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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

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Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#391

Post by addaon »

VikingCoder wrote: post #384
addaon wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being unnecessarily adversarial here. Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start and end. They even show them on the timeline, although they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most replayed"… presumedly because of everyone skipping the ad, losing their place, and then having to ste…

Would it have a negative impact on the businesses who promote those videos? Yes. If it's a negative impact on the businesses who promote videos, how can you say your idea doesn't impact content creators?

Why would it have a negative impact on either the promoted businesses or the content creators?

Promoted businesses currently pay based on (an estimate of) the number of views that the video will get. This would trivially adjust to paying based on the number of views that the sponsorship within the video gets -- that's why I mentioned the requirement to make this available through analytics. If the cost per view stays the same for sponsors, they're now paying for a self-selecting audience of people who are not actively bothered by their ads. (I doubt I'm the only person who, if I as going to pay money for a VPN, would choose literally anything other than Nord VPN just as petty "revenge" for how much of my life they've wasted.) If this slightly-reduced audience does not sufficiently eat their marketing budget, they can find new creators to sponsor.

For the content creators, presumedly the target amount paid directly per skipped ad would be chosen to slightly exceed the expected payout of showing the ad. This is the same conceptual model Premium uses today. So even though the sponsor may be paying them for a 9.5 M view video instead of a 10 M view video -- the payout should more than cover the difference.

I agree that these marginal wins run into systematic concerns if more than, say, 5% or so of users start opting out of embedded advertising this way. But besides being incredibly unlikely -- what would it say about the business model of embedded advertising if 5% of YouTube customers were willing to pay to avoid it!?

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#392

Post by adra »

myko wrote: post #346
josteink wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally it. It’s probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music, but if you’re going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and are able to endure the weird UI… Then it might save you a small monthly fee you’d otherwise pay to competing services. It’d never survive in the market as it’s own service, and it’s clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google Music. I have no idea who decided this thing was a…

Google Music was the best of the bunch and I am sad that it is gone. Google internal power struggles strike again.

If you can self host, I finally found that koel did a relatively decent job covering my old gmusic patterns.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#393

Post by pradn »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #301
numlocked wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems likely that YouTube TV is also going well.

Some numbers would be helpful. I recently got it for Superbowl, because I couldn't be bothered to find pirate stream and cancelled it shortly thereafter. I did look at what else they offer why I had access. Nothing that would make me think of staying anyway. I tend to think all those services rely heavily on old TV-addicts like my wife.

It’s worth getting a TV antenna for events like this. If you don’t have a TV, YouTube TV is a good option but expensive.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#394

Post by stiltzkin »

addaon wrote: post #334
joegahona wrote: post #56

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

The ads haven’t stayed gone, though. I would pay a substantial premium for an option to filter promotions out of videos. I would even pay to just never get promoted videos in my steam. The option to pay for no ads doesn’t exist, today, although it would be easy to ad. Instead, you get to pay to remove one advertiser, and not all the others.

That's why i'm happy with SmartTubeNext with Sponsorblock on Android TV.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#395

Post by adra »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #26

- increasingly ignores your search keywords, instead shoving unrelated stuff at you - removed ability to sort videos by date - removed dislikes what else.....youtube UX has being getting worse for a few years.

I couldn't care 2 shits about the dislike gauge (felt more there to wax the ego of the powerless).

Search as little as I use it is fine. Maybe you just don't have a ton of matching content left to watch, maybe it is worse but this all feels too subjective/situational to speak qualitatively about.

Sort by date of me is only really relevant in a creators page, and the "uploads" stream is always by date recent to oldest, so profits?

The only thing that has significantly gotten worse over the years is their ridiculous increase in ad placement throughout videos. I'm guessing you block ads or have premium because it HAS to be the #1 most hated change in YouTube over the past few years.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#397

Post by c3534l »

ajhurliman wrote: post #328
c3534l wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes are hidden now. I'm not sure they actually have enough information to determine video quality anymore. Its all about gaming the algorithm's "engagement" metrics. No one cares if you enjoyed yourself any longer.

The dislike button is still there, they just don’t want to show the results to advertisers. If advertisers can see the ratio, they start complaining about being associated with “problematic “ content. They probably want to show viewers, but you can’t reveal the stats to only one group.

Yeah, but because its hidden, people don't use it anymore.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#398

Post by thenaturalist »

labrador wrote: post #147

YouTube for the things I enjoy has improved dramatically because the comment section is vastly improved. Everyone used to use YouTube comments as an example of a comment section dumpster fire, but they fixed it. I've seen the recommendations get better then worse then better again as they tweaked the algorithms. Right now it's better than it's ever been. Again, for me. One complaint: I like to upload interesting clip…

> I've seen the recommendations get better then worse then better again as they tweaked the algorithms. Right now it's better than it's ever been. Again, for me.

Teach me your secret to receiving good recos.

The bad quality of recos is the total downturner for me.

Nothing, absolutely nothing interesting for months.

All that's being recommended is totally generic high view stuff, not at all related to my channels or content. Just a global dump of "what's being watched".

No topical clustered recommendations of channels I haven't watched in the past or am not subscribed to.

Good lord they have so much data. In my experience well over a year now, they fail miserably at recommendations.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#399

Post by mablopoule »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #387
jokoon wrote: post #335

I wonder if demonetization practices caused youtube to bleed creators. There was so much drama around youtubers and how youtube treated them. I guess Youtube must always obey its advertisers.

Due to demonitization some types of videos (especially political, "current affairs", medical, anything (even comedy) using curse words, etc.) almost always get demonetized and many people have stopped such content since it's not worth it. During covid times it was so bad, that even mentioning "covid" in a video got some of them demonetized (even in non-medical context, eg. "shippments from china got delayed due to co…

Yes, I wonder how we went from "9/11 never forget" to "Don't even mention the subject if you want to keep earning money for your effort in creating content" [1].

YouTube is weird when it comes to completely arbitrary demonetization (and the absolutely braindead idea of removing the downvote counter) because it's one of the rare plateform that get so much negative goodwill from content creator who depends on it to make some money.

[1] One famous french Youtubeur, "Joueur du Grenier" has to playfully bypass the subject by joking that "Nothing whatsoever happened between the 10th and the 12th September" while showing 2 plastic bottles being hit by paper airplane and then crumbling. He originally put real images of 9/11 while describing the early 00's zeitgeist, but had to do that instead since it caused the video to not be sent to subscribers (or demonetized to oblivion, I forgot which)

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#400

Post by Mountain_Skies »

kerpotgh wrote: post #44
robmusial wrote: post #28

Hopefully this brings back the dislike button. Intellectually I know a change of CEO shouldn't/wouldn't impact a feature like this, but I am still annoyed at its absence and find it makes YouTube substantially less useful. Edit: I understand the dislike button is still there, I misspoke. But for my purposes of seeing like/dislike ratio, it might as well not be there.

Completely disagree. Getting rid of that button has significantly cleaned up the associated comments sections. I’ve also noticed a general improvement in my recommendations. Great move imo.

There's a lot more to YouTube than political videos. I'd estimate over 90% of "reviews" for exercise equipment are automated videos based on data scraped from Amazon. These used to get downvoted heavily, so you could quickly see which videos were worth watching and which ones were created by bots. Now you have to slog through a dozen bot videos to find even one created by a human, giving their actual review. But fuck those of us who use YouTube for something other than political porn because some politician got their feelings hurt by a high dislike count.
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