5 ms·

The biggest of all being that Vimeo has essentially no discovery system? To a viewer, Vimeo is just a crude way to host a video.

amelius 5y ago
As a viewer I want my discovery algorithm decoupled from who hosts my videos.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  The problem with that for creators is the information on who is watching what gets much poorer when that happens so the algorithm has much less to go off of so no one has really done it. Also how do you monetize that? The host will be the one inserting ads.
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  Can I ask how that would work? Like, are you saying that you'd rather use Google to search for content (including videos) and then find the videos on whichever web site hosts that individual video? I do enjoy listening to music on YouTube and I actually like that it'll auto-enqueue music to play next that's similar to what I'm listening to now. You idea (I think) is really interesting - it's been a while since the web has worked that way and it's interesting to think about how combined hosting+discovery has changed it from the 'early days'
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    I could imagine an extension that scrapes video metadata (if not actual video frames) and runs some FLoC-like P2P discovery mechanism for similar video content. The main problem with this would be spam; Google has a lock on web search entirely because building a search index that is not immediately besieged by adversarial content is very difficult. Alternatively we could bring back RSS readers and aggregation. We'd need some way to scrape/feed YouTube metadata into it. Feeds could advertise related creators that way (with the caveat that this would almost certainly become a sponsorship/advertising mechanism, something something RAID Shadow Legends).
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    See for example DDG video search (which I believe proxies for Bing video search). If I bang-search "!video <search expression>" on DDG, I'll be returned hits for the search across a range of video hosting sites. Principally YouTube and Vimeo, though also others. I don't believe Peertube sites presently appear, which is a shame.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > I do enjoy listening to music on YouTube and I actually like that it'll auto-enqueue music to play next that's similar to what I'm listening to now. I'm like the post your responsed to, I really hate that (and all sorts of automated recommandation systems, I just can't stand Spotify for instance). Computers are here for me to tell them what to do, not to take non-repeatable decisions (and this makes it more and more painful to use the web over the years frankly, everything is becoming an inconsistent mess)
- sushid 5y ago
  As someone who enjoys watching recommended videos I'm glad your views are not shared by the majority.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    Yeah people shit on recommended videos a lot but I’ve found a couple real interesting gems in there. The most recent one is finding the video channel for the Battleship New Jersey museum ship. Their curator climbs all over the ship making videos about the engineering, construction and history of the ship. Admittedly I t’s often a lot of videos I’ve rewatched multiple times but I do enjoy them so it’s not wrong that I might like to watch them again. A trick I’ve found is being careful about not ‘poisoning’ your recommended videos. There are some topics that are really bad about taking over your recommendations (though liberal use of the “show me less like this” and “don’t recommend channel” options have pruned some of that out) so sometimes watching a video in incognito helps.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Huh? I didn't say you can't have recommendations. I said you can choose your recommendation engine.
    - sushid 5y ago
      Apologies, I misread.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  I don't need an algorithm, just have channels and a client-side subscription list. But on Vimeo everything is basically link-only and their front page wants you to sign up as a creator. It's just not a competition to YouTube, it's a video hoster.
  - bosie 5y ago
    if all you have are channels and client-side subscription list (sync across devices?), how do you find anything new?
    - krageon 5y ago
      There was a time when youtube wasn't around to shove "related" content in your face and videos still got shared, talked about and discovered. This would be by word-of-mouth (either real life or fora) and (as an another poster commented) searching.
    - greazy 5y ago
      ....by searching for it??
      - bosie 5y ago
        Searching and recommendation have two different use cases that might overlap but most often don’t
wruza 5y ago
This. Vimeo feels like these noname pic sharing services. You may land on it from somewhere, but if you try to explore, it’s just a “see plans” homepage and the search knows almost none of my interests.
- kranke155 5y ago
  You can have a feed but they’ve actually made it worse recently.
bedobi 5y ago
They also don't have a dark mode in their app, which is a showstopper for me Can't binge videos at night with what feels like a friggin flashlight shining in my face
- bombcar 5y ago
  We say as we are binging hackernews at night …
  - throwaway14356 5y ago
    https://github.com/UserStyles/hacker-news-solarized-dark https://github.com/UserStyles/hacker-news-solarized-dark
    - exodust 5y ago
      That github page links to the dodgy extension "Stylish". The better one is called Stylus. The main difference being "Any and all analytics, telemetry, and data-collection have been removed completely. We'd rather not know what you're up to." https://github.com/openstyles/stylus https://github.com/openstyles/stylus
      - throwaway14356 5y ago
        thanks for the reminder. I just use the css.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        No Safari, though.

amelius 5y ago

As a viewer I want my discovery algorithm decoupled from who hosts my videos.

rtkwe 5y ago
The problem with that for creators is the information on who is watching what gets much poorer when that happens so the algorithm has much less to go off of so no one has really done it. Also how do you monetize that? The host will be the one inserting ads.
MikeTheGreat 5y ago
Can I ask how that would work? Like, are you saying that you'd rather use Google to search for content (including videos) and then find the videos on whichever web site hosts that individual video? I do enjoy listening to music on YouTube and I actually like that it'll auto-enqueue music to play next that's similar to what I'm listening to now. You idea (I think) is really interesting - it's been a while since the web has worked that way and it's interesting to think about how combined hosting+discovery has changed it from the 'early days'
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  I could imagine an extension that scrapes video metadata (if not actual video frames) and runs some FLoC-like P2P discovery mechanism for similar video content. The main problem with this would be spam; Google has a lock on web search entirely because building a search index that is not immediately besieged by adversarial content is very difficult. Alternatively we could bring back RSS readers and aggregation. We'd need some way to scrape/feed YouTube metadata into it. Feeds could advertise related creators that way (with the caveat that this would almost certainly become a sponsorship/advertising mechanism, something something RAID Shadow Legends).
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  See for example DDG video search (which I believe proxies for Bing video search). If I bang-search "!video <search expression>" on DDG, I'll be returned hits for the search across a range of video hosting sites. Principally YouTube and Vimeo, though also others. I don't believe Peertube sites presently appear, which is a shame.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > I do enjoy listening to music on YouTube and I actually like that it'll auto-enqueue music to play next that's similar to what I'm listening to now. I'm like the post your responsed to, I really hate that (and all sorts of automated recommandation systems, I just can't stand Spotify for instance). Computers are here for me to tell them what to do, not to take non-repeatable decisions (and this makes it more and more painful to use the web over the years frankly, everything is becoming an inconsistent mess)
sushid 5y ago
As someone who enjoys watching recommended videos I'm glad your views are not shared by the majority.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  Yeah people shit on recommended videos a lot but I’ve found a couple real interesting gems in there. The most recent one is finding the video channel for the Battleship New Jersey museum ship. Their curator climbs all over the ship making videos about the engineering, construction and history of the ship. Admittedly I t’s often a lot of videos I’ve rewatched multiple times but I do enjoy them so it’s not wrong that I might like to watch them again. A trick I’ve found is being careful about not ‘poisoning’ your recommended videos. There are some topics that are really bad about taking over your recommendations (though liberal use of the “show me less like this” and “don’t recommend channel” options have pruned some of that out) so sometimes watching a video in incognito helps.
- amelius 5y ago
  Huh? I didn't say you can't have recommendations. I said you can choose your recommendation engine.
  - sushid 5y ago
    Apologies, I misread.
stefan_ 5y ago
I don't need an algorithm, just have channels and a client-side subscription list. But on Vimeo everything is basically link-only and their front page wants you to sign up as a creator. It's just not a competition to YouTube, it's a video hoster.
- bosie 5y ago
  if all you have are channels and client-side subscription list (sync across devices?), how do you find anything new?
  - krageon 5y ago
    There was a time when youtube wasn't around to shove "related" content in your face and videos still got shared, talked about and discovered. This would be by word-of-mouth (either real life or fora) and (as an another poster commented) searching.
  - greazy 5y ago
    ....by searching for it??
    - bosie 5y ago
      Searching and recommendation have two different use cases that might overlap but most often don’t

wruza 5y ago

This. Vimeo feels like these noname pic sharing services. You may land on it from somewhere, but if you try to explore, it’s just a “see plans” homepage and the search knows almost none of my interests.

kranke155 5y ago
You can have a feed but they’ve actually made it worse recently.

bedobi 5y ago

They also don't have a dark mode in their app, which is a showstopper for me Can't binge videos at night with what feels like a friggin flashlight shining in my face

bombcar 5y ago
We say as we are binging hackernews at night …
- throwaway14356 5y ago
  https://github.com/UserStyles/hacker-news-solarized-dark https://github.com/UserStyles/hacker-news-solarized-dark
  - exodust 5y ago
    That github page links to the dodgy extension "Stylish". The better one is called Stylus. The main difference being "Any and all analytics, telemetry, and data-collection have been removed completely. We'd rather not know what you're up to." https://github.com/openstyles/stylus https://github.com/openstyles/stylus
    - throwaway14356 5y ago
      thanks for the reminder. I just use the css.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      No Safari, though.