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Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

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Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#171

Post by wccrawford »

sofixa wrote: post #125
wccrawford wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP's point is that people like Colin Furze used to film themselves and just put out content, but now they court sponsors and have a production team. All of the people you mentioned have a production team, I think. I've got some channels I watch that don't have production crews (I think) like "Under Dunn" and I enjoy them every bit as much as the big ones you named, if not more... But there's no doubt that…

> I think the OP's point is that people like Colin Furze used to film themselves and just put out content, but now they court sponsors and have a production team. All of the people you mentioned have a production team, I think. Why is that a problem? People don't like it when the audio and video quality are good ? Or they don't like it when content producers focus entirely on content creating instead of moonlighting…

In itself, I don't have a problem with having sponsors.

But far too often, it feels like the person made the video just for the money, instead of because it's something their viewers would actually like to see.

Colin Furze has done remarkably little of this, but some of my other channels have entire videos that were obviously just to be a commercial, and the content is almost unlike the other channel content. Seeing one of those feels like they've wasted my time for their own profit, and that feels bad. And you often can't tell if it's going to be a whole video like that, or just an up-front sponsor message.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#172

Post by antisthenes »

I feel like there needs to be a way to exclude videos with over 100k or 1 million views.

I'm having immense difficulty discovering new and interesting content, because the top 20-30 videos are always clickbaity shorts or irrelevant (but several million views)

Don't care about the downvotes too much. I can usually tell within 3-4 seconds if the video is what I'm looking for or not.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#173

Post by grumbel »

dzek69 wrote: post #111
omega3 wrote: post #11

Especially since the removal of downvoting it's hard to get to good quality material. Majority of tech videos are a case of blind leading the blind and unless you know the subject already it's hard to spot. Nowadays I start with a forum/reddit/discord/hn search for a list of hive approved creators and only then go to youtube with that list in hand. Starting the search in youtube (unless for a very niche/non-marketabl…

> Majority of tech videos are a case of blind leading the blind and unless you know the subject already it's hard to spot. It drives me CRAZY! How often I want to know something about a product (something less popular than smartphones, let's say IP cameras) and I find only ~3 reviews, I watch them all and they are all full of BS, because the reviewer has no experience with the product type they are given, they just f…

That's a difficult problem to solve and extends far beyond Youtube. The reason why that happens is just due to timing, first one to review a new product gets all the clicks. So they can't spend weeks actually using the product to write a proper review, as interest would have been largely faded at that point. Back in the paper magazine days they had much more time, as magazines only got released once a month.

Meanwhile if you ignore all the commercial Youtubers and look for regular people using the product, you might end up with a more 'authentic' review, but also with an equally uninformative one, as most people just don't have access to all the latest tech gadgets on the market. They just have the one they are reviewing right now, so it's hard to get any meaningful comparisons.

There are a couple of good review sites left, but not nearly enough to cover all the tech stuff that gets released in the wild.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#174

Post by secret-noun »

Maybe I'm a hipster, but if I am recommended a video that's too popular by view count (say, 1M views or more), I don't want to watch it. Right click -> "Don't recommend channel" or "Not interested". I feel like the amount of gamesmanship and selling-out and wonky thumbnails and sponsorships you need to perform to attain that level of viewership is just not something I want to see. These aren't "real" people anymore.

My main page has steadily become more infected with popular content like this. On the other hand, the subscription page is too focused (doing exactly what it says on the tin with no unsubbed channels). I want some middle ground where I can see the stuff I've opted into and some budding creators in the same space.

I also realize this is negative feedback loop. If many people too are looking for "unpopular" videos, they become popular.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#175

Post by djhworld »

boundlessdreamz wrote: post #80
djhworld wrote: post #36

Maybe in some areas (software) but I'm finding YouTube a goldmine for my current interest - learning to drive in the UK When I was 17 I started learning for about 8 months but then stopped due to various reasons. I'm 35 now and picking it back up again and the most mind blowing aspect of it is how much content there is on YouTube to help learner drivers, compared to back then! There are loads of creators (usually dri…

Please share some channels that you found helpful

https://www.youtube.com/c/ConquerDriving

https://www.youtube.com/c/AdvanceDrivingSchoolThurston

https://www.youtube.com/c/GetDriving

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#176

Post by djhworld »

scoot wrote: post #109
djhworld wrote: post #36

Maybe in some areas (software) but I'm finding YouTube a goldmine for my current interest - learning to drive in the UK When I was 17 I started learning for about 8 months but then stopped due to various reasons. I'm 35 now and picking it back up again and the most mind blowing aspect of it is how much content there is on YouTube to help learner drivers, compared to back then! There are loads of creators (usually dri…

> When I was 17 I started learning for about 8 months but then stopped due to various reasons. I'm 35 now and picking it back up again and the most mind blowing aspect of it is how much content there is on YouTube to help learner drivers, compared to back then! YouTube hadn't been founded when you were 17, so it isn't particularly surprising that it didn't have eLearning content back then.

phrased that bit poorly, I meant "easilly accessible content for learning to drive" is leaps and bounds better than it was back then - with YouTube being the platform.

Back then the best you would have got was some onerous DVD-ROM software with low resolution videos and poor presentation, or at least very awkward. Like the training videos you get given at work...

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#177

Post by bool3max »

These questions pop up very often on HN and other circles - yet the answer is always the same. The algorithm(s) serve you content that makes money. If you manage to look past that, you'll still find plenty of honest, straight to the point material. Thing is - it's getting progressively harder year by year.

For example, YouTube recently crippled their search function severely - it displays batches of results completely irrelevant to your specific search term in-between actual results. Absolutely fucking retarded. And that's just one example.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#178

Post by sweuder »

yreg wrote: post #21
Mizza wrote: post #2

It's really awful. The worst are those short vertical videos with a robot voice and dramatic music laid over a short clip from another video. It must be what a lobotomy feels like.

Tip for other people: Never ever click on such short (reel) when logged in. If you watch them, YouTube will push more down your throat. If you ignore them, they disappear from your suggestions.

The shorts "shelf" as they call it has an X in the top right that hides them entirely.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#179

Post by sweuder »

I disagree. Youtube easily has the best recommendations out of all of the big social media/content sites.

Its entirely based in what you are watching. If you watch very little on the site then yes, obviously they will just throw random stuff at you that is popular. The recommendation algorithm has nothing to go on.

["Popular" in this case usually means trash since the videos that get the biggest on the platform ARE clickbait shallow garbage because the vast majority of watch time is from kids and teens.]

If you seek out creators and channels that you enjoy/find useful, actually engage with the algorithm by subscribing to quality channels, hitting "not interested" when the recommendations miss, suddenly you'll get better results.

One very recent (1 month maybe?) change that ive noticed is that Youtube tosses in WAY more tiny channels into the recommendations. I get recommended videos with ~1k or less views all the time. I've found some awesome stuff through that.

Re: Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

#180

Post by sweuder »

staticassertion wrote: post #71

It's been that way for years, as long as I can remember probably. But I still watch Youtube for probably ~50% of my content. I'd probably like podcasts but I never know how to play them. I just want educational content and, to my knowledge, Youtube has the best collection. I like hearing an expert in a field talk about a subject. Even Khan Academy has their content up on Youtube. I signed up for Nebula and I barely u…

Based on:

>but also I gotta have my "expert on topic talks to me about interesting thing" content.

You should absolutely be listening to podcasts. This is literally the main strength of the format. What do you mean you "never know how to play them" ?

Whichever phone you have there will be abundant free podcast players in the app store, you can look up and subscribe to their feeds and listen through that. Longform interviews or conversations on every topic imaginable.

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