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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

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Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#441

Post by RankingMember »

kentosi wrote: post #212

Dear Youtube: Please please please have an option to filter out "shorts" on the web version. None of the normal controls exist: playback speed, jump to position, etc. The desktop web interface is a terrible place for these.

Lot of replies to this describing hacks/workarounds/scripts for something that should really just be an option in the official interface. I get that this is hackernews and everyone's just trying to be helpful, but I'm sick of needing to do work on my end to work around crap UI decisions.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#442

Post by benatkin »

jongjong wrote: post #436
benatkin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. She was the CEO and was clearly not great from the perspective of users, in part because the real customers are advertisers. People who say "um, ok" when a CEO at a user-hostile corporation leaves are not haters. I know there are plenty of actual haters but I don't see "so much hate". Also from Wikipedia: "YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were early employees of Pa…

If you're CEO of such a successful company and are surrounded by smart people, you don't have to be very good to keep the thing running... Any modest person with half a brain could do it. Getting respect from employees these days is not difficult; most of them are extreme conformists and worship power for its own sake. They will interpret any dumb words out of your mouth as words of wisdom. Even if everything you say…

She did a good job, however, we had to see negative likes removed, a lot of really quality content demonetized, content creators removing words to avoid demonetization, and annoying af discovery algorithms. These were all things that she helped bring about, but that were in keeping with Google's strategy. Removing dislikes is similar to Google's search ads, where Google is happy to show all kinds of crap and it's up to you to filter them out. Caveat emptor.

Still, I think YouTube is better than average for social media. Its censorship of words sucked, but its censorship of ideas wasn't so bad. It was worse on other platforms.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#443

Post by cobertos »

daltont wrote: post #199

Hopefully, the "stop showing me this ad" feature gets fixed. I'm tired of always being presented with an ad for the "Dixie Store". No, I don't want to shop for Confederate flags and other garbage.

Why not use an ad blocker? There's no incentive for them to fix it.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#444

Post by dmix »

spike021 wrote: post #440

YouTube recommendations have always sucked for me. But ever since Shorts was released, I constantly get amazing science channel shorts that are usually bite sized chemistry or physics experiments. I'm really enjoying them. Not sure how they even came to be recommended to me because I was never one to search for them before. Kids have it so good these days.

Maybe they learned from TikTok? What matters most is what people watch from beginning to end, not what people "like and subscribe" to. Short videos are an easier signal for this than 1-20min+ videos.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#445

Post by cobertos »

robotnikman wrote: post #152
tasubotadas wrote: post #86

That crazy push for 10min and longer videos was a sole reason why tiktok happened. I still remember that there used to be short and super informative videos before but now everything is so stretched out with low info density

I remember some of the best youtube content I've seen was less than 10 minutes in length, like short animations and other content which took a lot of time to produce in small amounts.

It's still out there, it's just harder to find. YouTube also doesn't want to send it to my subscriptions inbox so I now prefer NewPipe which actually shows me what each channel posts.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#446

Post by voisin »

sammalloy wrote: post #424
voisin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear not! Just serve more ads before and between every video! Sacrifice your user at the altar of advertisers and all will be fine in the world.

YouTube is almost unwatchable. The show I’m viewing now has an ad every minute or so. I don’t see how they will survive another few years. They’ve literally angered their user base to the point of abandoning the platform.

There’s no alternative (though Tik Tok certainly is doing a decent job of taking all the short content). I think it would be a gangbuster opportunity for Apple to integrate user created content into Apple TV. They don’t need to rely on ad revenue, and similar to Microsoft kneecapping Google with ChatGPT, it would be a great opportunity for Apple to further hurt Google by winning longer form video content and driving advertisers away from YouTube.

But I am not sure Apple has the stomach for the controversy that often surrounds user generated content. Maybe Facebook would be the better competitor, though they are as beholden to advertisers as Google.

All I know is that it will take a massively well financed group that can sustain the server costs of video streaming with most of it generating zero revenue.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#447

Post by robswc »

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…

I honestly think YouTube could have stood up to the advertisers... I also think it was way overblown. Too many people got caught in the crosshairs.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#448

Post by oehpr »

r3vo wrote: post #428
Whatarethese wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you downloaded the extension that brings that back?

Only works against the database the extension manages. Biased in comparison to the native dislike button.

I used to think that was a negative until I realized I had more in common with the people who had that extension installed than I did with youtube at large.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#449

Post by jfoster »

paulpauper wrote: post #100

my suggestions: 1. make dislikes visible 2. no more covid warnings/disclaimers on content. Public health is important, but this beyond the scope or role of youtube. If the CDC, WHO etc. want to buy YouTube ads warning of covid misinformation, they can do so, and can afford to. 3. do more about accounts being hacked and repurposed for elon musk livestream scams 4. fewer ads, or no more 15 second ads. The max length sh…

Regarding warnings/disclaimers on content, I find genuinely helpful ones are far more palatable than censorship. I think Twitter's Community Notes is a great example of this.

From what I've seen, YouTubers are concerned about their videos getting censored or demonetized to a degree that indicates YouTube are being far too heavy handed.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#450

Post by oehpr »

galleywest200 wrote: post #383
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tired of the ads asking "Are you gay? Take this 10-minute quiz!"

Or alcohol ads when you have given up the juice.

Oooof. You may be able to disable that in googles ad choices setting. Assuming you have a google account.

To get there, when you see a youtube add, there should be some text in the bottom right, "Ad 1 of 2" and then an information icon, click that. and scroll down the popup and you should see "ad settings"

If you don't have an account then I'd really recommend an ad blocker in this circumstance.

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