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YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

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Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#81
post #31

Honestly, I'm not at all surprised. In many ways, YouTube (and other content creation platforms in general) are just a better deal for many people than traditional forms of entertainment. The thing with traditional media is that it's all about limits and compromise and trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The TV and radio airwaves are limited, as is the schedule. Cinemas and screening times are limited.…

> YouTube (and other content creation platforms in general) are just a better deal for many people than traditional forms of entertainment. I think a big factor is that it's low friction. Just open the link or search whatever you want and it plays. It's not like cable where you need to sign up for a service, or Netflix where you need to scroll around in previews selecting for your next show, it's always on your phone…

Oh this is definitely another big part of it. Signing up for any streaming service is a complete pain, especially if you're trying to set it up on a TV or something. Every time someone non-technical has tried to set up Disney+ or HBO or Netflix, they've ended up asking for help due to stuff like having to type in codes via a TV remote or access the same page across multiple devices just to get started.

And that's not even getting into the content part, where the stuff you want is probably on like 15 different services and you're either gonna pay through the nose for something you barely need or you'll have to miss a whole bunch of things because it's less of a hassle that way.

Yeah, it's a lot easier when almost everything can be found on a couple of sites for free, where you don't need an account to view most videos and where everything is about as predictable as it can be.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just anecdotes, but I feel YouTube comments are the bottom of social media. Even Twitter and Reddit are better. But if the 99% garbage is the price of the emerging of channels like 3B1B, I think it's still a pretty good deal.

Their algorithm has a toxic positivity problem where they weight positivity so much the most moronic, saccharine crap sits at the top and you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the comments from LLM slop.

"Epic refresh pull" is my personal pet hate right now. Although "like if you are watching this in " on older videos is close behind.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Don't talk to me like that. My post does not invite this kind of reaction. > Turn off the feed and turn on your brain. Don't suggest I don't use my brain, please. For this purpose I built my own feed reader (as part of all kinds of social functions for my website system, link in bio), which I also use to scan for new videos on Youtube's channels that I follow. It works great. Sometimes I want to discover new channels…

The home page isn’t great. I think what he ment was use the subscription feature, which you seem to do.

I sometime forget that feature exists, but I have channels I like that seem to only show up when I pull up subscriptions and never make it to the “home page suggestions” (I guess my own personal algorithm?).

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#85

Youtube must know better than me what to recommend me out of all the videos... still, I get presented the same shite again and again. To be fair: not everything is shite and Youtube is my favorite social media (especially for discovering new music), but I noticed a big drop in quality videos from one day to the other a couple of years ago. Just opening up Youtube one day and seeing all kinds of thumbnails with people…

curate your watch history a little bit

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#86
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have a very strong, borderline-irrational distaste for ads. I hate advertising, I hate having to watch advertisements, I will go out of my way considerably to avoid ads. I have over 400 blu-rays specifically because I wanted to guarantee that I don't have to risk seeing ads in my media. I liked YouTube Premium because it was an ethical way to avoid ads on YouTube; there's alw…

>If I start seeing ads unless I'm extorted for more money, that might end up being a final straw for me. How is it any different than the price increases that have happened up until now? Or do you mean $27 per month for up to 6 accounts is the most you will ever be willing to pay?

I'm not a huge fan of the current price increase, but what I was referring to was what Amazon Prime did about a year ago.

Amazon Prime has ads by default now, or you can get rid of the ads if you pay an additional $3 a month.

If they start showing some amount of ads on my YouTube Premium, and start charging a fee to get rid of all of them, I think it will just piss me off; I already pay for YouTube Premium, I am not going to pay extra for extra ad free.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#87

Youtube must know better than me what to recommend me out of all the videos... still, I get presented the same shite again and again. To be fair: not everything is shite and Youtube is my favorite social media (especially for discovering new music), but I noticed a big drop in quality videos from one day to the other a couple of years ago. Just opening up Youtube one day and seeing all kinds of thumbnails with people…

It's a constant job on my side, but asking the algorithm to not show me this trash channel seems to be working for me.

As soon as I see a clickbait thumbnail/title, I ask to not show it anymore.

On a daily basis I get 90% of interesting content on the home page.

It particularly works great for music; now I get better recommendations from YouTube than from Spotify (which is my main music platform).

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#88
post #36

My biggest concern about Youtube is that they do not truly have a competitor. They just raised premium prices again making it one of my most expensive entertainment subscriptions.

I suspect they're going to soon do what Amazon did as well, where they start putting ads into the regular YouTube Premium service, and charge an extra $3 a month for a completely ad free experience. I have the family plan shared across six accounts, and it went to $26, which really isn't that much but I'm not entirely sure why they're doing it.

Why would they? The entire point of YouTube Premium is removing ads. There are a few other benefits, but being ad-free is the big one. If they put back ads, I believe that most people will simply cancel their subscription and get a renewed interest in ad-blockers. It makes more sense to just increase the price, as they do.

It is not like Amazon. Most people get Amazon Prime for the "free" shipping, and Prime with ads is a good value proposition, you get shipping but get a discount on the part that doesn't interest you. I don't get why tying a shipping to a streaming service isn't more controversial by the way, it is borderline illegal.

Oh, and by the way, ad-free is not really ad-free, you still have sponsored segments, but these are not under YouTube control.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#89

Youtube must know better than me what to recommend me out of all the videos... still, I get presented the same shite again and again. To be fair: not everything is shite and Youtube is my favorite social media (especially for discovering new music), but I noticed a big drop in quality videos from one day to the other a couple of years ago. Just opening up Youtube one day and seeing all kinds of thumbnails with people…

I noticed that the Shorts pedaling is causing a major deterioration of the service and it started a few years ago.

At some point I looked too long at a thirst trap and now all I get is OF girls jumping on trampolines and stuff like that, despite spending literal days of time on longer form content for every second I've glanced at that stuff. They just really want me to interact with their Shorts doomscroll. It certainly has the scent of enshitification since Shorts.

Re: YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their last video search changes have been the worst thing they've ever done, I can never find anything I actually search for, its pretty obvious its to shove ad stuffed videos in your face, and hide old videos they cannot monetize, but holy crap. There's even some youtube channels where both the video and audio I used to listen to is completely FUBAR'd so somewhere in YouTubes infra, old videos are hinging on a hard…

>hide old videos they cannot monetize All videos are monetized. Some videos don't do rev share with the author, but YouTube still gets the ad rev.

Demonetized videos show fewer or no ads. It's something they implemented because advertisers don't want to be associated with some kinds of content.
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