Men are ditching TV for YouTube as AI usage and social media fatigue grow
ofcom.org.uk
ofcom.org.uk
I'm quite aggressively removing videos I don't like from my watch history, or flag "don't recommend" channels I know won't be for me. If I'm not careful it'll recommend crap for a while.
Other big complaints include no ability to prevent it from substantially using my cell data despite telling it to do everything over wifi. I've taken to just removing network permissions from the app unless I want to add something.
New prank on someone that left their laptop unlocked. Open YouTube to something they hate and then close it before they get back.
But at least you still have that ability compared to most platforms.
I haven't paid close attention to the effects, because I don't thumbs down too many videos. But it did feel like I generally don't get that channel as much after thumbing down a video from my recommended feed.
* Copy URL
* Open new private window
* Paste URL: trim pp and/or si parameters, which are a form of tracking
I also have a second channel for language learning where I used it to prune out any videos in English. It's not perfect and recommends a few still, but they get more rare as time passes.
[x] Turn off recommendations
[ ] Turn on recommendations
One problem with an internet where people expect, accept and rely on "recommendations" from so-called "tech" companies is that it ignores and disincentivises people who know how to search and find good stuff. Often these people want to tell others about, and share, what they find. Before so-called "tech" companies existed, these people could be excellent sources of recommendations. IMHO, they still are
Other HN comments have suggested recommendations should be an exception to Section 230 (cf. publishing user-generated content without commercially-motivated favoritism)
i'd rather pay the $10 than pay with my time by being an ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician
On my iPhone I almost never see YTube ads. I don’t use the YTube app and instead I install Chrome and watch YT that way. I lose notifications—which is perfect for me, since I don’t want many notifications on my phone anyway.
This might also work in Safari but I haven’t tested it.
No.
Edit: I do pay $5/mo for PBS
It requires the use of a google account and there is no way to even request opting out of the accompanying data harvesting. Any "curation" or "recommendation" that would inevitably happen is also an anti-feature.
>Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
No
And yes, thars the issue. I pretty much unsubscribed from Disney+, HBO, and Netflix becsuse I can't just have multiple 15 dollar subscriptions add up.
As of now, YouTube, Rider, and Google One are my only subs. And I should really shuffle around space so I can unsub from One.
That's why I pay.
I should probably de-algoify my YT experience.
Although decentralization by itself does probably not protect from this trap in the long run.
Nebula as a premium service seems to be the best in terms of paying creators and keeping non-perverse incentives. But Nebula is for very specific kinds of content.
I prefer to read news and information. What little exposure to YouTube personalities and editing styles I've had annoys me to no end.
"This changes everything!!"
Getting youtube fatigue.
Algorithms are sold as “curation is hard, the algorithm does it for you” but getting the algorithm to do a good job is actually a lot of work
If I just took any random 20 creators I’m subscribed to on YouTube, the premium membership fee, which includes YT Music, is more valuable than any of the other streaming services.
The only other streaming service I’ve been a paying member even longer than YouTube is di.fm
I also occasionally pay for a few months or bassdrive.com and or soma.fm
For movies / series, I’m back to sharing.
I actually don't care that much about YouTube content and it's not a place I go and hang out, but I'll pay just about anything to avoid seeing ads. Yes, I know ad blockers exist, but getting them to work on laptop, phone, Apple TV directly, Apple TV via casting, etc is not easy or even possible in some cases. If I had to guess I watch ~1hr of YouTube a week, if I watch more than that I'm watching longer-form content, but mostly it's because everyone hosts their videos there so the 3-7min here and there add up to ~1hr (tutorials, product launch, help/documentation video, etc). As much as it pains me to fork over $15+/mo for that, I hate being interrupted by ads more.
SmartTube on Android TV has no ads and skip sponsors
so all you need to remember are two apps FF (+uBO) and SmartTune on TV, you install it once and don't care anymore, comparably difficult with payment for YT
They totally made the free experience miserable as shit like airlines do for coach class.
> Participants claimed to be streaming more and viewing less linear TV. This is part of a medium-term trend we have seen over recent years. Participants also reported more of their viewing as being on their own, with less shared/communal viewing overall.Many participants claimed to be viewing more YouTube, in particular, in the past year. For some men, YouTube is now their main (or only) form of viewing.
- p 20.
> Whilst in previous years YouTube was predominantly being used to access specialist content around users' personal interests, it now also seems to serve a broader range of viewing needs. These include “background” viewing (sometimes as a replacement for daytime TV) and videos about random, eclectic, interesting topics – serendipitous content discoveries traditionally associated with linear TV channels.
- p 21.
[0] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/rese...
I only buy large monitors and mount them on my wall.
At first I only watched selfhosted media, but last 8 years it's been more and more Youtube. I'm not too happy about it, would like to wean myself off it.
I'm speaking from my own perspective here but scripted media is something I only watch socially, if my partner wants to watch with me. And I end up on my computer trying to type softly next to them.
All scripted media just seems so predictable now, I'm like Stan in that one South Park episode lol.
It also seems manipulative. I can see how a lot of shows just milk the story for more episodes until they can't milk it anymore. It doesn't seem genuine anymore, maybe it never was? Ratings have always existed, in my lifetime.
But the point is that the only newly produced content I watch is just regular people. One example is Antiques Roadshow, it's boring, maybe even "slow" TV, but it's real people. I much prefer watching real people than characters.
Something that really bugs me now is live action characters, I'd actually prefer cartoon characters. Because everything is so unreal and over the top, it might as well be a cartoon.
It is different from Netflix (that pays upfront for production costs), but there's of course a revenue share + the bulk of the revenue for creators is actually from sponsorships (which YT doesn't take a share of).
I'm also in the same bucket, happy to pay my subscription.
The only reason I really watch shorts is because Vsauce started using them a lot, and his content is definitely worth a watch every time in any format.
This is like complaining that your fridge takes money to run even though it produces none of the stuffs you put in your fridge. Serving video is enormously expensive especially if you let practically everyone use your platform as permanent storage for videos that will never be watched and will never generate ad revenue. There is a reason why no real competitor to YouTube has emerged and the alternative platforms that do exist target professional content creators even more than YouTube.
> They should quit it with the Shorts though, nobody likes those
No one on this website likes them, sure. The number of likes and comments some of those short videos get suggests that there are enough people who like them for YouTube to keep pushing them. They just don't tend to get very vocal about it on a nerd social media.
Of course there are some exceptions, for example when I want to watch my national football team, I'd like to watch it live. Luckily, that won't be a problem anymore this year (Italy).
What annoys me is when streaming services release shows on a weekly basis. Which makes them just as inconvenient to watch as traditional broadcasting.
do you need to binge all of the episodes at once?
And why shouldn’t people binge all the episodes at once? If that’s how they want to watch a series then who are we to say it’s wrong?
Let’s also not forget that the entire point of this tangent was people wanting to watch shows on their own schedule.
Proportional representation is nice, but it's neither sufficient nor necessary.
A report that makes zero comment on controlling how people use YouTube or any other social media.
And yet somehow they are "a disgrace to humanity"
Really?
this, and
> as AI usage and social media fatigue grow
this are not congruent, you are shown way more AI slop in YT than TV, where it is growing - but still no match. If anything, AI fatigue must be making people spend less time on the web. The write-up in the article itself is contradicting this title. Bad title.
and even if it's not algorithmically generated in a direct sense it is clearly subject matter made and selected by algorithm.
I struggle to find content I actually want to watch. It's really weird.
I can't tell if it's me, or the content, or a combination.
I think part of it is our attention span, or lack thereof.
Sample quotes from men in the study:
"Who tells me what's right and what's wrong... is it true or is it not true? Some of the things on YouTube are independent. I find I would listen to them more, because they're on the ground. They're telling you the story. "
"If you see something on social media, whether you believe it or not, you can go to the comments and see everyone's points… If most people agree with it, you know you should be at least somewhat agreeing with it. "
"It seems to everyone that it's an agenda, like the government's behind an agenda… it's like a brainwashing tool for the government. An illegal immigrant killed someone in the street the other day, stabbed them to death… And it's all over Facebook, all over YouTube. And the news hasn’t even said anything about it"
Only one man mentioned using YouTube for entertainment.
FoxNews, NewsMax, AM Radio are already good enough for that. I’ve also noticed that most of the guests on TV News are now YouTubers, so even if you are watching TV, you are going to see them.
Citizen journalism can be a bad thing, like the Nick Shirley example, but the alternative seems to be that only news Larry Ellison or some other billionaire approves will get on TV, that seems like a far worse scenario to me.
For the Iran war, on YouTube, you can see Canadian journalists sailing in the strait of Hormuz and interviews with real Iranians. You cannot see this on CBS.
Adults are the focus here, not men.
Where was there anything in that story that was ant-social media?