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Doesn't this have more to do with the fact that YouTube content is far more diverse with thousands of niches of varying sizes? YouTube's algorithmic recommendations are terrible but TikTok's model if applied to YouTube would just make it completely useless. I don't want to be shown a video that's generally popular, I want to be shown a video that is related to my interests.

Off Topic but from what little I saw, the content on TikTok is pure cancer.

Your opinion of TikTok is most likely due to your personal lens. With a 60 second time limit though the app there's very little time for thoughtful commentary unless you make the video elsewhere and import it. It's closer to a meme generator than a video hosting site, which makes the loss of creators even more problematic. Creators are willing to jump through hoops for less YouTube issues.

I know their contentID and copyright system is hopelessly broken and biased towards stealing from original content creators at the behest if established and larger publishers and this has been a real thorn in the side. Someone literally posted random white noise and it was claimed by multiple people automatically within seconds. That's a failure on YouTube's part that borders on facilitating cooyfraud. I'm surprised they haven't been sure over it yet.

Here's a primer on tiktok for those unfamiliar: https://slate.com/technology/2018/09/tiktok-app-musically-gu...

Agreed:for all its faults, I can't see the Tiktok algorithm working for YouTube style content. For instance, I like watching long-form electronics & machining videos. I have no interest in gaming channels, but they are incredibly popular. And by the same token, most average people would be incredibly annoyed to get reccomended a video from 'thesignalpath'.

That is understandable, but the diversity of content makes it so that YouTube can't just reccomend videos to everyone. I just hope that a place remains online for the weird niche stuff that is avaliable there, but Tiktok definitely isn't a place for that. It's fine for memes, but that's about it.

The idea is that their presumably clever AI/machine learning whatever should be able to show you some interesting video about game mechanics. But it's never the case, everyone sees very shallow selections.

>Off Topic but from what little I saw, the content on TikTok is pure cancer.

If by cancer you mean people having fun in ways you don't approve, then yes.

Thats no way to talk to the Thought Police

No more cancerous than most youtube comments sections.

Haven't been on Tik Tok that long either, but I stumbled upon this story where a girl send a poor non-binary kid a box full of cosmetics. I found that pretty heart-warming.

The point is it's a bit too quick to label a new medium pure cancer. Given time, people will find ways to create amazing things using any format.

I'm pretty sure you just described the first phase of every product's lifecycle. Everyone plays on the same field, early adopters start winning, everyone else follows... eventually you monetize it and it becomes clear that winners-win is a better business strategy than everyone wins. I don't know how to get around the business physics of this. Not sure anyone does. Tik-tok will eventually become the stagnant incumbent and it will try to suppress its challengers or it will die on the Vine.

> I don't know how to get around the business physics of this.

It seems like the best way to get around the business physics is to switch from a business model to a federation model. Something like Mastodon where hosting costs are distributed and the algorithm can be tweaked for exposure rather than dollars earned for the hosting company. Of course there you have a chicken and egg networking problem and an ease of use problem.

Wow, my favorite new phrase this year: business physics. Thank you!

> die on the Vine

Clever. Also, I think you nailed it.

YouTube is trying to curate their content. Any site that stays around for a while and wants to attract top advertising dollars does it. Reddit curates to an extent. Facebook is in all kinds of trouble for not curating.

I thought Facebook is in trouble for over curating. They tweaked their algorithms for maximum stay on page time and thus promoted clickbaity content that now increasingly drives away longer-ish time users. FB user count is growing, sure, but not in its lucrative home market, the US.

Click-baity and extremist content. Whether the extreme is more and more 80s PC games, cat videos, or politics, FB thrives but making you more passionate/engaged.

Of course dedicating 1 hour per day talking about Saboteur II is not the same as participating in hate-groups, but this has become our problem, not FB's.

Exactly. I was going to make this point myself, but you stated it better than I could. I can imagine a lot of prospective founders wanting to build an alternative platform to mitigate this issue, but then realize that further down the road they will ultimately become the very thing they set out to abolish in the first place.

> I don't know how to get around the business physics of this. Not sure anyone does.

Sometimes I think to myself that if their is less reliance on angel/VC funding from the very beginning, then founders could stay true to their vision. Like how Elon Musk refuses to make SpaceX a publicly traded company as it would squander the ultimate goal of colonizing mars. However, given how resource intensive it must be to process and store petabytes of video every year (exabytes in total), there is just no way around acquiring investment dollars.

Agreed. Same for Facebook. Starting about 3 months ago I suddenly started getting about 1/5 to 1/10 the engagement as I used to on any posts with external links. Which means I cannot share Github repos, interactive websites, or blog posts because nobody will see them.

I'm cool with friends seeing my stuff and not interacting or not liking it because it's not likeable. That's democratic. But I'm NOT cool with Facebook not even showing my content to my own friends.

The external link hating algorithm also extends to important news and events. Recently there was an arson attack in Japan on Kyoto Animation where the arsonist doused gasoline throughout the building and lit it on fire. 33+ people died, 37+ injured. I posted a link for my friends to donate to the official charity event on GoFundMe to help the survivors and victims. After 1 hour, ZERO interactions, ZERO comments, ZERO angry reactions.

I then deleted my post, and re-posted a text-only status with the same message and asking people to Google for the donation link. Within 1 hour, 25+ sad reactions and friends donating. Victims got helped, because I removed the link.

I see the same of friends' accounts as well. Links to blog posts about sexual assault encounters and racism get a fraction of the exposure they used to unless they are already viral, so they often never get seen. While on the other hand someone who posts a photo to Facebook directly about their amazing boba while #livingTheCaliforniaLife gets 100 likes.

Zuckerberg talked about changing the algorithm to "bring people closer together" and promote "meaningful interactions", but the algorithm really just promotes content uploaded to Facebook and down-ranks external content. It's not bringing people together at all.

And it's hurting independent creators even more, who increasingly depend on social media to spread their word.

> I then deleted my post, and re-posted a text-only status with the same message and asking people to Google for the donation link. Within 1 hour, 25+ sad reactions and friends donating. Victims got helped, because I removed the link.

That's funny, in my LinkedIn circle people have been doing this for more than a year, even marketing people recommend putting the link in a reply... apparently Facebook caught up with that.

As a Facebook user I actually like this change. I'd rather see original pictures taken by my friends instead of links to external sites.

Sounds to me like filtering for the dashboard would make more sense? Give users the ability to filter through content types instead of trying to cram through 5 thousand friends streams of content.

As a Facebook user if a friend encounters racism I'd like to see the link to blog post about it as well. If a friend is performing in a concert I'd like to see the link to the concert program. If a friend writes a news article or is in the news I'd like to see it as well. If a friend launches a startup I'd like to know. I often don't see these things because they're links.

I'm referring mostly to friends' content only. Decreased external links from non-friends is fine, but I'd like to see everything from friends and what they're upto, and in whatever form they want to share it in. That's why they are friends.

Nowadays it seems common to make a post without a link but with "link in a comment" note, post link as a comment under that post and like it (to increase change of it being on top). At least many fanpages I keep track of do that.

But I guess it's a matter of time before FB starts fighting that too.

That's sad. It's independent creators, charities, and people whose blogs need to be heard that are getting hurt here.

This is also why I quit Instagram, as I discussed further in another recent post. After implementing their "algorithm" the app was completely ruined. It clearly just caters the same repetitive mindless content to the lowest common demoninator

> If enough people who see it "like" it, it moves to a larger amount of people, and so on until everyone on the app sees it. This is easy, straightforward, and transparent (for the most part, there are special cases and such).

This is the problem of any platform.

What happens when the platform gets so big that you have thousands of videos competing for the same feed position because they are all getting likes?

I see the same thing happening with the dev.to platform. I used to syndicate my blog posts there. I got something like 7,000 followers in a few months while posting a few articles I picked from my site. They got thousands (10k+ on some of them) of views and every article I posted got tweeted from their main account which then got RT'd sometimes hundreds of times, etc..

But for the last few months not 1 of my articles have gotten tweeted and the posts have like 100 views (but have thousands of views on my own site).

So it's the same pattern. It's just a platform getting large enough where unless you get special treatment it's nearly impossible to be visible. In my case I'm probably not going to re-post on dev.to anymore because it's not worth the hassle to manually port those articles to their platform (which takes time).

>"TikTok's algorithm is pretty well-documented by its community: When you post a video, TikTok shows it to a certain amount of people. If enough people who see it "like" it, it moves to a larger amount of people, and so on until everyone on the app sees it. This is easy, straightforward, and transparent (for the most part, there are special cases and such)."

It sounds like your reason for preferring TikTok's approach is tied to an underlying aspect of their business that currently does well for you, but which could very easily (dare I say very likely?) change as their business grows and needs evolve.

What if this is simply what they've determined is the best approach for acquiring content creator market share, and once they feel secure enough, they shift it towards a more monetization-focused blackbox approach? Would you still create content for it? Or are you platform agnostic and you'll go where the views and subscribers are?

That's definitely a possibility and I agree that it will be the likely outcome but I don't think that this should be the take away from the OP.

I think the take away from the OP should be that there are other possibilities. We shouldn't think that the current state of YouTube is somehow optimal or the peak of video sharing simply because it is owned by a behemoth like Alphabet. Too often people assume that because Alphabet employs a lot of highly educated people who often happen to be very intelligent that the products they produce must be the pinnacle of creation but they're not. Their products are often just good enough or designed in such a way to make switching difficult.

You've correctly identified the underlying issue here -- misaligned incentives. As the dominant player in this field YouTube can no longer increase user count so they instead want to maximize per user revenue and the ways to go about are that produce a sub-optimal user and content creator experience.

Tik-Tok and Youtube before it are guilty of a common thing today which is basically business model bait and switch. Cool, Hip tech companies offer one thing to entice new users and once they get established they switch to a model that locks you in.

The solution isn't to just tweak content selection algorithms it's to move to a decentralized content distribution system so that we can't be lured into these kinds of bait and switch traps again.

Does anyone feel like this whole thing, including this top post, is just a carefully crafted advert to TikTok? It's no a YouBoob competitor at all! Maybe a Vine or Snap competitor.

You can't host the same type of content on there. Honestly people should just use PeerTube; either set up an instance or pay for a hosted one.

Just slightly OT - How does PeerTube handle having videos at multiple quality levels? Does it store each video at a few different bitrates?

Maybe the future of video content is just a minute soundbite.

Youtube could be built on an old paradigm where a video is on average 1 hour long.

A carefully crafted minute will beat most longer videos. Applying frugality to the use of our very limited time seems like logical evolution.

>TikTok lets whoever's talented become at least relatively popular

Enjoy it while it lasts.

No user generated content meritocracy ever lasts. Not steam greenlight, not the app store, not new grounds, not YouTube etc.

The problem with your "transparent algorithm" is when the supply of content starts to outpace the supply of 50 users to test it on. Then content will inevitably get unfairly unviewed and the only thing left to do is implement some dodgy [redacted] process.

Don't believe me? Consider this. Your one clip takes 30*50=1500 seconds of user time to categorize (according to your algorithm). If a user spends 1 hr on tiktok per day, they effectively volunteered 3600 seconds of work towards categorizing clips as good or not. Meaning if you post a moderate amount (2, sometimes 3 times per day), you've just cancelled out that entire user and you only spent 90 seconds of your own time to do it. If more than half the people on the platform are moderate posters and 1 hr a day consumers, the system breaks.

Most people on any platform are consumers, and that doesn't seem to decrease as the platform grows. Steam, the app stores, and YouTube are not exceptions.

If it did become a problem, TikTok could change rules so that you must review X clips for every one you post. It wouldn't put off most creators.

The reason user-generated recommendation systems don't last is not because they break down under a flood of content. The reason is that the platform finds it more profitable to promote content based on a different algorithm (whether that is pay to play, sponsored posts, optimise for user engagement/clickbait...).

>Most people on any platform are consumers,

Yes but one post can eat many user-hours. A minority of people can be making content and you would still have a supply glut.

    They never get recommended to anyone because I'm a smaller
    channel, and then I never become big for that reason.

Have you considered doing anything to promote your videos?

This was what stuck out to me.

No mention of actively promoting their content, not even in the comment itself.

Not relying on the whims of the platforms own algorithms seems like the first step.

Personally, I hate it when people do stuff like that and I would not have bothered to read his comment if he was using it to promote himself.

That's a fair point of view. I refer with a footer wouldn't have offended me, or a link in the profile.

That should have said “a reference with a footer”, but apparently I don’t proof read.

Alright, here are references:

https://youtube.com/devenblake (90 subscribers)

https://zikdo.com/randomguydtb/tiktok-user/65909148793126092... (third-party TikTok viewer)

Didn't supply links originally because (a) I was writing a bit hastily and (b) I personally never like it when people shill their accounts.

YouTube's pathology is the logical end result of any recommender based system.

I briefly worked on the recommenders for a fare sized fashion site. TLDR: the entire effort was a waste of money.

About the time I left, they were trying to pivot to a personalization based system. Think StitchFix. (With $1.5b/yr sales, they're doing much better than I thought possible.)

Long neglected is search and discovery. Somehow supporting casual foraging behavior online. We internally had long discussions about how to improve. I know exactly what I want and I worked for the company. Yet, I still couldn't find a likable shirt that fits. Pathetic and unforgivable. (I half considered moving to the search team, but stopped caring first.)

YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, etc. are all the same in this way. While I love YouTube content, it's terrible for finding new stuff.

PS- There's a phrase or term for preferential attachment leading into a (search space) local min (or max) sinkhole or dead end. Not recalling it right now is killing me. Any one know it?

> YouTube's algorithm is: [redacted].

I would guess it's mostly human-based selection, supported by algorithms.

This was super obvious when PewDiePie's videos were snubbed from recommended list for months at a time.

There was also this one instance where CEO promised to boost one rapper's channel (even though supposedly it's all done algorithmically).

That solution for sampling could work for tiktok/vine/... any service that wants to provide you the latest meme. It won't work for YouTube.

How many people will be ever interested in a random topic in a random language? If I was provided with a sample of new uploaded content, I'd be interested in approximately 0% of it. Even if I'm subscribed to 30 or so varied channels right now.

I can understand your feeling, but I'm not sure I share it. I did a series of extremely bad Dwarf Fortress videos on YT. I've gotten hundreds of views for some of them (and only a few for the latest ones: a testament to their lack of quality ;-) ). Mostly I think my views come from DF being a small community and it's easy to advertise to those people. If you are making a general comedy channel, I don't think it is surprising that you will get lost in the shuffle. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Even if it comes up on my suggestions, I'm not going to watch it unless I've heard of it.

I think you are correct that YT caters to the big names, but I can hardly blame them. It makes money for them. The platform is not about being fair: it's about making money for Google. I have no problem with that, really. They host my content for free, make it available to almost anyone, retain it for who knows how long... The fact that you have to do advertising and marketing for your content yourself is not really something that bothers me.

YouTube is no longer for funny short clips, it's not really set up for that.

I think YouTube could do more to expose people to more small channels (especially when you run out of videos from subscriptions if you are lucky enough that they will even deliver them to you).

Some of us are working together to build a YouTube video curation site, following a discussion a few days ago on HN. (although we're thinking mostly kids contents, but it doesn't have to be only that) See the discussion from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20528913

I'm hoping to get a bunch of YouTubers involved, since they want to get their stuff out there, and I think we can do better than YouTube at that. Notice that we won't be serving the videos, but we will embed them in a site.

The goal is to have something to put up on HN within two months.

If you want to join, let me know: rjbrown at gmail

What you're suggesting is a good idea - esp. for children's content - but isn't this sort of disintermediation against Youtube's T&C?

Not sure how it would be, could you elaborate? I mean, they allow you to embed videos in web sites. How would this be against the rules?

We're not downloading and redistributing, if that's what you mean. Only embedding. They still get to show ads.

What if YouTube just does the same, but the goal of the algorithm is not to maximize like/dislike ratios, but actual click-through rate and watch time? [1] It's an ad company after all. Also, the domain of TikTok videos seems very limited in comparison to YouTube videos, so your like-based algorithm might result in bad user retention with this broad strategy of showing random videos.

So the question really is: If YouTube's algorithm is more sophisticated than TikTok's and TikTok is trying to do the same, would they still be as transparent about it?

[1] https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=838

Well, youtube was good for me when I needed to pull the blower motor out of my jeep.

In the current media climate, the risks of recommending small channels probably aren't worth it. The moment something dodgy gets recommended and journalists get ahold of it, the loss of advertiser income site-wide costs both YouTube and other creators far more than they could ever get from better recommendations. The incentives are intentionally stacked against you.

Had never heard of them. Now I have and will be giving them a try. I definitely could see this word of mouth threatening YouTube if not outright killing them. Competition is always good.

(Runs off to check TikTok)

....

(After checking out some videos)

That was actually refreshing. Many of the videos were fun to watch and put a smile on my face. Not bad TikTok!

Ok but what if I don't want to watch random videos that may or may not be good?

As a YouTube consumer that posted one video of a cherry blue equipped keyboard recorded on a Sanyo flipphone (a long time ago)...

Works great for me.

Never even heard of tiktok and if it’s better for creators, great, but as a YT consumer I’m good

Have you ever asked yourself why you put so much effort into making these videos and what your goal is? Why you seek validation from views and likes from strangers?

your pride or your viewpoint doesn't = views. Sounds very entailed, but I would agree with you. It's hard to become something on Youtube, but that's the same for everything.

>Here's why YouTube can go fuck itself

I stopped reading. YouTube is a completely free platform. It will even pay you to host your content there if it's popular enough. You're free to go else where.

TiKTok does not pay you. Your subscribers are just a number, and you have no evidence that most of them are even real and you offer no evidence in your post that any of it matters.

This defense of "free" platforms is reminiscent to feudalism. In feudalism you of course did not pay rent. You simply took care of the land and in exchange your lord would provide you a small share of the produced food, a place to live, protection from attacks, and a [heavily biased] conflict resolution system. All for "free." But of course it wasn't free. The lords were utilizing the labors of the peasant to generate mass surpluses which were in turn used to greatly empower themselves.

In today's times human attention is arguably the most valuable 'commodity' there is. And YouTube is using their peasants to produce it in unprecedented quantities. In exchange they return a small share of the returns produced, a free place to host, protection from attacks, and a [heavily biased] conflict resolution system.

It's of course technically correct that it's free, but the connotation is entirely wrong. Few would idealize for the "free housing" of feudalism, and I think in the future we'll have few that would idealize the "free hosting" of today. In the present? People are simply greatly undervaluing their own worth, much as the peasants did. It took the black death emphasizing their relevance for them to finally understand they were the ones running the show all along.