave up ~2021. Bought one of the 10tb 5200rpm disks and just started yt-dlping entire channels when I found something good. With mixed 360p/480p/720p backups, I've used ~1/5th of the disc across nearly 50,000 files. This does make me the unethical bad-guy, but my aversion to advertisement is so strong that I can't feel any remorse. AdSense is a scourge on the internet, and once Google is held accountable for it the…

Not really. Youtube is just pocket money for Google. It's not like they're ethical themselves.

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

#158

Post by rambambram » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #150

rambambram wrote: post #42

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…

> If anybody knows some good DIY or woodworking channels, let me know! There are dozens of great channels in those spaces. Here are some I remember just off the top of my head. * Cars: Watch Wes Work (need 1.5x speed here!), Prop Department, Mat Armstrong, Chris Fix * Woodworking: Frank Howarth, Matthias Wandel, The Wood Whisperer, John Heisz, Steve Ramsey * Metalworking: Clickspring, Cronova Engineering, Tubal Cain…

Thanks! I know a couple of 'em, will check the rest.

Indeed not hard to surface, but a handful of channels is a drop in the ocean of all the videos that must have been uploaded and are at least nice to watch and informative. Sometimes I get these rare gems inside my recommendations; a small channel with a couple of very interesting videos, maybe not the best or slickest productions, but definitely of interest. I guess the algo strongly favors a regular upload rhythm.

I can subscribe to these channels, but I can't even find them in my subscriptions. There's no overview, and sometimes I subscribe to channels that I know I already subscribed to (the channels themselves also experienced this unsubscribing behavior and made this known in their videos).

> My main complaint is it will recommend a specific video to you for aaaages without you clicking on it before it finally realises you aren't interested. You can manually say you aren't interested, but it's two clicks and you shouldn't need to do that anyway.

Completely agree!

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

#159

Post by bookofjoe » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:11 PM UTC

Cider9986 wrote: post #94

dmbche wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newpipe and freepipe!

Exactly. Isn't this supposed to be Hacker news? I find it hard to believe that there are people on this site without an adblocker.

Believe it. I'm one.

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

#160

Post by tredre3 » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:11 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #121

peab wrote: post #115

Youtube's the only social media left where subscribing to a channel actually means something

Is it? I've heard YouTubers make snide comments about subscribing "as if that has any bearing on whether you see my videos", implying that it has minimal impact on the algo.

Many YouTubers claim that some of their subscribers do not get notified when they release new videos (the "hit the bell icon" portion). They've also been claims of users being silently unsubscribed from channels. That is probably what they're referring to in your paraphrased quote.

Because it would be shocking to me if there were Youtubers who truly believed that having (or not having) new subscribers had no impact on the algorithm.