Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

OT: YouTube has some big problems.

I don't think I am the audience for YouTube any more.

YouTube is converging towards where all the social media sites are:

* shorts

* photo/text posts

* longer videos too - typically 12 minutes approx

* AI videos - some of which are fine but I want to be able to filter them out

* their algorithm/feed is very bad at letting me explore my interests, when I choose to - instead it feeds me stuff that leaves me unsatisified

But I came here years ago to watch TV made by people NOT bound to 12 minutes. I watch pretty much nothing else at night on the couch except YouTube but I am coming to realise it's no longer what I want.

That "original YouTube" seems to be gone. Nothing has replaced it.

Original youtube is there, it's called subscriptions tab. A curated list of high-quality content creators accumulated for over a decade.

Youtube certainly took a lot of unpopular decisions lately, but being able to stream any hi-res video ever posted in an instant and for "free" is a miracle. I will be happy with youtube for as long as content creators I care about are happy and I can get their fresh content via browser, yt-dlp, or other means.

> Original youtube is there, it's called subscriptions tab. A curated list of high-quality content creators accumulated for over a decade.

Alternatively, it's there in my RSS reader app, where I can see new stuff showing up without even visiting or interacting with YT.

"The algorithm" is quite powerful. Most of my view time comes from long form content, between 30 minutes and 2hrs. Sometimes it can be a struggle to get it to show me a 10 minute video I can watch over breakfast or something. What Youtube pushes people towards is not uniform

They even added games lmao, all of them looks quickly sloped stuff. The only think keeping YouTube afloat is their inertia, everyone is here so everyone goes here. The day creators realize video is infintely copiable data and they can actually publish in multiple places simultaneously better platforms will emerge for sure.

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