YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down
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I've seen the recommendations get better then worse then better again as they tweaked the algorithms. Right now it's better than it's ever been. Again, for me.
One complaint: I like to upload interesting clips from this or that. I got my first copy right strike on a clip of Russel Brand talking to Terry Gross of NPR about life on heroin because I thought it was helpful for people. YouTube told me I could only get 3 strikes before they disabled my account, which I assume they mean they will disable my GMail. I can't have that so I don't upload interesting clips anymore. In fact, I don't upload anything since I don't want to lose my GMail. So the complaint is why didn't YouTube tell me when I uploaded it that I couldn't? I'd be ok with that.
So I give Ms Wojcicki a people choice grade of B+ overall
The Beatles - Within You Without You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsffxGyY4ck
Do you see a bunch of spam comments? Maybe my ad blocker is blocking them?
Some even try to impersonate the creator, using some weird V to pretend to be a checkmark.
Most finance videos (like general technical analysis, I don't watch crypto content) I watch are full of Whatsapp or Telegram scammers. Even a history channel I follow had to warn that the creator would never solicit money through Whatsapp or Telegram.
It's so reliable on CNBC clips that I almost think those videos comment sections could be used as a training set for spam prevention.
What do you like about it? Ever since they made comments a signal for discovery and openly communicated that, every creator and their dog will include call to actions to get viewers to comment some mindless nonsense, and users will happily oblige ("for the algorithm"). At least half the comments I see are completely useless.
Then there's the censorship issue where they hide comments but do not adjust the count, so it'll say "2 replies", but none will show up because they're hidden.
And last but not least ... it's has no useful nesting, just top comment and then everything else below it. With large audiences come hundreds or thousands of comments. Yet there's no structure. And you can't search in comments.
So I'm really surprised that you think they've been improved much and are on a good level. What exactly do you like about them?
Similarly I see YT content creators asking people to turn off their FM radios lest they end up with copyrighted music in their videos. Surely both of these cases are fair use?
Teach me your secret to receiving good recos.
The bad quality of recos is the total downturner for me.
Nothing, absolutely nothing interesting for months.
All that's being recommended is totally generic high view stuff, not at all related to my channels or content. Just a global dump of "what's being watched".
No topical clustered recommendations of channels I haven't watched in the past or am not subscribed to.
Good lord they have so much data. In my experience well over a year now, they fail miserably at recommendations.
Start liking videos more and using the “don’t recommend channel” feature. I went hard on that feature for a day or two and I think it helped.
It might be interesting to start a fresh account and figure out how to game the recommendations for specific types of content. I might do that this weekend.
The video often is amazing! The talent is many times top-notch! But I pine for the days of Slashdot, with their categorized moderation. You could hide all the “+5 funny” comments and only see the interesting or insightful ones.
In the case of machining videos, I want to see how others solved an issue the video dealt with. Or alternative tools that could do the same thing cheaper. These comments do exist, but are often buried. And Google only lets you see additional comments in little dribbles.
Recommendations have gone from bad, to bad, then to bad again, to me.
More and more the comments section strikes me as inauthentic and phony, at least earlier I’d get a chuckle out of some random comment now it’s only cringe.
YouTube under Woncicki has been grossly inadequate when it comes to its sliding rules and random choices to ban things, unban other, changing rules on the fly and in other cases completely selling out both users and advertisers for god only knows whose agenda.
YouTube had a real chance of being the true replacement for TV MSM, now it’s almost the same. The encouraged content is long, useless, and inauthentic, just like normal TV. You can find some interesting stuff from time to time but the opportunity they had was way larger, and they let it go because Woncicki wanted to provide as much and advertiser-friendly environment as possible, which in my opinion is short sighted. Advertising was going to come anyway as MSM is dying a slow death, all YouTube had to do is hold, but they buckled and sold short.
IMO, YouTube is going in the wrong direction on almost all fronts. I only hope that they actually realize that they need to spin it off into a separate company away from Google’s enterprise BS.
Ps to people downvoting: use your words.
I wonder if there some empirical evidence to support this because I'd argue it's much worse now. It went from "first" sort of harmless meme spam to real problems like encouraging conspiracy theories and criminal activities and toxic hate etc. Isn't that were most conspiracies like flat earth and covid crazies start?
Not to mention the absurd amount of spam. Leave a comment on any tech video and you'll very soon find out "you won an iPhone!" sent by someone with the exact same image/name as the channel of the video.
I follow some stand up comics in India. In one glance you can make out that most of the top comments are fake.
It is a completely horrible experience for me, bunch of same videos over and over again, often completely unrelated to what I'm watching now. I don't want a recommendation for some dumb shit when I'm watching a programming tutorial.
I've spend over a year clicking "Not Interested" or "Block channel" over various topics only for them to suddenly come back and dominate the recommendation feed again. I've once visited a profile of a youtuber that hadn't uploaded in a decade only for ALL of his videos to suddenly start popping up in my recommended feed, even though I've seen them dozens of times already. Why did it assume I am interested even though I just briefly clicked on a bunch of videos? Is the top data-hoarding company in the world unable to tell causal browsing form an actual engagement?
I still shudder when I think about the time I clicked a bunch of trashy meme videos and how they poisoned my recommended feeds for months. Once the algorithm decides you like something there's no way to stop it.
I've asked for possible solutions and people were like "well go to your history and delete everything that might be causing this". Like really? I am supposed to dedicate time to curating my own browsing history for a chance of a non-shitty recommendation? I have no idea how this algorithm works in the first place, so why would I dedicate my time doing that? Isn't a browsing history supposed to reflect - well - the history of browsing rather than being a dataset for a ML model where the only metric that matters is a video click? Why can't I have a browsing history and get recommendations relevant to what I'm watching? Why does it all needs to be bundled together into an uncontrollable, non-customizable mess where no one knows how it works?
I don't remember it being that bad in the 2010s and I won't even consider paying anything for anything related to YouTube until they make it good.
Makes the price low enough to beat the hassle of various ad blocking methods across many platforms and devices.
- Relatively similar offerings of music, at least when it came to my tastes. I have a wide variety and some weird stuff in there, but both worked for me to find whatever I thought of.
- Relatively similar price ($10 Spotify vs $12 YT), so I knew I needed at least some extra value from YT to justify
- YT Premium not only gives me YT Music, but also HASSLE FREE ad-free YT. What I mean is -- I don't have to manage extensions for web youtube and apps for Android or iOS or using NextDNS or a pihole or something just to get "ad free" from YT. It just works. Not having ads, and not having to CARE is a big value add for me. This alone is well worth $2 a month just in the time it saves me dealing with it.
- YT Premium USED to be Google Music, which I loved the UI of way more than Spotify. I am still VERY upset at YT Music since it's objectively worse than Google Music in every way, but it's still the same goddamn company
- AT THE TIME, I was having serious issues getting Spotify to play music from cache. Even if I cached, it would still default to streaming it as long as I had data. This resulted in huge data usage each month. I am SURE this is fixed by now. But this went into the calculus for me at the time.
Would I move over to Spotify? I think the things that would push me back would be an increase in YT price, a further degradation in YT Music UX, some new killer feature Spotify has/gets (podcasts aren't my thing)
This was a VERY long answer which can TLDR to "Having ad-free YouTube + Music all at once for $2 more was well worth not having to give a crap about all the infrastructure needed to block ads across all my devices forever."
Youtube music is not great, but its "free" to me.
It’s probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music, but if you’re going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and are able to endure the weird UI… Then it might save you a small monthly fee you’d otherwise pay to competing services.
It’d never survive in the market as it’s own service, and it’s clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google Music.
I have no idea who decided this thing was a good idea.
I remember Google Music being pretty good, but YouTube Music seems good enough
YT music, for me at least, not perfect but better than the two by far. I still keep spotify sub because sometimes we share playlists in office etc.. not sure I'll extend to be honest. YT Music on the other hand, especially in car is essential.
Sound quality not good enough? You know Apple Music supports lossless up to 24-bit 192kHz, at no cost, right?
Just what are you talking about?
Yt music also supports tapping the side of the screen to jump forwards or backwards in 10 second increments. Seems like a trivial feature, but holy shit I have needed it my entire life. The ability to both rapidly and finely adjust the time is huge when listing to things like live shows that are a 2 hour video.
Crazy but I don't think I have ever had a program or hardware player that could do both. Always either fast forward/rewind or trying to finely slide a slider.
Not a spotify fan either, but there's practically no upside to switching.
but the reality is that you're losing spotify radio and recommendations, and replacing it with youtube music's radio stations and recommendations. and for me, i found that spotify introduces me to a lot of new and interesting music that i wouldn't otherwise find, and youtube picks a dozen songs every month it wants to play, and regardless of what station i choose it plays those same songs.
for me, i'm currently paying for both because i like youtube premium, but the music offering doesn't replace spotify.
Disable Settings > Recommendations > Show your liked music from Youtube
Enable Settings > Data saving > Don't play music videos
Thanks though. Maybe some day they'll put in some effort.
If your tastes are more eclectic this can be a really big thing actually -- the music streaming services are largely similar in what they do and don't have, which leaves out a LOT of stuff, and finally things vanish off of streaming all the time. Individually-uploaded youtube music-in-a-video on the other hand is astonishingly durable.
Totally agree about the UI though, and they also suck on royalty payouts -- only Spotify is worse.
(The * was because it was on YouTube, not TV)
For example, imagine there are only three YouTube channels out there, The Spiffing Brit, Pewdiepie, and MrBeast. There’s $1,000,000 USD remaining in the pot for the month (or pay period, I’m not sure how regular the payouts are) after YouTube takes their cut. In sum total, YT Premium subscribers watched 100,000 minutes of content: 50,000 minutes to MrBeast, 40,000 minutes to Pewdiepie, and 10,000 minutes to The Spiffing Brit. The payouts would be calculated using:
revenue_share_ratio = sum_channel_premium_watch_time / sum_global_premium_watch_time
channel_premium_payout = global_premium_payout * revenue_share_ratio
So:
MrBeast: revenue_share_ratio = 0.50 = 50,000 / 100,000 channel_premium_payout = 500,000 = 0.50 * 1,000,000
Pewdiepie: revenue_share_ratio = 0.40 = 40,000 / 100,000 channel_premium_payout = 400,000 = 0.40 * 1,000,000
The spiffing brit: revenue_share_ratio = 0.10 = 10,000 / 100,000 channel_premium_payout = 100,000 = 0.10 * 1,000,000
A bit of a contrived and simplified explanation I’m sure, but as far as I am aware the formulae they use to divvy up the money between creators is as straight forward as it gets. Money out per creator = global money in total * (creator minutes total / global minutes total)
It's the major reason why I'm still subscribed.
I hope whoever takes it over creates an ad free plan that doesn't bundle music into it. I hate that all of these tech companies are taking the cable route they all rallied agains and bundling everything.
I would pay a substantial premium for an option to filter promotions out of videos. I would even pay to just never get promoted videos in my steam.
The option to pay for no ads doesn’t exist, today, although it would be easy to ad. Instead, you get to pay to remove one advertiser, and not all the others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs
Should it not let me see a product review if it was sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control?
Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else would tell you that you drew it wrong.
Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start and end. They even show them on the timeline, although they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most replayed"… presumedly because of everyone skipping the ad, losing their place, and then having to step back to try to find where the content begins again.
Here's how this could work. I would pay an additional $10/month for YouTube Scarlet. Content creators would have three options -- declare that their videos have no sources of revenue outside of YouTube revenue; provide start and end time stamps for any external-revenue-generating segments; or do nothing.
For my $10/month, videos in the second category would skip their promotion. In exchange, some portion of my $10/month would go to the video creator, just like ad/Premium revenue does today, and the metrics on number of videos where this segment was skipped would be made available in analytics for sharing with sponsors. Finally, I'd have access to a user preference to suppress videos in the third category for appearing in recommendations, ever.
Does this deal with every case? No. Would it make YouTube more pleasant for me and potentially others who share my values, without impacting current regular and Premium users, and with a neutral or positive impact on content creators? I assert yes.
Yes.
If it's a negative impact on the businesses who promote videos, how can you say your idea doesn't impact content creators?
Promoted businesses currently pay based on (an estimate of) the number of views that the video will get. This would trivially adjust to paying based on the number of views that the sponsorship within the video gets -- that's why I mentioned the requirement to make this available through analytics. If the cost per view stays the same for sponsors, they're now paying for a self-selecting audience of people who are not actively bothered by their ads. (I doubt I'm the only person who, if I as going to pay money for a VPN, would choose literally anything other than Nord VPN just as petty "revenge" for how much of my life they've wasted.) If this slightly-reduced audience does not sufficiently eat their marketing budget, they can find new creators to sponsor.
For the content creators, presumedly the target amount paid directly per skipped ad would be chosen to slightly exceed the expected payout of showing the ad. This is the same conceptual model Premium uses today. So even though the sponsor may be paying them for a 9.5 M view video instead of a 10 M view video -- the payout should more than cover the difference.
I agree that these marginal wins run into systematic concerns if more than, say, 5% or so of users start opting out of embedded advertising this way. But besides being incredibly unlikely -- what would it say about the business model of embedded advertising if 5% of YouTube customers were willing to pay to avoid it!?
A sponsor pays $10,000 to a content creator.
And then, they get zero views of their embedded ad in the video.
They got literally nothing for their $10,000 investment.
And let's say, for the sake of argument, that YouTube does not pay $10,000 for the same video, or ones like it.
Now, the content creator gets less money than they would have before.
It's almost like content creators have already done this calculus, and concluded that the best way to create content is to promote things.
It's funny to me when someone is like, "Why doesn't YouTube do X," and then they answer their own question, but then they still act like it's weird that YouTube doesn't do that thing.
What I'm proposing is exactly, 100% symmetric to how advertisers who pay Google for YouTube ad placement are already treated -- they pay for views, and YouTube can and does choose to not show those ads to some users, those who pay for Premium. Is that unfair for the ad buyers? Sure, if you squint right… but they're not being deprived something they paid for, they're just not being offered the option to put in ads in front of that particular market.
Before Youtube Premium, I would have said the same thing about blocking first-party ads in YouTube. It was weird they didn't do that thing. And then they did it. So now it's not weird I guess?
This can't be right, I've seen many videos from creators that say the opposite, it is a fixed amount per contract which can be one or more videos. Maybe it is different with creators that have more than 1M subscribers.
If the sponsorships bug you that much, use sponsorblock.
The original comment was proposing a new product, at a higher price point to reflect its higher costs, that /does/ cater to this expectation.
Everybody wins. (Yes this doesn't work for heavily integrated sponsorships but it'd still get most of them.)
I do think, though, that if the best answer to "YouTube doesn't let me do <x>" is "pay an alternate service provider instead," it might suggest a market opportunity for YouTube to provide the same service with much less friction.
[1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...
But I think it's short sighted and selfish to not pay for something like YouTube that you use and get value out of every day, when you can afford it. Either pay for it and support it or don't use it at all.
Second, the features of YouTube revanced apps also just simply surpasses official app for me anyway:
- My phone has 1440p HDR display and YouTube official app just doesn't show me above 720p60 for 60fps videos while in the past it could. And it put me in an awkward situation: for under 60fps and for HDR 60fps videos, it can show up to 2160p and 2160p HDR 60 fps like normal. The only videos that cannot go over 720p60 fps are the normal 60fps ones. I don't know what the actual bug they are introducing there. YouTube revanced extended works flawflessly.
- I can hide the sections I don't like (news, shorts, suggestions for me, mix playlists, the ending overlay at the end of videos... and many other things).
- I can swipe on the screen for brightness and volume.
- I can add the copy buttons that copy the video link AND the timestamp quickly, really convenient for me.
- And many more that I'm lazy to type on phone.
Those small features (except the first one) look like something I would laugh at but one by one they surprisingly enhance my experience with YouTube app a lot.
Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$ family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when YTM rolled out.
While unlikely, I have been hoping for some sort of "we changed our mind" PR statement from Google on this before we switch to a family Spotify come April.
The price hike doesn't hurt on our monthly finances, but considering the 12 month cost vs features compared to Spotify... it does hurt. Why pay more for less.
Like others are saying, the no ads Youtube is fantastic. We do use adblockers on all of our devices, but it's hard to do on Google Homes, casting to Chromecasts, and Youtube Kids.
I am prepared to go Firefox + Ublock/Brave on my Android phone if I do go Spotify though....
I'm currently still on the original $7.99 plan. Any tips on how to do the upgrade to the family plan for $14? I've wanted to do that for a while but not give up my grandfathered price. The price they show me for the family plan is $22.99.
(I.e., you can't use uBlock Origin or youtube-dl on mobile devices and TVs easily, and that's the way they want it.)
... and you get cost of living salary increases at the same time, right? Sadly a market oriented economy just doesn't work this way.
Now it feels like Youtube controls the tide towards some fixed direction outside of the user control, which is frankly really boring. It's almost like the opposite of TickTock if comparing to other platforms.
www.youtube.com##.ytd-rich-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer.style-scope
there's probably more filters to block shorts in other places like the suggestions sidebar if you look for them, but i have the sidebar disabled completely so the above filter was enough for me
YT shorts I guess is their solution to that... Still not a big fan and I hear the rates paid to yourubers is horrible.
For goodness's sake, I just want to view contents from my subscription, not taste changer.
And yeah, hiding the dislike count was an extremely weird/annoying move, given that it was a good quality indicator which is now completely gone. It doesn't matter if a video has 1M likes if it has 3M dislikes, in which case it probably sucks. Nor are you misled to believe a video with only 3k likes is bad if it doesn't have more than 22 dislikes.
As with everything you should keep context in mind. For example if you're watching a video on a political topic (or by a controversial character) then the ratio will be more even, even for high quality videos. But the point is: Give the user the information, don't assume they are dumb.
[0] Links for Chrome/Firefox/etc: https://returnyoutubedislike.com/install
Example: https://youtu.be/XS-r2Vpkxas
Depend on how big of a fish you are for the ccp to fry, this can be a matter of life and death.
People love Youtube because Youtube had the financial resources to store more video than any other service, and people love videos.
Youtube itself is a shitshow, famous for hosting the largest collection of low-quality comments on the planet – and Wojcicki has been okay with that. A better calibre of human being would have fixed Youtube – or resigned trying – years ago (eg: 2015, when Youtube became world's largest and most effective extremist recruitment service).
Wojcicki's best asset was perhaps an ability to keep her name out of the tech news cycle, and that's probably because 'Wojcicki' is difficult to spell more than any personal talent.
Youtube is great inasmuch as videos are great, but almost any other tech company would have been a better steward of humanity's video archive.
So my view is: Fantastic! I will not miss her – in fact I'll ride a wave of endorphins from this news all week.
To get there, when you see a youtube add, there should be some text in the bottom right, "Ad 1 of 2" and then an information icon, click that. and scroll down the popup and you should see "ad settings"
If you don't have an account then I'd really recommend an ad blocker in this circumstance.
It can be done
YouTube vastly improved in the recent years. If there's anyone who should step down, it's Sundar. What an uninspiring leader.
Can you explain how?
From my perspective, the platform is still struggling to get the basics right : lots of spam in the comments, recommendation is meh at best, some videos are hard to find even when typing the exact title in the search bar and I can go on and on.
I pay a premium subscription to not see ads, and I wish were able to disable shorts as well.
Sure, add a browser for short vertical videos. But don't ruin the existing experience for no reason.
At the end Susan managed to have a product on the market that was number 1 in its category, created revenue and has survived for so long. I think she deserve a fair amount of respect and acknowledgement, ad I have not seen any other platform with that track record (yep no time for envy, just hard facts).
I subscribe to that thought. One CEO isn't doing as much damage to a product this big as people thought. The dislike feature isn't coming back nor any other engineering feature that affected users.
1. make dislikes visible
2. no more covid warnings/disclaimers on content. Public health is important, but this beyond the scope or role of youtube. If the CDC, WHO etc. want to buy YouTube ads warning of covid misinformation, they can do so, and can afford to.
3. do more about accounts being hacked and repurposed for elon musk livestream scams
4. fewer ads, or no more 15 second ads. The max length should be 10 seconds, and no more than a single ad at a time, instead of having two ads back-to-back.
From what I've seen, YouTubers are concerned about their videos getting censored or demonetized to a degree that indicates YouTube are being far too heavy handed.
There was so much drama around youtubers and how youtube treated them.
I guess Youtube must always obey its advertisers.
YouTube is weird when it comes to completely arbitrary demonetization (and the absolutely braindead idea of removing the downvote counter) because it's one of the rare plateform that get so much negative goodwill from content creator who depends on it to make some money.
[1] One famous french Youtubeur, "Joueur du Grenier" has to playfully bypass the subject by joking that "Nothing whatsoever happened between the 10th and the 12th September" while showing 2 plastic bottles being hit by paper airplane and then crumbling. He originally put real images of 9/11 while describing the early 00's zeitgeist, but had to do that instead since it caused the video to not be sent to subscribers (or demonetized to oblivion, I forgot which)
No, YouTube was looking for an excuse to clean house. Advertisers have had the tools to stop their ads from appearing per video type for a long time now, so the claim that "it's the advertisers" was obvious misinformation.
>Too many people got caught in the crosshairs.
And yet, YouTube has yet to be dethroned; seems to be working fine for them.
I've had a rep lie straight to my face telling me demonetized content didn't affect the recommendation of the video. Everyone knew it was a lie but they only admitted it years later.
They inserted a few widets with unrelated videos ("People also watched", "Previously watched", etc.) after the first 5 results and you have to scroll through multiple pages to get to the next search results.
Kids have it so good these days.
I guess I was thinking more in terms of how the recommendations just one day populated with cool science content for no obvious reason in a format (shorts) that works so well.
I still remember that there used to be short and super informative videos before but now everything is so stretched out with low info density
However there seems to be a thing that you need 10 minutes for monetisation, so people stretch content not needing much time to those 10 minutes ...
the users loved vine and it's still quoted in tiktoks
i think it's because china is able to dump money it was able to take off more
it isn’t around anymore.
Sometimes companies shutter successful products.
Saying that Musical.ly, a Chinese based lip syncing service, was where everyone went after Vine, a USA based short video service, closed down in 2016 is quite the stretch.
I said 10 years which was an exaggeration but TikTok may be the spiritual successor to Vine but TikTok didnt even exist in the country where the majority of Vines users existed until two years later.
I guess you could say there was a exodus from Vine, users wandered around in a desert for two years, and then finally arrived at the promised land, TikTok...
TikTok is worldwide.
And I personally enjoy Youtube very much. So much great content for free. If I need to learn about something i find myself looking into youtube first quite often.
The content is unparalleled. Home repair is one of my most valued content types on the site.
There are many, many different types of house problems and solutions covered by videos.
Even when you get to something that seemingly has no person describing the problem and fix, you can often get close enough to improvise based on other people’s ideas.
YouTube is a skill building platform. You can save money by becoming more self-reliant.
Despite other comments here, I think the search is quite good. It sometimes ignores keywords but returns the video I _intended_ to seek.
I don’t care for shorts, though and would hide them completely if able.
It would also be good to have relatively anonymous ways to upload video. Sometimes I’ll establish a novel solution and would post the information but wouldn’t want it associated with my identity—or even to monetize it.
I guess that's what is to be expected with a platform over time. the market will optimize conditions until some peak of efficiency is reached, occasionally this will shift to another peak of perhaps even lower or higher efficiency after overcoming some activation energy or in the pretense of some catalyst (like when creators first realized the optimal video length). Its all seemingly thermodynamic in nature.
That being said, it sure gives you rose tinted glasses of those days of a dumb short and funny video of an actual unscripted happenstance, or someone teaching you how to fix something and actually pointing the camera at that something instead of their own face. It's like the stakes were lower and egos were nonexistent back then, and everything seemed a little more genuine.
"YouTube tops the 2022 teen online landscape among the platforms covered in the Center’s new survey, as it is used by 95% of teens. TikTok is next on the list of platforms that were asked about in this survey (67%), followed by Instagram and Snapchat, which are both used by about six-in-ten teens. After those platforms come Facebook with 32% and smaller shares who use Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr."
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...
It says Mohan launched 'youtube music' and 'shorts' et al. well, youtube music killed google play music, so not a fan; and shorts are the most recent annoying unfilterable addition to youtube.
ah well.
however, they got a chrome pm as ceo. and now the company is floundering.
if the youtube CEO made a billion in remuneration, it will be well deserved compared to say some CEO / CPO's eg the recent Coinbase CPO or Mozilla CEO.
It's not likely to happen, but it's not too far fetched either.
but i also empathize with someone trying to break even from a very expensive-to-run platform.
OpenAI's Codex model got the reasoning ability through github. LLM could learn so much more with real-life videos in an embodied way.
Maybe YouTube videos can be used to train models on how to verbally present information in a compelling way, but I don't see how it would make an AI better at generating written text.
No, I mean ML can recognize real-world objects like human eyes do. They have a raw, direct understanding of the visual "world", an alternative to parse the world facts only by texts.
For example, if you don't want to read tangentially related pet peeves every time bigtechco is in the news, you stop coming to HN. You stop coming to HN, and only complainers are left.
Doubt they will though.
Maybe just wants kids?
Thank you Susan!
no it doesn't has that spirit anymore, channels who get too many copyright strikes get banned.
Why do you even credit "Susan" for any of that? She isn't a Youtube founder, but a pure product of Google culture.
We didn't even notice it happening, like frogs being boiled. E.g. try being anonymous on a fresh Android device now. You can't even access the play store without logging in.
Also from Wikipedia: "YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were early employees of PayPal, which left them enriched after the company was bought by eBay. Hurley had studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign."
Getting respect from employees these days is not difficult; most of them are extreme conformists and worship power for its own sake. They will interpret any dumb words out of your mouth as words of wisdom. Even if everything you say is idiotic, they will bend so far as to assume you speak in metaphors.
Still, I think YouTube is better than average for social media. Its censorship of words sucked, but its censorship of ideas wasn't so bad. It was worse on other platforms.
I think TikTok holds this position, not YouTube. Indeed, YouTube seems to be pushing really hard for Shorts to be a viable competitor but it doesn't seem to be working.
Or, do you mean rewarding in terms of monetization for creators and not engagement?
I wonder if Elon Musk would notice.
Is this because of layoffs or something else happening? I would think that mass layoffs would still allow eligibility for rehire down the road?
- removed ability to sort videos by date
- removed dislikes
what else.....youtube UX has being getting worse for a few years.
But I am not sure Apple has the stomach for the controversy that often surrounds user generated content. Maybe Facebook would be the better competitor, though they are as beholden to advertisers as Google.
All I know is that it will take a massively well financed group that can sustain the server costs of video streaming with most of it generating zero revenue.
With MSFT it's obvious that Satya is trying to distract a competitor in cloud, but chatgpt is hardly going to "kneecap" Google. Satya is hyping it with all the credibility of a used car salesman. There's zero evidence that LLMs are going to finally make Microsoft capable of launching a competitive search service.
I can’t tell if you are trolling. Google develops Android which is the primary competitor to Apple’s biggest product. If Google loses revenue it weakens its ability to compete. This directly benefits Apple.
> With MSFT it's obvious that Satya is trying to distract a competitor in cloud, but chatgpt is hardly going to "kneecap" Google. Satya is hyping it with all the credibility of a used car salesman. There's zero evidence that LLMs are going to finally make Microsoft capable of launching a competitive search service.
All the reporting on this seems to be consistent that Google is freaked out about ChatGPT, rushed its announcement of Bard, etc etc. So I guess you could have the opinion that ChatGPT isn’t a threat, but I think it is obvious you would be in the minority. No one knows for sure of course, but the smart money, and Google itself, seem to think it is a major threat.
YouTube users are the product being sold, not the customers.
[1] The recent crackdown on swearing falls in the same category.
Better for advertisers looking to push non-sense to toddler-level users.
It does exist but it's hidden in the tabs. My m1 mac screen is not large enough to show the search icon which I must click on the right chevron icon to see as it's on the far right.
I'm glad it's there but it wasn't always like this. I wonder if I'm just an idiot (totally possible), a dark pattern, or just a bad UI change.
Search as little as I use it is fine. Maybe you just don't have a ton of matching content left to watch, maybe it is worse but this all feels too subjective/situational to speak qualitatively about.
Sort by date of me is only really relevant in a creators page, and the "uploads" stream is always by date recent to oldest, so profits?
The only thing that has significantly gotten worse over the years is their ridiculous increase in ad placement throughout videos. I'm guessing you block ads or have premium because it HAS to be the #1 most hated change in YouTube over the past few years.
None of the normal controls exist: playback speed, jump to position, etc. The desktop web interface is a terrible place for these.
There are addons to do this redirect automatically, but I haven't bothered.
Why they force the terrible UI on desktop is beyond me though.
Redirect: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/*
to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$1I'm well aware there is a land war in Europe right now, when I turn on the TV at 6pm on a Thursday to watch cooking videos I don't need reminders pushed in my face.
Out of all the issues with youtube, this is probably the one that has the most real negative cognitive impact for me.
I would broadly expect YouTube to get worse as a result of this.
* Presided over a vast increase in revenue, from $4 to $29 billion
* Steered the ship through a number of content controversies
* Anecdotally, the brand value of YouTube remains good
* YouTube Premium seems to have good uptake
* Presided over enormous cost savings with custom encoder hardware
* Few major technical outages, good streaming performance generally
* Relationships with advertisers and content creators generally remain good
Negatives:
* Missed the Twitch/streaming wave
* Missed the TikTok, short video wave
* YouTube Originals flopped (partly bc they didn't commit hard enough, not like Netflix or Amazon)
* Overall low user experience - slow/complex website and apps
* Issues for content creators - overly aggressive ContentID, not rewarding short but valuable videos enough (indie animation), opaque demonetization rules
* No shrinking of the algorithmic filter bubble
I'd say this is due to lack of competition and network effects than a good relationship. CuriosityStream, Nebula, and even channels as benign as Linus Tech Tips trying to get Floatplane off the ground show this relationship is far from strong. Your non-edgy creators wouldn't be trying to replace you if they thought you were doing a good job.
I literally have to wait for 5 seconds for 3 dot menus under videos to load on the main page. It's ridiculous.
Yes, just yesterday. Subpoena to resignation.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-republicans-subpoena...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/15/house-r...
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3859762-house-gop-subp...
That's actually a really bad look (pro PR tip: Don't resign immediately after bad press - delay your resignation to avoid association if possible - or, if you know a certain political group doesn't like you and you're planning to retire, maybe resign before they get into power). Particularly important because Twitter is all over that "connection" right now that was pretty unnecessary. It appears that the subpoena was directed at Google, but her resignation means she may not have to personally have to personally testify, as Google could send the new CEO in.
There's absolutely nothing stopping Congress from issuing her a direct subpoena.
Googling "republicans subpoena sundar" returns similar articles from 2020 and 2018 (such as https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/senate-republicans-vote-to-s... and https://theprint.in/india/governance/google-ceo-sundar-picha...).
1) It's undeniable that Republicans have been complaining about this shit. It's also something not everyone agrees happens at the level of the complaint. So "perceived" seems like an accurate description of the situation.
2) There's mention of a "strangehold" on journalism from Democrats which is exactly one of the sorts of complaints I was mentioning: but it's also one that seems no truer today than it was when I was hearing it on radio stations 25 years ago. Mainstream media personalities complaining that no personalities like themselves existed in the mainstream media. From Rush on the radio then to today's wave either on cable TV or online, the song remains the same. This is why personally I think the claims of persecution is wildly overblown.
Look, I hate all politics and politicians and don't care for one over the other, but I do not understand how anybody can perceive this as a sensible take post twitter-files. It's not perceived, it's indisputably accurate. I get it, I get it, political partisans abound and want to have their tampering ignored, but there should be limits, and this pretty clearly steps over them for anybody paying even the slightest amount of attention.
Tech companies have not feared the US government in decades. They embarrass or ignore US senators and representatives. See former (yes, they can subpoena you after you leave the company) Twitter employees embarrassing Donald Trump at these same hearings last week.
The more likely conspiracy theory is Wojcicki lost an internal power struggle. Google hasn't been doing great. Pichai hasn't been doing great. Wojcicki going for the top job and not getting it, and leaving is a much more believable scenario.
1) Wojcicki wasn't subpoenated, 2) everyone expected subpoenas to come, and if she wanted to avoid them, it would have been smarter to resign the day before, not the day after, 3) the panels are political theater and aren't based on any sort of evidence or reality, 4) Even if this was a super real issue and Wojcicki sat down and confessed to illegally murdering Republicans on Joe Biden's orders, there would be no consequences, since Democrats control the Senate. The news coverage from both sides would be roughly the same either way.
Netflix became the comedy powerhouse by, most likely, just looking at what unofficial standup uploads had the most views on YouTube and making appropriate offers.
Its a good business. My daughter isn't allowed Tiktok, but youtube comes with every phone and ipad already...
I tend to think all those services rely heavily on old TV-addicts like my wife.
Maybe as a whole, but Cobra Kai was excellent and very popular!
Also, in the long-run, will having "missed" streaming & shorts necessarily be a bad thing? Time will tell.
I wish they never introduced shorts. Why do all platforms need to be everything to everyone? Why can't they focus on just being the best platform for user-created long-form video? I probably know the answer, but it makes me sad that that's the reality we live in.
yt shorts are very successful. But regardless, I don't think that a CEO is unsuccessful any time innovation happens anywhere else in the world besides within their own company. That YT is a social media platform which has only become more relevant over the last 17 years is a pretty stunning track record. What other service has shown such longevity?
Edit: I understand the dislike button is still there, I misspoke. But for my purposes of seeing like/dislike ratio, it might as well not be there.
still, I found it more useful than not
I had this exact scenario yesterday trying to remove rounded/stripped lug nuts off my wheels. It would've been very helpful to be able to see if the video I was watching had 1000 likes but 6000 dislikes to know if what I was about to do was advisable or not. Yes, I read the comments and it ended up being a simple fix with the right tools, but the like/dislike ratio is a great way to filter dangerous/dumb/unhelpful videos.
Personally, I see the removal of visible dislikes as a net positive. They were used to rain down negativity and meanness on well-intentioned videos. I think YouTube is now a happier place when a kid's crappy singing video gets quietly ranked down, versus being shown to have 34 classmates (or 34,000 strangers) that hated it.
That's precisely why it was removed. Can't let the rabble have a voice. They might think the wrong things.
I could see it having an impact on the comment section because rather than just dislike and move on people feel compelled to say what is wrong with the video, but I could also see the opposite effect where instead of just disliking and moving on now people spam the comment section with unhelpful attacks on the video/creator.
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-dis...
From the FAQ
> Where does the extension get its data?
> A combination of archived data from before the offical YouTube dislike API shut down, and extrapolated extension user behavior.
New videos will only show dislikes sent by people using the extension. There's no way to know the real number anymore.
It can be purely emotional too, no data whatsoever. If there is data it's just selectively chosen to support the preconceived view. It literally happens all the time.
Just look at the changes to the Macbook following Johy Ive's departure or even the iOS UI changes following Forstall's departure. In the latter case, the removal of skeuomorphic design was so impactful Apple engineers called it "de-Forstall-ation".
In this case, I see it being big brands pushing for the removal of dislike button. They simply don't want to be dislike-bombed for doing something unpopular. That's it. So I wouldn't bet on Wijicki leaving impacts this.
Removing the dislike count takes away a valuable indicator of low quality and/or time wasting videos. Yes, it has false positives on charged topics, but I use it to help determine if an intriguing recommendation or search result is actually worthwhile or just clickbait. I suspect YouTube was pleased to remove the like/dislike visibility because it would boost engagement metrics. I assume any concerns about quality or the viewing experience are secondary or considered inconsequential.
Edit: They removed the dislike visibility, not the dislike button.
80% of regulars are not subscribed and don’t “like” videos according to content creators, that’s why they nag for “like, subscribe” five times per minute. Developers tend to think that bigcorps’ data analysis is at a rocket science level, when in reality it’s probably less efficient than SQL LIKE query could be on some `video.tags` field.
Either she is being blamed, or she is deeply guilty and wants to try to avoid the publicity, or they anticipate this will become extremely ugly.
Or sundar is blaming her for lining him up for a firing squad.
Or she is a liability due to her past work.
Regardless, it seems like she is leaving because what she had to do to make the government happy previously is now going to be used against Google.
Someone else mentioned the theory that she might be the best Sundar replacement. Maybe she found out it’s not her or Sundar is eliminating competition here.
The founders themselves of these companies have already gotten a headstart.
After 25 years and being worst case a hundred-millionaire, what's the point?
For some searches, it's baffling that the top results are clearly intuitively wrong (e.g. showing videos where dislike to like ratio is very high, compared to clearly better alternatives that you can find if you wade through the results)
- Why does seemingly every channel I follow, whether it be JCS Criminal Psychology or The 8-bit Guy, have to mention the YouTube Algorithm, Content ID, Copyright Strikes, or Community Guidelines? If almost every creator is struggling and not just the fringe and edgy, you've screwed up big time.
- Removal of the dislike count. Extremely unpopular decision. Also YouTube's API is still answering dislike counts making extensions to bring it back still function, despite over a year later, almost implying it was about keeping up appearances. Now... who could be so worried about keeping up appearances...
- Completely blowing up YouTube Rewind into an increasingly corporate affair that quickly started heading downhill until the absolute train wreck of 2018, where it became the most disliked video in YouTube history at that point. This was, in part, because YouTube basically sanitized it of the presence of the popular YouTubers at the time because they might not be advertiser-friendly. Rewind never recovered and YouTube has now given up trying to engage with the community in such a way.
- Taking a 5-second ad at the beginning of her tenure, and leaving it with multiple, constant, unskippable, rampant advertising; and a subscription plan that started at $10/mo. turning into $23/mo. for equivalent service (5 users).
- Launched YouTube Kids to provide a curated experience for younger individuals, then decided to make it run on automation. Which then screwed up big time and started serving kids extremely inappropriate content causing a brief congressional inquiry. Then YouTube settled as guilty to violating COPAA, and decided to shift all the responsibility on the creators by disabling comments and other features on any video that may possibly be seen by kids.
Some "success"...
Whatever algorithm YouTube uses professional uploaders will try to maximize their views, which goes by acting as the algorithm requires. In a competitive environment there is a inherent struggle.
That's because Youtube prioritizes engagement over quality. You make more money that way.
Like they innovated by blatantly ripping off tiktok and added "shorts"? Yeah best if they just stay exactly what they are.
Example: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-piano
https://youtu.be/ljjWeHmeVE8?t=157
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pub+piano+playi...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shopping+mall+p...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=public+piano+pl...
and the lack of likes/dislikes makes it harder to determine quality, which is probably some dark pattern to try and drive more engagement by forcing people to watch multiple videos. Dark patterns work short term, long term they result in TikTok or the equivalent eating your market share
No, I do not want to watch wedding videos that I've said I'm not interested in at least 50 times. No, there isn't anyone in my household watching wedding videos.
No, I do not want to rewatch a 6 hour long lecture I watched last month.
Yet it just doesn't bloody care. I am truly terrified to click on anything outside my regular comfort zone for fear that that's what I'll be recommended for the next 12 months. Youtube is the worst product I have to keep paying for — I tried going adblock, but good luck if you have Apple devices. I'd rather be held hostage to Youtube Premium than being brainwashed with ads every 5 minutes.
All of Google search is dogshit these days. You can't search for anything these days without a crap ton of ads and pages of SEO optimized wrong answers.
And people think chatgpt is going to save us, when all it's going to do is make the web, and therefore search results, ever more nonsensical.
Youtube was fine years ago. People make stuff, I subscribe and watch it. Sure throw in some algorithmic discovery on the side. Bring back dislike count.
Other than that I don't care for any innovation. Just keep the lights on.
Basically, it's users are very entitled.
Edit: I have had premium since day 1, I'm speaking about others.
Nothing about Youtube the platform needs to change. It just works.
The algorithm's goal is to maximize revenue or profit, and what does that doesn't change that dynamically. This means the metagame is inevitable. You're essentially asking for YouTube to cut their goal for an unclear long term benefit, and we all know how those conversations tend to go.
Every corporation owning more than 50% of a market should be broken up. But then, USA wouldn’t reign on the international culture.
Not to mention "sort by oldest first".
would you like to remove the ability to add labeled chapters to your videos? would you like to remove browseable transcriptions to videos?
Youtube has a ton of things that it still needs to add, such as embedding multiple audio streams so you can have more than one audio language in the same video (I think they are testing it currently), or being able to better modify a video after you've uploaded it. Adding audio normalization to ads so they are not louder than the video they appear in? Still waiting.
Point is, there is a ton to innovate and I think you are quickly forgetting all those useful features that came in the last 10 years that were't there before
They probably want to show viewers, but you can’t reveal the stats to only one group.
Edit: SV is full of nepotism.
They'd get more revenue by breaking things like uBlock origin being able to completely remove all ads. Not something we really want them to do I think.
Another probable issue is the upcoming Supreme Court decision about Section 230 protections. Maybe Wojcicki sees that writing on the wall.
Not only this, YouTube literally allows scammers to run ads and you can't report it. I saw an ad with Mr. Beast pop up offering $1,000 to the first X people to click on it. I clicked, because it sounds like something he would do and I was curious and figured YouTube wouldn't let a scammer advertise. Once I landed on the page it was immediately clear from the domain that it was a scam, but the page looked legit. It's astounding that YouTube is alright with openly running scammers ads for them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/ads-shown-isis...
this was a huge story overnight with tons of advertisers pulling out of youtube. the site became a lot more locked down after this and a few more advertiser threats in the following years.
(basically, the SC is reviewing YouTube's Section 230 protections due to the use of recommendation engines)
https://www.theblaze.com/news/youtube-ceo-receives-free-expr...
I’m not a journalist, but that doesn’t sound right.
Maybe she was an early employee?
Google's first office was in her parents' garage
> With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki
Wojcicki has been involved with Google practically since the beginning. The company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, set up office in her parents' garage soon after they incorporated Google in 1998. Wojcicki became Google's first marketing manager the following year and played a role in the earliest Google Doodles. In 2006, she encouraged Google to buy YouTube, which launched a year earlier.2023-1998=25
Sounds right to me.
That seems like something that would be of enough interest to make the top-30 stories for a period of time.
This was also posted today, criticizing SV culture. Yet it doesn't even have half the votes. This is also not an exception here, but a trend:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/the-silicon-valley-l...
I guess Susie stepping down the corporate ladder of a shitty company must be more stimulating.
Also, why the downvotes? I didn't know it was illegal to discuss how banal and uninteresting a post is. Clearly posharma and I see it that way. Yet every time this happens, people get downvoted. Why? Can't you just scroll through and move on, or do other people's opinions bother you?
So YouTube wasn't her passion project?! C'mon.
The same algorithm that YouTube was using for recommendations 10 years ago is still the same algorithm being used today. An absolute disgrace and a spat in the face for the platforms users.