5 ms·

While ultimately text content will always have a place, I do worry that video content could become way more popular, and text content much less so: simply becau

by axby 5y ago

While ultimately text content will always have a place, I do worry that video content could become way more popular, and text content much less so: simply because advertisers have a big incentive to push video content (bigger ads, more front and centre), and content producers are usually going to cater to the advertisers (unless people start paying for content more often). I don't see the appeal of TikTok (though I haven't tried it), I much prefer skimming text than skimming through videos (let alone with sound). But it is incredibly popular, and a ton of people find video content addictive. To my surprise it isn't just popular among youth, but I have older smart senior software engineer friends (who didn't grow up surrounded by optimally addictive apps) who say it's amazing, at least once you let the algorithm converge. So we shouldn't just assume that text will always prevail. Look at other seemingly amazing technologies/mediums that largely died or were at least hidden from the mainstream due to business reasons. These may be weak examples (I just woke up) but hopefully the gist of it is clear: * RSS? * I remember hearing that the alternatives to VHS and maybe blu-ray were technically superior but lost due to business reasons. * Maybe Windows too, beat out technically superior alternatives because of business reasons * Google+ apparently had a number of innovative features (like "circles"), but I barely know anyone who used it over facebook back in the day) Now of course text content couldn't just "die", but perhaps the main companies hosting content could give strong incentives to produce video content instead of text, and control what the vast majority of people see. From what I understand: content producing companies (like CollegeHumor) that were super popular before Facebook were basically screwed when Facebook was the main way that people discovered content. Even though it was still possible to visit their website, the majority (or at least many) people would just watch whatever videos showed up on their facebook feed, so CollegeHumor took a huge hit. (I think that was what I read a while ago, anyway. I forget a lot of details so please correct me or add more information) That scares the hell out of me: if a few tech companies ultimately control what the majority of people see, the content producers are basically chosen by the tech companies' algorithms. And the algorithms are ultimately going to optimize for profit, and not "quality content" or even "content that isn't harmful". (And more relevant to the comment I'm responding to: favouring ad heavy video over text). Potential up side: maybe it will be easier to filter out crap content if it all goes to video.

charcircuit 5y ago
>And the algorithms are ultimately going to optimize for profit, and not "quality content" or even "content that isn't harmful". If people value quality content, quality content will be rewarded. If people don't care it won't. Some people just want to have a laugh and don't care about the production value of the video.
- axby 5y ago
  I hope so, and perhaps to some extent quality content always will be rewarded in some circles of the internet. But I worry about the vast majority just falling prey to whatever is most convenient. Maybe it will always be possible to have "traditional" websites, but if only something like 0.1% of the population visits them, and the rest just mindlessly scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever the "metaverse" is supposed to be, then that seems like a problem. I have never tried to make money producing content on the internet. But I have found a few good content producers who make podcasts and post them to YouTube. I wish that they would also post transcripts and have an RSS feed, but they don't really have any incentive to do that. And I can't blame them: I don't think I would really pay any extra for it. And unless there are better content producers who show up and do those things, I'll probably still keep watching the same podcasts on YouTube. So I am concerned that all the best content producers just doing whatever will make them money, and: * ultimately they will probably produce content and host it with a big company. * And that big company will probably do whatever it can to maximize profits * (and presumably content providers will typically favour the company that pays them the best). * And I worry that video content can make way, way more money than text, at least for certain content types. Certainly I'm probably overstating the issues, but I think there's some truth to this. Look at what happens when you look up cooking recipes on the internet: you almost always get a big article and a bunch of garbage that no one wants. I think I read somewhere that they do that because a recipe can't be copyrighted without an article. If that's true, why isn't there a nice clean recipe site that doesn't have all the garbage in it? Perhaps even with a nifty database where I can filter based on ingredients and stuff that I have? I think the answer is that (#1) I don't look for new recipes that often, and (#2) I am willing to tolerate skimming through some garbage on the rare occasions that I do.
5y ago

by axby 5y ago

charcircuit 5y ago

>And the algorithms are ultimately going to optimize for profit, and not "quality content" or even "content that isn't harmful". If people value quality content, quality content will be rewarded. If people don't care it won't. Some people just want to have a laugh and don't care about the production value of the video.

axby 5y ago
I hope so, and perhaps to some extent quality content always will be rewarded in some circles of the internet. But I worry about the vast majority just falling prey to whatever is most convenient. Maybe it will always be possible to have "traditional" websites, but if only something like 0.1% of the population visits them, and the rest just mindlessly scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever the "metaverse" is supposed to be, then that seems like a problem. I have never tried to make money producing content on the internet. But I have found a few good content producers who make podcasts and post them to YouTube. I wish that they would also post transcripts and have an RSS feed, but they don't really have any incentive to do that. And I can't blame them: I don't think I would really pay any extra for it. And unless there are better content producers who show up and do those things, I'll probably still keep watching the same podcasts on YouTube. So I am concerned that all the best content producers just doing whatever will make them money, and: * ultimately they will probably produce content and host it with a big company. * And that big company will probably do whatever it can to maximize profits * (and presumably content providers will typically favour the company that pays them the best). * And I worry that video content can make way, way more money than text, at least for certain content types. Certainly I'm probably overstating the issues, but I think there's some truth to this. Look at what happens when you look up cooking recipes on the internet: you almost always get a big article and a bunch of garbage that no one wants. I think I read somewhere that they do that because a recipe can't be copyrighted without an article. If that's true, why isn't there a nice clean recipe site that doesn't have all the garbage in it? Perhaps even with a nifty database where I can filter based on ingredients and stuff that I have? I think the answer is that (#1) I don't look for new recipes that often, and (#2) I am willing to tolerate skimming through some garbage on the rare occasions that I do.

5y ago