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Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled

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

#461

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

atombender wrote: post #131
MBCook wrote: 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…

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…

Apple TV apps, in general, are terrible. Every single one [that I routinely use] (including Apple’s apps) regularly crash or lock up, often leaving it to me, to force-quit.

Amazon has started getting into a state, lately, where it ignores the remote, unless I go back, then go forward again.

This kind of “quality” is considered “acceptable,” in today’s world.

AppleTV has a JavaScript-based development system. It also has a fairly classic native Swift system (which I use). I suspect most apps are JavaScript, though.

[EDIT: Added the “routinely use” qualifier]

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

#462

Post by PaulRobinson »

schmuckonwheels wrote: post #237
aidenn0 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad . Seeing a product in a youtube ad now causes me to be more likely to believe it's a ripoff. Things like a cheap $5 fan being sold for $60 as roughly: "Super efficient A/C that will save you $100s on your electricity bill and can cool a room down in just minutes"

I assume you mean all the snake oil pre-playback ads? Mostly dangerous medical advice, solar scams, or wellness quackery. This week, an instructional video I was watching on how to repair my water heater was suddenly interrupted by a campy ad for pussy-hair razors. It was so ill-timed, bizarre, and inappropriate I burst out laughing. The other one I was seeing a lot of, until very recently, was pornographic static ad…

I find the downsampling thing happens on Temu ads a lot.

I do a cryptic crossword from a free UK newspaper most days, because my Dad (many thousands of miles away), also does the same crossword and we can bond over good and bad clues, and so on.

The banner ad on that page is always Temu. It always, always looks pornographic. And then you look closer, and it's completely innocuous.

I have assumed that the alogrithm is just optimising for attention, and it just so happens those images, at that scale, are going to get a lot of attention. But it does mean I can't show somebody else the crossword I'm doing for fear of looking like a degenerate pervert, and I am at risk of causing an issue if I play it on public transport.

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

#463

Post by chickensong »

aidenn0 wrote: post #193
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

I used to pay for YouTube premium. I stopped doing that, uninstalled the apps, and now use it through the browser with adblockers. (Yes, on my phone and iPad.) It works so well I’ve gotten at least half a dozen neighbours to do the same. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a definitive step up in UX.

Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad . Seeing a product in a youtube ad now causes me to be more likely to believe it's a ripoff. Things like a cheap $5 fan being sold for $60 as roughly: "Super efficient A/C that will save you $100s on your electricity bill and can cool a room down in just minutes"

No, why would you allow ads lol.

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

#464

Post by VMG »

csomar wrote: post #413
binarymax wrote: post #130

Why. Why are they doing this. It’s the same with Netflix. I don’t understand. What is the metric that goes up when they show a couple giant videos.

It's an Ad. Next quarter their revenue is up 25%. Since they need to grow 25% each quarter, by the end of 2026 YouTube will strictly display only Ads.

"Make product worse, get money"?

https://dynomight.net/worse/

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

#465

Post by bildung »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #461
atombender wrote: post #131

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…

Apple TV apps, in general, are terrible. Every single one [that I routinely use] (including Apple’s apps) regularly crash or lock up, often leaving it to me, to force-quit. Amazon has started getting into a state, lately, where it ignores the remote, unless I go back, then go forward again. This kind of “quality” is considered “acceptable,” in today’s world. AppleTV has a JavaScript-based development system. It also…

I have zero experience with these, but every app crashing could also indicate a hardware issue. Faulty memory perhaps?

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

#466

Post by fransje26 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #193
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

I used to pay for YouTube premium. I stopped doing that, uninstalled the apps, and now use it through the browser with adblockers. (Yes, on my phone and iPad.) It works so well I’ve gotten at least half a dozen neighbours to do the same. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a definitive step up in UX.

Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad . Seeing a product in a youtube ad now causes me to be more likely to believe it's a ripoff. Things like a cheap $5 fan being sold for $60 as roughly: "Super efficient A/C that will save you $100s on your electricity bill and can cool a room down in just minutes"

> Anyone else notice that most youtube ads are really bad.

Claiming that (youtube) ads are bad is a tautology at this point. What else can be expected from something competing for what is left of a user's attention at the very lowest end of a market already overflooded with crud?

The question should rather be: why would one voluntarily let one's well-being be polluted by such invasive, parasitic crap.

There is nothing normal about ads everywhere. There is nothing healthy about ads everywhere. Ads are not an inevitability.

Run an ad-blocker, protect your mental sanity.

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

#467

Post by arethuza »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #461
atombender wrote: post #131

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…

Apple TV apps, in general, are terrible. Every single one [that I routinely use] (including Apple’s apps) regularly crash or lock up, often leaving it to me, to force-quit. Amazon has started getting into a state, lately, where it ignores the remote, unless I go back, then go forward again. This kind of “quality” is considered “acceptable,” in today’s world. AppleTV has a JavaScript-based development system. It also…

That might be something wrong with your particular device - we've had two Apple TVs over 10+ years and they've been remarkably stable. I didn't even know how to "force quit" - I looked it up when you mentioned it.

Edit: Did have one problem where the centre channel would occasionally drop out - this would go away if you changed the volume and didn't happen that often so wasn't a big deal. I had assumed it was a problem with the Denon receiver we use but when we replaced our original Apple TV earlier this year wit a 4K model it stopped so must have been something to do with the device.

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

#468

Post by kevincox »

ksec wrote: post #450
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

I used to pay for YouTube premium. I stopped doing that, uninstalled the apps, and now use it through the browser with adblockers. (Yes, on my phone and iPad.) It works so well I’ve gotten at least half a dozen neighbours to do the same. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a definitive step up in UX.

>I used to pay for YouTube premium It would have been amazing value had Youtube Music, which came with YouTube Premium were half decent. But it is not. We got Spotify which isn't perfect, and then Apple Music, which for years didn't know what they were doing, and then Youtube Music, which is basically a company doesn't give a damn about Music. We now have three Giant companies over the history of the past 30 - 40 yea…

Yes, I very happily payed for YouTube Premium when it came with Google Play Music. Them turning that off in favour of the awful YouTube Music was the straw that broke the camels back.

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

#469

Post by neop1x »

duxup wrote: post #258

I miss when I could search youtube for "cats" and I'd get just raw cat footage. Now I get cat influencers and influencers selling me on them ... while they tell me how to pick a cat. Maybe I find kinda raw cat footage, with a title that is misleading, annoying music, text bubbles popping all over it :( I just want what I searched for ... youtube doesn't give me that. It's not that unlike when I open the home page, I'…

Sometimes it helps to use intitle:cats and other advanced search operators https://granwehr.com/blog/youtube-search-operators

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

#470

Post by kevincox »

bronco21016 wrote: post #278
walt_grata wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same, but I also added in a tamper monkey script to get rid of the picture in picture thing they force on you as part of their "core experience". I wish their ux designers and PMs were less arrogant and realized their preferences are just preferences and gave us back the ability to disable stuff like this in the app.

Are they the PMs' preferences? Or are they A/B tested "optimizations" to hit their KPIs?

I think it is worse than that. Yes they A/B test. But they also have incentive to show how great their new feature idea is. So they are always picking the metrics that make their feature look better and ignoring the ones that make it look worse. So there is a thumb on the scale here.
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