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"When you’re young, you look at television and think, 'There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down.' But when you get a little older, you

"When you’re young, you look at television and think, 'There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down.' But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth." --Steve Jobs The algorithms are they way they are because YouTube has figured out what people actually want to watch. Surprise, most people still want to watch "lowest common denominator" content, just like they did before digital media.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Put another way by Terry Pratchett, "And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."
- kaffee 9y ago
  Please! It's Brecht: Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? Poem in Die Welt (1959)
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    Ha, nice! Thanks, I love finding out about the origins of his aphorisms.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Aka The problem with humanity is all of the humans.
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
That's an interesting quote, but Steve Jobs was describing an industry with very little competition beyond its set format at the time. Look at the TV industry now: It's been declining for years, mostly because of rising prices and program line-ups that cater only to the lowest common denominator. The internet media of today is a completely different industry from the television industry of the 1990's. Catering to the lowest common denominator isn't necessarily bad as long as it's not the only option. If, however, YouTube only monetizes crap and removes more thoughtful content, people will go elsewhere.
- ascagnel_ 9y ago
  And TV itself has changed -- there are now networks that make serving higher-brow content a priority (HBO, AMC, etc).
photojosh 9y ago
Guilty pleasure: I love to indulge in YouTube fail video compilations when my brain is mush from a hard day. I've often noted that these days you get the entire actual content of a "<insert country>'s Funniest Home Videos" TV show in 60 seconds or less. In better times I'll turn to documentaries or TED talks, but yes, L.C.D. content is sometimes exactly what is needed.
AndrewUnmuted 9y ago
What you say is true, but there's another oracle of media that should be quoted in addition to Jobs: "The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." --Marshall McLuhan I evoke this point because I think it is crucial to remember that the content of a form of media is nowhere near as impactful as the medium itself. While TV as a medium was designed to cater to lowest-common-denominator values via video, YouTube and other digital video distribution services enable this same thing - but at enormous scale, brevity, and accuracy unknown to the TV medium. This is not just like the era prior to digital media - this is a huge expansion of the era prior to digital media. And it isn't incorrect to point out how scary and dangerous that fact is.
freshhawk 9y ago
Not so much what they want to watch, but what they will watch the most of.
- bryananderson 9y ago
  Indeed, this is an important point, and is more accurate than the way I phrased it.
  - freshhawk 9y ago
    I think it is really interesting, since people were already watching a lot of TV before the recent leap in quality. They were willing to watch those old school network dramas and sitcoms (and still are, see: Big Bang Theory) but when a few cable networks tried bumping the quality up significantly we saw how many people wanted to watch something better. And youtube is a much better platform than television for evolving the cheapest, crappiest "content" that is just barely good enough to get people to continue to watch. Twitch is especially interesting in this regard.
vacri 9y ago
So British people want better things than American people? BBC quality vs American? The networks aren't in business to give people what they want. They're in business to make money, and doing what sells easily is the usual way to make that money. The BBC have a different business model, so they don't have to chase the money that way. Jobs is talking as if people can afford the things they want - if he instead said that "the construction industry builds tons of cheap, shitty housing, because that's what people want! It's the truth!", it'd be immediately obvious that he was speaking blubbering nonsense.
- rixed 9y ago
  Also, for such an important thing as broadcast media, you must factor in the cultural consequences of the content regardless of how many people would watch it (or, more accurately, use it as a recreational drug to calm down after a hard day off work, as stated somewhere above).
- rblatz 9y ago
  But that's what they do build, and a lot of times they wait until a customer asks them to build it... Seems like they are building exactly what people want.
Nihilartikel 9y ago
It's sort of tautological to say that 'most people still want to watch "lowest common denominator" content'. I'm not really casting a judgement on the quality of the content, or of peoples' tastes - but I am lamenting the change to the system that tilts the scale further towards less distinctive media, at the expense of more distinctive. Especially since this used to not be the case. I'm also asserting that it need not be one way or the other. It's not a zero sum game. They could have multi-modal video relevance algorithms that don't leave niches to wither. They certainly have enough data to infer tastes. Do you want top 40 videos? You're in luck. Or do you want to hear some amateur Finnish death metal from a band that only posts 3 songs a year? The people that would be really jazzed about the latter are being under served, and the obscure Finnish death metal band is being under-compensated and under-promoted.
harveylord 9y ago
I disagree. Paraphrasing filmmaker James Gray: "To say people want to see trash is totally elitist. If you feed people McDonald's every day for years and then give them sushi, there ain't no way they're going to say 'give me more of that wasabi, please'. No, they're going to say 'what the hell is this crap?'. I personally agree with this. One piece of evidence is that thinking adults do go see Marvel movies instead of the Scorsese/Fellini/Antonioni/James Gray/Coppola/Fincher/etc. feature, when those are not options.
eighthnate 9y ago
Though I respect Jobs, I don't think he is completely correct here. We know that the networks sometime gives us what we don't want in order to push society into a certain direction. For example, the first interracial kiss in star trek caused a lot of pushback. The first gay theme in media also caused a lot of headaches for the networks. Even the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the first show about a career woman was met with resistance. I don't think it is a conspiracy. It is just what the networks do. It influences society. In other words, I think it's 50/50. Some times, the networks influence society and other times, society influences the networks.

leggomylibro 9y ago

Put another way by Terry Pratchett, "And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."

kaffee 9y ago
Please! It's Brecht: Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? Poem in Die Welt (1959)
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Ha, nice! Thanks, I love finding out about the origins of his aphorisms.
QAPereo 9y ago
Aka The problem with humanity is all of the humans.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

That's an interesting quote, but Steve Jobs was describing an industry with very little competition beyond its set format at the time. Look at the TV industry now: It's been declining for years, mostly because of rising prices and program line-ups that cater only to the lowest common denominator. The internet media of today is a completely different industry from the television industry of the 1990's. Catering to the lowest common denominator isn't necessarily bad as long as it's not the only option. If, however, YouTube only monetizes crap and removes more thoughtful content, people will go elsewhere.

ascagnel_ 9y ago
And TV itself has changed -- there are now networks that make serving higher-brow content a priority (HBO, AMC, etc).

photojosh 9y ago

Guilty pleasure: I love to indulge in YouTube fail video compilations when my brain is mush from a hard day. I've often noted that these days you get the entire actual content of a "<insert country>'s Funniest Home Videos" TV show in 60 seconds or less. In better times I'll turn to documentaries or TED talks, but yes, L.C.D. content is sometimes exactly what is needed.

AndrewUnmuted 9y ago

What you say is true, but there's another oracle of media that should be quoted in addition to Jobs: "The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." --Marshall McLuhan I evoke this point because I think it is crucial to remember that the content of a form of media is nowhere near as impactful as the medium itself. While TV as a medium was designed to cater to lowest-common-denominator values via video, YouTube and other digital video distribution services enable this same thing - but at enormous scale, brevity, and accuracy unknown to the TV medium. This is not just like the era prior to digital media - this is a huge expansion of the era prior to digital media. And it isn't incorrect to point out how scary and dangerous that fact is.

freshhawk 9y ago

Not so much what they want to watch, but what they will watch the most of.

bryananderson 9y ago
Indeed, this is an important point, and is more accurate than the way I phrased it.
- freshhawk 9y ago
  I think it is really interesting, since people were already watching a lot of TV before the recent leap in quality. They were willing to watch those old school network dramas and sitcoms (and still are, see: Big Bang Theory) but when a few cable networks tried bumping the quality up significantly we saw how many people wanted to watch something better. And youtube is a much better platform than television for evolving the cheapest, crappiest "content" that is just barely good enough to get people to continue to watch. Twitch is especially interesting in this regard.

vacri 9y ago

So British people want better things than American people? BBC quality vs American? The networks aren't in business to give people what they want. They're in business to make money, and doing what sells easily is the usual way to make that money. The BBC have a different business model, so they don't have to chase the money that way. Jobs is talking as if people can afford the things they want - if he instead said that "the construction industry builds tons of cheap, shitty housing, because that's what people want! It's the truth!", it'd be immediately obvious that he was speaking blubbering nonsense.

rixed 9y ago
Also, for such an important thing as broadcast media, you must factor in the cultural consequences of the content regardless of how many people would watch it (or, more accurately, use it as a recreational drug to calm down after a hard day off work, as stated somewhere above).
rblatz 9y ago
But that's what they do build, and a lot of times they wait until a customer asks them to build it... Seems like they are building exactly what people want.

Nihilartikel 9y ago

It's sort of tautological to say that 'most people still want to watch "lowest common denominator" content'. I'm not really casting a judgement on the quality of the content, or of peoples' tastes - but I am lamenting the change to the system that tilts the scale further towards less distinctive media, at the expense of more distinctive. Especially since this used to not be the case. I'm also asserting that it need not be one way or the other. It's not a zero sum game. They could have multi-modal video relevance algorithms that don't leave niches to wither. They certainly have enough data to infer tastes. Do you want top 40 videos? You're in luck. Or do you want to hear some amateur Finnish death metal from a band that only posts 3 songs a year? The people that would be really jazzed about the latter are being under served, and the obscure Finnish death metal band is being under-compensated and under-promoted.

harveylord 9y ago

I disagree. Paraphrasing filmmaker James Gray: "To say people want to see trash is totally elitist. If you feed people McDonald's every day for years and then give them sushi, there ain't no way they're going to say 'give me more of that wasabi, please'. No, they're going to say 'what the hell is this crap?'. I personally agree with this. One piece of evidence is that thinking adults do go see Marvel movies instead of the Scorsese/Fellini/Antonioni/James Gray/Coppola/Fincher/etc. feature, when those are not options.

eighthnate 9y ago

Though I respect Jobs, I don't think he is completely correct here. We know that the networks sometime gives us what we don't want in order to push society into a certain direction. For example, the first interracial kiss in star trek caused a lot of pushback. The first gay theme in media also caused a lot of headaches for the networks. Even the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the first show about a career woman was met with resistance. I don't think it is a conspiracy. It is just what the networks do. It influences society. In other words, I think it's 50/50. Some times, the networks influence society and other times, society influences the networks.