4 ms·

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

by 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.
- sofixa 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. Why is that a problem? People don't like it when the audio and video quality are good ? Or they don't like it when content producers focus entirely on content creating instead of moonlighting (with the necessary associations with sponsors and what not). I don't mind either, and having seen a few channels "grow" into a more professional outfit, i vastly prefer the new, more qualitative version, even if it wastes me a few seconds for monetisation.
  - wccrawford 4y ago
    In itself, I don't have a problem with having sponsors. But far too often, it feels like the person made the video just for the money, instead of because it's something their viewers would actually like to see. Colin Furze has done remarkably little of this, but some of my other channels have entire videos that were obviously just to be a commercial, and the content is almost unlike the other channel content. Seeing one of those feels like they've wasted my time for their own profit, and that feels bad. And you often can't tell if it's going to be a whole video like that, or just an up-front sponsor message.
- Youden 4y ago
  It's true that monetization has changed things and I can understand that for some folks it's bad but for some I think it's been really good. In the old days the content was only driven by passion, because it wasn't really possible to make a living or fund a production team. These days, you get guys like Colin Furze who are able to do what they're passionate about full-time, with nice equipment and staff to support them. Tom Scott is another good example. He has a production team behind him but his content is still "here's a genuinely interesting thing I wanted to show you", maybe with a short, very obviously marked sponsored segment.
  - scarab92 4y ago
    Tom Scott is perhaps a better example of how hollow monetised content can be. His formula is taking topics that have been covered by other creators, dumbing the content down a bit, adding a sponsor block and a clickbait title. There's no effort expended in contributing new topics, or adding new colour to existing topics because researching that requires too much time and expertise to repeat day after day.
darkwater 4y ago
> 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. With all due respect, your whole post smells of "blame the victim", or "you are not doing it right" vibes. I think we can all agree that the big numbers in YT are in videos made explicitly for that, where some new stars arose due to the new media but now it's not that different from mainstream TV (yes, there is still this plus that if you dig deep enough you might find something worth that the TV didn't have due to much lower bandwidth, but I would ignore that since you can/could do that "in the Internet" anyway).
funcDropShadow 4y ago
> 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. So it is still impossible to decide today that I want to see good reviews of some technology category, whereas I am usually interested in something completely different. Google, and I assume Youtube as well, tries really hard to connect all my different accounts and identities on different devices, browsers. That closes the escape hatch that I could have one browser identity focused on topic A and another on topic B. All in all we have to be honest here. Youtube only interest is to serve us content that will make us watch more content. They have absolutely no incentive to show me content, that is relevant to me.
phailhaus 4y ago
> When I see recommendations I don't like, I flag them with "not interested" or "don't recommend channel". Recommendation engines like YouTube are way too confident in their own abilities, to the point that they hide first-class operations like these behind the little three-dot menu on videos. They support negative feedback reluctantly, to the detriment of society. I bet you their reasoning is "well, not many people use it so it doesn't need to be up front", but the problem is that it must be used in order to tailor the feed correctly, and now many people don't even know it's an option because it's hidden.

by Youden 4y ago

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.

sofixa 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. Why is that a problem? People don't like it when the audio and video quality are good ? Or they don't like it when content producers focus entirely on content creating instead of moonlighting (with the necessary associations with sponsors and what not). I don't mind either, and having seen a few channels "grow" into a more professional outfit, i vastly prefer the new, more qualitative version, even if it wastes me a few seconds for monetisation.
- wccrawford 4y ago
  In itself, I don't have a problem with having sponsors. But far too often, it feels like the person made the video just for the money, instead of because it's something their viewers would actually like to see. Colin Furze has done remarkably little of this, but some of my other channels have entire videos that were obviously just to be a commercial, and the content is almost unlike the other channel content. Seeing one of those feels like they've wasted my time for their own profit, and that feels bad. And you often can't tell if it's going to be a whole video like that, or just an up-front sponsor message.
Youden 4y ago
It's true that monetization has changed things and I can understand that for some folks it's bad but for some I think it's been really good. In the old days the content was only driven by passion, because it wasn't really possible to make a living or fund a production team. These days, you get guys like Colin Furze who are able to do what they're passionate about full-time, with nice equipment and staff to support them. Tom Scott is another good example. He has a production team behind him but his content is still "here's a genuinely interesting thing I wanted to show you", maybe with a short, very obviously marked sponsored segment.
- scarab92 4y ago
  Tom Scott is perhaps a better example of how hollow monetised content can be. His formula is taking topics that have been covered by other creators, dumbing the content down a bit, adding a sponsor block and a clickbait title. There's no effort expended in contributing new topics, or adding new colour to existing topics because researching that requires too much time and expertise to repeat day after day.

darkwater 4y ago

> 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. With all due respect, your whole post smells of "blame the victim", or "you are not doing it right" vibes. I think we can all agree that the big numbers in YT are in videos made explicitly for that, where some new stars arose due to the new media but now it's not that different from mainstream TV (yes, there is still this plus that if you dig deep enough you might find something worth that the TV didn't have due to much lower bandwidth, but I would ignore that since you can/could do that "in the Internet" anyway).

funcDropShadow 4y ago

> 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. So it is still impossible to decide today that I want to see good reviews of some technology category, whereas I am usually interested in something completely different. Google, and I assume Youtube as well, tries really hard to connect all my different accounts and identities on different devices, browsers. That closes the escape hatch that I could have one browser identity focused on topic A and another on topic B. All in all we have to be honest here. Youtube only interest is to serve us content that will make us watch more content. They have absolutely no incentive to show me content, that is relevant to me.

phailhaus 4y ago

> When I see recommendations I don't like, I flag them with "not interested" or "don't recommend channel". Recommendation engines like YouTube are way too confident in their own abilities, to the point that they hide first-class operations like these behind the little three-dot menu on videos. They support negative feedback reluctantly, to the detriment of society. I bet you their reasoning is "well, not many people use it so it doesn't need to be up front", but the problem is that it must be used in order to tailor the feed correctly, and now many people don't even know it's an option because it's hidden.