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I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

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Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#21

Post by jonplackett »

freetime2 wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #11

If you're not familiar with this channel, do yourself a favor and watch your way through his backyard trail build videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsuk8OndHs&list=PL5S7V5NhM8... They're so well done. Sadly, he doesn't do them anymore because Youtube's algorithm doesn't make it worth his while. Evidently, he gets the same traffic & revenue from a 10 minute video reviewing "stupid bike gadgets" into the camera…

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them. I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting relea…

I’m gonna say it’s YouTube. They are obsessed with pushing short form shit videos to me despite me never wanting to watch them. I hate YouTube shorts so much

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#22

Post by globular-toast »

nrabulinski wrote: post #16

I hate how he’s doing the kind of project a ton of people would like to help with, for free and on their own time, yet he’s making an LLM do all the interesting work. He can’t code so he vibecodes the whole frontend. He can’t reverse engineer so he leaves Claude with the uart connection. He doesn’t understand something so he makes an LLM explain it. With his platform he could easily find a person (or a couple) who co…

Yep, we're becoming further and further apart by the day.

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#23

Post by marysol5 »

jonplackett wrote: post #21
freetime2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them. I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting relea…

I’m gonna say it’s YouTube. They are obsessed with pushing short form shit videos to me despite me never wanting to watch them. I hate YouTube shorts so much

In what context do you get Short Form videos? I've never once been pushed to them.

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#24

Post by close04 »

freetime2 wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #11

If you're not familiar with this channel, do yourself a favor and watch your way through his backyard trail build videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsuk8OndHs&list=PL5S7V5NhM8... They're so well done. Sadly, he doesn't do them anymore because Youtube's algorithm doesn't make it worth his while. Evidently, he gets the same traffic & revenue from a 10 minute video reviewing "stupid bike gadgets" into the camera…

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them. I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting relea…

I think it's the algorithm. Occasionally I get recommended videos that are 5-8+ years old (so old in terms of Youtube years) with no new comments so presumably not getting a lot of recent views. But soon comes a wave of fresh comments wondering why they never discovered this video before. So the algorithm starts the cycle, not the organic user preferences.

For this particular channel, I watched a bunch of his videos on this Reevo bike In January 2025, and a lot of bike/cycling related videos in general. Despite this clear preference to guide the algorithm, Youtube stopped recommending this channel to me. It disappeared from my feed.

I always suspected Youtube "motivates" creators to pay for promotion by giving them a taste for free, how it looks like to be on everyone's feed, and then takes them off.

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#25

Post by anukin »

freetime2 wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #11

If you're not familiar with this channel, do yourself a favor and watch your way through his backyard trail build videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsuk8OndHs&list=PL5S7V5NhM8... They're so well done. Sadly, he doesn't do them anymore because Youtube's algorithm doesn't make it worth his while. Evidently, he gets the same traffic & revenue from a 10 minute video reviewing "stupid bike gadgets" into the camera…

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them. I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting relea…

Do you have some recommendations for photography channels on YouTube?

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#26

Post by jowsie »

_def wrote: post #3
himata4113 wrote: post #2

A bit of a tangent, but I hate the way this channel uses AI. There's moments where the creator doesn't really know what they're talking about so they ask AI which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, I don't mind it! However, the way it's repeated verbatim mimicing the speech style of the creator is so offputting I don't really know how to describe it, sounds like someone trying to speak a language they don't know…

Maybe the trick is to own it - are AI vtubers already a thing?

Neuro-sama has been a thing for quite a while, and is much more interesting than ChatGPT in a waifu suit. https://youtube.com/channel/UCLHmLrj4pHHg3-iBJn_CqxA

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#27

Post by atoav »

freetime2 wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #11

If you're not familiar with this channel, do yourself a favor and watch your way through his backyard trail build videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsuk8OndHs&list=PL5S7V5NhM8... They're so well done. Sadly, he doesn't do them anymore because Youtube's algorithm doesn't make it worth his while. Evidently, he gets the same traffic & revenue from a 10 minute video reviewing "stupid bike gadgets" into the camera…

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them. I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting relea…

As a young film student my Prof asked me whether I wanted to go to a talk to which he was invited. It was on the genres shown in German public television.

There the summary of the discussion was: Our core demographic are 60 to 70 year olds which is why we only make shows that appeal to 60-70 year olds and our core audience watches TV while doing household chores, so it needs to be simple to follow, so they can do household chores while watching.

I told them that to me this sounds a lot like circular logic, where they justify the things they are doing with the outcomes that produced. It is obvious there are other markets targeting different audiences (e.g. the likes of Netflix have been explicitly mentioned) and these markets are growing based on the way demographics shift.

A bit like a drug dealer that says he can't do honest work since all his customers are drug addicts, they are using the status quo as an excuse to persist the status quo.

The real way to think about these things is to consider them feedback loops. If all your content targets a specific demographic of course you're gonna have more audience members of that demographic, which again leads you to make more content for said demographic, which leads to more audience members of that demographic which... Until you hit some systemic limit, e.g. you have saturated the market or it turns out your content isn't that appealing to begin with in comparison to other stuff.

That means if you want to be strategic about this you need to give incentives to creators to produce stuff for audiences you don't already have. Even better: you need to become a partner these creators can and want to trust in.

These are the levers YouTube needs to pull if they want to stay a relevant platform that people enjoy spending their time on.

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#28

Post by fnands »

nrabulinski wrote: post #16

I hate how he’s doing the kind of project a ton of people would like to help with, for free and on their own time, yet he’s making an LLM do all the interesting work. He can’t code so he vibecodes the whole frontend. He can’t reverse engineer so he leaves Claude with the uart connection. He doesn’t understand something so he makes an LLM explain it. With his platform he could easily find a person (or a couple) who co…

I'm pretty sure if he did that someone would complain that he is using people as free labour to increase his youtube revenues.

It's impossible to do anything on the internet without someone in the peanut gallery telling you you are doing something wrong.

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#29

Post by reddalo »

jonplackett wrote: post #21
freetime2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them. I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting relea…

I’m gonna say it’s YouTube. They are obsessed with pushing short form shit videos to me despite me never wanting to watch them. I hate YouTube shorts so much

I also hate YouTube Shorts. Just put them out on another website.

Luckily I use uBlock Origin and ReVanced, and I blocked all Shorts from even appearing.

Re: I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

#30

Post by jonplackett »

marysol5 wrote: post #23
jonplackett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna say it’s YouTube. They are obsessed with pushing short form shit videos to me despite me never wanting to watch them. I hate YouTube shorts so much

In what context do you get Short Form videos? I've never once been pushed to them.

In the Home Screen it is always completely full of shorts. In my recommendations, full of shorts. There’s no way to just never be shown shorts. It’s very clear from the layout that they REALLY want you to watch shorts. I assume it’s because they are more addictive = more views = more ads. But I pay for YY premium! So why do they still insist on putting shorts everywhere? If I want shitty short videos I’ll use TikTok
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