8 ms·

YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos

115 points by bipr0 9y ago

bognition 9y ago
Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.
- jonknee 9y ago
  > I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back. It could be different now, but the last time I tried to answer this the answer was that preference is stored in a cookie and not globally. I have my browser set to dump cookies when it closes so I kept losing that setting.
- carlossilva33 9y ago
  Do you have an adblocker? It makes it very easy to block anotations and all other kinds of annoying crap.
- MrMember 9y ago
  I've never been able to get the disable annotations option to stick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it's been that way for years. Very annoying.
  - thephyber 9y ago
    I don't think it's persistent if you don't log in. There is an account-level setting (not a video-level setting) which I the gp is talking about.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  It seems like a better approach would be to just get rid of those annotations. I don't know how anyone ever thought that was a good idea. But YT should let them link externally. Site's like Patreon are beneficial to everyone involved.
  - pmichaud 9y ago
    I've been watching tutorial videos on software packages recently, and one really nice use case for annotations is that if there is out of date information in a specific sentence, they can just annotate it with the newer info instead of redoing the entire video. It's also helpful when they use the links as intended, like the video links to its own follow up video at the end.
    - ncallaway 9y ago
      Yea, this is the case with almost every channel I watch. I've found annotations and links to be used responsibly and to usually be helpful. I can totally see how these features could be abused by some channels, though.
  - anyfoo 9y ago
    I can echo what the others have already commented, which is that in the overwhelming majority of videos from channels that I have subscribed to, the annotations have been useful. Getting rid of them entirely would get rid of an easy and much needed way for the uploader to add corrections and other additions after the fact. I do see videos where the annotations are rather annoying, but I don't think it's so often that it has been a terrible problem overall, and I have a suspicion that on those videos the annotations have not been the only annoying aspect. Edit: I just saw further down that annotations are actually deprecated, and now I really wonder how people can add corrections to videos? Does that mean I have to read the description of every video I watch?
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      How to add corrections to post? Well, reply to your own video with a blank post so its top post and reserved. Edit it to add corrections. I just regard annotations and commercials (which aren't blocked by uBlock Origin) as part of a video. If you (or I) don't enjoy a video (for whatever reason), stopping watching it is always an option to consider.
- wickawic 9y ago
  Agreed, but this move seems like a grab at Patreon and self promotion in general. Users can still put obnoxious annotations up.
  - timothya 9y ago
    > Users can still put obnoxious annotations up. No, annotations are deprecated, you can't add them to videos anymore. [0] [0]: https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/03/keep-fans-engaged-with-cards-end.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/03/keep-fans-en...
    - Mithaldu 9y ago
      Wow, that is utterly disgusting and an attack on their own user base.
    - anyfoo 9y ago
      Huh, so, how will uploaders update corrections and other additions after the fact?
      - Mithaldu 9y ago
        You can add "cards", i.e. the popups in the top right that show a short text and an "i" button. Those can be links to videos, polls, or external links (if you're a big youtuber). However the text is limited, you can't set how long it shows, and you can have a maximum of 5. You can maybe use subtitles too, but you cannot set a default subtitle for your video. So there are hacky half-working workarounds, but otherwise youtube just told everyone who cares about their videos to go and kindly get fucked.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Well, how about reuploading if you fuck up the editing process, and trying not to fuck up the next time?
        PhasmaFelis 9y ago
- cm2187 9y ago
  Also the ability to illustrate a video with an image that's not part of the video, has become a click bait paradise.
  - anyfoo 9y ago
    Unlike the additions, I really don't see how that feature is benefiting the platform except for some uploaders by, as you succinctly put it, providing click bait. I really wish the video image would have to be a frame taken from the video. Make it any frame, if the uploader cares so much they can include the image as a title card and pick a frame from that.
    - LeoNatan25 9y ago
      Before the option to put a custom image existed, assholes would put the click-bait image for a few frames in the middle of the video. You can't win with such idiots.
- rasz 9y ago
  install ImprovedTube Plus, turn off annotations in the extension, problem solved
- dpedu 9y ago
  There's a (fake) setting to globally disable annotations? Even if it doesn't work as Google describes it, I'm interested.
  - apocalyptic0n3 9y ago
    There's been one in the playback settings for years. https://www.youtube.com/account_playback https://www.youtube.com/account_playback
- norswap 9y ago
  The answer to excess of marketing is censorship of the small accounts? This does not make any sense.
  - wdr1 9y ago
    It's not just small accounts. It's also big accounts that are abusive.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Nice that they are getting rid of an irritating implementation. But they aren't replacing the legitimate need. Some videos do benefit from background material. Or a patreon type link to support the content creator. Google should address the need. Otherwise it just looks like a tactic to keep people on YouTube.
slrz 9y ago
Considering the crap ratio in these obnoxious end-of-video links and the fact that external links in the video description (e.g. to point to additional information) are still allowed, I don't think this is a bad thing. I'd probably prefer it if the same rules applied to anyone though.
throwaway2048 9y ago
An important note here, if you cannot enable monetize videos, YouTube will not allow you to link to patreon or other sites. https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg Its not enough for Google to ban you from ads, they have decided to cut off any other funding source aswell...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- noitsnot 9y ago
  I really don't understand how they have made it to this point.
  - lovich 9y ago
    The government doesn't try to prevent monopolies anymore, and once you're a monopoly you have more than enough power to stop competitors if you pay even a modicum of attention to them
    - colejohnson66 9y ago
      The problem is that YouTube isn’t a monopoly. There’s other video sharing sites available such as Vimeo. Also, everyone uses YouTube and private companies don’t have to respect the freedom of speech ideal.
      - lovich 9y ago
        The colliqual usage of monopoly does not mean that the group described as a monoply has 100% of the market as seen here[1]. Having nearly all of the market is sufficient to be described as a monopoly. Once you are able to unialterally affect the market as you wish, because you control such a large portion of it, you are exercising monoply power. As an example Microsoft didn't control 100% of operating systems when the US government went after them, but they were still found to have been absuing their monoply power. Google putting their reviews above the search results when you search for a restaurant, which always made them appear before Yelp's, is pretty much the exact same situation as Microsoft forcing IE to be the default browser on Windows but you don't hear anyone in the government even hint at going after Google nowadays [1]http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopoly.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopoly.asp
ungzd 9y ago
Google is cracking down on links in their search results too, using AMP.
andyjsong 9y ago
From the article it sounds like it's more cracking down on people who rip off other people's content and then use the link cards to get referral traffic to their own properties. I don't think legitimate creators need to be concerned. From the article, the minimum requirement to be a partner is 10K public views. That's a relatively low bar, and you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of a view count anyway.
- falcolas 9y ago
  > you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of a view count anyway. Urm, why? Not everyone is in it for the advertisement money. Want to direct someone to a charity instead of supporting you? Not unless you're 10k+ Patreon? 10k+ Blueprints for the table you just built on screen? 10k+ Not to mention one of the requirements to be a partner is that your content is advertiser friendly. If you make videos about videogames, like Destiny 2, that rules you out.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    What’s wrong with links in the description box in that case?
    - Mithaldu 9y ago
      Many people ignore them and on mobile viewers need to do extra steps to even be able to see the description.
      - philfrasty 9y ago
        Even on mobile CTR for Description-Links is by far higher than for dynamic annotations. Source: myself (approx. 80%+ mobile viewers on my channel)
        Mithaldu 9y ago
        What exactly do you mean by dynamic annotations?
rasz 9y ago
Was youtube always tracking links in Video description? I dont remember ever noticing it, spotted it yesterday, every non google link is redirected with https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencoded https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencod... link+video title
- everythingswan 9y ago
  Think this happened within last 6-12 months. Not long ago it wasn't possible to see referral data from YouTube in something like Google Analytics without manually adding utm's. I noticed the data coming in automatically sometime in that period.
tehwebguy 9y ago
YouTube still hasn't stopped the hordes of fake accounts that spam every top creator's new videos. Ex. PewDiePie video has a dozen comments from fake PewDiePie accounts (name, avatar) posting about "contest" link.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  It drives me crazy how much this clutters search results. For years I would almost always sort by >20mins/upload date for whatever I was looking for (usually lectures/talks, hence the >20mins) but over the past few years where I used to get the most recent talk from $person, now I get a full page of reuploaded content from 1994, half of which is from the same spam user. Now my search of choice tends to be viewcount/<1month. I now prefer mps-youtube for the majority of my youtube interaction. It's a gplv3 cli client, and then I just have VLC open up the video. No ads, no popups, no links. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube You know, a long time ago when google bought youtube I remember thinking to myself that it meant it was never going to be the same. After things like the google+ name fiasco, etc (Jawed Karim's first comment on youtube was: "why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?"), and many other scandals, and not seeing hardly a dent in their userbase, I wonder what it would take to get the users to another platform?
LeoNatan25 9y ago
You know what I want YouTube to "crack" on? Assholes that say "But, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments section bellow." Any video of those should be immediately demonetized. This is a half serious rant, but seriously, video quality has gone so low over the last few years. There is practically a format that all those "professional" assholes follow. Does it really help them get more cash?
- james-skemp 9y ago
  I believe number of minutes viewed, number of comments, and number of likes and dislikes all have a part in the algorithm for how well a video does in YouTube's eyes. So yes. Of course source: professional YouTubers who have talked about the changes to the algorithm over the years.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    I am not talking about the algorithm. I am asking whether saying "leave a comment" actually makes people leave a comment? For me, that acts as a detergent and an automatic down-vote. Are people that gullible that they subscribe when told to, comment when asked, etc?
    - james-skemp 9y ago
      I wouldn't consider myself a normal user, so I don't know. "Like, comment, and subscribe" also was once a popular thing to say at the end of videos too. I'm sure for some individuals this would be beneficial to reinforce. For some it had no impact. For others (myself included) it would be mocked. I guess the question is, does less than five seconds of text at the end of a video (which some people may not even see) hurt more than it could potentially help? My search terms don't seem to find such research, if it was done. My assumption, however, is that there are plenty of people out there that will do it, and might look at the comments to see what others have discussed. And some just have to comment on everything.

115 points by bipr0 9y ago

Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years. It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

jonknee 9y ago
> I've disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if youtube is deliberately switching the setting back. It could be different now, but the last time I tried to answer this the answer was that preference is stored in a cookie and not globally. I have my browser set to dump cookies when it closes so I kept losing that setting.
carlossilva33 9y ago
Do you have an adblocker? It makes it very easy to block anotations and all other kinds of annoying crap.
MrMember 9y ago
I've never been able to get the disable annotations option to stick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it's been that way for years. Very annoying.
- thephyber 9y ago
  I don't think it's persistent if you don't log in. There is an account-level setting (not a video-level setting) which I the gp is talking about.
CaptSpify 9y ago
It seems like a better approach would be to just get rid of those annotations. I don't know how anyone ever thought that was a good idea. But YT should let them link externally. Site's like Patreon are beneficial to everyone involved.
- pmichaud 9y ago
  I've been watching tutorial videos on software packages recently, and one really nice use case for annotations is that if there is out of date information in a specific sentence, they can just annotate it with the newer info instead of redoing the entire video. It's also helpful when they use the links as intended, like the video links to its own follow up video at the end.
  - ncallaway 9y ago
    Yea, this is the case with almost every channel I watch. I've found annotations and links to be used responsibly and to usually be helpful. I can totally see how these features could be abused by some channels, though.
- anyfoo 9y ago
  I can echo what the others have already commented, which is that in the overwhelming majority of videos from channels that I have subscribed to, the annotations have been useful. Getting rid of them entirely would get rid of an easy and much needed way for the uploader to add corrections and other additions after the fact. I do see videos where the annotations are rather annoying, but I don't think it's so often that it has been a terrible problem overall, and I have a suspicion that on those videos the annotations have not been the only annoying aspect. Edit: I just saw further down that annotations are actually deprecated, and now I really wonder how people can add corrections to videos? Does that mean I have to read the description of every video I watch?
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    How to add corrections to post? Well, reply to your own video with a blank post so its top post and reserved. Edit it to add corrections. I just regard annotations and commercials (which aren't blocked by uBlock Origin) as part of a video. If you (or I) don't enjoy a video (for whatever reason), stopping watching it is always an option to consider.
wickawic 9y ago
Agreed, but this move seems like a grab at Patreon and self promotion in general. Users can still put obnoxious annotations up.
- timothya 9y ago
  > Users can still put obnoxious annotations up. No, annotations are deprecated, you can't add them to videos anymore. [0] [0]: https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/03/keep-fans-engaged-with-cards-end.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/03/keep-fans-en...
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    Wow, that is utterly disgusting and an attack on their own user base.
  - anyfoo 9y ago
    Huh, so, how will uploaders update corrections and other additions after the fact?
    - Mithaldu 9y ago
      You can add "cards", i.e. the popups in the top right that show a short text and an "i" button. Those can be links to videos, polls, or external links (if you're a big youtuber). However the text is limited, you can't set how long it shows, and you can have a maximum of 5. You can maybe use subtitles too, but you cannot set a default subtitle for your video. So there are hacky half-working workarounds, but otherwise youtube just told everyone who cares about their videos to go and kindly get fucked.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Well, how about reuploading if you fuck up the editing process, and trying not to fuck up the next time?
      - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
cm2187 9y ago
Also the ability to illustrate a video with an image that's not part of the video, has become a click bait paradise.
- anyfoo 9y ago
  Unlike the additions, I really don't see how that feature is benefiting the platform except for some uploaders by, as you succinctly put it, providing click bait. I really wish the video image would have to be a frame taken from the video. Make it any frame, if the uploader cares so much they can include the image as a title card and pick a frame from that.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    Before the option to put a custom image existed, assholes would put the click-bait image for a few frames in the middle of the video. You can't win with such idiots.
rasz 9y ago
install ImprovedTube Plus, turn off annotations in the extension, problem solved
dpedu 9y ago
There's a (fake) setting to globally disable annotations? Even if it doesn't work as Google describes it, I'm interested.
- apocalyptic0n3 9y ago
  There's been one in the playback settings for years. https://www.youtube.com/account_playback https://www.youtube.com/account_playback
norswap 9y ago
The answer to excess of marketing is censorship of the small accounts? This does not make any sense.
- wdr1 9y ago
  It's not just small accounts. It's also big accounts that are abusive.
tyingq 9y ago
Nice that they are getting rid of an irritating implementation. But they aren't replacing the legitimate need. Some videos do benefit from background material. Or a patreon type link to support the content creator. Google should address the need. Otherwise it just looks like a tactic to keep people on YouTube.

slrz 9y ago

Considering the crap ratio in these obnoxious end-of-video links and the fact that external links in the video description (e.g. to point to additional information) are still allowed, I don't think this is a bad thing. I'd probably prefer it if the same rules applied to anyone though.

throwaway2048 9y ago

An important note here, if you cannot enable monetize videos, YouTube will not allow you to link to patreon or other sites. https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg Its not enough for Google to ban you from ads, they have decided to cut off any other funding source aswell...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
noitsnot 9y ago
I really don't understand how they have made it to this point.
- lovich 9y ago
  The government doesn't try to prevent monopolies anymore, and once you're a monopoly you have more than enough power to stop competitors if you pay even a modicum of attention to them
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    The problem is that YouTube isn’t a monopoly. There’s other video sharing sites available such as Vimeo. Also, everyone uses YouTube and private companies don’t have to respect the freedom of speech ideal.
    - lovich 9y ago
      The colliqual usage of monopoly does not mean that the group described as a monoply has 100% of the market as seen here[1]. Having nearly all of the market is sufficient to be described as a monopoly. Once you are able to unialterally affect the market as you wish, because you control such a large portion of it, you are exercising monoply power. As an example Microsoft didn't control 100% of operating systems when the US government went after them, but they were still found to have been absuing their monoply power. Google putting their reviews above the search results when you search for a restaurant, which always made them appear before Yelp's, is pretty much the exact same situation as Microsoft forcing IE to be the default browser on Windows but you don't hear anyone in the government even hint at going after Google nowadays [1]http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopoly.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopoly.asp

ungzd 9y ago

Google is cracking down on links in their search results too, using AMP.

andyjsong 9y ago

From the article it sounds like it's more cracking down on people who rip off other people's content and then use the link cards to get referral traffic to their own properties. I don't think legitimate creators need to be concerned. From the article, the minimum requirement to be a partner is 10K public views. That's a relatively low bar, and you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of a view count anyway.

falcolas 9y ago
> you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of a view count anyway. Urm, why? Not everyone is in it for the advertisement money. Want to direct someone to a charity instead of supporting you? Not unless you're 10k+ Patreon? 10k+ Blueprints for the table you just built on screen? 10k+ Not to mention one of the requirements to be a partner is that your content is advertiser friendly. If you make videos about videogames, like Destiny 2, that rules you out.
- manigandham 9y ago
  What’s wrong with links in the description box in that case?
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    Many people ignore them and on mobile viewers need to do extra steps to even be able to see the description.
    - philfrasty 9y ago
      Even on mobile CTR for Description-Links is by far higher than for dynamic annotations. Source: myself (approx. 80%+ mobile viewers on my channel)
      - Mithaldu 9y ago
        What exactly do you mean by dynamic annotations?

rasz 9y ago

Was youtube always tracking links in Video description? I dont remember ever noticing it, spotted it yesterday, every non google link is redirected with https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencoded https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencod... link+video title

everythingswan 9y ago
Think this happened within last 6-12 months. Not long ago it wasn't possible to see referral data from YouTube in something like Google Analytics without manually adding utm's. I noticed the data coming in automatically sometime in that period.

tehwebguy 9y ago

YouTube still hasn't stopped the hordes of fake accounts that spam every top creator's new videos. Ex. PewDiePie video has a dozen comments from fake PewDiePie accounts (name, avatar) posting about "contest" link.

arca_vorago 9y ago
It drives me crazy how much this clutters search results. For years I would almost always sort by >20mins/upload date for whatever I was looking for (usually lectures/talks, hence the >20mins) but over the past few years where I used to get the most recent talk from $person, now I get a full page of reuploaded content from 1994, half of which is from the same spam user. Now my search of choice tends to be viewcount/<1month. I now prefer mps-youtube for the majority of my youtube interaction. It's a gplv3 cli client, and then I just have VLC open up the video. No ads, no popups, no links. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube You know, a long time ago when google bought youtube I remember thinking to myself that it meant it was never going to be the same. After things like the google+ name fiasco, etc (Jawed Karim's first comment on youtube was: "why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?"), and many other scandals, and not seeing hardly a dent in their userbase, I wonder what it would take to get the users to another platform?

LeoNatan25 9y ago

You know what I want YouTube to "crack" on? Assholes that say "But, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments section bellow." Any video of those should be immediately demonetized. This is a half serious rant, but seriously, video quality has gone so low over the last few years. There is practically a format that all those "professional" assholes follow. Does it really help them get more cash?

james-skemp 9y ago
I believe number of minutes viewed, number of comments, and number of likes and dislikes all have a part in the algorithm for how well a video does in YouTube's eyes. So yes. Of course source: professional YouTubers who have talked about the changes to the algorithm over the years.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  I am not talking about the algorithm. I am asking whether saying "leave a comment" actually makes people leave a comment? For me, that acts as a detergent and an automatic down-vote. Are people that gullible that they subscribe when told to, comment when asked, etc?
  - james-skemp 9y ago
    I wouldn't consider myself a normal user, so I don't know. "Like, comment, and subscribe" also was once a popular thing to say at the end of videos too. I'm sure for some individuals this would be beneficial to reinforce. For some it had no impact. For others (myself included) it would be mocked. I guess the question is, does less than five seconds of text at the end of a video (which some people may not even see) hurt more than it could potentially help? My search terms don't seem to find such research, if it was done. My assumption, however, is that there are plenty of people out there that will do it, and might look at the comments to see what others have discussed. And some just have to comment on everything.