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Clickbait is unreasonably effective [video]

129 points by underscore_ku 5y ago

cblconfederate 5y ago
I have found this video to be cope, it's trying to justify clickbait as "making an effective title". I think it's important to have in mind what was the purpose of the internet: to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world can move forward faster. Clickbaiting people to watch 10 minutes videos for tiddly little bits of information is a colossal waste of potential there.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  How are you using "cope" in this context?
  - Aulig 5y ago
    Sounds like one of the modern colloquial definitions: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cope https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cope Tough to put in words really. Maybe it could be rephrased to "I found that he is trying to legitimize clickbait", however the second part of the sentence says that too.
    - _bohm 5y ago
      or maybe: "rationalizing his use of clickbait as a means of coping with the weight it places on his conscience"
      - Aulig 5y ago
        That's a great explanation, I agree with that. I couldnt put it into words that well :)
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    Unreasonably.
  - dnissley 5y ago
    cope = sour grapes
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    I mean as a coping mechanism for not admitting that clickbait is manipulation of humans. "But look it's working" is not an excuse
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Thanks. That's rather unclear and nonstandard, in my view.
- antasvara 5y ago
  Some of your criticism seems to be directed at video length and not a clickbaity title. If a video takes 10 minutes to tell me a single piece of information, the title isn't the issue with that video.
  - infogulch 5y ago
    Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but what if there's a human reason why 10m videos are popular. Maybe 10 minutes is just the minimum time needed to get across a non-trivial idea to a broad audience. Sure, the platform itself encourages that length implicitly but maybe that's not an arbitrary decision and is based on the human capacity to absorb information.
    - jrootabega 5y ago
      10 minutes is the original minimum video length youtube required before you could place midroll ads. It's now 8 minutes, but 10 is still a goal that many "creators" aim for. What it mostly results in is low-quality, low-information videos that are padded out to be just long enough to show you: - pre-roll ads - embedded sponsored content - plug for your patreon/other videos - reminder to like/subscribe/comment - a tiny nugget of actual content SOMETIMES - mid-roll ads - post-roll ads I agree that 10 minutes feels about right if you were actually trying to convey a good chunk of information in good faith, but that's just not what happens on youtube. Maybe 10 minutes was a good threshold for midroll ads for the same reason that it would have been a good threshold for quality videos. Videos like the linked one, while technically longer, just result in more and more mid-roll ads. In fact while attempting to watch this one, I got just past his embedded sponsorship plug, when youtube ambushed me with the "Ads in 3... 2... 1..." type of ad that makes it impossible to tell just how much of the video is compromised by ads before watching it.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        10-25 minutes or so seems like the sweet spot for a lot of podcasts, informational videos, presentations, and the like when they're genuinely trying to inform/entertain. It's hard to really communicate a lot of information or have a meaningful discussion in a shorter period of time unless it's very focused (how to...) and a lot of those would better be text and a photo. And a lot of hour long interviews etc. tend to feel like they go on too long.
- epidemian 5y ago
  Have you also found other videos by the author to be "10 minutes of tiddly little bits of information"? I think Veritasium makes some of the most valuable and informative videos out there. Definitely not the kind of channel that i would consider "baiting" with titles and then disappointing with the video content itself. His views on video titles' "clickbaitiness", given the state of affairs of Youtube recommendation algorithms and the "competition" for viewers' attention, seem pretty on point to me.
  - gmiller123456 5y ago
    He specifically said in the video that he hasn't been doing this in the past, but plans to "get better at it". I think one of his videos that qualifies as pure clickbait is "Can a Wind-Powered Car Go Faster Than The Wind?". It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. Certainly not 20 minutes worth, and very different from the rest of his videos. It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching.
    - 4ad 5y ago
      > It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. It's entertainment, not a scientific lecture. As entertainment, it contained far more information that the vast majority of competing entertainment. > and very different from the rest of his videos. I must disagree here, I think most of his videos contain very little information as well. Less than I would like, in any case. > It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching. How is this not a good thing? It's great for people who actually want more information, and it's great for the creators who provide said information. It makes the creator community (I hate that term) healthy.
    - epidemian 5y ago
      I understood that he's been doing more clickbaity titles for the past year or two, but maybe i misunderstood. For the first video about the wind powered vehicle, yes i agree. It was more of a story and spectacle than any actual information. Still quite entertaining i think, but maybe disappointing if you wanted to learn something, which is usually the spirit of the channel.
- infogulch 5y ago
  This one is almost 20 minutes. Here's a histogram of video lengths of Veritasium videos over the last year: 3 videos 10m or less 8 videos from 11m-14m 11 videos from 15m-19m 5 videos from 20m-22m 1 video at 34m
- noahtallen 5y ago
  > to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world can move forward faster. While I would love this to be true, we have to remember that so much of the internet is a business in our capitalist economy. To many YouTube channels (especially the big ones), the primary purpose of the title is to get someone to watch the video to make money. Sharing information is only a secondary purpose. This is true across basically every business. The primary purpose of anything is profit, and every other thing is secondary. This is why health care is difficult to privatize, as the primary purpose of profit is very easily at odds with the secondary purpose of health outcomes. I feel like I see this purpose thing come up all the time in different parts of businesses, and it really makes me wonder whether this system is sustainable. The YouTube channel is justified in writing a clickbait title, because other types of titles reduce profit. And because of the way our society and economy works, reducing profit is always a “bad” thing. You could say that with more profit, the creators could expand the business and provide even more value to their viewers. Maybe that’s true in this case, but that’s basically the whole reason clickbait exists. I’m not sure we should be that happy about it.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >I have found this video to be cope, I am not familiar with this phrase - is it a typo or is this just a bit of slang I have missed out on - is it a variant of this https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope
  - ryeights 5y ago
    Cope (noun, slang) is any thought used as a coping mechanism against an emotional stressor or perceived shortcoming. For example: Alice: I may be ugly, but at least I’m not superficial. Bob: Cope
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      I'm aware of this usage of cope, and I guess I might use it myself if the opportunity arose - it's just 'to be cope' seems a different usage.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    OP responds here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266767
karmakaze 5y ago
OT: Youtube should adopt Github-like URLs so you could know that this was a Veritasium video just by looking at the link. Secondly, HN should show more of the URL for such sites.
- jstanley 5y ago
  Which part of the URL would you want to see more of? YouTube doesn't include the creator's username in the URL unfortunately. Maybe they should!
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    IF Youtube revealed the creator's channel on the URL THEN HN could (and should) show that element. Note that the suggested change would also better enable my requested feature of being able to block specific channels by providing the in-URL hooks to do so. (Not OP.)
    - AvocadoCake 5y ago
      Furthermore, it would allow me to turn off my ad-block for certain creators, without making me suffer through ads on videos made by creators I'm not willing to support in that way.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hartator 5y ago
Veritasium is an awesome channel. Check his videos out if you haven't already. Derek wrote a PHD on how to make videos interesting while learning and his YouTube reflects some deep thoughts on how to do that. Quality is awesome, he is personable, and you feel you always learn some deep insider knowledge.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  Didn't know you could get a phd in that
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    some quick research says that he got a PhD in physics education research from the University of Sydney. You can read his PhD thesis, "Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education", right here: https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/super/PhD(Muller).pdf https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/supe...
    - latexr 5y ago
      He has a short (6 minutes) TED talk on the subject. “The key to effective educational science videos”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQaW2bFieo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQaW2bFieo8
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cturhan 5y ago
It’s so interesting that YouTube doesn’t support A/B test for title and graphics.
- nexuist 5y ago
  If you think about it, every video listed as a search result is a title/thumbnail test, except instead of an A/B test it's A/B/C/D/E...
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    I think GP meant A/B for your own thumbnails, so you'd be able to randomly show two different thumbnail/titles to viewers and then see stats for each one. They can come clarify if that's incorrect.
- LordAtlas 5y ago
  External paid tools like TubeBuddy and VidIQ allow you to do that. Most large channels use them for constant testing.
  - spuz 5y ago
    How can an external tool do this? As far as I know, there is no way to show half of your audience a title/thumbnail and the other half another title/thumbnail. If they are not testing different variants at the same time, it limits what can be learnt from the experiment.
    - Cipater 5y ago
      TubeBuddy's A/B Testing works by having you create a variation of a video's metadata (this could include the Thumbnail, Title, Tags or Description). We then alternate your video's metadata every 24 hours at Midnight PST (to line up with YouTube Analytics statistics). The test completes either based on a certain number of days that you picked or based on statistical significance being achieved. In an ideal world, we'd be able to have each impression throughout the day alternate between the Original and Variation which would be a 'true' A/B test. Since YouTube analytics are only provided in 24 hours blocks, our current system is basically the best that can be done taking into account YouTube's limitations. https://tubebuddy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000707329-a-b-testing-notes https://tubebuddy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5...
_Algernon_ 5y ago
While I like the channel in general, these attempts at justifying click bait are just annoying. Just do it if you deem it necessary, but don't pretend like you have the moral high ground for doing it. You don't. That being said, Veritasium is among the least clickbaity clickbaiters.
m_ke 5y ago
Somewhat unrelated but I think there should be a law to force all of these big corps to give people an opt out button to disable algorithmic feeds and recommendations.
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  While Youtube doesn't have a full opt-out it does at least have a reverse chronological feed still available[0]. You can get quite close to an algorithm free experience by using that feed, combined with blocking sections that include recommendations with ublock origin. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  You can block the Recommendations (and Comments) portions of the page, provided you're using a browser that supports extensions, using uBlock Origin or Stylish, amongst others. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266550
  - m_ke 5y ago
    Yes I already do that. My issue is with recommendations in app, I mostly watch CS / ML lectures and for some reason youtube keeps recommending right wingers and other sensational clickbait no matter how much I click "not interested" and "don't recommend channel".
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      All the more reason to ditch the app.
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      how odd, I don't find this true for me at all. For a while I turned off watch history (which means that the recommendations are only based on your subscriptions) and that was... not an objection improvement, it made it harder to find content that was unlike the stuff I'm subscribed to, but it also made my recommendations more focused.
s9w 5y ago
It's effective in the same way as robbing a bank is effective. It is also effective at driving away your core audience.
dredmorbius 5y ago
What's left out of most discussions of clickbait are the questions of consequence and of engineered promotionn. Clickbait is effective where it can be employed without consequence. YouTube is one such domain. It's inordinately effective where algorithms promote material based on short-term appeal rather than long-term benefit. Where either or both of these factors are addressed, clickbait doesn't disappear entirely (it does hook into human psychology), but its effectiveness and power fall markedly. YouTube does not support blocking of individual channels by users, or at least didn't as of the last time I used it whilst logged in (some years ago). If I'm presented with content that is absolute bilgewater, I cannot in any way indicate to the system "do not show me content from this source at all ever". This is the equivalent of a privately-functioning super-downvote, and is an exceedingly strong signal YouTUbe are denying themselves over content quality. Its availability would be among the very few possible reasons I'd consider accessing the service other than anonymously (and preferably through a front-end such as Invidious or FixYT, or commandline / terminal tools such as youtube-dl, mpv, or mps-youtube). Eventually, YouTube might themselves consider re-jiggering their recommendations away from channels which are consistently blocked. In the absence, attention and misdirection games can be played, repeatedly, without risk. (Oh: and quality contributors such as Derek Muller are also harmed by this as they're competing with scum-sucking bottom feeders for their own far superior productions.) The other aspect is that the algorithm itself promotes short-term engagement at the cost of not only long-term value and quality, but genuine social harm, as has been well documented over recent years. (Including by Destin Sandler in an excellent 3-part series on online disinformation, the YouTube segment is here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4) This means that the existing psychological highjacking is further juiced algorithmically. On desktop systems where the option is available to me, I use CSS hacks to remove both recommendations and comments from YouTube. The experience improves tremendously. (Stylish: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-themes-for/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-the... though the uBlock Origin elements remover can also be used for this.) I've just had an exchange with dang about a recent submission and site which makes no bones about its dedication to pseudoscience and disinformation. Hacker News does have a policy of penalising (though not completely blocking) such sites. In our back-and-forth, dang offered (tongue-in-cheek, I'm pretty sure), that any strict "no bullshit" rule would render much of the present-day Internet inadmissable on HN. The longer I think that over, the more my response is "Yes, and that would be a Good Thing." (I'm well aware if issues with truth-determination, epistemology, simple errors, politically-motivated censorship, and more. I'm referring here to publishers and authors who specifically and categorically defend posting of bullshit, though that's not the full extent of what I'd object to. I refer to Dante's Inferno in which it is the 8th of the 9 circles to which false counselors, falsifiers, hypocrits, schismatics, corrupt politicians, flatterers, pimps, and seducers are consigned. Violations of trust strike at the very heart of polity and civilisation.) http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/dante-alighieris-inferno_50290aae6f2f5_w1500.png http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/dante-alighieris-i... In my experience on the non-commerial, non-algorithmic, and distributed social platforms of Mastodon / the Fediverse and Diaspora, I find that whilst bullshit isn't entirely absent, its role is much reduced. There is no algorithm to juice its spread. On Mastodon, instances can elect to federate fully, partially, or not at all with others. Smaller instances can define and tune their interactions with others quite specifically. (The instance I'm on, toot.cat, run by a long-time online friend, has a substantial list of limited and silenced servers: https://toot.cat/about/more https://toot.cat/about/more) Diaspora dates from somewhat earlier, and has a more open philosophy toward content, though repeat disinformation, attacks and threats, and spam are dealt with in at least part. Among my contacts, we share information on block-worthy profiles based on various criteria. (Such informal lists are a frequent occurrence, especially in the absence of more powerful tools. They're not without their own risks and failure modes, including inadvertent or unwarranted inclusion.) The larger point though is that clickbait is a phenomenon actively and intentionally supported by algorithmic social media to serve its short-term benefits. It does so at its own long-term cost.
nett18 5y ago
He even renamed that video, it was called something along the lines of "We need to talk about clickbait" previously.
- nicetryguy 5y ago
  Indeed. It will probably end up with: "You'll Never Believe How Clickbait Actually Works!"
colechristensen 5y ago
His justifications bother me, it's still making money from manipulation, and in at least one example he makes, fear. One thing that doesn't get mention is how clickbait changes your audience, usually in a race to the bottom. It alienates fewer people than it attracts, but then your new audience reacts differently to your content.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  The challenge, as he mentions a bit at the end, is that "no manipulation" isn't an option. He didn't have to climb up on a ladder, or post-edit 3D labels on top of his presentation, or make a cute little animation of a present unwrapping into another present. He did all of that to make the video more engaging, which means nothing more or less than manipulating people to keep watching. Crazy titles bug me personally a lot more than fancy editing or weird props, but as long as they're not so misleading I can't make an informed decision on what to watch, it's hard to begrudge content creators an engagement tool that can make such a difference.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    What is and is not "manipulation" depends on your definition of manipulation. A very narrow definition captures only intentional harm and a very broad definition excludes only existing in a vacuum isolated from the universe. It is pretty easy, when you are engaging in questionable manipulation to justify what you are doing by picking a somewhat broader line for what counts as manipulation compared to what you are doing and then saying "see! there's no way I can't manipulate!". Comforting perhaps but more of a rationalization than a reason. When you make your decisions about quality with popularity as a basis, there is no way you don't end up being manipulative with or without intent. This is what is wrong with the attention economy, it evolves the world to find and exploit the weaknesses in humans.
- emerged 5y ago
  I took the video as a long winded “don’t hate the player hate the game” and assume he wants external validation that it’s okay to manipulate people if everyone else is doing it. I like him and watch all his videos, but the ease of that justification is why we are on a long slippery slide straight into dystopia.
pininja 5y ago
And here Veritasium already practiced an idea in this video! When I watched this a few days ago it was still called “We Need To Talk About Clickbait.” I guess that didn’t convert enough, so they tweaked the name to “Clickbait Is Unreasonably Effective,” but kept the thumbnail the same (for now).
- SimeVidas 5y ago
  I was actually confused for a few seconds whether I already watched this video because the title changed.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    The Veritasium channel does this with all its videos; it lets Derek test which thumbnail/titles are effective and which aren't. He talks about it in this videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 at about the 15:50-16:00 mark
- Leftium 5y ago
  Veritasium also tested different versions of the thumbnail. Here's a snapshot of when the thumbnail said "It's important; I'll explain with data:" https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuUES.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuUES.png I saw the video shortly after it was released, and I thought it was ironic the video had a relatively weak thumbnail and title.
  - lawl 5y ago
    > Veritasium also tested different versions of the thumbnail Pretty sure there automated tools that A/B test thumbs and titles and most big youtubers use them and then just add a bunch of titles and thumbs that are automatically tested.
- nonfamous 5y ago
  There was a section near the end of video where the background flashed dozens of images in rapid succession. I’m not familiar with the process of setting thumbnails in YT videos - do you have to choose a frame from the actual video, and is this a trick to provide many potential thumbnails to choose from?
vagrantJin 5y ago
Click bait is why I click on any title. I, like many others here spend 12-18hours a day on the internet for work and otherwise, can almost sense a BS title from experience.
open-source-ux 5y ago
Many content creators on YouTube succumb to creating a clickbait title because their video stats reveal which of their videos are popular. Naturally, this encourages the creator to make more videos on that theme or topic. But how many videos on the same topic (in the same channel) can you regurgitate over and over? To give an example, how many videos on the topic of 'productivity' can you cram into the same channel? As many as possible it seems given the high subscriber counts for some channels that talk mostly about 'productivity'. The somewhat uncomfortable truth is that the high subscriber counts for those channels prove clickbait titles work (as discussed in the video). The distinction between Type I and II clickbait titles in the video is useful though. For programming channels, the clickbait tendency seems lower than other types of channels (based purely on anecdotal impressions). There is plenty of clickbait in the wider computing/technology channel space on YouTube. This YouTube video is an honest look at creating content for YouTube from one Software Engineer (watch at 2x if the video is too long): I almost burnt out creating software engineering content on YouTube, here is what I learned : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJJORDSlho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJJORDSlho
LegitGandalf 5y ago
My grandfather, who I respected very much, was an accomplished career bureaucrat and considered any sort of promotion beneath him, and for sure crafting clickbait would earn his scorn. Thus marketing, promotion and crafting clickbait goes against everything I come from. But, making something that I think will actually help people, and then watching it go unseen because I wouldn't do the thing required to spread the message via the network effect is a far worse fate. So, I do the thing.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Could we please ban the words “unreasonably effective” in a title?
- TwoNineFive 5y ago
  I mentally banish hipster clickbait titles as soon as I see them. Things like "unreasonably effective" and "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love X" are toxic to me, so I almost never bother reading whatever they link to. But clickbait is something I'm interested in, so I went ahead and watched the video. Or at least I listened to it -- 98% of the video was a guy inexplicably standing on a ladder, waving his hands around, while casting a shadow against a screen. The video is a justification of why it's okay for him to use clickbait. The same justifications are used by spammers and criminals to justify their actions. Nobody thinks it's fascism when they do it. It's some pretty light-weight wrongdoing he's into though, and I'm fairly sympathetic to the argument. The reality is that you can't get a good social network without a lot of idiots. If you want to reach the widest cross-section of people they are going to be Dan Carlin levels of "average". But as the top comment here shows, there's an insidious and perverse effect of scraping the bottom of the barrel. You might just start to like it. This person would be wise to be wary of such.
guerrilla 5y ago
I really appreciate his current title of that example video "The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - The Collatz Conjecture" because the thing that pisses me off most about clickbait is that I just don't know what the video or article is even about. It just creates an immediate dilemma which I personally find stressful. I think it actually violates the principle of autonomy because they're intentionally taking away your ability to make an informed decision. People mention deception but it's a little bit more than that because of this. Maybe that's me, but I think the worst offenders are the ones who actually disappoint (Veritasium not being one.) How can we disincentivize them doing that? Currently, there seems to be little downside for them completely misrepresenting their content.
- nonfamous 5y ago
  At least in that particular case the image (if not the title) gave you, personally, the information you needed about the video topic. If you know what the Collatz Conjecture is, the image “3x+1” makes the topic obvious. If you don’t, your curiosity is piqued.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
MichaelGroves 5y ago
> "Now there seems to be a paradox when it comes to clickbait. People almost universally claim to hate it, but you also see it everywhere." His paradox of clickbait is very... interesting. I propose a similar paradox of used car salesmen: People say they hate it when used car salesmen lie to them, yet used car salesmen who lie the most sell the most cars!
- solarmist 5y ago
  Used car salesmen is all about information imbalances. Daniel Pink describes this in detail in to "Sell is Human" Here's a short summary. https://fourminutebooks.com/to-sell-is-human-summary/ https://fourminutebooks.com/to-sell-is-human-summary/
- ewag 5y ago
  I think the more people we educate on critical thinking, the less effective click bait will be. Today though, if a used car salesman has some truly great cars that people really need but nobody buys them because Donald down the street is pulling people in to buy lemons with bald faced lies...well, that's sort of the conundrum we find ourselves in, isn't it?
  - grumbel 5y ago
    The core issue isn't education, but that as a user you have little to no control over the recommendation system and the rest of the Youtube experience. So even if you hate clickbait and want to get rid of it, there is nothing that you can do to make it disappear from your Youtube. Google fully controls what you get to see and they don't care if you feel happy or educated from watching videos, they only care that you keep watching so that they can show you ads. To have any hope of fixing this we'd need to separate the curation of content from the hosting of content.

129 points by underscore_ku 5y ago

I have found this video to be cope, it's trying to justify clickbait as "making an effective title". I think it's important to have in mind what was the purpose of the internet: to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world can move forward faster. Clickbaiting people to watch 10 minutes videos for tiddly little bits of information is a colossal waste of potential there.

dredmorbius 5y ago
How are you using "cope" in this context?
- Aulig 5y ago
  Sounds like one of the modern colloquial definitions: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cope https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cope Tough to put in words really. Maybe it could be rephrased to "I found that he is trying to legitimize clickbait", however the second part of the sentence says that too.
  - _bohm 5y ago
    or maybe: "rationalizing his use of clickbait as a means of coping with the weight it places on his conscience"
    - Aulig 5y ago
      That's a great explanation, I agree with that. I couldnt put it into words that well :)
- newbamboo 5y ago
  Unreasonably.
- dnissley 5y ago
  cope = sour grapes
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  I mean as a coping mechanism for not admitting that clickbait is manipulation of humans. "But look it's working" is not an excuse
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Thanks. That's rather unclear and nonstandard, in my view.
antasvara 5y ago
Some of your criticism seems to be directed at video length and not a clickbaity title. If a video takes 10 minutes to tell me a single piece of information, the title isn't the issue with that video.
- infogulch 5y ago
  Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but what if there's a human reason why 10m videos are popular. Maybe 10 minutes is just the minimum time needed to get across a non-trivial idea to a broad audience. Sure, the platform itself encourages that length implicitly but maybe that's not an arbitrary decision and is based on the human capacity to absorb information.
  - jrootabega 5y ago
    10 minutes is the original minimum video length youtube required before you could place midroll ads. It's now 8 minutes, but 10 is still a goal that many "creators" aim for. What it mostly results in is low-quality, low-information videos that are padded out to be just long enough to show you: - pre-roll ads - embedded sponsored content - plug for your patreon/other videos - reminder to like/subscribe/comment - a tiny nugget of actual content SOMETIMES - mid-roll ads - post-roll ads I agree that 10 minutes feels about right if you were actually trying to convey a good chunk of information in good faith, but that's just not what happens on youtube. Maybe 10 minutes was a good threshold for midroll ads for the same reason that it would have been a good threshold for quality videos. Videos like the linked one, while technically longer, just result in more and more mid-roll ads. In fact while attempting to watch this one, I got just past his embedded sponsorship plug, when youtube ambushed me with the "Ads in 3... 2... 1..." type of ad that makes it impossible to tell just how much of the video is compromised by ads before watching it.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      10-25 minutes or so seems like the sweet spot for a lot of podcasts, informational videos, presentations, and the like when they're genuinely trying to inform/entertain. It's hard to really communicate a lot of information or have a meaningful discussion in a shorter period of time unless it's very focused (how to...) and a lot of those would better be text and a photo. And a lot of hour long interviews etc. tend to feel like they go on too long.
epidemian 5y ago
Have you also found other videos by the author to be "10 minutes of tiddly little bits of information"? I think Veritasium makes some of the most valuable and informative videos out there. Definitely not the kind of channel that i would consider "baiting" with titles and then disappointing with the video content itself. His views on video titles' "clickbaitiness", given the state of affairs of Youtube recommendation algorithms and the "competition" for viewers' attention, seem pretty on point to me.
- gmiller123456 5y ago
  He specifically said in the video that he hasn't been doing this in the past, but plans to "get better at it". I think one of his videos that qualifies as pure clickbait is "Can a Wind-Powered Car Go Faster Than The Wind?". It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. Certainly not 20 minutes worth, and very different from the rest of his videos. It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching.
  - 4ad 5y ago
    > It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real information. It's entertainment, not a scientific lecture. As entertainment, it contained far more information that the vast majority of competing entertainment. > and very different from the rest of his videos. I must disagree here, I think most of his videos contain very little information as well. Less than I would like, in any case. > It did spawn more videos about how the car actually worked that were worth watching. How is this not a good thing? It's great for people who actually want more information, and it's great for the creators who provide said information. It makes the creator community (I hate that term) healthy.
  - epidemian 5y ago
    I understood that he's been doing more clickbaity titles for the past year or two, but maybe i misunderstood. For the first video about the wind powered vehicle, yes i agree. It was more of a story and spectacle than any actual information. Still quite entertaining i think, but maybe disappointing if you wanted to learn something, which is usually the spirit of the channel.
infogulch 5y ago
This one is almost 20 minutes. Here's a histogram of video lengths of Veritasium videos over the last year: 3 videos 10m or less 8 videos from 11m-14m 11 videos from 15m-19m 5 videos from 20m-22m 1 video at 34m
noahtallen 5y ago
> to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world can move forward faster. While I would love this to be true, we have to remember that so much of the internet is a business in our capitalist economy. To many YouTube channels (especially the big ones), the primary purpose of the title is to get someone to watch the video to make money. Sharing information is only a secondary purpose. This is true across basically every business. The primary purpose of anything is profit, and every other thing is secondary. This is why health care is difficult to privatize, as the primary purpose of profit is very easily at odds with the secondary purpose of health outcomes. I feel like I see this purpose thing come up all the time in different parts of businesses, and it really makes me wonder whether this system is sustainable. The YouTube channel is justified in writing a clickbait title, because other types of titles reduce profit. And because of the way our society and economy works, reducing profit is always a “bad” thing. You could say that with more profit, the creators could expand the business and provide even more value to their viewers. Maybe that’s true in this case, but that’s basically the whole reason clickbait exists. I’m not sure we should be that happy about it.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>I have found this video to be cope, I am not familiar with this phrase - is it a typo or is this just a bit of slang I have missed out on - is it a variant of this https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope
- ryeights 5y ago
  Cope (noun, slang) is any thought used as a coping mechanism against an emotional stressor or perceived shortcoming. For example: Alice: I may be ugly, but at least I’m not superficial. Bob: Cope
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I'm aware of this usage of cope, and I guess I might use it myself if the opportunity arose - it's just 'to be cope' seems a different usage.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  OP responds here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266767

karmakaze 5y ago

OT: Youtube should adopt Github-like URLs so you could know that this was a Veritasium video just by looking at the link. Secondly, HN should show more of the URL for such sites.

jstanley 5y ago
Which part of the URL would you want to see more of? YouTube doesn't include the creator's username in the URL unfortunately. Maybe they should!
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  IF Youtube revealed the creator's channel on the URL THEN HN could (and should) show that element. Note that the suggested change would also better enable my requested feature of being able to block specific channels by providing the in-URL hooks to do so. (Not OP.)
  - AvocadoCake 5y ago
    Furthermore, it would allow me to turn off my ad-block for certain creators, without making me suffer through ads on videos made by creators I'm not willing to support in that way.
deleted 5y ago
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hartator 5y ago

Veritasium is an awesome channel. Check his videos out if you haven't already. Derek wrote a PHD on how to make videos interesting while learning and his YouTube reflects some deep thoughts on how to do that. Quality is awesome, he is personable, and you feel you always learn some deep insider knowledge.

paulpauper 5y ago
Didn't know you could get a phd in that
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  some quick research says that he got a PhD in physics education research from the University of Sydney. You can read his PhD thesis, "Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education", right here: https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/super/PhD(Muller).pdf https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/supe...
  - latexr 5y ago
    He has a short (6 minutes) TED talk on the subject. “The key to effective educational science videos”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQaW2bFieo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQaW2bFieo8
deleted 5y ago
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cturhan 5y ago

It’s so interesting that YouTube doesn’t support A/B test for title and graphics.

nexuist 5y ago
If you think about it, every video listed as a search result is a title/thumbnail test, except instead of an A/B test it's A/B/C/D/E...
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  I think GP meant A/B for your own thumbnails, so you'd be able to randomly show two different thumbnail/titles to viewers and then see stats for each one. They can come clarify if that's incorrect.
LordAtlas 5y ago
External paid tools like TubeBuddy and VidIQ allow you to do that. Most large channels use them for constant testing.
- spuz 5y ago
  How can an external tool do this? As far as I know, there is no way to show half of your audience a title/thumbnail and the other half another title/thumbnail. If they are not testing different variants at the same time, it limits what can be learnt from the experiment.
  - Cipater 5y ago
    TubeBuddy's A/B Testing works by having you create a variation of a video's metadata (this could include the Thumbnail, Title, Tags or Description). We then alternate your video's metadata every 24 hours at Midnight PST (to line up with YouTube Analytics statistics). The test completes either based on a certain number of days that you picked or based on statistical significance being achieved. In an ideal world, we'd be able to have each impression throughout the day alternate between the Original and Variation which would be a 'true' A/B test. Since YouTube analytics are only provided in 24 hours blocks, our current system is basically the best that can be done taking into account YouTube's limitations. https://tubebuddy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000707329-a-b-testing-notes https://tubebuddy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5...

_Algernon_ 5y ago

While I like the channel in general, these attempts at justifying click bait are just annoying. Just do it if you deem it necessary, but don't pretend like you have the moral high ground for doing it. You don't. That being said, Veritasium is among the least clickbaity clickbaiters.

m_ke 5y ago

Somewhat unrelated but I think there should be a law to force all of these big corps to give people an opt out button to disable algorithmic feeds and recommendations.

_Algernon_ 5y ago
While Youtube doesn't have a full opt-out it does at least have a reverse chronological feed still available[0]. You can get quite close to an algorithm free experience by using that feed, combined with blocking sections that include recommendations with ublock origin. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
dredmorbius 5y ago
You can block the Recommendations (and Comments) portions of the page, provided you're using a browser that supports extensions, using uBlock Origin or Stylish, amongst others. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266550
- m_ke 5y ago
  Yes I already do that. My issue is with recommendations in app, I mostly watch CS / ML lectures and for some reason youtube keeps recommending right wingers and other sensational clickbait no matter how much I click "not interested" and "don't recommend channel".
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    All the more reason to ditch the app.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    how odd, I don't find this true for me at all. For a while I turned off watch history (which means that the recommendations are only based on your subscriptions) and that was... not an objection improvement, it made it harder to find content that was unlike the stuff I'm subscribed to, but it also made my recommendations more focused.

s9w 5y ago

It's effective in the same way as robbing a bank is effective. It is also effective at driving away your core audience.

dredmorbius 5y ago

What's left out of most discussions of clickbait are the questions of consequence and of engineered promotionn. Clickbait is effective where it can be employed without consequence. YouTube is one such domain. It's inordinately effective where algorithms promote material based on short-term appeal rather than long-term benefit. Where either or both of these factors are addressed, clickbait doesn't disappear entirely (it does hook into human psychology), but its effectiveness and power fall markedly. YouTube does not support blocking of individual channels by users, or at least didn't as of the last time I used it whilst logged in (some years ago). If I'm presented with content that is absolute bilgewater, I cannot in any way indicate to the system "do not show me content from this source at all ever". This is the equivalent of a privately-functioning super-downvote, and is an exceedingly strong signal YouTUbe are denying themselves over content quality. Its availability would be among the very few possible reasons I'd consider accessing the service other than anonymously (and preferably through a front-end such as Invidious or FixYT, or commandline / terminal tools such as youtube-dl, mpv, or mps-youtube). Eventually, YouTube might themselves consider re-jiggering their recommendations away from channels which are consistently blocked. In the absence, attention and misdirection games can be played, repeatedly, without risk. (Oh: and quality contributors such as Derek Muller are also harmed by this as they're competing with scum-sucking bottom feeders for their own far superior productions.) The other aspect is that the algorithm itself promotes short-term engagement at the cost of not only long-term value and quality, but genuine social harm, as has been well documented over recent years. (Including by Destin Sandler in an excellent 3-part series on online disinformation, the YouTube segment is here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4) This means that the existing psychological highjacking is further juiced algorithmically. On desktop systems where the option is available to me, I use CSS hacks to remove both recommendations and comments from YouTube. The experience improves tremendously. (Stylish: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-themes-for/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-the... though the uBlock Origin elements remover can also be used for this.) I've just had an exchange with dang about a recent submission and site which makes no bones about its dedication to pseudoscience and disinformation. Hacker News does have a policy of penalising (though not completely blocking) such sites. In our back-and-forth, dang offered (tongue-in-cheek, I'm pretty sure), that any strict "no bullshit" rule would render much of the present-day Internet inadmissable on HN. The longer I think that over, the more my response is "Yes, and that would be a Good Thing." (I'm well aware if issues with truth-determination, epistemology, simple errors, politically-motivated censorship, and more. I'm referring here to publishers and authors who specifically and categorically defend posting of bullshit, though that's not the full extent of what I'd object to. I refer to Dante's Inferno in which it is the 8th of the 9 circles to which false counselors, falsifiers, hypocrits, schismatics, corrupt politicians, flatterers, pimps, and seducers are consigned. Violations of trust strike at the very heart of polity and civilisation.) http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/dante-alighieris-inferno_50290aae6f2f5_w1500.png http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/dante-alighieris-i... In my experience on the non-commerial, non-algorithmic, and distributed social platforms of Mastodon / the Fediverse and Diaspora, I find that whilst bullshit isn't entirely absent, its role is much reduced. There is no algorithm to juice its spread. On Mastodon, instances can elect to federate fully, partially, or not at all with others. Smaller instances can define and tune their interactions with others quite specifically. (The instance I'm on, toot.cat, run by a long-time online friend, has a substantial list of limited and silenced servers: https://toot.cat/about/more https://toot.cat/about/more) Diaspora dates from somewhat earlier, and has a more open philosophy toward content, though repeat disinformation, attacks and threats, and spam are dealt with in at least part. Among my contacts, we share information on block-worthy profiles based on various criteria. (Such informal lists are a frequent occurrence, especially in the absence of more powerful tools. They're not without their own risks and failure modes, including inadvertent or unwarranted inclusion.) The larger point though is that clickbait is a phenomenon actively and intentionally supported by algorithmic social media to serve its short-term benefits. It does so at its own long-term cost.

nett18 5y ago

He even renamed that video, it was called something along the lines of "We need to talk about clickbait" previously.

nicetryguy 5y ago
Indeed. It will probably end up with: "You'll Never Believe How Clickbait Actually Works!"

colechristensen 5y ago

His justifications bother me, it's still making money from manipulation, and in at least one example he makes, fear. One thing that doesn't get mention is how clickbait changes your audience, usually in a race to the bottom. It alienates fewer people than it attracts, but then your new audience reacts differently to your content.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
The challenge, as he mentions a bit at the end, is that "no manipulation" isn't an option. He didn't have to climb up on a ladder, or post-edit 3D labels on top of his presentation, or make a cute little animation of a present unwrapping into another present. He did all of that to make the video more engaging, which means nothing more or less than manipulating people to keep watching. Crazy titles bug me personally a lot more than fancy editing or weird props, but as long as they're not so misleading I can't make an informed decision on what to watch, it's hard to begrudge content creators an engagement tool that can make such a difference.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  What is and is not "manipulation" depends on your definition of manipulation. A very narrow definition captures only intentional harm and a very broad definition excludes only existing in a vacuum isolated from the universe. It is pretty easy, when you are engaging in questionable manipulation to justify what you are doing by picking a somewhat broader line for what counts as manipulation compared to what you are doing and then saying "see! there's no way I can't manipulate!". Comforting perhaps but more of a rationalization than a reason. When you make your decisions about quality with popularity as a basis, there is no way you don't end up being manipulative with or without intent. This is what is wrong with the attention economy, it evolves the world to find and exploit the weaknesses in humans.
emerged 5y ago
I took the video as a long winded “don’t hate the player hate the game” and assume he wants external validation that it’s okay to manipulate people if everyone else is doing it. I like him and watch all his videos, but the ease of that justification is why we are on a long slippery slide straight into dystopia.

pininja 5y ago

And here Veritasium already practiced an idea in this video! When I watched this a few days ago it was still called “We Need To Talk About Clickbait.” I guess that didn’t convert enough, so they tweaked the name to “Clickbait Is Unreasonably Effective,” but kept the thumbnail the same (for now).

SimeVidas 5y ago
I was actually confused for a few seconds whether I already watched this video because the title changed.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  The Veritasium channel does this with all its videos; it lets Derek test which thumbnail/titles are effective and which aren't. He talks about it in this videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 at about the 15:50-16:00 mark
Leftium 5y ago
Veritasium also tested different versions of the thumbnail. Here's a snapshot of when the thumbnail said "It's important; I'll explain with data:" https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuUES.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuUES.png I saw the video shortly after it was released, and I thought it was ironic the video had a relatively weak thumbnail and title.
- lawl 5y ago
  > Veritasium also tested different versions of the thumbnail Pretty sure there automated tools that A/B test thumbs and titles and most big youtubers use them and then just add a bunch of titles and thumbs that are automatically tested.
nonfamous 5y ago
There was a section near the end of video where the background flashed dozens of images in rapid succession. I’m not familiar with the process of setting thumbnails in YT videos - do you have to choose a frame from the actual video, and is this a trick to provide many potential thumbnails to choose from?

vagrantJin 5y ago

Click bait is why I click on any title. I, like many others here spend 12-18hours a day on the internet for work and otherwise, can almost sense a BS title from experience.

open-source-ux 5y ago

Many content creators on YouTube succumb to creating a clickbait title because their video stats reveal which of their videos are popular. Naturally, this encourages the creator to make more videos on that theme or topic. But how many videos on the same topic (in the same channel) can you regurgitate over and over? To give an example, how many videos on the topic of 'productivity' can you cram into the same channel? As many as possible it seems given the high subscriber counts for some channels that talk mostly about 'productivity'. The somewhat uncomfortable truth is that the high subscriber counts for those channels prove clickbait titles work (as discussed in the video). The distinction between Type I and II clickbait titles in the video is useful though. For programming channels, the clickbait tendency seems lower than other types of channels (based purely on anecdotal impressions). There is plenty of clickbait in the wider computing/technology channel space on YouTube. This YouTube video is an honest look at creating content for YouTube from one Software Engineer (watch at 2x if the video is too long): I almost burnt out creating software engineering content on YouTube, here is what I learned : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJJORDSlho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJJORDSlho

LegitGandalf 5y ago

My grandfather, who I respected very much, was an accomplished career bureaucrat and considered any sort of promotion beneath him, and for sure crafting clickbait would earn his scorn. Thus marketing, promotion and crafting clickbait goes against everything I come from. But, making something that I think will actually help people, and then watching it go unseen because I wouldn't do the thing required to spread the message via the network effect is a far worse fate. So, I do the thing.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Could we please ban the words “unreasonably effective” in a title?

TwoNineFive 5y ago
I mentally banish hipster clickbait titles as soon as I see them. Things like "unreasonably effective" and "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love X" are toxic to me, so I almost never bother reading whatever they link to. But clickbait is something I'm interested in, so I went ahead and watched the video. Or at least I listened to it -- 98% of the video was a guy inexplicably standing on a ladder, waving his hands around, while casting a shadow against a screen. The video is a justification of why it's okay for him to use clickbait. The same justifications are used by spammers and criminals to justify their actions. Nobody thinks it's fascism when they do it. It's some pretty light-weight wrongdoing he's into though, and I'm fairly sympathetic to the argument. The reality is that you can't get a good social network without a lot of idiots. If you want to reach the widest cross-section of people they are going to be Dan Carlin levels of "average". But as the top comment here shows, there's an insidious and perverse effect of scraping the bottom of the barrel. You might just start to like it. This person would be wise to be wary of such.

guerrilla 5y ago

I really appreciate his current title of that example video "The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - The Collatz Conjecture" because the thing that pisses me off most about clickbait is that I just don't know what the video or article is even about. It just creates an immediate dilemma which I personally find stressful. I think it actually violates the principle of autonomy because they're intentionally taking away your ability to make an informed decision. People mention deception but it's a little bit more than that because of this. Maybe that's me, but I think the worst offenders are the ones who actually disappoint (Veritasium not being one.) How can we disincentivize them doing that? Currently, there seems to be little downside for them completely misrepresenting their content.

nonfamous 5y ago
At least in that particular case the image (if not the title) gave you, personally, the information you needed about the video topic. If you know what the Collatz Conjecture is, the image “3x+1” makes the topic obvious. If you don’t, your curiosity is piqued.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

MichaelGroves 5y ago

> "Now there seems to be a paradox when it comes to clickbait. People almost universally claim to hate it, but you also see it everywhere." His paradox of clickbait is very... interesting. I propose a similar paradox of used car salesmen: People say they hate it when used car salesmen lie to them, yet used car salesmen who lie the most sell the most cars!

solarmist 5y ago
Used car salesmen is all about information imbalances. Daniel Pink describes this in detail in to "Sell is Human" Here's a short summary. https://fourminutebooks.com/to-sell-is-human-summary/ https://fourminutebooks.com/to-sell-is-human-summary/
ewag 5y ago
I think the more people we educate on critical thinking, the less effective click bait will be. Today though, if a used car salesman has some truly great cars that people really need but nobody buys them because Donald down the street is pulling people in to buy lemons with bald faced lies...well, that's sort of the conundrum we find ourselves in, isn't it?
- grumbel 5y ago
  The core issue isn't education, but that as a user you have little to no control over the recommendation system and the rest of the Youtube experience. So even if you hate clickbait and want to get rid of it, there is nothing that you can do to make it disappear from your Youtube. Google fully controls what you get to see and they don't care if you feel happy or educated from watching videos, they only care that you keep watching so that they can show you ads. To have any hope of fixing this we'd need to separate the curation of content from the hosting of content.