YouTube marked a huge shift on the internet. But of course all good things come to an end. It was an incredible free service that I loved and still love so much. Not to say it's going away but ye I do notice cracks in the facade .. it's no longer the new thing or even the current moment it is showing its age
YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
181–190 of 219 posts
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
My feeling is that at Google, building something novel (e.g. community contributions) is more important than maintaining something (e.g. dealing with spam/abuse in community contributions). Unless it brings in profit or collects valuable user data, anything that takes developer hours to maintain eventually gets canned. There could be a code silo issue here as well. My understanding is Google dev teams are very mobile…
I hear this explanation a lot. What I don't get is how Google, a company known for being exceptionally clever in how it manages engineers, hasn't realized that their organizational structure causes this sort of build-and-abandon pattern. In any case, the rest of us at large shouldn't have to suffer just because Google can't figure out how to build meaningfully long-lasting services.
I'm sure they are aware (or at least some people there are aware), especially since it is repeatedly pointed out on the internet. They just might not care.
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#183Yet another cool feature lost to the fact that the YouTube "community" is a toxic swamp.
This is the real problem. None of the other conspiracy theories, "Google is evil", profit-based claims, etc. are the cause. The problem is that people are horrible, awful, disgusting monsters, and letting them communicate on the Internet in public forums is a terrible idea.
HN is literally the only public forum I use, and only because it's small enough and obscure enough that most of the trolls stay away, and a couple moderators can keep it usable.
Yahoo removed comments, ridding the world of one of the larger cesspools. Reddit's entire raison d'être is to serve as a fetid pool of the worst the Internet has to offer.
We can't have nice things because we don't deserve nice things.
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#184I am Deaf. Community-added subs are wonderful and a lot better than AI generated subs. However many of them suddenly stop a few minutes into the movie. It looks like subtitling was too much work and got abandoned.
But even so: Incomplete subs are better than AI generated subs.
AI generated subs are better than no subs. So I switch to AI subs when neccessary. This shows that incomplete subs are welcome to me!
I hope that Youtube reconsiders their decision.
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear this explanation a lot. What I don't get is how Google, a company known for being exceptionally clever in how it manages engineers, hasn't realized that their organizational structure causes this sort of build-and-abandon pattern. In any case, the rest of us at large shouldn't have to suffer just because Google can't figure out how to build meaningfully long-lasting services.
I'm sure they are aware (or at least some people there are aware), especially since it is repeatedly pointed out on the internet. They just might not care.
I can't imagine they care.
Yeah, people are justifiably upset that they dropped this feature. But they are also, to my knowledge, the online video source that ever offered a feature like this in the first place. So nobody's upset is realistically going to translate into an exodus to a competitor, and the effect on their bottom line is negligible, and they have zero reason to care.
You know how the last 3 hours of any game of Monopoly is just this long, shitty, inhuman slog that isn't fun for anyone, except perhaps the person who lucked into owning all the properties? We've made it to that phase of the game.
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
everytime I visit sites like these, they're already infested with crypticurrency nuts, racists, conspiracy theorists, and all other manner of internet wack jobs
Are "internet wack jobs" not allowed a platform? There's certainly some content niche that they're filling for some people even if you disagree with them/dislike them.
when every alternative platform immediately gets filled with people who hold really despicable views, it's a hard pass for normal consumers to join
look at gab and voat
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear this explanation a lot. What I don't get is how Google, a company known for being exceptionally clever in how it manages engineers, hasn't realized that their organizational structure causes this sort of build-and-abandon pattern. In any case, the rest of us at large shouldn't have to suffer just because Google can't figure out how to build meaningfully long-lasting services.
I'm sure they are aware (or at least some people there are aware), especially since it is repeatedly pointed out on the internet. They just might not care.
Google seems to want you to believe they are a Hanlon's Razor Schroedinger's Cat: the two most likely options are A) malice or B) incompetence. Their "well known" motto "Don't Be Evil" would have you believe it must entirely be incompetence, and so would Hanlon's Razor, normally. But with the number of smart people on staff how could they be so incompetent? Is it malice? Should we take Google on their "word" that they are simply incompetent on an amazing, heretofore undiscovered, scale, or maybe start to question if they are actively malevolent? Is the cat alive or dead? Who can observe it?
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some creators I follow have said they wanted to use community translations but didn't because the feature was underdeveloped. Particularly the fact that contributions are anonymous so there's no way to build trust in a particular translator, every translation for every video needs to be scrutinized and they just don't have time. But from Googles beep boop robot analytics perspective they just see that nobody is using…
It's almost like Google's product owners have no idea how to build and maintain comprehensive products. If people aren't using a feature, figure out why and can it if it's not being used because of a lack of interest instead of said feature being poorly implemented or maintained. Does Google talk to anyone outside of their engineering bro culture?
I don't know why you're assuming they didn't do this.
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear this explanation a lot. What I don't get is how Google, a company known for being exceptionally clever in how it manages engineers, hasn't realized that their organizational structure causes this sort of build-and-abandon pattern. In any case, the rest of us at large shouldn't have to suffer just because Google can't figure out how to build meaningfully long-lasting services.
I'm sure they are aware (or at least some people there are aware), especially since it is repeatedly pointed out on the internet. They just might not care.
The constant product churn hasn't hurt ad revenue so why would they care? If they actually had to survive on some of these products they would change how they incentivized their employees.
Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So just to be clear, any project that improves accessibility can never be shut down for any reason under any circumstances? That's a pretty hard stance to take. You make it sound like this feature costs a significant amount of resources and maintenance work. It's simple brokerage between users creating subtitles and creators assigning them to their videos. And then you mention auto-generated subtitles like this is…
> You make it sound like this feature costs a significant amount of resources and maintenance work. It's simple brokerage Yes. This right here. This is typical HN. You have absolutely no idea about what it takes to build or police this feature. You have no data about how much this feature is used and abused and by who. Without knowing anything you are confidently asserting that it costs very little to maintain this f…
> Yes. This right here. This is typical HN. You have absolutely no idea about what it takes to build or police this feature. You have no data about how much this feature is used and abused and by who.
As someone working in the field it's at least possible to make an educated guess about such things.
> Without knowing anything you are confidently asserting that it costs very little to maintain this feature.
No. You are primarily coming up with phrases like this, like "typical for HN" above to make it sound like everyone complaining is a pleb with no clue and you are far superior. You then go on to claim the reason people do this is to "farm upvotes" as a blanket invalidation, instead of contributing anything of substance.
> I trust them a lot more than people who speak authoritatively while knowing very little
I initially criticized that you suggested going by share of users when judging the usefulness of this feature, by comparing it to CC on TV and similar technologies. I tried reasoning why I believe this is an important and valuable feature that should not be removed. Only in my third comment did I mention that I can't imagine that it takes too much work to maintain this feature. But you immediately jumped at it, screaming THIS!! and continued your arrogant ramble about stupid HNers. The only one in this whole comment thread coming across as authoritative is you.
> I'd ask you to reconsider this approach [...] So you do you.
Sometimes it's best to follow your own advice.
Over and out.