11 ms·

Ask HN: Has YouTube peaked?

• nkotov 4y ago
  I found that TikTok provides better content since YouTube has become so saturated with 10+ minute videos where the first half is literally paraphrasing some other source. As an example, I recently been looking at trucks and found better, more personal content from creators on TikTok that I actually care about (like experience, driving, interesting angles). It's similar to when I search for something and add "reddit" at the end, I want to see real people say real reviews, not some blog articles where every link is a referral link.
• HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Who cares about the majority of content as long as you can still find what you want? Expecting the majority of anything that can make money to be "passion driven" is naive at best.
• taldo 4y ago
  As many others have said: YT these days is mostly entertainment, and, yes, driven by money. There's the few goldmines in their niche topics, but you're not going to have much luck finding them. In particular, I personally find maker-related content to be of pretty good quality, if you follow the right channels. For some topics, it's the best medium to stay on top of things, e.g. downhill mountain biking, you have the racers' own channels/vlogs, plus the smallish outlets putting out a ton of content during the racing season, plus the official RedBull stuff... There's just no other way to enjoy the sport to this extent. And, of course, it's an endless library of howtos and tutorials, BUT it's also full of crap. So you have to somewhat know what you're doing in the first place, then find a howto for that very specific thing you need to do, e.g. I know my way around a car, mechanically, but I'd still search for a howto video on changing the accessory drive belt in my particular car, because there's probably an easier way that somebody already documented, and I don't want to spend 1h on what could be a 10m job.
• antisthenes 4y ago
  I feel like there needs to be a way to exclude videos with over 100k or 1 million views. I'm having immense difficulty discovering new and interesting content, because the top 20-30 videos are always clickbaity shorts or irrelevant (but several million views) Don't care about the downvotes too much. I can usually tell within 3-4 seconds if the video is what I'm looking for or not.
• secret-noun 4y ago
  Maybe I'm a hipster, but if I am recommended a video that's too popular by view count (say, 1M views or more), I don't want to watch it. Right click -> "Don't recommend channel" or "Not interested". I feel like the amount of gamesmanship and selling-out and wonky thumbnails and sponsorships you need to perform to attain that level of viewership is just not something I want to see. These aren't "real" people anymore. My main page has steadily become more infected with popular content like this. On the other hand, the subscription page is too focused (doing exactly what it says on the tin with no unsubbed channels). I want some middle ground where I can see the stuff I've opted into and some budding creators in the same space. I also realize this is negative feedback loop. If many people too are looking for "unpopular" videos, they become popular.
• bool3max 4y ago
  These questions pop up very often on HN and other circles - yet the answer is always the same. The algorithm(s) serve you content that makes money. If you manage to look past that, you'll still find plenty of honest, straight to the point material. Thing is - it's getting progressively harder year by year. For example, YouTube recently crippled their search function severely - it displays batches of results completely irrelevant to your specific search term in-between actual results. Absolutely fucking retarded. And that's just one example.
• sweuder 4y ago
  I disagree. Youtube easily has the best recommendations out of all of the big social media/content sites. Its entirely based in what you are watching. If you watch very little on the site then yes, obviously they will just throw random stuff at you that is popular. The recommendation algorithm has nothing to go on. ["Popular" in this case usually means trash since the videos that get the biggest on the platform ARE clickbait shallow garbage because the vast majority of watch time is from kids and teens.] If you seek out creators and channels that you enjoy/find useful, actually engage with the algorithm by subscribing to quality channels, hitting "not interested" when the recommendations miss, suddenly you'll get better results. One very recent (1 month maybe?) change that ive noticed is that Youtube tosses in WAY more tiny channels into the recommendations. I get recommended videos with ~1k or less views all the time. I've found some awesome stuff through that.
• DantesKite 4y ago
  Their recommendations are good but their search could use some work.
• hmate9 4y ago
  It’s the fact that every video is 10 minutes long now because then you can monetise better. The majority of videos have about ~3 minutes of the actual content that you’re interested in and 7 minutes of just pure fluff and fillers.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    Have you tried the SponsorBlock plugin?
• Mizza 4y ago
  It's really awful. The worst are those short vertical videos with a robot voice and dramatic music laid over a short clip from another video. It must be what a lobotomy feels like.
  • yreg 4y ago
    Tip for other people: Never ever click on such short (reel) when logged in. If you watch them, YouTube will push more down your throat. If you ignore them, they disappear from your suggestions.
    • sweuder 4y ago
      The shorts "shelf" as they call it has an X in the top right that hides them entirely.
    • AshamedCaptain 4y ago
      Unless you decline tracking cookies or outright disable cookies, in which case YouTube will push even more crap content down your throat because I guess that's what the average person wants.
• dudus 4y ago
  YouTube is amazing. YouTube search is good but has some bad spots. Software is one of them, a lot of bad quality content. Luckily you can be creative with the filtering and sorting to cut out the low quality content by views
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bluGill 4y ago
  Search has never been good, and the algorithm seem to prioritize things that make YouTube money, but it is still where all the good passion generated stuff goes if you can find it.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ellieh 4y ago
  I feel like this is just the way the Google-owned web is going at the moment. Every Google search is filled with e-commerce and ads. It's all just selling you stuff.
• open-source-ux 4y ago
  I don't think YouTube has peaked. It is as popular today as it as ever been. It's not surprising monetisation is more prevalent when channels grow. I remain impressed that among the staggering quantity of content there is plently to watch and find. I rarely watch the most popular tech channels. The trend I dislike is 'shorts' which are encouraged by YouTube. An obvious nod to TikTok, which ironically now allows longer videos - a maximum of 10 minutes. So to sum up: yes, there is lots of rubbish on YouTube (as to be expected), but there is also plenty of watchable content - whether it's silly, informative, education, music or a myriad of other types. Is it unhealthy to consume too much? I guess that's a question for a different discussion.
  • mliker 4y ago
    In absolute terms, there's no rubbish, but yes, it hasn't peaked. In relative terms, the rubbish is about the same. There are simply way more videos than ever before.
• danpalmer 4y ago
  I'd say that the quality of the best content on YouTube is still fantastic, and those creators are often able to bring in more and more money, allowing even more improvements. Looking at the sorts of channels represented by Standard, they're at the top of their game and doing better than ever. - https://standard.tv/ https://standard.tv/ Yes there's a ton of crap too, but I think this is just a symptom of YouTube being truly mainstream now. There are areas that do better and worse on this. I'd agree that programming tutorials aren't good, but I've never found YouTube to be good for programming tutorials. Conference talks tend to be much better.
• azangru 4y ago
  I wouldn't use the word "peaked". It may be hard to discover useful content; but if you know the channels that you are interested in, then youtube is fantastic compared to the alternatives (vimeo, odysee, rumble, peertube).
  • ls15 4y ago
    ... assuming that these channels of interest are on Youtube and not on one of the other platform. I am using multiple platforms, just because the content is spread out now.
• omega3 4y ago
  Especially since the removal of downvoting it's hard to get to good quality material. Majority of tech videos are a case of blind leading the blind and unless you know the subject already it's hard to spot. Nowadays I start with a forum/reddit/discord/hn search for a list of hive approved creators and only then go to youtube with that list in hand. Starting the search in youtube (unless for a very niche/non-marketable topics) is close to worthless.
  • LinuxBender 4y ago
    There is an addon to bring back downvote visibility in firefox. [1] I believe it makes a call to an API on a 3rd party site so there may be privacy implications. [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/return-youtube-dislikes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/return-youtub...
  • bfung 4y ago
    There’s still the “don’t recommend channel” and “not interested” options to modify recommendations.
  • bergenty 4y ago
    I disagree. YouTube content has never been better for me. There has been an explosion of specialized and niche videos and the recommendation algorithm really seems to be working for me.
  • tmaly 4y ago
    I am curious, why was downvoting removed? It seems to have had a bad effect based on what you are saying.
  • abnercoimbre 4y ago
    > Especially since the removal of downvoting A wake-up call that a single company annihilated our ability to sort out information for ourselves. I'm still rather disturbed and shaken.
    • scoot 4y ago
• V-2 4y ago
  The drive for monetization certainly shows in the form of needlessly, absurdly long videos. I recently came across a "How to Make the Windows 11 Taskbar Completely Transparent" tutorial (I had a whim to do just that). The whole content boils down to "install such-and-such app". Length of the video? 5:50 :) (And the narrator calls it a "real quick video" by the way, so apparently that passes for being rather brief). YT, or even videos in general, don't have a monopoly for that though. Eg. in my country some Sundays are shopping, some are not. Every now and then I need to google it out to find out if the shops are open next Sunday, and inevitably at the top of search results will sit a 4 screens long blog post starting with an 'immersive' story to the tune of "Imagine you wake up on Sunday morning, and your fridge is empty. That's a bummer, huh?", followed by paragraphs and paragraphs of such fluff with the only information any sane person could care about buried somewhere near the end : )
  • jerrya 4y ago
    There's a variety of youtube "creators" that I follow as I have the same interests or hobbies, okay, I'm an aviation nerd, and the videos from the same creators have over time morphed from ad-hoc, homemade, quicky explainers into very professional looking videos clearly put together by a team. And they are longer. And they are selling their merch. And they are all cross-promoting each other. And they are all advertising the same vpns. And it's become so professional, so impersonal, that watching now feels much more like a chore
    • V-2 4y ago
      That's the problem. And it is said that internet has shortened our attention span - probably true. But the common wisdom is that it did so by being brief and to the point. But it's the opposite. Modern internet does that by drowning us in so much fluff (subscribe to our newsletter, or do you want to see our useless chatbot utterly fail to help you) that we've all developed our personal "skip intro" heuristics. And we now have this knee-jerk reaction to aggressively cut through fluff even when there's actually no fluff. Back in the day the list of shopping Sundays would be printed in my pocketbook calendar that I'd buy in early January. And it would be a simple list without all the "...shopping for goods is such an important part of life, you need to eat after all (sometimes too much, am I right!). But did you know that on some days..." BS. Because paper is an actual commodity, and no editor would publish a pocketbook calendar the size of a brick. Unlike paper though, kilobytes cost nothing, so there you go.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• _Algernon_ 4y ago
  I would say youtube peaked around 2012. Been downhill of a cliff ever since.
  • mliker 4y ago
    2012 is around when they rolled out personalization of your feed, which drastically increased hours spent on YouTube. So the data shows it was on an upward trajectory since then.
    • _Algernon_ 4y ago
      I'm talking about quality of content, not attention parasitism. Youtube peaked in quality in 2012, and probably hasn't peaked in attention parasitism yet.
• chrisseaton 4y ago
  > I searched for a software tutorial on Youtube and 90% of results are talking heads. What else did you want on a video site? You just think they should not include their faces in the videos?
  • chiheisen 4y ago
    Yes? Heads add no value to a technical video, they function as a distraction at best.
    • tiborsaas 4y ago
      Nonverbal communication is still valuable, I really don't mind to see who's talking compared to staring at an IDE for 3 minutes before they start.
    • chrisseaton 4y ago
      > Heads add no value to a technical video Body language. Expression.
      • AshamedCaptain 4y ago
        None of them is required for this, it just steals valuable time from the actual content. For example when trying to find physical hardware reviews (basically the only reason I can think of where a video can be more preferable to something written). And yet it is incredible how many reviewers think you'll be happy to stare at their faces for the majority of the "review"; practically all this runtime is them advertising themselves.
        • chrisseaton 4y ago
          I guess not everyone communicates like you do.
    • cr3ative 4y ago
      Having a headshot for the introduction to the concepts is, to me, more useful than narration over a blank IDE.
• _8j50 4y ago
  It did so several years ago. It is now practically begging for a competition with deep pockets to end its journey. Toktok has taken a lot of the fun content away from it.
• z9znz 4y ago
  I still find youtube invaluable for tech related demos and tutorials. In fact, I've probably learned more in the last 5 years from youtube than any other source, books included. There's little better than watching someone walk you through something new, especially when there's a good bit of exact configuration to get right. As for other content, who knows. There's SO much stuff on youtube, stuff I wouldn't begin to know how to find. I'm sure most of it is of low value to most people, but I think some people just use it as a creative outlet, or a place to talk (with no viewers).
• secondcoming 4y ago
  There is still some quality content on youtube, but the ads I get are awful and repetitive... It's probably my own fault though as I turn personalisation off (so likely no frequency capping) And there's something tragic about people making content in their homes and reading out a marketing script about some crap for a minute.
  • dtx1 4y ago
    why are you not using ublock & sponsorblock? Ads are a choice you know?
    • Tainnor 4y ago
      Ads aren't a choice on mobile or SmartTV.
      • _Algernon_ 4y ago
        pihole.
      • mxvzr 4y ago
        pi-hole can still help with that, unless the client is running on android.
      • bemused 4y ago
        https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/mobile/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/mobile/
      • another_story 4y ago
        Watch through the browser on your phone or use Newpipe.
      • me_bx 4y ago
        on mobile, newPipe (open source app) is great to get youtube content without ads, and/or listen to the music of a youtube video with the screen turned off.
• coffeeblack 4y ago
  Yt is a pile of bs with many hidden gems. There are great channels with awesome content. But they are not easy to find in the sea of bs.
• rjh29 4y ago
  I've only just got into it and I found lots of good creators. It's not difficult to find them - avoid clickbaity titles/thumbnails, look for people funded by patreon, look for creators who publish longer videos (20-40 minutes) infrequently. Subscribe to those people and ignore the rest. Same principle as reddit really - if content is being pushed into your face, it's probably worth avoiding. Seek out the high quality, less marketed content, subscribe to that and ignore what the algorithms send your way.
• SpotnikSignal 4y ago
  Yea there is a lot of crap nowadays, but fear not! The algorithm still surprises me with amazing content, mostly related to electro music. Comedy is harder to find
• orliesaurus 4y ago
  I would say Twitch peaked and now is declining. People are moving from Twitch to YouTube because they can put as much effort and make much more revenue. I don't know if YouTube is declining - it's definitely changed - but if you know where to look you can still find incredible videos and channel owners :)
• ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  I think that the monetization on youtubes (not individual creators) side is slowly destroying youtube. Just a few years ago, you could search for anything, even current-political, and find a bunch of videos from a bunch of people, from "best trump insults" to "why xyz is bad?" .... but now, all the top search results about anything remotely current (be it politics, covid, russia/ukraine, crime, heatwaves,...), all you get is mainstream media (cnn, msnbc,....). If I wanted to watch CNN, I'd watch CNN, not youtube. Add to this all the blatant demonetization of anything remotely non-politically-correct, discussing anything current, or even using a bad word. For me, youtube has become in 90% just one more "cable tv" channel... mainstream media, and a few large media houses pushing their shitty videos. There are only a few channels left that I actually enjoy, and even those are producing less and less content every year.
  • simiones 4y ago
    > but now, all the top search results about anything remotely current (be it politics, covid, russia/ukraine, crime, heatwaves,...), all you get is mainstream media (cnn, msnbc,....). If I wanted to watch CNN, I'd watch CNN, not youtube. I think this has nothing to do with monetization per se, it was an explicit decision taken by YT and hard-coded into the search and recommendations algorithms in light of the craze about "fake news". It's very funny to notice when looking at videos from new media creators - even though I am subscribed, Like most videos I watch, watch them till the end etc, I will almost always get "redirected" to a mainstream news video if Auto-play is on, at least after 2-3 videos.
• exDM69 4y ago
  Yes it has. It seems like the downturn was a few years ago when they made their monetization system pay less to the content creators and introduced a high barrier to entry for monetization (1k subscribers). Add in the algorithm preferring new content and channels that publish new videos frequently (weekly or more), making it essentially a full time job staying relevant. Youtube money is not enough to pay for living in high cost of living countries any more. Almost every popular channel I follow is mostly funded by Patreon etc these days. The people who made a living on YouTube started in the early 2010s or so. And I have understood that most of them aren't primarily funded by tube moneys any more. There is some interesting stuff coming from low cost of living countries like India, Bangladesh and in particular Vietnam. Not enough to offset the loss of creators from western countries. I have not seen a new and interesting channel by anyone living in America or Europe in many years.
  • abirch 4y ago
    Where are the content creators moving?
    • exDM69 4y ago
      The ones I follow are mostly getting paid by Patreon subscriptions. Some are doing content for niche platforms specific to the hobby they dabble in. Some use YouTube for free previews of paid content available elsewhere. But a lot of creators just quit. There is no platform that is sucking creators out of youtube, there just isn't enough money from ad funded free content to keep it up.
  • jsnell 4y ago
    > Yes it has. It seems like the downturn was a few years ago when they made their monetization system pay less to the content creators Do you have a source for that? As far as I know, the YT revenue share has been stable (at 55% to the creator) for like 15 years.
    • exDM69 4y ago
      Not right away and I don't have the time to search for it. Youtube is notoriously secretive about their contracts. There was a big outrage among the creators about the changes in 2017 or so. The revenue split may have stayed the same but the revenue total has gone down, despite the huge increase in the number of ads. E.g. Mathias Wandel has discussed the financial side of running YouTube if you want to dig deeper.
• polotics 4y ago
  Sorting the wheat from the chaff has become indeed harder and harder, I guess this is more because of the dominance of the platform. What is definitely clear is that popularity-driven content curation produces a draining race-to-the-bottom for what gets put in our feed. Maybe for monetisation, instead of the first 30 seconds having been watched, a further time point should be set. As a Youtube Premium customer I would like to be able to say: this video was exploitative and disingenuous, do not monetize my 31 wasted seconds...
• djhworld 4y ago
  Maybe in some areas (software) but I'm finding YouTube a goldmine for my current interest - learning to drive in the UK When I was 17 I started learning for about 8 months but then stopped due to various reasons. I'm 35 now and picking it back up again and the most mind blowing aspect of it is how much content there is on YouTube to help learner drivers, compared to back then! There are loads of creators (usually driving instructors) creating really good instructional videos with helpful visuals for everything you could think of for driving in the UK and how to pass the high bar of the UK practical test. It's been an invaluable resource and new content seems to come out everyday exploring different topics. Yes some of the channels are sponsored, usually by car insurance companies, but it's not intrusive
  • becquerel 4y ago
    I'm glad someone else has noticed this. There are tons of good vids showing mock driving exams with the faults highlighted and explained which I found really useful. It's mostly good marketing for the instructors, I think - you get to know their personality and chops before you put down the quite large amount of money required for a full suite of lessons. And it's just good PR - adding value and all that...
    • kuu 4y ago
      I know you're not telling this with bad faith, but not everything has to be done with a financial/economic objective. Some people likes to share their knowledge just for the sake of it and that's one of the things that made Internet great... Now it all has to be related with views, monetization and brand content...
  • SevenNatty 4y ago
    100% agree with this. I passed my test in 2018, but YouTube was a game changer. The UK driving test is pretty difficult, and everyone always tells you horror stories about it, so being able to watch test videos reduces anxiety so much. When you face the facts, it's just two 45-50 minute tests and each has a 45% pass ratio, so it's nowhere near as bad as people make it sound. You can easily pass on the first or second attempt if you study enough. Failing your test can cost you loads of money in extra lessons, car hire, testing. It's so useful to be able to see lessons online and get better. Financially, I think YouTube lessons and tests can save the average learner £500-1000.
• singaporecode 4y ago
  YouTube is amazing, especially conference talks and music
• lovehashbrowns 4y ago
  It feels kind of entitled to want free content that people can’t earn money from, for starters. I don’t understand why something can’t be passion driven or organic without also being money driven. Kind of reminds me of the music industry where people say a band sold out because they signed a deal with a label. Anyway, the reason it’s harder to find good software tutorials is because software engineers can make a ton of money from anywhere in the world. This doesn’t even just affect YouTube. Try to go through the tech category on Audible without tripping over low-effort Python tutorials. I don’t use TikTok atm but I bet you’ll find a similar problem there soon, if it’s not already prevalent. The cause is humans trying to find the shortest path to money, not some YouTube algorithm.
• adrianN 4y ago
  The whole Internet hat peaked due to monetization. Very little content is created because somebody is passionate about something and wants to share. Almost all content is created to either directly make money or to collect enough followers to eventually start making money. Everything is fake and optimized to grab attention. What organic content remains is drowned out by the firehose of monetized content.
  • throwaway29812 4y ago
    Or all the growth and actual engagement is going to TikTok
  • hef19898 4y ago
    My youtube feed is heavily curated. Every once in a while Youtube tries to slip in some of those monetization channels (e.g. reaction videos, videos recycling snippets from films,...). Also, once in a while, I start exploring, trying to find some new stuff that inteigues me. This seems to kick the algorithm into over drive... It's two weeks now that I kick out channels and content after I watched some Goodwood Racing clips and stupid me clicked on one or two of youtubes recommendations below those...
  • mschuster91 4y ago
    > What organic content remains is drowned out by the firehose of monetized content. When r/gonewild (NSFW!) is about the only source of genuinely non-monetized content on the Internet remaining... sigh
  • poisonborz 4y ago
    What's the problem with the drive for monetization? Out in the physical world you also rarely get services and content for free. Also monetization here mostly means possibilites for donation and paying for extra content, usually most of a creator's content is still free. As for money-grabber content: a good platform should have an efficient and honest rating mechanism.
    • adrianN 4y ago
• spoonjim 4y ago
  No, YouTube has not peaked, YouTube is only getting better. However, the only way to experience this is to DISCOVER CONTENT OUTSIDE OF YOUTUBE. If you just click around YouTube you will get the content equivalent of Mountain Dew and Cheetos - unhealthy garbage that will make you worse off but will enrich the vendor. If you want to find the good stuff you have to know what you're looking for and seek it out.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    I use DDG to search for videos and find it much more useful.
• scoutt 4y ago
  I'm split between agreeing with you, and that Youtube is no longer a thing for me. Probably it's my forties talking here, but I am under the impression that the content and the format (including the length) is being leaned towards the 15-25 years old range. For (our) work stuff, it's all 30 minutes "learning tutorials", for a kid getting hands on a programming language or tool, or the couch-video-watcher-curious. I honestly don't have the time to look for tutorials of work stuff on YouTube (I don't even have audio on my work PC). If I must, I prefer to watch a lecture from a professor in some university. Text-format tutorials are always welcome. What it leads me to my next point: everything in YT is entertaiment. No matter what, the main scope of all those video is to entertain people first, and teach later. And for the entertainment PoV: for example last night I watched "What Makes This Song Great?" from a "Rick Beato". It's a musician that does an analysis about a song. Other than leaving me with a sense of "emptiness" the guy never REALLY explained "What Makes This Song Great". Perhaps a 25 yo sees this guy as an authority, or doesn't care wasting time, but I personally felt scammed. I'll keep using YouTube to occasionally watch a trailer or an old music video clip or a live performance.
  • srg0 4y ago
    Unlike Beato, 8-Bit Music Theory is actually insightful. Every time I watch his analysis video I see something that I want to apply and use.
  • brtkdotse 4y ago
    Re: Rick Beato, I agree. Especially his “lessons”. Check out Pat Finnerty, he does a series called “Why does this songs stink” and he really has an axe to grind with Beato: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWfMI4CVFI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWfMI4CVFI
    • pertique 4y ago
      Not to knock Pat Finnerty (his content might be comparatively good) but I thought this was a satirical recommendation. Between the fluff, 8 minute intro, and unrelated sponsorships (for hot sauce too! which was also called out in the thread) he's quite the Youtuber.
• mkl95 4y ago
  Market segmentation, copyright trolls / bullies and extreme monetization have made Youtube lose most of its attractiveness. I created dozens of YT playlists over the years and copyright trolls ruined them, so nowadays I use Spotify instead. Youtube's future involves poaching Twitch streamers and targeting younger audiences.
• conradfr 4y ago
  It's great for audio production and instruments, and music in general. Of course you have to be aware of the marketing and monetization aspect. I see people raving about science or historian Youtubers etc, I see there's an audience and money to be made, but I'm not sure who has the time to watch all that? For coding or tech in general I vastly prefer reading anyway. Sometimes, a tech keynote at 1.5x in the background...
• Rounin 4y ago
  Oh, they have content on there still? I thought it was just ads.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    If you use browser plugins, it's still quite a nice experience. * uBlock Origin (kills the ads) * SponsorBlock (uses crowdsourcing to skip the sponsored, intros, self promotion, credits, etc. This cuts 10% to 20% from most videos, saving a lot of time) * Channel Blocker (gives you a button to permanently block all videos from a channel) * BlockTube (lets you block videos based on keywords in video titles) * Unhook (removes recommended and suggested videos) * Better Subscriptions for YouTube (lets you hide videos you've already watched from your subscriptions page and other pages) Another popular YouTube plugin is 'Enhancer for YouTube', but personally I don't find this one very useful.
• jstx1 4y ago
  Another change in recent years - erasing your history doesn't erase your history anymore. The recommendation algorithm clearly remembers stuff from before erasing the history and there's no way to fully reset it.
• konart 4y ago
  I'm subscribed to quite a few great channels^1 honestly. I can't say anything about them being born our of passion or something else, but I love the content they deliver. And this is most important. >It used to be index of useful organic information, To be honest - no. It became an index of useful information not so long ago. It used to be just a site for funny videos, homevideo often and things like that. [^1]: To name a few: https://www.youtube.com/c/athleanx https://www.youtube.com/c/athleanx https://www.youtube.com/c/Strengthside https://www.youtube.com/c/Strengthside https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/c/LetThemTalkTV/ https://www.youtube.com/c/LetThemTalkTV/ https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenredProductions https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenredProductions https://www.youtube.com/c/inanutshell https://www.youtube.com/c/inanutshell
• mid-kid 4y ago
  It peaked in 2012-2014 and has gone downhill since the rise of recommendation algorithm optimization. The signs were there before, with the rise of let's players and the existence of things like Machinima, but there was a turning point when that became the vast majority of channels.
• Youden 4y ago
  I think YouTube is like Reddit: it is what you make of it. If you only ever look at the front page of Reddit, you're going to be fed memes and outrage. If you go and subscribe to a few small, focused subreddits, you're going to see things that are relevant to you. Same with YouTube. If you watch a lot of junk content, that's what it's going to feed you in recommendations. If you focus on some specific segment of content, it'll give you that instead. For example I watch a bunch of creators that build stuff (e.g. Tested, ThisOldTony, AvE) and as a result I get recommendations for other relevant creators, like Alec Steele, James Bruton, Tom Stanton and Colin Furze. When I see recommendations I don't like, I flag them with "not interested" or "don't recommend channel". There's definitely still organic, passion-driven content out there, especially with new fan-funding mechanisms like Patreon, you just need to focus on it, because it's really easy for YouTube to shovel junk down your throat, if you give it the chance.
  • acomjean 4y ago
    Yeah, you need an account on Reddit and Youtube to make it worthwhile. Going into "private browsing" and going to youtube is a weird experience. There are a bunch of niche youtube channels that don't get a ton of views that seem to support via Patreon (or there just retired). I mean sometimes the sponsorships make sense. The video about how to change your car's heating/vent fan, came with a link to a place to buy said fan (It was in line with other prices so I used it). In the how to do things department Youtube is King. Even very obscure things. I had a hubbard squash and needed to open it... you tube had it. Not sure some of those methods where the best, but I found one that was effective.
  • wccrawford 4y ago
    I think the OP's point is that people like Colin Furze used to film themselves and just put out content, but now they court sponsors and have a production team. All of the people you mentioned have a production team, I think. I've got some channels I watch that don't have production crews (I think) like "Under Dunn" and I enjoy them every bit as much as the big ones you named, if not more... But there's no doubt that even they pay at least some attention to monetization. I also heavily curate my recommendations. It's kind of painful because there's so much crap, but I do still find channels that I enjoy once in a while. They generally aren't new channels, though, just ones I hadn't found yet. A few of my channels got really stupid about monetization, though. One of my woodworking channels recently said that he wasn't going to do any more content like his old content because it doesn't attract new viewers. He's very much trying to make that channel be his day job, and it ruined it for me. I almost never watch his new stuff, but I guess others do, so... Oh well.
• sturza 4y ago
  I am being pissed of videos that should be a blog post. I also ack that great effort went into making a video but the substance could have been a 2 page text and a few specific pictures. I also ack the incentive to get video ads vs text ads(more expensive) but i don’t want to accept the fact that someone has a choice between publishing the script of the video as text or spending time, effort and money to make a video instead. I also accept that video is a better medium than text for certain topics.
• staticassertion 4y ago
  It's been that way for years, as long as I can remember probably. But I still watch Youtube for probably ~50% of my content. I'd probably like podcasts but I never know how to play them. I just want educational content and, to my knowledge, Youtube has the best collection. I like hearing an expert in a field talk about a subject. Even Khan Academy has their content up on Youtube. I signed up for Nebula and I barely use it. It's poorly curated, there's seemingly no recommendations so I'm just in a wash of content with no direction. I think that it's probably worse the more you use it. The more I subscribe the more garbage I get recommended I think. I watched the raw footage of some of the Heard v Depp trial (as in - uncut, direct footage) and I don't know if my algorithmic output will ever recover - the shit I get recommended now is of zero interest to me. Similarly, I looked up a few 'how tos' for some games, and now I get tons of 'gamer' content. The other day Youtube recommended Ben Shapiro to me lol But that's just the main page. If I'm already on a good video the sidebar recommendations are decent. If there's something better please let me know, I hate Youtube as a construct and I think that the monetization of horribly low content is damaging in ways I can't even predict, but also I gotsta have my "expert on topic talks to me about interesting thing" content.
  • sweuder 4y ago
    Based on: >but also I gotta have my "expert on topic talks to me about interesting thing" content. You should absolutely be listening to podcasts. This is literally the main strength of the format. What do you mean you "never know how to play them" ? Whichever phone you have there will be abundant free podcast players in the app store, you can look up and subscribe to their feeds and listen through that. Longform interviews or conversations on every topic imaginable.
    • staticassertion 4y ago
      I've just never "gotten into" them. Like is there a site I can just use? I don't really like apps I guess, but I'm open to using one.
      • sweuder 4y ago
• josephkern 4y ago
  There is so much content on youtube, especially independent music, that it's often I find that I need to purposefully watch things I want to see more of instead of letting autoplay or autorecommend take over. Purposeful searching and watching habits make youtube much more enjoyable for me. Of course `Dead Internet Theory` might be true, or at least feel that way, if you let the algorithms drive.
• mrjay42 4y ago
  Maybe free speech/creation spaces are moving away from massively capitalistic oriented spaces. Because in the end, the search for maximization of profits may not be the best way to achieve creativity. For a time, and I still think that somehow it's the case right now, a lot of creativity can be found on: TikTok, some Discord servers, etc. etc. But clearly, Youtube feels like TV in a way: a bunch of "professional" people rehashing the same concepts over and over: over-produced fiction, gaming stuff, react-stuff, beauty stuff, etc. The only thing that I currently value Youtube for is the access to science stuff: 3 blue 1 brown, Veritasium, etc. etc. Oh also Youtube has become the home for the cancer of tutorial: the video tutorials. Why cancer? Because reading is faster, searchable, indexable, etc.
  • mschuster91 4y ago
    > Oh also Youtube has become the home for the cancer of tutorial: the video tutorials. Why cancer? Because reading is faster, searchable, indexable, etc. Reading may be faster for a lot of things, but there are instances where nothing beats a video - one of them is any sort of tutorial for a GUI program like Photoshop, Premiere, IntelliJ or whatever. A written tutorial either assumes the user knows exactly what the "lasso tool" is and how to select it (and so is useless for novices) or it assumes "know nothing" and so is excessively verbose for people above the "barely novice" level. With a well made video tutorial, both a complete novice and an expert can find value, simply because all the verbose description can be seen in action on the screen.
• rvz 4y ago
  > It feels like the majority of content is no longer organic or passion driven. It is now monetisation driven content. Yes. There is a griftopia or mania around these platforms which early adopters, geeks, etc have used it for fun for a long time and the tech bros go and successfully hijack it for monetisation and this has been happening since the 2000s up until this point. I think there is no going back from this and this form of grifting is here to stay and it will continue on another platform which will take YouTube's place because the content creators, shills, marketers will go where the money is. Now the money is in TikTok and you will watch that get destroyed very soon and the so-called early users will get upset because the platform has changed to favour big business or much larger creators manipulating the algorithm to favour them. So I'm afraid you will be very disappointed as nothing has changed.
• Cloudef 4y ago
  Its mostly product reviews and streamers. Probably the algorithm scores monetized content higher. Installing sponsorblock and clickbait remover makes youtube a lot better experience. Sponsorblock skips all the annoying sponsors, subscribe reminders, intros and gives you option to skip straight to the meat of the content, it's highly customizable. It will also show a badge on video if it's obviously a shill video for company X's product. Clickbait remover, forces thumbnails to be from the actual video itself, it also has option to remove allcaps titles etc.. I don't like the shorts, I hate the UX and how it forces you to interact with these shorts and always found tiktok annoying anyways.
• kypro 4y ago
  There's been a lot of negative changes to algorithms recent years. Search seems to function more as an extension to the recommendation page at this point with little relation to the search terms used. Content moderation has also heavily sanitised some communities on the site, but I'm not sure how wide spread that is. I know certain kinds of "edgy" content or controversial political discussions aren't really possible on YouTube today like there were in the past though. My main issue with monetisation isn't so much the content itself, but the content recommendations. It seems that a lot of the content recommendations today have a corporate bias which they didn't used to. If a tech review channel just wants to make market videos and post them to YouTube that's fine with me personally so long as the algorithms don't push me to that type of content (which it currently does). The authentic low-budget tech reviewer doesn't have a chance on YouTube today, and that's real the problem. If you want authentic, low-budget user curated content YouTube isn't the place anymore. There was something special about those early years of YouTube when it was mostly just low-budget videos made by real people on 420p webcams or video cameras. Back then no one made YouTube videos to be rich or famous, they made videos simply because they enjoyed making them and wanted to share their content with the world. I don't think YouTube has peaked as a business, but I think it peaked in terms of an web 2.0 platform about a decade ago. That's a common trend though. All web 2.0 sites have been trending towards corporatisation for years now. The dream of the internet being a place where individuals could make cool stuff that other people around the world could find and enjoy is dead imo. Search and recommendation algorithms across the web are increasingly pushing users towards the approved corporate content because that's where the money is. Unless you know where to look today authentic content is extremely hard to find.
• throwaway4good 4y ago
  Seriously - take a look a TikTok - I am amazed at what tech content can be squeezed into a 30 second clip.
• saos 4y ago
  Yup and the problem is its creating medicore content all for the sake of earning money. I won't name and and shame but theres a YouTuber who obviously put in big effort in their editting...but it quickly went south when the person started teaching JavaScript. I've never been dissappointed. I'm also getting sick and tired of the YouTube how to guides and the constant pressure to "smash the like button" and subscribe. And removing the dislike button is complete and utter garbage. I cannot even understand it at all.
• DoubleGlazing 4y ago
  It depends on the subject matter I think. For more popular subjects I definitely think that an obsession with monetization is having a negative effect. For more niche subjects, it's still very much like early YouTube - lots of organic well made content. I watch a lot of videos related to two of my hobbies fly fishing/tying and ham radio. There is very little in the way of sponsorship or paid reviews and nearly all videos on these subjects feel rewarding to watch. Technical content on the other hand is a whole different ball game. If I have to learn a new framework or library I used to head to YouTube first to view a few tutorials before diving in to the docs. The quality of these has declined because a lot of channels are just churning out tutorials without really understanding the subject matter. In some cases they are just video versions of the getting started tutorials on the libraries website. There are loads of channels where they churn out new low quality tutorials every day on a wide range of subjects - jack of all trades, master of none - but they are doing something right because YouTube places them high in the search results. And as for the bigger channels on popular subjects such a gadgets, computers, food and gaming - yes I do feel like they are often feel like the content support the advertising as oppose the adverts supporting the content. I think to get value from YouTube you just need to be a bit more choosy. There is still good organic content being made, but it sits behind all the stuff that is primarily designed to get high up in the search results and make money. Remember, the way YouTube ranks search results and places suggestions is designed to benefit them more than you.
• plaguepilled 4y ago
  Google sabotaged their own value proposition? Noooooo. No waaaaaaaaaaaay. They've never done that before! Why on earth would you think that? At this point, TikTok is going to capture YouTube's entire demographic and then the US tech industry will wonder why on earth the youth are so corruptible! Its definitely the consumer's fault after all. Mmmm hmmm.
• grumbel 4y ago
  While the majority of recommendations are bigger monetized channels, I still come across tiny channels with view numbers in the double or tripple digits quite regularly, but it does require searching for something specific. Youtube also changed the algorithm recently to no longer punish old content, so there is a lot of old stuff that keeps bubbling back to the top. It might still have peaked, but I think for most part it's doing fine, it's still the best source for video on the Internet. On a side note, I find it interesting that TikTok today feels quite a lot like early Youtube, back when Youtube had much more personal content, video replies and a <10min limit for video. Seems like the market for that content is there, it just moved to another platform.
• impulser_ 4y ago
  Mainstream YouTube is absolute garbage (minmaxing views for revenue). The best part of YouTube is there is so much content that if you know how to dig/search you can really find some great content that might have a few hundred views. I recently found a channel with hundreds of videos about a interest I had and I watch all of them. The highest view count a video had was 1k views. Very insightful and the guy didn't care about min/maxing views for money like 99% of the content YouTube. I still think YouTube is by far the best resource for learning new things.
• illuminati1911 4y ago
  I would say the YouTube content is better than ever, but YouTube itself is shittier than ever. Removing dislike button/count, demonetizing people without valid reason, censorship, copyright trolls without bounds, absolutely insane amount ads before, in the middle of and after the video etc. Without adblocker YouTube would be unsable.
• xbmcuser 4y ago
  No it has just started it's financial growth stage. As someone from a non western country youtube is the source for 99% news that is being censored or blocked in main stream media. Conservatives in the US have build a main stream media narrative which does a deservixe to someone from a country with a real autocratic/fascist regime blocking access to news.
• pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  All I know is that my search results have the same <20 people for any subject matter. It's like, where the heck are all the humans that exist? It's almost as bad as any mainstream filter.
• danesparza 4y ago
  Yes. It peaked in 2017. You can actually see this change with the quality & variety of content that existed in 2017 vs after that. Then Google shot itself in the face with monetization changes: https://www.quora.com/How-has-YouTube-monetization-changed-over-the-years?share=1 https://www.quora.com/How-has-YouTube-monetization-changed-o...
• deleted 4y ago
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• de6u99er 4y ago
  I totally agree, and what's annoying is that when YouTube runs an ad I have the feeling that the App on my LG TV is increasing the volume when showing an advertisement. Since as you said most of the stuff has become marketing garbage, I am not willing to pay for an ad free experience because YouTube anyways can't guarantee that content creators are not doing secretly paid content in favor of their sponsors regardless of ehat they say.
• GuB-42 4y ago
  Yep, it is monetization driven, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Making quality content costs money, and people have to get it back somehow. Anyways, I think YouTube has peaked, or at least plateaued. One simple reason is that it has saturated its market. It can no longer expand without targeting other markets, like it did recently with "Shorts", which is an obvious attempt by Google to get into TikTok market. Previously, it tried attacking Netflix with YouTube Originals, without much success. BTW, TikTok seem to still be in the organic / passion driven phase. It may not be what you are looking for, or you may not like "the algorithm" or the fact it is Chinese, but it is much closer in spirit to the early YouTube, with small time creators and regular people who just want to put videos on the internet.
• jobstijl 4y ago
  I hate the youtube search these days. You get back a very limited list off content you serached for and a lot off videos that are "related" to your search.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    Have you tried searching for videos using Google, DDG, or Bing? I find it's better than YT's search. There is a browser plugin named "Unhook" that removes "related" search results.
• Smithalicious 4y ago
  Is this a question you can expect a good anecdotal answer for? In my experience YouTube still has more high quality content than I can consume, but there's so much content on YouTube that I can only be aware of a small fraction of it, so I can't say anything about the whole. The feel is definitely different, though. You can clearly see the effects of monetization, both in the amount of YouTubers who are "just working a job" and in the production values. Everything has gotten more consistent, more streamlined. Videos are longer and have more of a coherent throughline. But about the content itself I cannot say much, other than that me and my peer group are still managing to find enough interesting stuff to satisfy our appetite.
• bdhcuidbebe 4y ago
  Interesting. For me, yt had peaked before influencers were a thing. Back befor google bought em.
• ephaeton 4y ago
  Firstly, I don't know about "peaked". But I do know about "useful" (for me, as creator). As someone who uploads music (videos) of my own creation, youtube (still) works fine to connect with an audience that I would have no chance of reaching otherwise. I'm far from being flagged to monetize, so I don't have any incentive to put out something that I do for the money and not because I want to put it up. As a niche musician (didgeridoo), I'm glad that I have access to a global community and a non-zero chance of someone searching for e.g. 'didgeridoo music' finding me. Shorts may annoy people but I see it as an interesting challenge to make great 60s didgeridoo solos. Maybe my view will change if I'm ever sniffing the chance of being monetarily successful on this platform but until then, I'm doing whatever the hell I want and it's great.
• fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
  I have worked very hard to stop my addiction to Youtube. I watched a lot of "lifestyle instructional" videos (ToT, Ave, Fireball Tools, LPL, Tom Lipton, Matt's Recovery, etc), but after you've had your "inspiration moment" with these, you're not learning much and are essentially spending your life watching someone else's. That brings me on to my second point - video is a HORRIBLE format for most forms of instruction (for me). Practically every time I decide to try watching one to learn something, it could easily have been communicated in text form. Coding is a great example - I really hate having to skip through a 10-minute video that boils down to a single screen's worth of basic code. Saying that, I've saved myself a bunch of money watching youtubers who very generously give away their time and experience for free to show me how to disassemble and re-assemble electronics and cars.
• kirb 4y ago
  I feel YouTube is on the up and up in terms of high quality content, but the site is terrible at surfacing that content, because the ones that play the algorithm will always win the game of getting their content in front of more eyeballs. There are more channels than ever producing content that’s super interesting, informative, straight to the point, with at least bare minimum production values (i.e. they at least appear to be trying to do more than hit record on their phone/webcam, even if they have a long way to go on framing, lighting, editing, and all that). Some examples of channels that have risen into producing solid content in the tech space only very recently include Adrian’s Digital Basement, DankPods, and Dave’s Garage. I’m also fond of Tech Tangents and Cathode Ray Dude who aren’t as new but still have that smaller channel vibe. The issue I feel is more to do with the algorithms that push content to you via homepage, related sidebar, and search, and the incentives this naturally pushes upon creators. Sometime recently Linus mentioned in a WAN Show that the goal of YouTube now seems to be entirely on having the algorithm figure out what you want to watch, rather than using straightforward signals such as the channel you’re currently watching, your subscriptions list, or the most relevant search results. You constantly hear creators complaining about videos being buried by the algorithm, which is why “click the bell” is part of everyone’s outros now. Loyalty from their follower base has become more important than ever so YouTube has all the positive signals to decide the video is worthy of being pushed outside of that small sphere - that is, it decides whether you’ll be allowed or denied growth on a video-by-video basis by pure luck you can’t control. This is an absolute shame, because creators who deserve views aren’t getting them even from their own subscribers, and those of us who really don’t give a care for the type of content that feeds the algorithm what it wants can’t escape it because the algorithm is begging us to please click on those videos. I noticed if you play any video in an incognito window, it will always display completely unrelated clickbait in every position of the related videos sidebar, probably because it hasn’t figured out your interests yet. Plus, when VPNs and oddball mobile games see your success, they’re not going to snooze capitalising on it, and let’s be real, it’s hard for many people to say no to easy money for mindlessly reading a 30 second script. In some cases I’ve seen creators post about the business proposals they turn down and they can be absolute junk such as factories trying to move some random Amazon sludge. Luckily it seems these ones are being consistently turned down as just too far below any creator’s morals. I don’t enjoy it but I’ll sit through being introduced to Squarespace for the millionth time or a highly misleading VPN ad read that ticks me off if it means a creator of integrity can quit their job and work full-time on producing top quality content. But YouTube sure could help not make it so high-stakes to find where that sweet spot of quality vs profitability is, and should work out why so many SEO spam videos keep making it past the filters.
• prima-facie 4y ago
  I subscribed to Linkedin Learning a few months ago, mainly because I wanted to push myself to complete at least one tutorial per month. It's not cheap (about £30 pm) but the content is of very good quality. Tutorials are split into lessons and chapters. They all have transcripts added by the author. No flashy fillers, no talking heads, no wasted time. Just pure content made by known and respectable professionals in the domain. For example the 'Async Python Foundations' course has already helped me at work. Edit: I now realise this post sounds like an advertisement, but I assure you that was not the intention. It really is a breath of fresh air among video platforms. It feels like the content creators would rather starve than promote the latest VPN software mid-lesson.
• alexruf 4y ago
  You are right that it is harder those days to find good quality content on YouTube. Most of the content you get presented is just click bait and optimised for monetarisation. However, the real issue here is the assumption that people need AI optimised personal content recommendations. The opposite is the case. Now we trained all those algorithms over the years and were teaching them to recommend us all this shitty content. Welcome to the future!
• rg111 4y ago
  When you ask this question, you need to ask: "what aspect?". I primarily use YouTube for three particular tasks: 1. Watch lecture videos from Stanford, MIT, NYU classes. 2. Watch or listen to music videos. 3. Watch some channels like Vox, Veritasium, 3b1b, Lex Fridman Podcast, etc. That is, stuff from sources that I already know pretty well. For me, YouTube is more than fine. I will not change anything. Even ten years before, this much educational content weren’t available. And it is increasing every year. And more and more people from the US and the rest of the world are getting connected. This aspect is far from being plateaued.
• taylodl 4y ago
  You are implicitly saying that passion and monetization are at odds with one another. By finding ways to monetize their passion people are able to spend more time pursuing their passion rather than moonlighting. People who are able to create content full-time tend to create better content - the video production quality is better, the sound is better, the presentation is more interesting - it's all gotten more professional and more engaging. I'm now watching YouTube more than any of my other streaming content. It's more interesting content than Big Entertainment is producing and I get a chance to learn something to boot! What I don't do - I rarely watch IT-related videos. The videos I watch are related to my interests and hobbies. If I need anything IT-specific I first start with my company's training provider who provides self-paced content specific to whatever it is I need to learn.