26 ms·

YouTube, the jewel of the internet

473 points by gumby 4y ago

tambourine_man 4y ago
Why didn’t the author linked to the examples he cites? It’s almost cruel.
- ur-whale 4y ago
  > Why didn’t the author linked to the examples he cites? And generate traffic and revenue for another company without getting a cut? You gotta be kidding, right?
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    I know you’re jesting, but he’s singing the praises of those channels in specific and YouTube in general. Unless the author meant or even linked in the original but the editor cut it out, which is actually probable, considering it’s the financial times.
belter 4y ago
https://archive.is/kUh3M https://archive.is/kUh3M
turtleyacht 4y ago
Recently: YouTube, the Jewel of the Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670162 - yesterday (1 comment)
- Kye 4y ago
  This website has no connection to Internet Archive.
  - sp332 4y ago
    No, but it does have a paywall that you can get around by reading the archived version.
    - Kye 4y ago
      I didn't comment on that. Just the mistake about having something to do with Internet Archive.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - turtleyacht 4y ago
        (Edited the above.)
    - YinLuck- 4y ago
      [dead]
rolph 4y ago
a cavity concealed jewel perhaps?
rcarr 4y ago
I agree with the author. I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix and Prime too and just take out the odd month subscription to a streaming service if there’s something I really want to watch. I’m probably better off watching some informative documentary on YT than I am watching Netflix anyway and if I want entertainment, there are millions of hours of TTRPGs, stand up comedy and web series to watch that are often of a really high quality (e.g Critical Role, Ari Shaffir, Wayne). It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. You were limited by your parents bank balance or the resources of your local library.
- mkaic 4y ago
  As a Gen Z-er who grew up learning as much as I could about my passions, mostly on YouTube, I hope you're right about us! I'm really hopeful that my generation can go on to do some pretty great stuff. We do have a patently odd sense of humor, though...
- coliveira 4y ago
  This assumes that this generation will spent its youtube time learning something useful. While this will be true for part of the population, most people are just wasting their time and, in aggregate, it may happen that this generation will have even lower skills than the previous generation that had access only to a local library.
- irrational 4y ago
  > they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I have children between the ages of 9 and 26. You know what they are passionate about? Minecraft, Mr Beast, Travel vlogs, mommy vlogs, “reality” videos, etc. I’ve tried to introduce them to science, space, programming, history, math, finance, nature, etc. content and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. They are passionate about cheap mindless entertainment. I see the same things in their friends and classmates. You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I’m sure there are a few youths who are using their time productively and it will pay dividends for them. But, from what I’ve seen, the vast majority aren’t interested.
causality0 4y ago
Or it was, anyway. Youtube's choice to tune its algorithm for profitability rather than things I'm actually interested means my home page and "related videos" are almost entirely useless. Youtube's strict search limits also make it very hard to find anything obscure, and impossible to find every video on a particular topic. Maybe it's not the most intellectually healthy thing in the world, but if I want to watch every single, say, reaction video to The Verge's terrible PC build, how dare YouTube decide I'm only allowed to see the three most popular ones before my search results are replaced with random monetized nonsense?
- ravenstine 4y ago
  YouTube's search is pretty much horseshit now. Trip off any wrongthink keywords and it will give you nothing but CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR. I wrote an add-on that blocks all these channels by filtering out anything with the verified checkmark, and it's pretty revealing as to how much content YouTube suppresses. It's pretty clear who's buttering their biscuits.
  - causality0 4y ago
    It's truly disheartening to go back through your favorite creators and liked videos and see how many have been removed for violating new community guidelines or deleted by their creators because they no longer fit a marketable image. If I hadn't already had complete archives of my favorite channels due to an obsession with carrying media on the go, I'd probably have broken down and wept at the devastation of channels like Retsupurae and ChipCheezumSA. I learned that if there's any chance I'll want to watch something again in the future I need it saved to disk.
- timbit42 4y ago
  I often use a another search engine, like DDG, to search for videos. Much better.
jackcosgrove 4y ago
> It has a greater trove of content than Netflix, HBO and Amazon Prime combined and squared And one third of that is presented by Simon Whistler.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Who?
  - ahefner 4y ago
    Simon Whistler.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      Who?
andrewstuart 4y ago
YouTube is amazing but a couple of disappointments: 1: YouTube financially rewards 12 minute videos. I feel like this has resulted in a collapse in creativity as now most videos are 12 minutes. You get what you pay for. 2: being a walled garden, YouTube is devoid of technical innovation. This really hasn’t evolved far beyond broadcast TV and that’s because YouTube owns all the content and developers can’t innovate the core experience.
- waboremo 4y ago
  YouTube has gotten much much better at rewarding videos based on context not just length. They weren't always great about it, but they've improved tremendously. I can see them further adjusting this, so that say if you've uploaded ~11 minute videos consecutively it'll prevent you from adding that "middle video" ad break (note: I don't know if they already do this). I don't believe these changes have collapsed creativity, there isn't another platform on the planet that is creating as much long form content as on YouTube. People aren't posting their great absurdly high detailed yet entertaining content on Medium or Substack, no it's on YouTube. This has led to a walled garden of sorts, but it's also reaping benefits from their improvements from the days where you could easily game YouTube with shallow thumbnails.
- zokier 4y ago
  > 1: YouTube financially rewards 12 minute videos. I feel like this has resulted in a collapse in creativity as now most videos are 12 minutes. You get what you pay for. I checked my subscriptions page and of the latest 18 videos, here are the lengths stats * 1× <1min * 3× 4-6min * 1× 10-12min * 6× 13-20min * 7× 20-40min
  - Zetice 4y ago
    Levi Rozman talks about this a bit in his videos, I feel like the better rule is that you need at least one ad break, but two is also a good inflection point? I don’t think its 12 the number specifically, but 12 guarantees the first ad break.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
skywal_l 4y ago
HN is the jewel of the internet. Youtube might be the amethyst maybe?
- crop_rotation 4y ago
  HN is too small to be the jewel of "the internet", and irrelevant compared to YouTube for impact.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Man, I dunno. If you're only looking at hype cycle peak, maybe. But discussions on HN are what become the buzz-worthy products after 5 years or so.
cypherpunks01 4y ago
Sans paywall: https://t.co/ZyQ4Xz9zX9 https://t.co/ZyQ4Xz9zX9
xrd 4y ago
I'm troubled by YouTube. There is absolutely incredible content there. And there is so much shit in between the good stuff. Does anyone run a frontend that offers control over the shit? I want my kids to have autonomy in viewing interesting things there, but I don't want to YouTube algorithm attacking their developing brains. Maybe a browser plugin?
- duxup 4y ago
  > And there is so much shit in between the good stuff. Yeah discovery is really hard on there. So much loud crap :(
- Jolter 4y ago
  There are alternative front-end apps. Not for iPhone, because of course not, but Android has Newpipe at least. For desktop, I haven’t looked but sure there are some.
- kmfrk 4y ago
  There's Restricted Mode[1], but it's extremely aggressive to the point of hiding too much. I personally use the drop-down feature to tell YouTube I'm not interested in a particular recommended channel or video, as well as maintain a manually updated BlockTube list for channels and keywords. I've also heard that clearing stuff like your watch history is a good way to flush weird recommendations. Generally, disabling all targeted stuff goes a long way to ward off the craziest stuff. On top of disabling the main trending page so it goes directly to your subscriptions. [1]: https://www.howtogeek.com/770192/how-to-turn-off-restricted-mode-on-youtube/ https://www.howtogeek.com/770192/how-to-turn-off-restricted-...
- sp332 4y ago
  Well, YouTube Kids?
- sgu999 4y ago
  That's my problem with it as well... I keep on clicking "I'm not interested" for all kind of clickbait brainless content, but they keep on coming back.
seydor 4y ago
You can't even read the subtitle now. Focus on the clickbait.
kubectl_h 4y ago
Over the christmas holiday I was surprised you couldn't purchase youtube premium as a gift card for someone else. Seems like this would be a non-trivial source of revenue for YT.
- verall 4y ago
  You can pay for YT premium from Google play dollars which have gift cards. It's a little bit annoying to set up though.
zh3 4y ago
There is indeed great content on Youtube. It's just more than unfortunate that the algorithmic pull is towards the - shall we say - less informative end of the spectrum? Some people learn a lot from it. Most people just seem to gawp endlessly.
- jimsimmons 4y ago
  YouTube is an internet in itself. There are many sub-Youtubes and you can end up in any set of them depending on where the algorithm takes you.
- dkarl 4y ago
  > less informative end of the spectrum My experience is that my recommendations are 80% good but lightly sprinkled with random stuff that is known to addict and exploit people in my demographic. It reminds me of gambling and other businesses that make a disproportionate amount of their money off of a few "whales" who invest an unhealthy amount of their lives into it. They're happy to serve you and make a tiny bit of money off you, but their real goal is to turn you into a whale. My theory is that some small percentage of my recommendations (2-3%) are dedicated to YouTube's best guess at, "What would this guy watch if he was miserable enough to watch YouTube 16 hours a day?"
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hsjqllzlfkf 4y ago
I think wikipedia is the jewel of the internet, but that's just grumpy old me.
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
YouTube will pull you towards controversial clickbaity crappy content since that’s what generated clicks. These days I just surgically search for what I need, watch that, then get out, ignoring all recommends because invariably they are crap. And YouTube is poison for young children who don’t know better than to follow what the algorithm tells you. You like super Mario? Here, 500 ways to die in Mario. And next - what would happen if all Mario characters killed each other bloodily? And it starts getting worse. We banned YouTube for our kid and couldn’t be happier - the damage that thing was doing to his mind was noticeable and no amount of guidance or curation was able to keep him away from the cesspool.
- Zetice 4y ago
  Yeah but if you’re immune to the most obvious awful shit (not your kids) it’s kind of the only drawback. I get the occasional “lets debunk flat earthers” but a) I don’t find that content interesting and b) I know that’s the lip of the rabbit hole, so if I just avoid those kind of videos, my feed is fine. Your problem is legitimate and your response is understandable, but what would you think of YouTube if that weren’t a problem?
  - doublerabbit 4y ago
    > What would you think of YouTube if that weren’t a problem? Not op, however I avoid YT at all costs. I would sing a tune of a product giving back to the world. Education, knowledge and entertainment. Quite a dream compared to the current as of the moment; corruption of education, knowledge and entertainment.
    - Zetice 4y ago
      No, YouTube is not a corruption of any of those things. You can’t have the things you like without some way of allowing the people who created those things to no have to do other things to survive.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  Youtube only gives you what they think you will click on. If you don't click on the crappy content (or at least leave the video immediately) then they will stop recommending it. I guess this advice doesn't apply if you are sharing an account with your kid, then you're screwed.
grensley 4y ago
I think YouTube will really struggle to figure out how to weigh lowest common denominator content that does well with personalized recommendation that satisfy some deeper intellectual curiosity. I'm already finding it's a kind of "work" to keep the geopolitical and economics content that makes me feel like YouTube is a positive for me on the front page over shorts and sports montages. Maybe my algorithms just in a bad place right now, but it feels like there's been some kind of shift this year, and I'm wondering if others are noticing something similar.
- chongli 4y ago
  I’m a very strict curator of my watch history. If I ever succumb to click bait and click on some video I immediately regret, I go into my watch history and delete the offending video. This puts an immediate stop to any recommendations of similar videos. I recommend it to everyone!
  - spydum 4y ago
    same, single greatest control of what it recommends. sometimes i will go off on a tangent, but i dont want it populating my feed, so i'll prune the history, and it's perfectly happy.
  - SteveDR 4y ago
    I use a second account to watch videos that i think will muck with my recommendations in any way I don’t like. Comedy, political news, music videos, etc… it’s nice to have a separate feed that gets my taste in these things without distracting my main algorithm from focusing on my deeper interests
  - lazycouchpotato 4y ago
    I do it slightly differently. My watch and search history have been paused for 3+ years, leaving the algorithm to only use my highly curated list of followed channels and Liked videos to recommend me videos from. Even if I watch a meme video or two, it should have no impact on my recommendations. If there's a random video that I want to revisit though, I only have my PC's browser history to rely on. Outta luck on mobile.
petilon 4y ago
A major fail, in my opinion, is YouTube TV. The user interface is horrendous. YouTube TV's UI is mostly images (video thumbnails) and it is hard to see what the currently selected item is. A mostly-text UI, with thumbnail only for the currently selected item would have worked much better. I tried to switch to YouTube TV as soon as it launched, but canceled because of the horrible UI. Recently I tried again — surely they would have fixed the issues — but no, navigation is still terrible, so canceled again.
- snug 4y ago
  As someone that only uses YTTV to watch sportss, pecifically NFL Redzone, F1, and baseball/basketball playoffs, I really enjoy YTTV interface because it always knows what I'm going to YTTV for. Very rarely do I need to click more than 2 buttons to get to the thing I'm trying to watch
- jutrewag 4y ago
  YouTube’s video player is the best and most responsive video player online. I don’t think I want any UI changes around it.
  - petilon 4y ago
    YouTube TV is for watching broadcast and cable television. It has a different UI.
tambourine_man 4y ago
Another great thing about YouTube not mentioned is the quality of comments. Something happened in the last 5 years or so that changed them profoundly. Once the laugh of the internet they are now one of the most wholesome in it. Almost unbelievable for a public site.
- alonsonic 4y ago
  I'm fascinated by this. I feel the same way. Do we know if The YouTube team if ordering comments using some sort of sentiment analysis? This might be the key to moderating social media. Is almost like negative/toxic comments are shadow banned and relegated to the bottom of the comments section.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Youtube's system is extremely heavy handed. You can sometimes notice your comments getting shadowbanned if you see the same comment from another account/computer. And I think you can notice it for other people when you get a reply notification, and can even read the comment, but it doesn't show in the comments if you open the list of comments in notifications ? (Posting multiple comments for the same video seems to be an easy way to get them (shadow)banned. Even more posting links, even when it's literally a timelink to the same video using the mm:so format !)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsnell 4y ago
    There was a HN submission on this a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151021
- jasmer 4y ago
  I see masses of bots and dregs in support of authoritarian states.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
bdangubic 4y ago
My kid is 9 - YouTube is her search engine. All my efforts to explain that is what Google is for have failed. Every time I use Google she laughs at me and calls me old :)
- dagorenouf 4y ago
  Doesn't that make her slower? Youtube has better quality results most of the time, but it takes so long to watch the video and get to the information I want... I always start with a google search for that reason.
  - bdangubic 4y ago
    Yea I am always wondering the same thing but what I am searching for normally is instant answers to questions while I am finding she is searching is more like “how do I…?” it is all fascinating to me… Her older friends use TikTok in lieu of YT which might be “best of both worlds” but I am not ready to let her use TikTok
    - dagorenouf 4y ago
      Interesting. If she wants to know "how do I" stuff, then I guess chatgpt will be a huge success for her generation!
stolenmerch 4y ago
My experience with YouTube seems to be entirely dissimilar with the clickbait/algorithm horror stories I'm reading here in the comments. I watch a lot of Youtube and I let my 1st grader watch YouTube somewhat unregulated. It's seems entirely fine to me. When I do look over his viewing history, I'm relieved it's all fairly wholesome content. No, he's not always learning science and math (but sometimes), but I simply do not consider his research into "what every color light saber means" as harmful. Looking over my own current recommendations it's all science and engineering related videos because that's what it knows I'm interested it. You get out what you put in.
logicallee 4y ago
(via Google): Nearly 17 years ago, Google purchased YouTube for the hefty sum of $1.65 billion. The actual date the news hit was Oct. 9, 2006. The transaction closed on Nov 13, 2006. Can you imagine if there had been any snag in the paperwork or with the legal team or the deal fell through?
mastax 4y ago
I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by content mills and "grindset" individuals. But at some point basically everybody started optimizing their titles and thumbnails and some of the stuff the algorithm was suggesting was actually good even though it looked "too flashy."
- hollerith 4y ago
  I like the algorithm, but it seems biased towards short-duration videos.
- gambiting 4y ago
  Same here. I pretty much only watch car channels and some meme compilations and that's exactly what YouTube shows me, nothing else.
- WanderPanda 4y ago
  Watching one „wrong“ video can mess everything up for a couple of weeks though, which always gives me some level of anxiety :D
  - GalenErso 4y ago
    I open Incognito mode when I'm about to watch a video like that.
    - beAbU 4y ago
      I discovered the other day that incognito mode removes the Premium privileges, which makes 0 sense to me. I want to watch one video without it contributing to my history, and now I'm subjected to ads again. No thanks.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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1023bytes 4y ago
I need to mention how terrible YouTube search has gotten. Instead of giving you actual search results, it only gives a 2-3 relevant videos and then some random recommendations that are often completely unrelated to the query
- harry8 4y ago
  Google itself no longer does search and does recommendation in its place. I hate it so much. They must have such an incredible moat if they aren't getting smashed by the competition by just doing actual search, with all the words in the query string, ensuring every single one of them is actually in each result.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Yes, I often now use another search engine, such as DDG, to search YouTube.
- skybrian 4y ago
  The trick is to go into search settings and select “videos.” All the other sections go away. You have to do it each time, though. I’ve heard there’s a browser addon to do it automatically, but I didn’t install it.
jasmer 4y ago
What is truly astonishing is that there are not many other competitors that are consistently as good.
asdfman123 4y ago
I couldn’t agree more. Most of my other “social media” consumption involves either low effort humor or getting mad at strangers. I’m constantly learning stuff from YouTube. I’m watching chemistry channels, DIY channels, history channels, etc. It’s an amazing learning tool.
alex_young 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline
- cubefox 4y ago
  Wikipedia these days... Imagine putting an article there about the "Woke pipeline" or similar.
  - alex_young 4y ago
    Here's a NYTimes podcast on the subject. Not really a made up thing on wikipedia: https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole
    - cubefox 4y ago
      The NYT is very left-wing, so of course they are more willing to support and promote such theories. My point is that similar things could be said about the "woke" just as about the "alt-right", but Wikipedia would never allow such an article.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - kowabunga123 4y ago
        Yes indeed. I think you'll be astonished by the data demonstrating the trend here. It shows how around 2010 [1], there was an inflection point in main stream US media. It appears to be a coordinated campaign. Which would make sense given Operation Mockingbird [2] [1] "Many trends develop over decades but I’ve never seen change so rapid as the breathtaking success of what one might call social justice concerns. Beginning around 2010-2014 there appears to have been a inflection point. Here from Zach Goldberg on twitter are various words drawn from Lexis-Nexis." https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/the-nytimes-is-woke.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th... [2] "Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
wwarner 4y ago
btw the feynman lecture mentioned in the article is first rate, a bit mind blowing
lawrenceyan 4y ago
Deriving pearls from the complex oyster that is our world.
tus666 4y ago
No, no, surely it's Facebook! I joke, I joke.
karaterobot 4y ago
I agree with the author that YouTube is a great resource. My appreciation of it went up a great deal when I started skipping ad inserts with uBlock, skipping sponsored content with SponsorBlock, and skipping the terrible recommendations and just going straight to my subscriptions with a descriptively named extension called Replace Youtube's Home with Subscriptions. Without those, I don't know whether I'd find it useful.
joshspankit 4y ago
This leans in to what I’ve been saying as an armchair board member: The value prop of YT is everygreen content. There is a net-negative effect when they try to be the “right now” platform (they pollute the index of factually-right answers). If YT doubled-down on hosting evergreen content they wouldn’t have to fight for market share against TT/IG/SC/WE because those apps need 10 years to catch up to where YT is today.
tomcam 4y ago
I pay happily for YouTube, but just so you know... if your politics are considered wrongthink they will happily delete accounts or apply repressive algorithm changes to search results. For example, they kicked well-intentioned people off for suggesting that Covid might have been caused by the Wuhan lab until the New York Times finally published an article suggesting exactly that. This comment will be downvoted and flagged, but before you do so imagine how you'd feel if you wanted simply to watch a video but Neil Mohan didn't want you to and gave you a shit Fox News video instead.
- tomrod 4y ago
  I wonder if your concern that your opinions will be downvoted and flagged are misplaced. The rest of the commentariat may prove me wrong. But Hacker News tends to be more open to real discussion than most pubs on the internet. During the COVID period (which I consider functionally complete Fall 2022 with Omnicron's cycle completed), there was a need for keeping the channel from being flooded. The academic discussion of potential counterfactuals, usually to be found in conferences and certain blog webs, were often misconstrued by content producers, conspiracy mongers, and others driven by less-then-truthful motives to convince the gullible or distracted. As this causes very real harm [0], quelling the contrarian-without-evidence voices was important in the short term. We will see regarding the long term impacts as acts of governance are often seen as tyranny by the same groups that push contrarianism for their personal profit. [0] https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/09/22/kicked-in-the-ribs-harassed-at-vaccine-sites-health-care-workers-are-tired-of-new https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/09/22/kicked-in-the-ribs-haras...
  - tomcam 4y ago
    > The academic discussion of potential counterfactuals, usually to be found in conferences and certain blog webs, were often misconstrued by content producers, conspiracy mongers, and others driven by less-then-truthful motives Don’t care. Price of a free press. > As this causes very real harm History shows that the people who suppress free speech are never the good guys, especially when it’s the US government or their complicit media. Also, thanks for engaging in good faith. If I’m wrong, I want to hear it from you, not a censor.
jacooper 4y ago
Want the best youtube experience? Use libretube or newpipe.
31337Logic 4y ago
You spelled "Wikipedia" wrong. :-/
lvl102 4y ago
I hate what Wojcicki did to Youtube but their decision to pay content creators will go down as not only one of the greatest business decisions, but for all things internet related in the past 30 years.
cubefox 4y ago
> If the tone of Twitter is a twee leftism, parts of YouTube are conducted in the register of the aggrieved alt-right. There is lots of dating advice on there of the me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind. But these flaws — arbitrary power, weirdo politics — afflict lots of platforms. This quote says more about the author than about YouTube. It seems obvious that YouTube is much more centrist on average than Twitter, where political polarization is stronger than anywhere else.
- jsemrau 4y ago
  I am currently watching a lot of videos on race relations (Douglas Murray vs Robin DiAngelo). What Youtube is doing well compared to other platforms is to give all sides a voice and let the (hopefully better) educated mass make the choice for themselves. That laissez-faire approach to content moderation is what makes YT great in my opinion. And as of now (April 2023) there is a lot of interesting content off the beaten path that can be found.
cubefox 4y ago
My problem with YouTube is that its recommendation algorithm is too good nowadays. The website is seriously an addiction for me.
sylware 4y ago
wowowow, hold on. Where is my noscript/basic (x)html interface with a nice <video> html element. And do we finally have a standard way to select a streaming location in a big video file and get the full time of the video? That for proper video seeking from the "video player" and displaying a consistent progession bar. For instance https://cdn.net/uhentouhognagna/signed_end_time_ms?t=signed_time_ms https://cdn.net/uhentouhognagna/signed_end_time_ms?t=signed_...
unsupp0rted 4y ago
My YouTube feed is 40% videos I’ve watched in the last 2 months, 8/10 of those with a red tracking bar showing 98% ~ 100% watched to completion.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
The author states: "All praise to the moderation algorithm." "Algorithm" is becoming some sort of online pop culture buzzword. According to the dictionary, algorithm means a rule or a set of rules for solving a problem. Restated without buzzword: "All praise to the moderation rules". Maybe we should praise the people who actually do the moderation. "Google and YouTube approach content moderation the same way all of the other tech giants do: paying a handful of other companies to do most of the work." https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/21021005/google-youtube-moderators-ptsd-accenture-violent-disturbing-content-interviews-video https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/21021005/google-youtube-... ""I understand the content I will be reviewing may be disturbing," reads the document, which is titled "Acknowledgement" and was distributed to employees using DocuSign. "It is possible that reviewing such content may impact my mental health, and it could even lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)."" https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21075830/youtube-moderators-ptsd-accenture-statement-lawsuits-mental-health https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21075830/youtube-moderato... "Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter uphold content moderation as a key component in the fight against abuse of their services by actors such as Russian operatives and violent extremists. In the past couple years, the companies have hired through outsourcing firms thousands of moderators, who watch or read traumatic posts about suicides, mass murders and child pornography, and must quickly make a decision about whether to leave them up or take them down based on whether they violate the companies' policies." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/08/inside-facebook-second-class-workers-who-do-hardest-job-are-waging-quiet-battle/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/08/inside-... https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/facebook-content-moderation-is-an-ugly-business-heres-who-does-it/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/facebook-content-moderation...
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"Even so, the real heroes of the site are not those who make original content. It is those who post old programming from the analogue age." What the author is stating here, which may be lost on some readers, is that he thinks (video) file sharers are the real heroes of YouTube. He thinks the heroes are not necessarily the folks who make videos intended for YouTube (original content), but the ones who generate digital video files from analogue content and upload (post) them to YouTube. (assuming the persons generating the digital video files are also the uploaders) To retrieve FT articles, one can use 12ft.io. Here is example using popular programs curl and firefox usage: echo https://www.ft.com/content/c57e3503-6fc0-44dc-9d50-35f8f9da25d2|1.sh > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm #!/bin/sh sed -e '/www.ft.com\/content/s>.*>url=https://12ft.io/api/proxy?ref=\&q=&>' \ -e 's/:/%3A/2' -e:a -e 's>/>%2F>5;ta'|curl -sA "" -K- -o/dev/stdout|gzip -dc \ |sed '/./{/t=.o-cookie-message/,/Manage cookies/d;};/<\/a>$/d;/<\/div>$/d'
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  Indeed. You are doing gods work here :-)
- geraldhh 4y ago
  archive.is works for a lot of paywalled sites
throwaway835sd 4y ago
I never log in. I block all YT cookies. I use Enhancer for YouTube, Clickbait Remover for Youtube, and uBO. I never ever visit YT home page. I have a self-curated shortlist of channels that interest me enough to keep up with, via local bookmarks/notes. No ads. No clickbait faces/emoji/etc. No distracting annotations/cards/referrals. No shorts. No auto play. The list goes on. When used in this manner, YT is amazing. However, it is a bit of a shame that I have to go to these lengths just to make it bearable. P.S. Yeah I know I’m a bit of a leech in this regard, but I do not agree with the business model that Google has chosen. And even still, I probably care about them more than they care about me.
- adeelk93 4y ago
  There’s free with ads and premium without ads, what else could you want out of a business model?
- jsemrau 4y ago
  I think content "embed-ability" is a core feature of YTs success. It makes matching content much easier. Like embedding relevant videos in a stock dashboard. https://app.finclout.io/p/C https://app.finclout.io/p/C
hackernewds 4y ago
I just want a way to get rid of the Shorts or how addictive and draining they are. Does anyone have a way?
NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
Recommendations are good when I've found myself in a sort of ecosystem of people who are all into the same thing. For example, independent comedians who play multiple characters in solo videos. And I believe that I've had more recommendations turn me on to really good stuff that I've followed long-term; for example, I seem to recall that I was watching Ginny Di and Mann Shorts awhile and YT found Deerstalker Productions for me; that was a really great rec. And then they held up VLDL and I resisted because it looked dumb and silly, and when I finally gave in, VLDL had another loyal follower who binged their back catalog in the space of a week or two. And this story keeps playing out. Sometimes I need to purposely search out channels, and also ignore recommendations, because YT got the wrong idea. For example, right now I am interested in local Irish performers from Donegal, but YT has decided that I want to see any old Irish country-and-western performers. False on two counts: genre matters less than specific location.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
phodo 4y ago
My biggest gripe is that I cannot search playlists by name - especially when I want to add a new piece of content to a previously created playlist. I end up having to scroll through many playlists or end up creating duplicate playlists.
denvaar 4y ago
Of all my subscriptions, YT Premium would be the last I’d cancel. Love the diversity of content: you can watch MIT lectures, cat videos, documentaries, 90’s commercial compilations, whatever you want. Being able to enjoy all this ad-free content is so nice. I do wish there was a way to get certain videos out of your feed without worrying about skewing the algorithm. Eg. “I don’t want to see this skateboarding video, but please keep suggesting other skateboarding videos”. Really happy with YT Music as well. Never not been able to find a song or artist. Hope it never changes.
sundvor 4y ago
Long form YouTube is amazing. I just wish I could completely disable Shorts from my YouTube Premium. It is the diet equivalent of eating raw sugar with honey on top - it just wants to suck you in with stuff you had no intention of watching. I'd pay extra on top of the going rate for that.
- marisnom 4y ago
  I definitely agree with you, I know some people don't like the idea of paying for YT Premium instead of just using AdBlock but YouTube is just so good that I think it's more worth my money than any other streaming service
Stephen_0xFF 4y ago
YT is the greatest media content platform to ever exist. I’ve tried to tell people to cancel Spotify and just rebuild your playlists on YT. The algorithms are just as good. You can also find ALL music on it. When I’m looking for a song that wasn’t popular I can usually find it as one of those slide show videos with the lyrics on it. The only thing I wish it did better was podcasts. If it followed Netflix’s footsteps in producing really good studio quality shows I’d probably cancel Netflix too.
- stemlord 4y ago
  Big problem is that videos disappear regularly (copyright 99% of the time). I have music playlists hundreds of videos each spanning 15 years and there are so many lost videos especially toward the beginning. No way to tell what's even missing. Very bad from an archival pov.
- kecupochren 4y ago
  The sound quality suffers though
somecommit 4y ago
Sure it's great, but one man can watch so much ads for Grammarly!
mudil 4y ago
It says something about the power of YouTube that Russian government still did not ban it, but it banned Facebook and Instagram. I suspect that banning YouTube might be dangerous to the putin regime.
siljon 4y ago
I have one issue with Youtube shorts today. I keep getting the tate brothers and pearl recommended even though I have disliked the videos and informed youtube to stop recommending them. I have even sent a message to Youtube but still no luck. Nothing against those people, I'm just bored of their message they spreading and want to see something new
figassis 4y ago
Too bad only the US can pay for premium
- tomashubelbauer 4y ago
  I'm in the Czech Republic and I used to be subscribed to YouTube Premium until they removed dislikes at which point I canceled my subscription. Not sure what country you're from but I am pretty sure there is an array of countries where you can get Premium now.
dmje 4y ago
Switched the algorithm off years ago. It's rare I even look at YT.
einpoklum 4y ago
> "If the tone of Twitter is a twee leftism" US democratic party establishment loyalism is not "leftism".
makach 4y ago
the jewel AND the cesspool
kleiba 4y ago
I wonder if the author ever had to deal with "this video is not available in your country" though... The biggest enemy of the "information super highway" that the internet could have become - and, thankfully, in large parts have - is the greed of corporations, manifested in overly broad copyright laws, licensing terms, and TOS.
INTPenis 4y ago
Youtube is OP right now. People are literally wasting away their lives watching Youtube, for better or worse that's a sure sign your startup worked. I want to know what the next youtube alternative is going to be. And don't say peertube, you're delusional.
Pooge 4y ago
I use RSS feeds to follow YouTube channels I enjoy[1]. I absolutely never watch the "Trending" page nor follow the suggestions on the right side of the video. When I want to search for something, I do, and hope the search algorithm isn't going to screw me over. [1]: I use Akregator and I can just enter the URL of the YouTube channel for it to find the RSS feed automatically.
deleted 4y ago
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yaya69 4y ago
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jim_gorski 4y ago
I'm not sure what my problem could be - but I just can't watch anything on the site. The inline ads and popup banner ads at the bottom haunt me. Plus the stretching of forty lines of text into a twenty minute video irritates me. When it works it's golden - no doubt about that (say changing a spark plug) but most of the time it's the wrong medium and it makes things worse.
elif 4y ago
YouTube is by far the most reviled live streaming platform. Even if you ignore the insane automatic demonetization trap labyrinth and play perfectly by the books, the monetisation is slapped on as an afterthought, such that you have to already be a celebrity to make any real money out of it. And as for the "how to fix my panasonic..." Style videos the article praises, unfortunately that video which could be 45 seconds and informative is 11 minutes padded in the first minute for keyword and adult filtering sorting terms, drawn out with filler to 10 minutes to get full ad revenue, and the video itself is interspersed with unskippable "sponsored content" detours because creators are forced to being their own ad agency on top of YouTube's ad system. That is, if you got the right video in the first place and not a speech to text generated copy that utilizes a better subject and preview icon to steal traffic from a video that was found to be useful. For all the things Meta is doing wrong, even THEY are creating a better curated video content and streaming platform than YouTube right now. One which supports legitimate creators and not algorithm miners.
- tizzy 4y ago
  I think the point is that the "how to fix my panasonic..." videos don't exist anywhere else. Sure you could work it by googling "panasonic manual pdf" out but a lot of the times someone has had the exact same issue and have thankfully shared their fix on Youtube.
NickC25 4y ago
YT's algorithm is great - shows me a great mix of mindless stuff I like that I can just watch and not think or put on in the background (sports highlights, music playlists); or stuff that I need to pay attention to (politics, finance, how-to's), and even some guilty pleasures (film/tv clips, comedy sets, etc). It's great. The shorts, however, need to just die. Youtube, stop trying to compete with TikTok. You have a niche, and need stick to it. No need to dumb down with crappy content and actively work to shorten attention spans with cropped clips and cannibalize your main product.
liminal 4y ago
Bizarre to see this YouTube love-fest in the comments. Lately I've been finding their recommendations a disaster of click-bait shorts that seem like a desperate attempt to compete with TikTok. The worst part is that the algorithm is way too sensitive so if you ever accidentally click on something, you're guaranteed to be force-fed a fire hose of that for life (good luck trying to convince the algorithm otherwise).
superposeur 4y ago
I’m old enough to remember the advent of YouTube and remember thinking that it would obviously be one of zillions of video-streaming sites. Nope. Still I am mystified by the dynamic whereby there is just one website people go to to watch videos and just one Twitter and just one Facebook. Somehow, having all the choice in the world funnels into its opposite.
93po 4y ago
Youtube overwhelmingly shows me videos that it's showed me 100 times before and didn't click on, or stuff that I've already watched. The only time it's anything else is when a channel that I'm interested in posts new content. I find it super frustrating to the point I don't even bother going there anymore unless I'm looking for something specific.
husamia 4y ago
for me it's worth paying premium for until it isn't. I hope I will catch the next one.
fnord77 4y ago
"Even so, the real heroes of the site are not those who make original content. It is those who post old programming from the analogue age." someone should tell the author about archive.org

473 points by gumby 4y ago

tambourine_man 4y ago

Why didn’t the author linked to the examples he cites? It’s almost cruel.

ur-whale 4y ago
> Why didn’t the author linked to the examples he cites? And generate traffic and revenue for another company without getting a cut? You gotta be kidding, right?
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  I know you’re jesting, but he’s singing the praises of those channels in specific and YouTube in general. Unless the author meant or even linked in the original but the editor cut it out, which is actually probable, considering it’s the financial times.

belter 4y ago

https://archive.is/kUh3M https://archive.is/kUh3M

turtleyacht 4y ago

Recently: YouTube, the Jewel of the Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670162 - yesterday (1 comment)

Kye 4y ago
This website has no connection to Internet Archive.
- sp332 4y ago
  No, but it does have a paywall that you can get around by reading the archived version.
  - Kye 4y ago
    I didn't comment on that. Just the mistake about having something to do with Internet Archive.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - turtleyacht 4y ago
      (Edited the above.)
  - YinLuck- 4y ago
    [dead]

rolph 4y ago

a cavity concealed jewel perhaps?

rcarr 4y ago

I agree with the author. I just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium and it was an absolutely brilliant decision. Pretty soon I’m going to cancel Netflix and Prime too and just take out the odd month subscription to a streaming service if there’s something I really want to watch. I’m probably better off watching some informative documentary on YT than I am watching Netflix anyway and if I want entertainment, there are millions of hours of TTRPGs, stand up comedy and web series to watch that are often of a really high quality (e.g Critical Role, Ari Shaffir, Wayne). It’s an awesome resource and I think Gen Z are at a massive advantage because of it. They can literally leave school and already be professionally competent. I think we’ll see them leapfrogging millennials on the career ladder because they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free. No other generation in history has had such an opportunity. You were limited by your parents bank balance or the resources of your local library.

mkaic 4y ago
As a Gen Z-er who grew up learning as much as I could about my passions, mostly on YouTube, I hope you're right about us! I'm really hopeful that my generation can go on to do some pretty great stuff. We do have a patently odd sense of humor, though...
coliveira 4y ago
This assumes that this generation will spent its youtube time learning something useful. While this will be true for part of the population, most people are just wasting their time and, in aggregate, it may happen that this generation will have even lower skills than the previous generation that had access only to a local library.
irrational 4y ago
> they had a youth where they could spend their entire time learning literally everything there is to know about their passion for free I have children between the ages of 9 and 26. You know what they are passionate about? Minecraft, Mr Beast, Travel vlogs, mommy vlogs, “reality” videos, etc. I’ve tried to introduce them to science, space, programming, history, math, finance, nature, etc. content and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. They are passionate about cheap mindless entertainment. I see the same things in their friends and classmates. You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I’m sure there are a few youths who are using their time productively and it will pay dividends for them. But, from what I’ve seen, the vast majority aren’t interested.

causality0 4y ago

Or it was, anyway. Youtube's choice to tune its algorithm for profitability rather than things I'm actually interested means my home page and "related videos" are almost entirely useless. Youtube's strict search limits also make it very hard to find anything obscure, and impossible to find every video on a particular topic. Maybe it's not the most intellectually healthy thing in the world, but if I want to watch every single, say, reaction video to The Verge's terrible PC build, how dare YouTube decide I'm only allowed to see the three most popular ones before my search results are replaced with random monetized nonsense?

ravenstine 4y ago
YouTube's search is pretty much horseshit now. Trip off any wrongthink keywords and it will give you nothing but CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR. I wrote an add-on that blocks all these channels by filtering out anything with the verified checkmark, and it's pretty revealing as to how much content YouTube suppresses. It's pretty clear who's buttering their biscuits.
- causality0 4y ago
  It's truly disheartening to go back through your favorite creators and liked videos and see how many have been removed for violating new community guidelines or deleted by their creators because they no longer fit a marketable image. If I hadn't already had complete archives of my favorite channels due to an obsession with carrying media on the go, I'd probably have broken down and wept at the devastation of channels like Retsupurae and ChipCheezumSA. I learned that if there's any chance I'll want to watch something again in the future I need it saved to disk.
timbit42 4y ago
I often use a another search engine, like DDG, to search for videos. Much better.

jackcosgrove 4y ago

> It has a greater trove of content than Netflix, HBO and Amazon Prime combined and squared And one third of that is presented by Simon Whistler.

tomrod 4y ago
Who?
- ahefner 4y ago
  Simon Whistler.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Who?

andrewstuart 4y ago

YouTube is amazing but a couple of disappointments: 1: YouTube financially rewards 12 minute videos. I feel like this has resulted in a collapse in creativity as now most videos are 12 minutes. You get what you pay for. 2: being a walled garden, YouTube is devoid of technical innovation. This really hasn’t evolved far beyond broadcast TV and that’s because YouTube owns all the content and developers can’t innovate the core experience.

waboremo 4y ago
YouTube has gotten much much better at rewarding videos based on context not just length. They weren't always great about it, but they've improved tremendously. I can see them further adjusting this, so that say if you've uploaded ~11 minute videos consecutively it'll prevent you from adding that "middle video" ad break (note: I don't know if they already do this). I don't believe these changes have collapsed creativity, there isn't another platform on the planet that is creating as much long form content as on YouTube. People aren't posting their great absurdly high detailed yet entertaining content on Medium or Substack, no it's on YouTube. This has led to a walled garden of sorts, but it's also reaping benefits from their improvements from the days where you could easily game YouTube with shallow thumbnails.
zokier 4y ago
> 1: YouTube financially rewards 12 minute videos. I feel like this has resulted in a collapse in creativity as now most videos are 12 minutes. You get what you pay for. I checked my subscriptions page and of the latest 18 videos, here are the lengths stats * 1× <1min * 3× 4-6min * 1× 10-12min * 6× 13-20min * 7× 20-40min
- Zetice 4y ago
  Levi Rozman talks about this a bit in his videos, I feel like the better rule is that you need at least one ad break, but two is also a good inflection point? I don’t think its 12 the number specifically, but 12 guarantees the first ad break.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

skywal_l 4y ago

HN is the jewel of the internet. Youtube might be the amethyst maybe?

crop_rotation 4y ago
HN is too small to be the jewel of "the internet", and irrelevant compared to YouTube for impact.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Man, I dunno. If you're only looking at hype cycle peak, maybe. But discussions on HN are what become the buzz-worthy products after 5 years or so.

cypherpunks01 4y ago

Sans paywall: https://t.co/ZyQ4Xz9zX9 https://t.co/ZyQ4Xz9zX9

xrd 4y ago

I'm troubled by YouTube. There is absolutely incredible content there. And there is so much shit in between the good stuff. Does anyone run a frontend that offers control over the shit? I want my kids to have autonomy in viewing interesting things there, but I don't want to YouTube algorithm attacking their developing brains. Maybe a browser plugin?

duxup 4y ago
> And there is so much shit in between the good stuff. Yeah discovery is really hard on there. So much loud crap :(
Jolter 4y ago
There are alternative front-end apps. Not for iPhone, because of course not, but Android has Newpipe at least. For desktop, I haven’t looked but sure there are some.
kmfrk 4y ago
There's Restricted Mode[1], but it's extremely aggressive to the point of hiding too much. I personally use the drop-down feature to tell YouTube I'm not interested in a particular recommended channel or video, as well as maintain a manually updated BlockTube list for channels and keywords. I've also heard that clearing stuff like your watch history is a good way to flush weird recommendations. Generally, disabling all targeted stuff goes a long way to ward off the craziest stuff. On top of disabling the main trending page so it goes directly to your subscriptions. [1]: https://www.howtogeek.com/770192/how-to-turn-off-restricted-mode-on-youtube/ https://www.howtogeek.com/770192/how-to-turn-off-restricted-...
sp332 4y ago
Well, YouTube Kids?
sgu999 4y ago
That's my problem with it as well... I keep on clicking "I'm not interested" for all kind of clickbait brainless content, but they keep on coming back.

seydor 4y ago

You can't even read the subtitle now. Focus on the clickbait.

kubectl_h 4y ago

Over the christmas holiday I was surprised you couldn't purchase youtube premium as a gift card for someone else. Seems like this would be a non-trivial source of revenue for YT.

verall 4y ago
You can pay for YT premium from Google play dollars which have gift cards. It's a little bit annoying to set up though.

zh3 4y ago

There is indeed great content on Youtube. It's just more than unfortunate that the algorithmic pull is towards the - shall we say - less informative end of the spectrum? Some people learn a lot from it. Most people just seem to gawp endlessly.

jimsimmons 4y ago
YouTube is an internet in itself. There are many sub-Youtubes and you can end up in any set of them depending on where the algorithm takes you.
dkarl 4y ago
> less informative end of the spectrum My experience is that my recommendations are 80% good but lightly sprinkled with random stuff that is known to addict and exploit people in my demographic. It reminds me of gambling and other businesses that make a disproportionate amount of their money off of a few "whales" who invest an unhealthy amount of their lives into it. They're happy to serve you and make a tiny bit of money off you, but their real goal is to turn you into a whale. My theory is that some small percentage of my recommendations (2-3%) are dedicated to YouTube's best guess at, "What would this guy watch if he was miserable enough to watch YouTube 16 hours a day?"

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hsjqllzlfkf 4y ago

I think wikipedia is the jewel of the internet, but that's just grumpy old me.

loloquwowndueo 4y ago

YouTube will pull you towards controversial clickbaity crappy content since that’s what generated clicks. These days I just surgically search for what I need, watch that, then get out, ignoring all recommends because invariably they are crap. And YouTube is poison for young children who don’t know better than to follow what the algorithm tells you. You like super Mario? Here, 500 ways to die in Mario. And next - what would happen if all Mario characters killed each other bloodily? And it starts getting worse. We banned YouTube for our kid and couldn’t be happier - the damage that thing was doing to his mind was noticeable and no amount of guidance or curation was able to keep him away from the cesspool.

Zetice 4y ago
Yeah but if you’re immune to the most obvious awful shit (not your kids) it’s kind of the only drawback. I get the occasional “lets debunk flat earthers” but a) I don’t find that content interesting and b) I know that’s the lip of the rabbit hole, so if I just avoid those kind of videos, my feed is fine. Your problem is legitimate and your response is understandable, but what would you think of YouTube if that weren’t a problem?
- doublerabbit 4y ago
  > What would you think of YouTube if that weren’t a problem? Not op, however I avoid YT at all costs. I would sing a tune of a product giving back to the world. Education, knowledge and entertainment. Quite a dream compared to the current as of the moment; corruption of education, knowledge and entertainment.
  - Zetice 4y ago
    No, YouTube is not a corruption of any of those things. You can’t have the things you like without some way of allowing the people who created those things to no have to do other things to survive.
sebzim4500 4y ago
Youtube only gives you what they think you will click on. If you don't click on the crappy content (or at least leave the video immediately) then they will stop recommending it. I guess this advice doesn't apply if you are sharing an account with your kid, then you're screwed.

grensley 4y ago

I think YouTube will really struggle to figure out how to weigh lowest common denominator content that does well with personalized recommendation that satisfy some deeper intellectual curiosity. I'm already finding it's a kind of "work" to keep the geopolitical and economics content that makes me feel like YouTube is a positive for me on the front page over shorts and sports montages. Maybe my algorithms just in a bad place right now, but it feels like there's been some kind of shift this year, and I'm wondering if others are noticing something similar.

chongli 4y ago
I’m a very strict curator of my watch history. If I ever succumb to click bait and click on some video I immediately regret, I go into my watch history and delete the offending video. This puts an immediate stop to any recommendations of similar videos. I recommend it to everyone!
- spydum 4y ago
  same, single greatest control of what it recommends. sometimes i will go off on a tangent, but i dont want it populating my feed, so i'll prune the history, and it's perfectly happy.
- SteveDR 4y ago
  I use a second account to watch videos that i think will muck with my recommendations in any way I don’t like. Comedy, political news, music videos, etc… it’s nice to have a separate feed that gets my taste in these things without distracting my main algorithm from focusing on my deeper interests
- lazycouchpotato 4y ago
  I do it slightly differently. My watch and search history have been paused for 3+ years, leaving the algorithm to only use my highly curated list of followed channels and Liked videos to recommend me videos from. Even if I watch a meme video or two, it should have no impact on my recommendations. If there's a random video that I want to revisit though, I only have my PC's browser history to rely on. Outta luck on mobile.

petilon 4y ago

A major fail, in my opinion, is YouTube TV. The user interface is horrendous. YouTube TV's UI is mostly images (video thumbnails) and it is hard to see what the currently selected item is. A mostly-text UI, with thumbnail only for the currently selected item would have worked much better. I tried to switch to YouTube TV as soon as it launched, but canceled because of the horrible UI. Recently I tried again — surely they would have fixed the issues — but no, navigation is still terrible, so canceled again.

snug 4y ago
As someone that only uses YTTV to watch sportss, pecifically NFL Redzone, F1, and baseball/basketball playoffs, I really enjoy YTTV interface because it always knows what I'm going to YTTV for. Very rarely do I need to click more than 2 buttons to get to the thing I'm trying to watch
jutrewag 4y ago
YouTube’s video player is the best and most responsive video player online. I don’t think I want any UI changes around it.
- petilon 4y ago
  YouTube TV is for watching broadcast and cable television. It has a different UI.

tambourine_man 4y ago

Another great thing about YouTube not mentioned is the quality of comments. Something happened in the last 5 years or so that changed them profoundly. Once the laugh of the internet they are now one of the most wholesome in it. Almost unbelievable for a public site.

alonsonic 4y ago
I'm fascinated by this. I feel the same way. Do we know if The YouTube team if ordering comments using some sort of sentiment analysis? This might be the key to moderating social media. Is almost like negative/toxic comments are shadow banned and relegated to the bottom of the comments section.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Youtube's system is extremely heavy handed. You can sometimes notice your comments getting shadowbanned if you see the same comment from another account/computer. And I think you can notice it for other people when you get a reply notification, and can even read the comment, but it doesn't show in the comments if you open the list of comments in notifications ? (Posting multiple comments for the same video seems to be an easy way to get them (shadow)banned. Even more posting links, even when it's literally a timelink to the same video using the mm:so format !)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jsnell 4y ago
  There was a HN submission on this a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151021
jasmer 4y ago
I see masses of bots and dregs in support of authoritarian states.
sebzim4500 4y ago

bdangubic 4y ago

My kid is 9 - YouTube is her search engine. All my efforts to explain that is what Google is for have failed. Every time I use Google she laughs at me and calls me old :)

dagorenouf 4y ago
Doesn't that make her slower? Youtube has better quality results most of the time, but it takes so long to watch the video and get to the information I want... I always start with a google search for that reason.
- bdangubic 4y ago
  Yea I am always wondering the same thing but what I am searching for normally is instant answers to questions while I am finding she is searching is more like “how do I…?” it is all fascinating to me… Her older friends use TikTok in lieu of YT which might be “best of both worlds” but I am not ready to let her use TikTok
  - dagorenouf 4y ago
    Interesting. If she wants to know "how do I" stuff, then I guess chatgpt will be a huge success for her generation!

stolenmerch 4y ago

My experience with YouTube seems to be entirely dissimilar with the clickbait/algorithm horror stories I'm reading here in the comments. I watch a lot of Youtube and I let my 1st grader watch YouTube somewhat unregulated. It's seems entirely fine to me. When I do look over his viewing history, I'm relieved it's all fairly wholesome content. No, he's not always learning science and math (but sometimes), but I simply do not consider his research into "what every color light saber means" as harmful. Looking over my own current recommendations it's all science and engineering related videos because that's what it knows I'm interested it. You get out what you put in.

logicallee 4y ago

(via Google): Nearly 17 years ago, Google purchased YouTube for the hefty sum of $1.65 billion. The actual date the news hit was Oct. 9, 2006. The transaction closed on Nov 13, 2006. Can you imagine if there had been any snag in the paperwork or with the legal team or the deal fell through?

mastax 4y ago

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by content mills and "grindset" individuals. But at some point basically everybody started optimizing their titles and thumbnails and some of the stuff the algorithm was suggesting was actually good even though it looked "too flashy."

hollerith 4y ago
I like the algorithm, but it seems biased towards short-duration videos.
gambiting 4y ago
Same here. I pretty much only watch car channels and some meme compilations and that's exactly what YouTube shows me, nothing else.
WanderPanda 4y ago
Watching one „wrong“ video can mess everything up for a couple of weeks though, which always gives me some level of anxiety :D
- GalenErso 4y ago
  I open Incognito mode when I'm about to watch a video like that.
  - beAbU 4y ago
    I discovered the other day that incognito mode removes the Premium privileges, which makes 0 sense to me. I want to watch one video without it contributing to my history, and now I'm subjected to ads again. No thanks.

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1023bytes 4y ago

I need to mention how terrible YouTube search has gotten. Instead of giving you actual search results, it only gives a 2-3 relevant videos and then some random recommendations that are often completely unrelated to the query

harry8 4y ago
Google itself no longer does search and does recommendation in its place. I hate it so much. They must have such an incredible moat if they aren't getting smashed by the competition by just doing actual search, with all the words in the query string, ensuring every single one of them is actually in each result.
timbit42 4y ago
Yes, I often now use another search engine, such as DDG, to search YouTube.
skybrian 4y ago
The trick is to go into search settings and select “videos.” All the other sections go away. You have to do it each time, though. I’ve heard there’s a browser addon to do it automatically, but I didn’t install it.

jasmer 4y ago

What is truly astonishing is that there are not many other competitors that are consistently as good.

asdfman123 4y ago

I couldn’t agree more. Most of my other “social media” consumption involves either low effort humor or getting mad at strangers. I’m constantly learning stuff from YouTube. I’m watching chemistry channels, DIY channels, history channels, etc. It’s an amazing learning tool.

alex_young 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline

cubefox 4y ago
Wikipedia these days... Imagine putting an article there about the "Woke pipeline" or similar.
- alex_young 4y ago
  Here's a NYTimes podcast on the subject. Not really a made up thing on wikipedia: https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole
  - cubefox 4y ago
    The NYT is very left-wing, so of course they are more willing to support and promote such theories. My point is that similar things could be said about the "woke" just as about the "alt-right", but Wikipedia would never allow such an article.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - kowabunga123 4y ago
      Yes indeed. I think you'll be astonished by the data demonstrating the trend here. It shows how around 2010 [1], there was an inflection point in main stream US media. It appears to be a coordinated campaign. Which would make sense given Operation Mockingbird [2] [1] "Many trends develop over decades but I’ve never seen change so rapid as the breathtaking success of what one might call social justice concerns. Beginning around 2010-2014 there appears to have been a inflection point. Here from Zach Goldberg on twitter are various words drawn from Lexis-Nexis." https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/the-nytimes-is-woke.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th... [2] "Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

wwarner 4y ago

btw the feynman lecture mentioned in the article is first rate, a bit mind blowing

lawrenceyan 4y ago

Deriving pearls from the complex oyster that is our world.

tus666 4y ago

No, no, surely it's Facebook! I joke, I joke.

karaterobot 4y ago

I agree with the author that YouTube is a great resource. My appreciation of it went up a great deal when I started skipping ad inserts with uBlock, skipping sponsored content with SponsorBlock, and skipping the terrible recommendations and just going straight to my subscriptions with a descriptively named extension called Replace Youtube's Home with Subscriptions. Without those, I don't know whether I'd find it useful.

joshspankit 4y ago

This leans in to what I’ve been saying as an armchair board member: The value prop of YT is everygreen content. There is a net-negative effect when they try to be the “right now” platform (they pollute the index of factually-right answers). If YT doubled-down on hosting evergreen content they wouldn’t have to fight for market share against TT/IG/SC/WE because those apps need 10 years to catch up to where YT is today.

tomcam 4y ago

I pay happily for YouTube, but just so you know... if your politics are considered wrongthink they will happily delete accounts or apply repressive algorithm changes to search results. For example, they kicked well-intentioned people off for suggesting that Covid might have been caused by the Wuhan lab until the New York Times finally published an article suggesting exactly that. This comment will be downvoted and flagged, but before you do so imagine how you'd feel if you wanted simply to watch a video but Neil Mohan didn't want you to and gave you a shit Fox News video instead.

tomrod 4y ago
I wonder if your concern that your opinions will be downvoted and flagged are misplaced. The rest of the commentariat may prove me wrong. But Hacker News tends to be more open to real discussion than most pubs on the internet. During the COVID period (which I consider functionally complete Fall 2022 with Omnicron's cycle completed), there was a need for keeping the channel from being flooded. The academic discussion of potential counterfactuals, usually to be found in conferences and certain blog webs, were often misconstrued by content producers, conspiracy mongers, and others driven by less-then-truthful motives to convince the gullible or distracted. As this causes very real harm [0], quelling the contrarian-without-evidence voices was important in the short term. We will see regarding the long term impacts as acts of governance are often seen as tyranny by the same groups that push contrarianism for their personal profit. [0] https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/09/22/kicked-in-the-ribs-harassed-at-vaccine-sites-health-care-workers-are-tired-of-new https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/09/22/kicked-in-the-ribs-haras...
- tomcam 4y ago
  > The academic discussion of potential counterfactuals, usually to be found in conferences and certain blog webs, were often misconstrued by content producers, conspiracy mongers, and others driven by less-then-truthful motives Don’t care. Price of a free press. > As this causes very real harm History shows that the people who suppress free speech are never the good guys, especially when it’s the US government or their complicit media. Also, thanks for engaging in good faith. If I’m wrong, I want to hear it from you, not a censor.

jacooper 4y ago

Want the best youtube experience? Use libretube or newpipe.

31337Logic 4y ago

You spelled "Wikipedia" wrong. :-/

lvl102 4y ago

I hate what Wojcicki did to Youtube but their decision to pay content creators will go down as not only one of the greatest business decisions, but for all things internet related in the past 30 years.

cubefox 4y ago

> If the tone of Twitter is a twee leftism, parts of YouTube are conducted in the register of the aggrieved alt-right. There is lots of dating advice on there of the me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind. But these flaws — arbitrary power, weirdo politics — afflict lots of platforms. This quote says more about the author than about YouTube. It seems obvious that YouTube is much more centrist on average than Twitter, where political polarization is stronger than anywhere else.

jsemrau 4y ago
I am currently watching a lot of videos on race relations (Douglas Murray vs Robin DiAngelo). What Youtube is doing well compared to other platforms is to give all sides a voice and let the (hopefully better) educated mass make the choice for themselves. That laissez-faire approach to content moderation is what makes YT great in my opinion. And as of now (April 2023) there is a lot of interesting content off the beaten path that can be found.

cubefox 4y ago

My problem with YouTube is that its recommendation algorithm is too good nowadays. The website is seriously an addiction for me.

sylware 4y ago

wowowow, hold on. Where is my noscript/basic (x)html interface with a nice <video> html element. And do we finally have a standard way to select a streaming location in a big video file and get the full time of the video? That for proper video seeking from the "video player" and displaying a consistent progession bar. For instance https://cdn.net/uhentouhognagna/signed_end_time_ms?t=signed_time_ms https://cdn.net/uhentouhognagna/signed_end_time_ms?t=signed_...

unsupp0rted 4y ago

My YouTube feed is 40% videos I’ve watched in the last 2 months, 8/10 of those with a red tracking bar showing 98% ~ 100% watched to completion.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

The author states: "All praise to the moderation algorithm." "Algorithm" is becoming some sort of online pop culture buzzword. According to the dictionary, algorithm means a rule or a set of rules for solving a problem. Restated without buzzword: "All praise to the moderation rules". Maybe we should praise the people who actually do the moderation. "Google and YouTube approach content moderation the same way all of the other tech giants do: paying a handful of other companies to do most of the work." https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/21021005/google-youtube-moderators-ptsd-accenture-violent-disturbing-content-interviews-video https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/21021005/google-youtube-... ""I understand the content I will be reviewing may be disturbing," reads the document, which is titled "Acknowledgement" and was distributed to employees using DocuSign. "It is possible that reviewing such content may impact my mental health, and it could even lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)."" https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21075830/youtube-moderators-ptsd-accenture-statement-lawsuits-mental-health https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21075830/youtube-moderato... "Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter uphold content moderation as a key component in the fight against abuse of their services by actors such as Russian operatives and violent extremists. In the past couple years, the companies have hired through outsourcing firms thousands of moderators, who watch or read traumatic posts about suicides, mass murders and child pornography, and must quickly make a decision about whether to leave them up or take them down based on whether they violate the companies' policies." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/08/inside-facebook-second-class-workers-who-do-hardest-job-are-waging-quiet-battle/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/08/inside-... https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/facebook-content-moderation-is-an-ugly-business-heres-who-does-it/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/facebook-content-moderation...

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"Even so, the real heroes of the site are not those who make original content. It is those who post old programming from the analogue age." What the author is stating here, which may be lost on some readers, is that he thinks (video) file sharers are the real heroes of YouTube. He thinks the heroes are not necessarily the folks who make videos intended for YouTube (original content), but the ones who generate digital video files from analogue content and upload (post) them to YouTube. (assuming the persons generating the digital video files are also the uploaders) To retrieve FT articles, one can use 12ft.io. Here is example using popular programs curl and firefox usage: echo https://www.ft.com/content/c57e3503-6fc0-44dc-9d50-35f8f9da25d2|1.sh > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm #!/bin/sh sed -e '/www.ft.com\/content/s>.*>url=https://12ft.io/api/proxy?ref=\&q=&>' \ -e 's/:/%3A/2' -e:a -e 's>/>%2F>5;ta'|curl -sA "" -K- -o/dev/stdout|gzip -dc \ |sed '/./{/t=.o-cookie-message/,/Manage cookies/d;};/<\/a>$/d;/<\/div>$/d'

benjaminwootton 4y ago
Indeed. You are doing gods work here :-)
geraldhh 4y ago
archive.is works for a lot of paywalled sites

throwaway835sd 4y ago

I never log in. I block all YT cookies. I use Enhancer for YouTube, Clickbait Remover for Youtube, and uBO. I never ever visit YT home page. I have a self-curated shortlist of channels that interest me enough to keep up with, via local bookmarks/notes. No ads. No clickbait faces/emoji/etc. No distracting annotations/cards/referrals. No shorts. No auto play. The list goes on. When used in this manner, YT is amazing. However, it is a bit of a shame that I have to go to these lengths just to make it bearable. P.S. Yeah I know I’m a bit of a leech in this regard, but I do not agree with the business model that Google has chosen. And even still, I probably care about them more than they care about me.

adeelk93 4y ago
There’s free with ads and premium without ads, what else could you want out of a business model?
jsemrau 4y ago
I think content "embed-ability" is a core feature of YTs success. It makes matching content much easier. Like embedding relevant videos in a stock dashboard. https://app.finclout.io/p/C https://app.finclout.io/p/C

hackernewds 4y ago

I just want a way to get rid of the Shorts or how addictive and draining they are. Does anyone have a way?

NoZebra120vClip 4y ago

Recommendations are good when I've found myself in a sort of ecosystem of people who are all into the same thing. For example, independent comedians who play multiple characters in solo videos. And I believe that I've had more recommendations turn me on to really good stuff that I've followed long-term; for example, I seem to recall that I was watching Ginny Di and Mann Shorts awhile and YT found Deerstalker Productions for me; that was a really great rec. And then they held up VLDL and I resisted because it looked dumb and silly, and when I finally gave in, VLDL had another loyal follower who binged their back catalog in the space of a week or two. And this story keeps playing out. Sometimes I need to purposely search out channels, and also ignore recommendations, because YT got the wrong idea. For example, right now I am interested in local Irish performers from Donegal, but YT has decided that I want to see any old Irish country-and-western performers. False on two counts: genre matters less than specific location.

aaron695 4y ago

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phodo 4y ago

My biggest gripe is that I cannot search playlists by name - especially when I want to add a new piece of content to a previously created playlist. I end up having to scroll through many playlists or end up creating duplicate playlists.

denvaar 4y ago

Of all my subscriptions, YT Premium would be the last I’d cancel. Love the diversity of content: you can watch MIT lectures, cat videos, documentaries, 90’s commercial compilations, whatever you want. Being able to enjoy all this ad-free content is so nice. I do wish there was a way to get certain videos out of your feed without worrying about skewing the algorithm. Eg. “I don’t want to see this skateboarding video, but please keep suggesting other skateboarding videos”. Really happy with YT Music as well. Never not been able to find a song or artist. Hope it never changes.

sundvor 4y ago

Long form YouTube is amazing. I just wish I could completely disable Shorts from my YouTube Premium. It is the diet equivalent of eating raw sugar with honey on top - it just wants to suck you in with stuff you had no intention of watching. I'd pay extra on top of the going rate for that.

marisnom 4y ago
I definitely agree with you, I know some people don't like the idea of paying for YT Premium instead of just using AdBlock but YouTube is just so good that I think it's more worth my money than any other streaming service

Stephen_0xFF 4y ago

YT is the greatest media content platform to ever exist. I’ve tried to tell people to cancel Spotify and just rebuild your playlists on YT. The algorithms are just as good. You can also find ALL music on it. When I’m looking for a song that wasn’t popular I can usually find it as one of those slide show videos with the lyrics on it. The only thing I wish it did better was podcasts. If it followed Netflix’s footsteps in producing really good studio quality shows I’d probably cancel Netflix too.

stemlord 4y ago
Big problem is that videos disappear regularly (copyright 99% of the time). I have music playlists hundreds of videos each spanning 15 years and there are so many lost videos especially toward the beginning. No way to tell what's even missing. Very bad from an archival pov.
kecupochren 4y ago
The sound quality suffers though

somecommit 4y ago

Sure it's great, but one man can watch so much ads for Grammarly!

mudil 4y ago

It says something about the power of YouTube that Russian government still did not ban it, but it banned Facebook and Instagram. I suspect that banning YouTube might be dangerous to the putin regime.

siljon 4y ago

I have one issue with Youtube shorts today. I keep getting the tate brothers and pearl recommended even though I have disliked the videos and informed youtube to stop recommending them. I have even sent a message to Youtube but still no luck. Nothing against those people, I'm just bored of their message they spreading and want to see something new

figassis 4y ago

Too bad only the US can pay for premium

tomashubelbauer 4y ago
I'm in the Czech Republic and I used to be subscribed to YouTube Premium until they removed dislikes at which point I canceled my subscription. Not sure what country you're from but I am pretty sure there is an array of countries where you can get Premium now.

dmje 4y ago

Switched the algorithm off years ago. It's rare I even look at YT.

einpoklum 4y ago

> "If the tone of Twitter is a twee leftism" US democratic party establishment loyalism is not "leftism".

makach 4y ago

the jewel AND the cesspool

kleiba 4y ago

I wonder if the author ever had to deal with "this video is not available in your country" though... The biggest enemy of the "information super highway" that the internet could have become - and, thankfully, in large parts have - is the greed of corporations, manifested in overly broad copyright laws, licensing terms, and TOS.

INTPenis 4y ago

Youtube is OP right now. People are literally wasting away their lives watching Youtube, for better or worse that's a sure sign your startup worked. I want to know what the next youtube alternative is going to be. And don't say peertube, you're delusional.

Pooge 4y ago

I use RSS feeds to follow YouTube channels I enjoy[1]. I absolutely never watch the "Trending" page nor follow the suggestions on the right side of the video. When I want to search for something, I do, and hope the search algorithm isn't going to screw me over. [1]: I use Akregator and I can just enter the URL of the YouTube channel for it to find the RSS feed automatically.

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yaya69 4y ago

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jim_gorski 4y ago

I'm not sure what my problem could be - but I just can't watch anything on the site. The inline ads and popup banner ads at the bottom haunt me. Plus the stretching of forty lines of text into a twenty minute video irritates me. When it works it's golden - no doubt about that (say changing a spark plug) but most of the time it's the wrong medium and it makes things worse.

elif 4y ago

YouTube is by far the most reviled live streaming platform. Even if you ignore the insane automatic demonetization trap labyrinth and play perfectly by the books, the monetisation is slapped on as an afterthought, such that you have to already be a celebrity to make any real money out of it. And as for the "how to fix my panasonic..." Style videos the article praises, unfortunately that video which could be 45 seconds and informative is 11 minutes padded in the first minute for keyword and adult filtering sorting terms, drawn out with filler to 10 minutes to get full ad revenue, and the video itself is interspersed with unskippable "sponsored content" detours because creators are forced to being their own ad agency on top of YouTube's ad system. That is, if you got the right video in the first place and not a speech to text generated copy that utilizes a better subject and preview icon to steal traffic from a video that was found to be useful. For all the things Meta is doing wrong, even THEY are creating a better curated video content and streaming platform than YouTube right now. One which supports legitimate creators and not algorithm miners.

tizzy 4y ago
I think the point is that the "how to fix my panasonic..." videos don't exist anywhere else. Sure you could work it by googling "panasonic manual pdf" out but a lot of the times someone has had the exact same issue and have thankfully shared their fix on Youtube.

NickC25 4y ago

YT's algorithm is great - shows me a great mix of mindless stuff I like that I can just watch and not think or put on in the background (sports highlights, music playlists); or stuff that I need to pay attention to (politics, finance, how-to's), and even some guilty pleasures (film/tv clips, comedy sets, etc). It's great. The shorts, however, need to just die. Youtube, stop trying to compete with TikTok. You have a niche, and need stick to it. No need to dumb down with crappy content and actively work to shorten attention spans with cropped clips and cannibalize your main product.

liminal 4y ago

Bizarre to see this YouTube love-fest in the comments. Lately I've been finding their recommendations a disaster of click-bait shorts that seem like a desperate attempt to compete with TikTok. The worst part is that the algorithm is way too sensitive so if you ever accidentally click on something, you're guaranteed to be force-fed a fire hose of that for life (good luck trying to convince the algorithm otherwise).

superposeur 4y ago

I’m old enough to remember the advent of YouTube and remember thinking that it would obviously be one of zillions of video-streaming sites. Nope. Still I am mystified by the dynamic whereby there is just one website people go to to watch videos and just one Twitter and just one Facebook. Somehow, having all the choice in the world funnels into its opposite.

93po 4y ago

Youtube overwhelmingly shows me videos that it's showed me 100 times before and didn't click on, or stuff that I've already watched. The only time it's anything else is when a channel that I'm interested in posts new content. I find it super frustrating to the point I don't even bother going there anymore unless I'm looking for something specific.

husamia 4y ago

for me it's worth paying premium for until it isn't. I hope I will catch the next one.

fnord77 4y ago

"Even so, the real heroes of the site are not those who make original content. It is those who post old programming from the analogue age." someone should tell the author about archive.org