Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

hollywoodreporter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 284 posts

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

#271

Post by squishy47 »

lairv wrote: post #217
foruhar wrote: post #113

Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources. I can find anything from precision machining, LLM internals, historical footage of WWI, music performances from pretty much any era, and on, and on. There are so many things that I didn't know there was any footage of or that I didn't a single thing about that I find there pretty much daily. I wish the BBC would publish their whole archive through YT.…

Worth noting that most of youtube videos can no longer be discovered through search. Search results can now only be sorted by "Relevance" and "Popularity" while you used to be able to sort by release date Search results are also non-exhaustive and biased towards recent videos as noted in this study https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727 Basically many videos can no longer be discovered if you don't have a url to the video…

you can add search filters to the search bar in youtube.

e.g this will return videos published in that time range with a duration longer than 2m

cat videos after:2014-01-01 before:2014-12-31 >2m

[edit] - the duration doesn't remove shorts I think there's just no shorts published in that time range.

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

#272

Post by ButlerianJihad »

foruhar wrote: post #113

Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources. I can find anything from precision machining, LLM internals, historical footage of WWI, music performances from pretty much any era, and on, and on. There are so many things that I didn't know there was any footage of or that I didn't a single thing about that I find there pretty much daily. I wish the BBC would publish their whole archive through YT.…

One really stunning deep dive into the bowels of weird YT content: https://youtu.be/JAALDob9Ev0?si=vooePQoQM0TURpNK

  Grady Smith published an investigative video titled "This TikTok Girl Band Ruined My Life" on October 18, 2022. The project focuses on Taylor Red, a group of triplet sisters with red hair who originally started as a traditional country band. Smith's video explores their transition from serious musicians to creators of surreal, fast-paced TikTok and YouTube content that appears specifically designed to capture the attention of toddlers and children.

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

#273

Post by izacus »

dmbche wrote: post #268
izacus wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A competitor to YouTube needs to support paying the creators not demand content for free.

I'm fine with using youtubes platform to browse creators and then supporting independently those I watch/want to. No one demanded anything! I'm not certain that the firehose of "content" that youtube is creating is all that valuable to humanity, and I won't subject myself to ads to support it's existence.

This isn't about you, it's about people who make videos for you.

YouTube's competitive advantage is their ability to pay video makers, not their video playback tech. And to make a competitor that has any kind of traction, this problem needs to be solved in a more reasonable way than "I'll somehow find a way to pay someone maybe".

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

#274

Post by [deleted] »

izacus wrote: post #273
dmbche wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with using youtubes platform to browse creators and then supporting independently those I watch/want to. No one demanded anything! I'm not certain that the firehose of "content" that youtube is creating is all that valuable to humanity, and I won't subject myself to ads to support it's existence.

This isn't about you, it's about people who make videos for you. YouTube's competitive advantage is their ability to pay video makers, not their video playback tech. And to make a competitor that has any kind of traction, this problem needs to be solved in a more reasonable way than "I'll somehow find a way to pay someone maybe".

[deleted]

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

#275

Post by wffurr »

hitekker wrote: post #234
wffurr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it respects my time > remove video thumbnail” and “remove YouTube shorts” chrome extension is a must install Which is it? Does YouTube respect your time and attention as a user or does it prey on them? I'm pretty sure it's the latter. The fact that you can pay to opt out of ads has always seemed like a weird business decision to me. Sabotage your ad viewership by siphoning off users with spending money for things l…

Well, it respects my time and I respect my time. Youtube wants me (its idea of me) to have a bright, colorful, exciting experience; I want a dreary and focused one. That's not disrespect, it's just different expectations. I'd like Youtube to one day enable me to disable the fun colors in-app, but that's not a requirement. At the end of the day, the onus is on me, first, to number my days. (Psalm 90:12) I'm sympatheti…

>> I think the blame-game obscures our own agency, which we pretend not to have, and overemphasizes the platform's power, which isn't as strong as we pretend

Yes we do have agency. Also the platforms employ psychologists and designers and run experiments specifically to engagement hack human brains to increase ad watch time. That's a really tough opponent for individual humans.

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

#276

Post by wffurr »

topsphere wrote: post #143
wffurr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube home screen is a total wasteland. It's a disaster. It's a horrific attention suck that's done enormous damage to humanity's collective attention span. Recommendations are barely any better - sometimes they're loosely connected to the video you just watched, but other times it's just more weird addicting YouTube slop. At the same time, YouTube is an incredible resources; a civilizational achievement. It's…

Check out the Unhook extension (available in various browsers), it can turn YT into search box + video player.

That's perfect and it doesn't request unnecessary permissions - it only wants access to youtube.com. Thanks!

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

#277

Post by rconti »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #218
tredre3 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

My understanding is that the percentage of viewers that are actually coming from subscriptions has gone down significantly. The recommendations drive everything, and they don't really care if you're subscribed for what videos they offer.

That makes sense -- yeah, that if you go to the Subscribed page, you still see all that content, but the algorithm is de-prioritizing subscribed channels in the recommended feed.

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

#278

Post by rconti »

peab wrote: post #193
rconti wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well there's a dedicated subscriptions page which is nice. On desktop, the homepage also has subscriptions on the side, with an indicator that someone has a new video.

Yeah, I still have to go to it, AND pass the recommended stuff at the top, and maybe shorts too (?), but at least I can see the stuff i want to see.

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

#279

Post by carlosjobim »

kbelder wrote: post #239
carlosjobim wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just raised premium prices again making it one of my most expensive entertainment subscriptions. The above is from the comment I replied to. Netflix, Prime, Disney, cable TV, satellite TV, etc are without any kind of doubt competitors to YouTube within video entertainment. Just because companies have different ways of doing business doesn't mean they're not competitors. If your kids won't eat any fast food exc…

In your analogy, McDonalds is the only restaurant serving fast food. All others are sit-down cafes. The closest thing to a youtube competitor is Twitch and TikTok. The traditional media companies are not competing in the same field.

All restaurants compete for the bellies of the customers, so the analogy holds very well. Competing streamers like Netflix and traditional streamers like cable TV are very much competitors to YouTube.

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

#280

Post by Ferret7446 »

lairv wrote: post #217
foruhar wrote: post #113

Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources. I can find anything from precision machining, LLM internals, historical footage of WWI, music performances from pretty much any era, and on, and on. There are so many things that I didn't know there was any footage of or that I didn't a single thing about that I find there pretty much daily. I wish the BBC would publish their whole archive through YT.…

Worth noting that most of youtube videos can no longer be discovered through search. Search results can now only be sorted by "Relevance" and "Popularity" while you used to be able to sort by release date Search results are also non-exhaustive and biased towards recent videos as noted in this study https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727 Basically many videos can no longer be discovered if you don't have a url to the video…

Realistically you cannot make every video discoverable given the massive ever growing amount of content.
Post reply on HN