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On youtube's desktop site, I've also noticed that sometime within the last couple months the home page no longer shows the duration of videos when the page load
by dpedu 4y ago
On youtube's desktop site, I've also noticed that sometime within the last couple months the home page no longer shows the duration of videos when the page loads. After 3-6 seconds, the timestamps pop in. I don't know if this is intentionally or a result of lazy-loading - but seeing that the video thumb, title, author, view count, and age all load instantly with the page, I struggle to come up with a reason it could be unintentional.
This bothers me because I like to know how long a video is before I commit the time to sitting down and watching it. This feels like an attempt at a dark pattern with the intent to improve metrics - surely watch time is a metric youtube cares about.
- spikej 4y agoSame with the 3 dots that show extra options like saving to playlist. They pop in after the rest of the site has loaded.
- bavell 4y agoThey also have a tiny hotbox which encourages misclicks (trying to click "Not Interested" but whoopsie, another view on that video!). Dark patterns galore. Edit: looks like the dots are 40x40px on desktop
- lakomen 4y agoAnd then they torture and ban sites who use the same dark patterns with Adsense. It's as hypocritical as it gets.
- RealStickman_ 4y agoAnd sometimes the save to playlist is a separate button while at other times it's hidden behind the dots. I've had to cancel countless clips from misclicking. (Multiple times in a row even)
- dom96 4y agoyeah, I've noticed that timestamp thing as well. Super annoying.
- gs17 4y agoMy timestamps don't pop in, they're either there immediately or never show up. It's very frustrating, since I also decide what to watch based on them.
- staindk 4y agoCould be your adblocker sometimes blocking them, other times not? Though it probably is some bug or... rapid A/B testing thing Google has going on.
- gs17 4y agoI'm pretty sure it's just a bug, I don't think adblock caused it for me. Wouldn't put it past them to intentionally break things for adblock users though.
- Octabrain 4y agoAnother thing I've noticed in Youtube on the smart™ TV, is that the app does not adapt the suggestions based on previous searches anymore. Now it's almost entirely generic crap all the time (Seriously, I am so sick of those thumbnails with the surprise face. I hate them!) Between the ads and the poor content, I feel like Youtube is pushing hard to become the new public TV.
- weare138 4y agoIt's not just you. Mozilla ran a study recently and found user content controls on YouTube such as the 'Like' and 'Dislike' buttons are largely useless and have no effect on what we're recommended. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/research/library/user-controls/report/nothing-changed-a-qualitative-analysis-of-youtubes-user-controls/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/research/library/user-cont...
- satiric 4y agoThe algorithm might not take it into account but it's useful for viewers to see how downvoted a video is. If I see that it's 50% downvoted then I know the contents to be controversial.