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Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

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Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#281

Post by ncr100 »

antioppressor wrote: post #145

Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these creators make. So that means I want the new stuff from the frequented ones on my front page ASAP. Yet, it's a hit and miss. From the remaining 90 channels I never get anything recommended. Why? If I subscribe to a new channel it gets recommended like hell, then…

I suspect YouTube is weighting incorrectly. I miss Human Curation of content.

I am looking for other sources.

It's annoying, more often than joyful, to use YouTube for me. It feels like a half-baked project. I miss Human Curation.

My story: paying long-term YT user (no ads), watched many multi-hour "calm stream / quiet cafe" videos, Recommended list became 75% polluted w/these and un-cleanable regardless of many "Don't Like" actions by me, nuked history, still seeing some.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#282

Post by Noumenon72 »

avian wrote: post #25
dageshi wrote: post #7

Their search has got pretty bad I've noticed. They've changed it to start showing random shit you might want to watch instead of the thing you actually searched for after the first 10 or so videos. They seem to repeat videos they think you ought to watch quite often in search results as well. Significant downgrade on what it used to be.

Bad search that tries hard not to actually show you search results is another one of those dark trends I see everywhere. Have you seen Twitter search lately? The search tab in the app doesn't even have a text field visible by default. It's all just unrelated popular garbage. You have to swipe down to reveal the text field where you can enter your search term. Then you get more unrelated garbage in the "top" result ta…

Meanwhile the only way I can get to advanced search on the web site is searching for "advanced search" in the regular search box.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#283

Post by oceanplexian »

dereg wrote: post #204
antioppressor wrote: post #145

Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these creators make. So that means I want the new stuff from the frequented ones on my front page ASAP. Yet, it's a hit and miss. From the remaining 90 channels I never get anything recommended. Why? If I subscribe to a new channel it gets recommended like hell, then…

The best part of YouTube recommendations - side bar recommendations - have been broken for at least 7-9 years. I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed…

I'm surprised you guys still get recommendations.

YouTube disabled my entire feed a few weeks ago (https://i.imgur.com/Q78FqLQ.png) and is bullying with a big prompt to turn on tracking to restore it. What's funny is that recommendations have worked perfectly well for the last few years with history turned off (Just show me the stuff I subscribed to) but now I have to click on each subscription one-by-one to see content. Good riddance since I've pretty much stopped using Youtube at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#284

Post by LordHeini »

My YouTube recommendations while being logged in are usually quite low quality. Mostly stuff already seen, some gaping mouth people and klickbait the rest stuff I don't care about.

Having a cookie for work and the private stuff while not being logged in works quite well, especially for music.

Adblock removes the Add crap and another plug in keeps the playback in the background going for music.

And I blocked the Shorts block in uBlock since that is 100 percent complete garbage.

No idea what purpose this serves seems to be some low effort Tiktok clone...

Maybe someone can develop a plug-in for vertical video, gaping mouths, click bait and lists (10 YouTube recommendations that you don't care about, number 5 will annoy you) and just dowvotes that so it does not show up in the personal recommendations anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#285

Post by ur-whale »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #278
ur-whale wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their search has got pretty bad I've noticed YT search was never good (that I can recall). When I want to find content on YT, I use Google search with a site restrict [1]. Infinitely better. I invite you all to do the same and forget the YT search box. [1] something like : life of Albert Einstein site:youtube.com

Very ironic that you have to use Google to get decent results in YouTube. The knowledge is in the same company just not applied consistently.

As is often forgotten on HN, a company is nothing but a bunch of people, each with their own incentives and political dominions to defend.

We like to think of a company as one entity and assign to it some sort of anthropomorphic aspect, but that's just a dumbed-down simplification our minds like to make to make dealing with the world easier.

Especially for a company as large as Google, were political infighting between product verticals are a documented problem.

In that regard, it is not ironic at all, there is no such thing as consistency in such a large human organization. Hell, even the army is not capable of doing this properly.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#286

Post by DarkmSparks »

I really really miss stumble video. algorithm was simple, like a video and the next video would be one someone liked who liked that video, dislike and the next would be a video someone like who also disliked that one, just click next and get a video you havent seen before with lots of likes. It was heaven. These days bounce between bitchute or a couple of other for random giggles and 3 or 4 subscriptions on TY on computing and manufacturing. otherwise just stick with ones that get recommended on discord, mostly telegram it seems.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#287

Post by marshray »

ChrisRR wrote: post #190
gherkinnn wrote: post #19

YT on a clean slate is horrendous. Give it a few days and it becomes bearable. I’m mostly impressed. Though there is a growing number of anecdotes surrounding (niche|not palatable to SV) channels who’s subscribers don’t get notified despite the bell thing being on, new videos no longer in feeds, and even people getting unsubscribed for no apparent reason. This is a problem, as I’d sooner give up peanut butter than on…

I've been using the same google account for so many years and still every damn Youtube video I get 2-3 ads for Tiktok. How does the algorithm not get that I have probably watched 10,000 ads for Tiktok, I am not installing that shit! Stop trying!

Tiktok must have ad budget to blow regardless of individualized conversion rate considerations. Google's algorithm is happy to oblige.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#288

Post by iamflimflam1 »

Interestingly I’ve just been discussing this problem with a bunch of maker friends on YouTube. The recommendation system is so broken that we are working on ways to directly reach our audience. First attempt is a newsletter - https://makernews.substack.com

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#289

Post by r721 »

dorkwood wrote: post #133
ddmichael wrote: post #107

You asked about bots and spam but I want to talk about the content degradation. YT has been heavily commercialised and lots of people are trying to make a living out of it. Most videos are about keeping viewers for as much time possible watching your content. As a result what would have been a 2-minute video becomes a 20-minute video with introductions, discussions about the weather and silly sales/crowd manipulation…

I looked up how to pronounce a word the other day and found a 30-second YouTube video. I expected it to be a looping track of someone saying the word over and over, but what I got instead was 25 seconds of someone describing the word's origin (without saying the word itself), and explaining how many people want to know how to pronounce it. Only as the thumbnail overlay popped up at the end of the video did they actua…

Try Forvo:

"Forvo is the largest pronunciation reference online. Our goal is to compile native speaker pronunciations for all the words that exist in the world, including names."

https://forvo.com/faq/

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#290

Post by robotnikman »

bmitc wrote: post #269
dereg wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part of YouTube recommendations - side bar recommendations - have been broken for at least 7-9 years. I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed…

It's pretty clear to me that YouTube wants to steer you towards content they want you to watch and not content that you want to watch. Watching intellectual long-form content does not equal ad revenue, user "engagement", and whatever else bullshit addictive metrics they only care about. None of these systems are for the people. It's either about YouTube's bottom dollar or some influencer's ego. It is really amazing t…

>It is really amazing to me when I come across old YouTube videos that are just people filming or discussing something interesting without fanfare.

This so much. I feel the same way, I remember when people would just make creative videos or goofy animations.

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