Ask HN: Why YouTube doesn't let you search transcripts?
For a search engine company, I don't understand why this is not already implemented. Is there any risk to release a feature like that?
Not really related, but I thought of this. I used to work on a popular search engine. Our main metric started out as number of searches and number of results clicked on. That made sense as we were working on increasing the number of relevant results. Eventually we had to pivot the opposite direction because we wanted people to find the best result the fastest, which means less searches and less clicks on results. Kind of interesting how a core metric can flip like that.
I could see YouTube potentially making lower watch time a goal if they make the experience of finding useful information so slow that people go elsewhere.
I suspect Youtube cripples transcript usefulness because it aligns with what customers want. And customers are important to Youtube - while end users are something else.
many people listen to spaces after they’re over like a podcast or other form of broadcast recording.
searching public twitter space transcripts would allow us to find more relevant things to consume perhaps.
same with youtube. i wonder whether anything is logging and indexing these with a non-internal program; cursory searches seem to imply that it’s unlikely.
I use it with Raycast and the Raycast browser extension, but it's easily adapted for other AI browser extensions, as well as scripts and other launchers.
It's helped cut out a lot of cruft.
--BEGIN-PROMPT--
Create a summary of a YouTube video using its transcript. You will use the following template:
"""
## Summary
{Multiple sentences summarising the YouTube video}
## Notes
{Bullet points that summarize the key points or important moments from the video’s transcript with explanations}
## Quotes
{Extract the best sentences from the transcript in a list}
"""
Transcript: {browser-tab}
--END-PROMPT--