Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

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Nothing surprising. We are deep into the age of griefter economy - make a cringey video - making a scene - whether it's an argument between people or "owning someone", get people roiled up against each other, start selling merch like shirts or a book full of your "wisdom" and you are set for life. Tiktok is the perfect platform for stuff like that with practically 0 regulation. Meta just wants a piece of that cake, simple as that. 300k may as well be well worth it. The sad part is that ultimately it is us, the users that end up suffering. A decade ago science videos were thriving on YouTube and I loved it. These days we are lucky if we get two videos out of hundreds if not thousands of youtubers that used to push 40 minutes of videos each every month. I don't blame them, I'd also find it utterly demotivating to have a team of people and a month worth of work from dawn till dusk every month just to get a microscopical fraction of what some teen gets for shouting at a minecraft screen for 30 minutes.

https://nebula.tv/ is a nice YouTube alternative for that kind of stuff (disclaimer: I'm mostly a subscriber for the music content, so my perception may be skewed).

I think that in some ways, certain parts of TikTok feel like the old YouTube. It's usually one person talking into a camera about a subject they know a lot about and it's usually straight to the point. Videos aren't as long as they're on YouTube but there's a lot of 3-5 min long content.

I pine for an in-between world. My youtube feed and Watch Later list is filled to the brim with 40-90 minute videos I'll likely never get to. Youtube seems determined to push longer videos on me. I'd much prefer more 8-15 minute videos which seem to be as rare as hen's teeth. It feels like you either get 4 seconds or 45 minutes. Nothing in between.

I think your point about the grift is well-put.

But I disagree with your comment about YouTube. I think YouTube recommendations work extremely well, and I only see videos that are related to the 5-6 topics I am exploring on YouTube in the previous few weeks. And when I explore a new topic I start seeing those recommendations instead.

I have never seen a Mr Beast video (or any other video by similar hucksters) on my feed.

You do need to be logged in though. But I use Premium, so that's a given.

Yeah, I thought it was odd to call out Youtube, especially science videos in particular. To me it's always seemed Youtube is one part of the internet that has managed to maintain some decently sane bits among the brainrot. I'm not even logged in half the time, but the recommendation algorithm kicks quite well after a video or two, even in incognito (after you make it past the whiplash of the "default" home page, which is admittedly pretty nasty). My sidebar is typically mostly edutainment type stuff (AlphaPhoenix, Technology Connections, Applied Science, NileRed...) and while it's not refined university-level content or anything, it's quite alright. (And I'm confused why the parent comment lamented the lack of science videos! There's honestly so much neat stuff still being made today. Heck, look at 3b1b.) Like you said, I never really see Mr. Beast or alt-right pipeline stuff or anything like that. If anything, maybe the other platforms could learn from Youtube - I get the feeling they've cleaned up their algorithm in recent years?

I generally agree that YouTube seems relatively sane compared to Meta/TikTok (emphasis on the "relative" part).

I do think that will change though, probably in the near term. YouTube seems determined to push their own shorts. More concerning though, it seems there's now a very strong emphasize on very new content. Several channels have mentioned that videos have to succeed almost immediately and will get little traffic over longer time frames. LTT mentioned this and I've seen it on my own (tiny) channel. I expect this will incentivize publishers to churn out more content more quickly to increase potential success rates, to the determent of quality.

Also, I'm increasingly seeing longer, clearly AI generated listicle-style content showing up in my feeds. I made the mistake of starting one of these a few weeks ago, and now half my feed is similar junk content.

> I made the mistake of starting one of these a few weeks ago, and now half my feed is similar junk content.

If you accidentally click on something that turns out to be junk, it's vital you go into the "History" section in the sidebar and remove it from there. This removes it from the stuff considered by the algorithm.

I think it varies by topic. Some topics certainly lead you on a downward spiral of garbage content. I occasionally enjoy watching videos about firearms for example, and I have to avoid them on YouTube or make sure to clear them from my history or all sorts of wild shit starts popping up. But I am also free from Mr Beast.

I think like with anything on the Internet, this dynamic didn't change from how it was before. Jerry Springer was wildly more popular than Nova. It just scaled up.

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