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Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

jayd.ml

301–310 of 728 posts

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I have the right to pay someone to watch the ads + videos for me, and then summarize me the video minus ads. Just like I have the right to hand my ad-full newspaper to someone, have them cut out the ads and hand me back the now ad-free one. If both of those are legal and ethical (I’d be curious what argument someone would make against this), then offloading this work to a machine should be just as ethical.

You can rationalize this any way you want, but at the end of the day you're screwing over not a faceless corporation - but the very people who put out videos on YouTube. It's fine if you're OK with it, but don't pretend that you're not doing that.

The choice of an individual to skip an advertisement has minimal impact on the content creator or the platform. This person isn't accountable for the decisions of others regarding whether they watch the ad or not. Ultimately, their actions only affect themselves and do not influence anyone involved in the advertisement process.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#302
One of the things I dislike about the Youtube app on Apple TV is how it appears to maintain an entirely separate list of recommended videos, specific to the kinds of videos I tend to watch on TV, versus the phone and desktop (which might themselves also each have their own recommendation algorithm, but my behavior there is closer so as to not notice).

The difference is stark. I use YouTube on the Apple TV to play mostly background videos; 8 hour AI generated lofi mixes, burning fireplaces, things like that. Ambiance. Its all that gets recommended now when I pull up the app; but only on the TV.

This behavior is somewhat desirable: but the issue is, the youtube apple TV app is an abhorrent experience that feels deeply tailored to stop you from getting to any content that is not expressly recommended. And these videos are all that get recommended. A new Linus Tech Tips video might be in my feed on desktop/mobile; but finding that video on the TV literally requires me to search "Linus Tech Tips" and go to their channel -> all videos.

I certainly don't mind the platform raising the prominence of videos I tend to watch on that platform; but to me it feels like I should be able to at least scroll down on the home page a bit to get a more "centralized" view into everything my account watches and would be recommended.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV. For example, if you pause the video by clicking the main action button brings up an overlay that takes up almost the whole screen, so you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame. How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. For some reason up means back and down means to open some additional UI with…

This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem. But no government seems to care—-and what will you do, stop watching YouTube?

This is nonsense. Among other things, the YouTube app on Apple TV is superior to the one on Android TV. No loud startup sound, the back button exits the app rather than popping up a menu asking "if I'm sure" or if I want to go to a screensaver mode - clean straightforward UI.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#304
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm going to state the truth that I never agreed to be shown ads, and you are extremely weird for lying and claiming that I did. Google wants to show me ads. I don't want to see them. I demonstrated this by blocking them. Google continues to show me videos anyway. Clearly they're ok with the arrangement. They are free to present me with written terms, or gate all their videos behind a login, but they choose not t…

[flagged]

did you give the grocery store an account name and tons of other information while stealing and they still allowed it? and welcomed you back the next visit, for years on end using those same credentials?

also did the grocery store start out as a free food store similarly to youtube? and then just expect people pay despite not enforcing it?

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#305

It's difficult to capture into words how much contempt I hold for Google and Amazon, two companies which lost their way long ago and are now actively user-hostile. YouTube has gotten worse with every release. Endless, pointless UI changes. Sneaky resolution downgrades. When your video says "Auto 1080p" it's like 480p quality, manually choose 1080p and watch it change. Amazon has been working overtime to make your exp…

>entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable If these changes are not hurting user metrics are they really making their lives miserable? When you are optimizing an experience for billions of users, numbers are the only thing you can trust.

I’m still using Amazon as much as I was before, it’s just a more miserable experience now which I can feel and the annoyances are compounding. I’ve not yet done anything that would show in their numbers, like cancel my prime or start trying to shop elsewhere or even boycott them altogether, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy as I was and would say they’re pushing me to a point of defection. All to say, they should be smart enough to not just do uninformed numerical analysis. They need to hone a gut feeling for how pleased people are or build metrics around that. They should see satisfaction is waning. In fact, it may be what’s driving this behavior. If satisfaction is down, people leave, sales slump, then they make more user hostile changes in hopes to cover the sales gap with existing customers, but results in satisfaction going down at every pass. It’s a vicious cycle.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#306
post #198
post #19

I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. I can’t wait to find out how they screwed this one up. My personal long-term complaint is the length of video titles. Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”. Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But t…

There are two apps called "DeArrow" and SponsorBlock that basically everyone should be using. DeArrow replaces thumbnails and titles with crowd sourced versions. I can't use youtube without it anymore. Usually the titles get replaced with stuff like "How to build a table" instead of "Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!". Same with thumbnails. No longer are they over-saturated close up AI gene…

Neither of these are available on Apple TV. Otherwise, you make a good suggestion; install them where available.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video. Did I? Can you tell me where I made this deal? I navigated to YouTube.com, I don't see a contract, I don't see a place to sign or a hand to shake. Where is this bilateral agreement? I think what you meant to say was, YouTube really very much wants me to watch their ads, and I don't care to, so I won't. If your counter is that then Yo…

> I've already archived all the videos I care about That's quite literally what we call piracy.

No, that's just a you thing.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is the surefire way to stop AI scrapers from accessing your website? If there is no way, how can this be an acceptable ask? It already sounds like you're using several IPs to access sites, which seems like a work around to someone somewhere trying to limit the use of one IP (or just lack of desire to host and distribute the data yourself to your various hosts). Just because you can do something doesn't mean…

The answer is right there: use authentication with cost per load, or an IP whitelist. GP is absolutely right. If your server is just going to send me traffic when I ask I’m just going to ask and do what I want with the response. Your server will respond fine if I click through with different IPs and it’s just a menial task to have this distribution of requests to IPs, which is what we made computers for. Yeah, you’re…

As long as we all understand that this mentality is advocating for the end of an open internet. This is the tragedy of the commons in action, the removal of a common good because the few that would take advantage of it do. Just because something is programmed to be a request and response interaction (although the use of blocklists and robots.txt and etc should reveal that it's not a simple request and response interaction), does not mean we should have to go all or nothing in ensuring it's not abused. We are still the operators of programs, it's still a social contract. If I block an IP and the same operator shows up with a different IP, it's like if I got kicked out of a bar and then came back with a fake mustache on and got confused why they think it's wrong because they don't have a members list.

A personal website is like a community cupboard or an open access water tap, people put it out there for others to enjoy but when the reseller shows up and takes it all it's no longer sustainable to provide the service.

Of course, it's all a spectrum: from monster corporations that build in the loss to their projections and participate in wholesale data collection and selling to open websites with no ads or limited ads as a sort of donation box; from a person using css/js to block ads or software to pirate for cheaper entertainment to an AI scrapper using swathes of IPs and servers to non-stop request all the data you're hosting for their own monetary gain. I have different opinions depending on where on the spectrum you are. But I do think piracy and ad blocking are on the same spectrum, and much closer to acceptable than mass AI scraping.

These responses were more about your comments about AI scraping then the piracy vs ad blocking conversation, but in my opinion the gap between them and scraping is quite large.

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not generating revenue for a lot of companies who are in the advertising business. That's not the definition of piracy. Find another word.

[flagged]

> Youtube gonna fail if everyone and I mean everyone suddenly stopped watching ads

Maybe that would be better? :)

Re: Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

#310
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorts are up to 3 minutes long now. At this point they are just vertical videos. I fully expect the supported length to keep increasing!

Vertical videos with much shitter UI. Inability to skip ahead or turn back may be understandable for <30 second videos, but not more.

They put seek controls on them quite a while back.
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