Hacker News Reader

> the solution to this is not for them to pivot to stupid information bytes, but for them to make a better damn algorithm

Keep in mind that the best algorithm is always the human mind. People know what they like and that makes them happy. If you're following creators X, Y, and Z, you don't need a fancy algorithm to expose their videos to their followers, you just a place to show their videos in the order published.

Better YouTube algorithms might help in some cases like discovery of totally new channels and creators that people might be interested in. YouTube should go nuts and do whatever crazy experiments they want on some recommendations page. But the solution of trying to dictate precisely what users see all of the time through making the entire site a big algorithm-festival will always be suboptimial.

If only there were a podcasts application for video.

RSS, etc surely support such things, right?

> Improve. Your. Algorithm.

These established sites are now designed to show you content most profitable to them, not the content you’re most likely to like.

This is why YouTube will endlessly recommend news videos to me. I’ve never watched a news video on YouTube, and any time I see it on my “Home Screen” I flag it as “Don’t show me this.” Is the algorithm comically idiotic? No, it’s trying to shove profitable (for them) content down my throat.

These platforms are fundamentally broken and we’re just waiting around for the actual implosion.

>this is sad because youtube is and always has been extremely resistant to public pressure. it doesn’t matter how much people complain, this is going to happen.

Well of course they are. YouTube isn't a public utility. And we aren't its customers, we're its product.

I think Instagram, youtube, and even a couple of porn sites have realized that they get really good engagement out of their product (users) with shorts and that's why they're doing it.

HN folks are not the target demographic, and we're a tiny minority, so they don't care what we think, even if we're justifiably annoyed.

I'd love to see a better algorithm on youtube too, but that's not their priority.

Surely as a paid subscriber I am a customer?

Lol you poor thing. No, you pay for the privilege of propping up Google's revenue. They'll still track everything you do and sell that to advertisers.

>same for removing dislikes to protect corporations from negative press

I like how the internet accepts this as a fact, despite there being zero evidence for this. It doesn't matter that corporations were historically a lot less likely to hide dislikes than independent creators. It doesn't matter that corporations that get a lot of dislikes aren't ones that that advertise much on Youtube (e.g. CNN), so they wouldn't have any leverage. It doesn't matter if they threatened to stop advertising, they'd hurt themselves as much as they'd hurt Google because the existence of the dislike button doesn't make ads any less valuable. What matters is that Google is a big corporation, and big corporations are all friends with each other.

People, think this sort of vague outrage towards "the elite" is productive, but ironically it just screws them over. Any sleazy politician or cryto influencer can peddle the same vague outrage to easily amass support.

What's your explanation, then? The "protect advertisers" theory wasn't just born out of outrage IMO, it's also the simplest explanation.

> it's also the simplest explanation

Care to address all the reasons why I described this is unlikely?

> What's your explanation, then?

The simplest explanation is their official one that they want to protect smaller creators from brigading. The simplest cynical explanation is that they noticed from A/B tests that hiding dislikes increases user retention, which is more profitable for them. It's likely a mix of both.

IIRC that decision was made shortly after Wojcicki (YT chief at the time) posted a video that got some incredibly huge quantity of dislikes vs likes, and/or Biden had the same issue. Don't recall the exact timeline. Dislikes disappeared shortly afterwards. Seems more likely it was in response to powerful people being upset at being disliked than commercial imperatives.

Can’t decide if wilfully blind, thoroughly propagandized or just carrying water. Guess it doesn’t matter in the end.

> It doesn't matter that corporations were historically a lot less likely to hide dislikes than independent creators

Is there data on this? I've seen hiding the likes bar to be significantly more common in videos published by corporations. Especially when it's a video talking about a product.

News media like CNN usually had the bar enabled, but nearly every other genre of corporate videos had the bar disabled.

No need to denigrate teenage girls.

To be fair, HN commenters probably all have opted out of the Personalized Ads. Have you done it, by the way?

yes I have, but what has this got to do with it?

> 5 videos I’ve already watched

Are you signed in and/or using the same device?

Not OP but I get tons of videos I've already watched. It's funny how terrible their recommendations are at this point :)

If they bring back the old algo then they’ll summon he who must not be named again and democracy dies.