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The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

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Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#71

Post by johnfn »

slg wrote: post #56
johnfn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. How did you think they did automated closed captioning..?

I don't know why you quoted this snippet to ask this question when I addressed it literally in the next sentence of my original comment, but I guess I need to reiterate it. Automatic transcripts/ closed captioning suggest Google heard what was said. This feature suggests Google understands what was said. Think of it like reading a foreign language that uses the same alphabet. You can give me some French text and I ca…

The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is because I can't understand its relationship to your argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here. It's just a substring match.

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#72

Post by slg »

johnfn wrote: post #71
slg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you quoted this snippet to ask this question when I addressed it literally in the next sentence of my original comment, but I guess I need to reiterate it. Automatic transcripts/ closed captioning suggest Google heard what was said. This feature suggests Google understands what was said. Think of it like reading a foreign language that uses the same alphabet. You can give me some French text and I ca…

The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is because I can't understand its relationship to your argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here. It's just a substring match.

Ironically you seem to be focusing too much on the exact words and phrases I used rather than the deeper meaning. So let's just get completely away from words like "knows" and "understanding" which seem to be tripping multiple people up.

> It's just a substring match.

Let's just say this is true. That is a super simply process, but what would it look like?

Step 1: Transcribe the audio into text

Step 2: Run substring match on text

The transcribing/close captioning feature only does step 1. This shows that a step 2 is possible. I think you would have to be naive to think the capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for only this feature and would never be used for anything else. This feature is announcing that Youtube isn't merely creating transcripts of the audio in videos, it is running some unknown amount of analysis on that data.

As I said in my original comment, "it isn't that I didn't know Google had this ability", but this is literally a glowing sign pointing to this fact. I think the danger of Google reminding people of this has potential to outweigh the benefit of the "that's cute" reaction that this is designed to elicit.

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#73

Post by jrvieira »

slg wrote: post #72
johnfn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is because I can't understand its relationship to your argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here. It's just a substring match.

Ironically you seem to be focusing too much on the exact words and phrases I used rather than the deeper meaning. So let's just get completely away from words like "knows" and "understanding" which seem to be tripping multiple people up. > It's just a substring match. Let's just say this is true. That is a super simply process, but what would it look like? Step 1: Transcribe the audio into text Step 2: Run substring…

so you're not so worried that they do this analysis (this is very tame comparing to what they really do), but rather that they are transparent about it?

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#74

Post by OJFord »

gruez wrote: post #25
slg wrote: post #18

I know this is just a fun little easter egg, but features like this seems a little risky to me. It calls attention to the fact that Youtube isn't just serving me videos neutrally, it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. It highlights how much Google analyses the content of its videos in a way that more neutral features like automatic transcripts don't and in turn how much that can…

> It calls attention to the fact that Youtube isn't just serving me videos neutrally, it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. It highlights how much Google analyses the content of its videos in a way that more neutral features like automatic transcripts don't and in turn how much that can teach Google about me based on the videos I watch. How else do you think the "up next" and "re…

I'm not saying I thought this was the case, but I can think of:

1) similarity to other users (people who watched this also watched)

2) similarity in words in title or description (or the generated transcript)

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#76

Post by johnfn »

slg wrote: post #72
johnfn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is because I can't understand its relationship to your argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here. It's just a substring match.

Ironically you seem to be focusing too much on the exact words and phrases I used rather than the deeper meaning. So let's just get completely away from words like "knows" and "understanding" which seem to be tripping multiple people up. > It's just a substring match. Let's just say this is true. That is a super simply process, but what would it look like? Step 1: Transcribe the audio into text Step 2: Run substring…

> I think you would have to be naive to think the capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for only this feature and would never be used for anything else.

Why would you have to be naive to believe this? The subtitles, with timings, are available on the client-side already. You seem to allude that doing this work would require some sort of deep analysis work. I think it's really more like 5 lines of JS, and 4 of them are producing the fun animated gradient :P

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#77

Post by SllX »

rft wrote: post #42
cjs_ac wrote: post #27

Given that YouTube uses the like and subscribe buttons as inputs for its recommendation algorithm, doesn't this feature just aid and abet content creators in gaming YouTube's system?

I have noticed multiple YT content creators just casually mentioning things like "like and subscribe for the algorithm" and even "leave a comment for the algorithm", which people do, sometimes just saying "comment for the algorithm". One creator I remember did a "if you watched until the end comment 'boat'" or similar, which of course is again just baiting more comments. It also nudges recurring viewers who know that…

Just yesterday I discovered a channel that asks for people who watched all the way to the end to replay the video at 0.25x speed to support the channel. I have zero clue if that would work and I’m not going to do that, but he makes good videos so I mean, if others want to do, it’s whatever I guess. I no longer care about crap like that, YouTube is essentially its own medium at this point.

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#78

Post by seydor »

slg wrote: post #18

I know this is just a fun little easter egg, but features like this seems a little risky to me. It calls attention to the fact that Youtube isn't just serving me videos neutrally, it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is said. It highlights how much Google analyses the content of its videos in a way that more neutral features like automatic transcripts don't and in turn how much that can…

> at the exact moment it is said.

I mean, it has autogenerated captions, translated (which i use to learn languages, fun)

Re: The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button" [video]

#79

Post by [deleted] »

Axsuul wrote: post #36
vijucat wrote: post #11

What about if I say, "Please don't smash that like button" or "Smash that like button if you're an idiot"? Just wondering if it is based on transcript-grepping or does it even consider sentence semantics? (I know, overkill. Please don't implement that, YT engineers. You've heard of "boiling the ocean to make a cup of tea", right?)

It should still highlight it to clarify which button they're referring to

[deleted]
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