4 ms·

YouTube Is Awful. I'm Not Posting There Anymore

66 points by speckx 1y ago

beanjuiceII 1y ago
[flagged]
- nness 1y ago
  Those values being the proliferation of AI, YouTube's settlement to Trump, unbanning of conspiracy theory and hate-speech creators popular amongst Trump's base, and a moral complaint about AI age-checking, and censorship (particularly around the most recent Israel-Gaza conflict.)
- georgemcbay 1y ago
  Values and creator-side issues aside, YouTube is just awful to use in its natural state just from a user experience perspective. Way too many ads per minute of content watched, the ads are all extremely low quality and a lot of them are just outright scams these days. You can solve this to some degree (on some devices) using adblockers, but YouTube has been going out of its way over the past year making this as difficult as possible. And there are non-ad issues as well, eg. the algorithm absolutely sucks at discovering new content.
- budududuroiu 1y ago
  So, someone writing about making choices aligned with their values, got it.
- ragingregard 1y ago
  Says the user who didn't even read the article. The whole first half had nothing to do with the author's values. It was about the poor implementation of AI algorithms as it relates to creator functionality. Shitty AI creator workflow, automatic ad injection, blocking of viewers to combat ad blockers... Useless reply.
chasing0entropy 1y ago
Walled gardens are meant for the owners. Everyone else are decorations.
taylodl 1y ago
Media distributors have always exercised control over the content they deliver—editing for length, compliance, or audience standards is nothing new. The confusion often comes from viewing YouTube as a neutral hosting service, like Dropbox, rather than as a full-fledged media distributor. Once you recognize that YouTube operates more like a broadcast network than a storage platform, its behavior - curating, monetizing, and enforcing content policies - looks far less unusual. What feels different today is the scale and automation: traditional networks relied on human editors and clear standards, while YouTube uses opaque algorithms that can affect visibility and revenue in ways creators don’t always understand. That shift makes the control feel more intrusive, but the underlying principle - 'the distributor sets the rules' - has been part of media distribution for decades.
- scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
  What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role. The part that's new in the distributor setting the rules dynamic is that there is no specific "they" to blame for the rules. The strangest content has found me on YT
  - zinekeller 1y ago
    > What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role. The correct answer here, rather disappointingly, is that they were never neutral. Google Videos (the one that Google actually launched) arguably is a neutral service, but YouTube was always designed to be a social media (even if that term is not as well-known at the time as it is now). It even had five star ratings, which as the style for its time. It is always closer to Instagram rather than Dropbox (although that's an anachronistic comparison since that YouTube was the first of the three).
    - scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
      Correct yes sure - point is that it cultivated a neutral hosting service brand image and that's interesting
stitched2gethr 1y ago
I'm surprised there was no mention of shorts which take attention away from long form content. It's all they a pushing these days. In my feed I regularly see 6 shorts, then a video, then 6 more shorts. TikTok is not the ideal model for everyone.
- MathMonkeyMan 1y ago
  If you're on a web browser, there are extensions that hide them (for now). That and members only and such. Soon, assuming my setup continues to work, my youtube experience will be completely unlike the default: no shorts, no autoplay, no ads, no sidebar recommendations, homepage is subscriptions, no premium. I'm bleeding them dry!
  - Akronymus 1y ago
    May I recommend de-arrow and sponsorblock as well?
    - s1mplicissimus 1y ago
      https://unhook.app/ https://unhook.app/ - removes the addiction from the tube (i'm not affiliated except as a user)
pabs3 1y ago
Affected channels: https://www.youtube.com/@TripleIris https://www.youtube.com/@TripleIris https://www.youtube.com/@JoshJunkDrawer https://www.youtube.com/@JoshJunkDrawer
halJordan 1y ago
Guy i dont know, pops up on a feed i dont control to tell me he isnt doing something anymore.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  > WHY > Algorithms https://youtu.be/qMsH_3cRKeI https://youtu.be/qMsH_3cRKeI (Okay, it's a different subject and totally different algorithms but still what I was reminded of.)
pfannkuchen 1y ago
> Unbanning Election Conspiracy Theorists and Anti-vaxxers Why should people be banned for these? I don’t agree with either group, generally, but I don’t really see the harm either? If the election and vaccines are so air tight, why doesn’t anyone just publish a piece tearing down the top N counterarguments? There are a few that aren’t obviously stupid and would require more research for any random person to be sure they are wrong, but I haven’t seen anyone publish solid deconstruction pieces on them. I don’t really know why, though. It seems like it has been moralized and the people who are “right” don’t have to actually rebut arguments against their position because they are so right? I don’t get it.
- ivell 1y ago
  I guess it is more like being hard prove a negative. There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. But it is also difficult to prove vaccines cannot cause autism. The Anti-Vaxxers use this loophole to spread their beliefs.
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    How is that difficult though? Just do a study comparing vaccinated cohort to unvaccinated cohort and show that the unvaccinated cohort has a statistically similar rate of autism.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      They have 12. Taylor B, Miller E, Farrington CP, Petropoulos MC, Favot-Mayaud I, Li J, Waight PA. Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet 1999; 353(9169): 2026-9. 13. Taylor B, Miller E, Lingam R, Andrews N, Simmons A, Stowe J. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: population study. BMJ 2002; 324(7334): 393-6. 14. Farrington CP, Miller E, Taylor B. MMR and autism: further evidence against a causal association. Vaccine 2001; 19(27): 3632-5. 15. Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med 2002; 347(19): 1477-82. 16. Smeeth L, Cook C, Fombonne E, Heavey L, Rodrigues LC, Smith PG, Hall AJ. MMR vaccination and pervasive developmental disorders: a case-control study. Lancet 2004; 364(9438): 963-9. 17. Makela A, Nuorti JP, Peltola H. Neurologic disorders after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Pediatrics 2002; 110(5): 957-63. 18. Jain A, Marshall J, Buikema A, Bancroft T, Kelly JP, Newschaffer CJ. Autism occurrence by MMR vaccine status among US children with older siblings with and without autism. JAMA 2015; 313(15): 1534-40. 19. Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N. Early exposure to the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Vaccine 2015; 33(21): 2511-6. 20. Hviid A, Hansen JV, Frisch M, Melbye M. Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort StudyMeasles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism. 2019. 21. Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. JAMA 2003; 290(13): 1763-6. 22. Verstraeten T, Davis RL, DeStefano F, Lieu TA, Rhodes PH, Black SB, Shinefield H, Chen RT. Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics 2003; 112(5): 1039-48. 23. Andrews N, Miller E, Grant A, Stowe J, Osborne V, Taylor B. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a retrospective cohort study in the United kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics 2004; 114(3): 584-91. 24. Croen LA, Matevia M, Yoshida CK, Grether JK. Maternal Rh D status, anti-D immune globulin exposure during pregnancy, and risk of autism spectrum disorders. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2008; 199(3): 234.e1-6. 25. Price CS, Thompson WW, Goodson B, Weintraub ES, Croen LA, Hinrichsen VL, Marcy M, Robertson A, Eriksen E, Lewis E, Bernal P, Shay D, Davis RL, DeStefano F. Prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and immunoglobulins and risk of autism. Pediatrics 2010; 126(4): 656-64. 26. Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N. The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and the total number of vaccines are not associated with development of autism spectrum disorder: the first case-control study in Asia. Vaccine 2012; 30(28): 4292-8. 27. DeStefano F, Price CS, Weintraub ES. Increasing exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides in vaccines is not associated with risk of autism. J Pediatr 2013; 163(2): 561-7. From this site https://www.vaccinesafety.edu/do-vaccines-cause-autism/ https://www.vaccinesafety.edu/do-vaccines-cause-autism/
hnburnsy 1y ago
>You are able to turn these ads off, but only individually by editing the videos one by one. I spent hours going through my backlog of videos disabling ads I didn’t place. This is like my Google Wallet where I have hundreds of old boarding passes that can only be deletion d by editing each on. No delete all, no multi select. I consider this malicious compliance, where Google sees a way to store your history (travel in this case) despite having all other location history off.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  > I consider this malicious compliance Hadn't thought of it that way before but this sounds spot-on.
  - skylurk 1y ago
    Google Photos too
    - ikeashark 1y ago
      I'm not sure what platform of Google Photos you were trying, but on the web and mobile app, you can drag to select sequential photos (i.e multi-select).
      - skylurk 1y ago
        What if you are trying to delete all 30k of them after a google takeout?

66 points by speckx 1y ago

beanjuiceII 1y ago

[flagged]

nness 1y ago
Those values being the proliferation of AI, YouTube's settlement to Trump, unbanning of conspiracy theory and hate-speech creators popular amongst Trump's base, and a moral complaint about AI age-checking, and censorship (particularly around the most recent Israel-Gaza conflict.)
georgemcbay 1y ago
Values and creator-side issues aside, YouTube is just awful to use in its natural state just from a user experience perspective. Way too many ads per minute of content watched, the ads are all extremely low quality and a lot of them are just outright scams these days. You can solve this to some degree (on some devices) using adblockers, but YouTube has been going out of its way over the past year making this as difficult as possible. And there are non-ad issues as well, eg. the algorithm absolutely sucks at discovering new content.
budududuroiu 1y ago
So, someone writing about making choices aligned with their values, got it.
ragingregard 1y ago
Says the user who didn't even read the article. The whole first half had nothing to do with the author's values. It was about the poor implementation of AI algorithms as it relates to creator functionality. Shitty AI creator workflow, automatic ad injection, blocking of viewers to combat ad blockers... Useless reply.

chasing0entropy 1y ago

Walled gardens are meant for the owners. Everyone else are decorations.

taylodl 1y ago

Media distributors have always exercised control over the content they deliver—editing for length, compliance, or audience standards is nothing new. The confusion often comes from viewing YouTube as a neutral hosting service, like Dropbox, rather than as a full-fledged media distributor. Once you recognize that YouTube operates more like a broadcast network than a storage platform, its behavior - curating, monetizing, and enforcing content policies - looks far less unusual. What feels different today is the scale and automation: traditional networks relied on human editors and clear standards, while YouTube uses opaque algorithms that can affect visibility and revenue in ways creators don’t always understand. That shift makes the control feel more intrusive, but the underlying principle - 'the distributor sets the rules' - has been part of media distribution for decades.

scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role. The part that's new in the distributor setting the rules dynamic is that there is no specific "they" to blame for the rules. The strangest content has found me on YT
- zinekeller 1y ago
  > What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role. The correct answer here, rather disappointingly, is that they were never neutral. Google Videos (the one that Google actually launched) arguably is a neutral service, but YouTube was always designed to be a social media (even if that term is not as well-known at the time as it is now). It even had five star ratings, which as the style for its time. It is always closer to Instagram rather than Dropbox (although that's an anachronistic comparison since that YouTube was the first of the three).
  - scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
    Correct yes sure - point is that it cultivated a neutral hosting service brand image and that's interesting

stitched2gethr 1y ago

I'm surprised there was no mention of shorts which take attention away from long form content. It's all they a pushing these days. In my feed I regularly see 6 shorts, then a video, then 6 more shorts. TikTok is not the ideal model for everyone.

MathMonkeyMan 1y ago
If you're on a web browser, there are extensions that hide them (for now). That and members only and such. Soon, assuming my setup continues to work, my youtube experience will be completely unlike the default: no shorts, no autoplay, no ads, no sidebar recommendations, homepage is subscriptions, no premium. I'm bleeding them dry!
- Akronymus 1y ago
  May I recommend de-arrow and sponsorblock as well?
  - s1mplicissimus 1y ago
    https://unhook.app/ https://unhook.app/ - removes the addiction from the tube (i'm not affiliated except as a user)

pabs3 1y ago

Affected channels: https://www.youtube.com/@TripleIris https://www.youtube.com/@TripleIris https://www.youtube.com/@JoshJunkDrawer https://www.youtube.com/@JoshJunkDrawer

halJordan 1y ago

Guy i dont know, pops up on a feed i dont control to tell me he isnt doing something anymore.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
> WHY > Algorithms https://youtu.be/qMsH_3cRKeI https://youtu.be/qMsH_3cRKeI (Okay, it's a different subject and totally different algorithms but still what I was reminded of.)

pfannkuchen 1y ago

> Unbanning Election Conspiracy Theorists and Anti-vaxxers Why should people be banned for these? I don’t agree with either group, generally, but I don’t really see the harm either? If the election and vaccines are so air tight, why doesn’t anyone just publish a piece tearing down the top N counterarguments? There are a few that aren’t obviously stupid and would require more research for any random person to be sure they are wrong, but I haven’t seen anyone publish solid deconstruction pieces on them. I don’t really know why, though. It seems like it has been moralized and the people who are “right” don’t have to actually rebut arguments against their position because they are so right? I don’t get it.

ivell 1y ago
I guess it is more like being hard prove a negative. There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. But it is also difficult to prove vaccines cannot cause autism. The Anti-Vaxxers use this loophole to spread their beliefs.
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  How is that difficult though? Just do a study comparing vaccinated cohort to unvaccinated cohort and show that the unvaccinated cohort has a statistically similar rate of autism.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    They have 12. Taylor B, Miller E, Farrington CP, Petropoulos MC, Favot-Mayaud I, Li J, Waight PA. Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet 1999; 353(9169): 2026-9. 13. Taylor B, Miller E, Lingam R, Andrews N, Simmons A, Stowe J. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: population study. BMJ 2002; 324(7334): 393-6. 14. Farrington CP, Miller E, Taylor B. MMR and autism: further evidence against a causal association. Vaccine 2001; 19(27): 3632-5. 15. Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med 2002; 347(19): 1477-82. 16. Smeeth L, Cook C, Fombonne E, Heavey L, Rodrigues LC, Smith PG, Hall AJ. MMR vaccination and pervasive developmental disorders: a case-control study. Lancet 2004; 364(9438): 963-9. 17. Makela A, Nuorti JP, Peltola H. Neurologic disorders after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Pediatrics 2002; 110(5): 957-63. 18. Jain A, Marshall J, Buikema A, Bancroft T, Kelly JP, Newschaffer CJ. Autism occurrence by MMR vaccine status among US children with older siblings with and without autism. JAMA 2015; 313(15): 1534-40. 19. Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N. Early exposure to the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Vaccine 2015; 33(21): 2511-6. 20. Hviid A, Hansen JV, Frisch M, Melbye M. Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort StudyMeasles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism. 2019. 21. Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. JAMA 2003; 290(13): 1763-6. 22. Verstraeten T, Davis RL, DeStefano F, Lieu TA, Rhodes PH, Black SB, Shinefield H, Chen RT. Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics 2003; 112(5): 1039-48. 23. Andrews N, Miller E, Grant A, Stowe J, Osborne V, Taylor B. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a retrospective cohort study in the United kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics 2004; 114(3): 584-91. 24. Croen LA, Matevia M, Yoshida CK, Grether JK. Maternal Rh D status, anti-D immune globulin exposure during pregnancy, and risk of autism spectrum disorders. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2008; 199(3): 234.e1-6. 25. Price CS, Thompson WW, Goodson B, Weintraub ES, Croen LA, Hinrichsen VL, Marcy M, Robertson A, Eriksen E, Lewis E, Bernal P, Shay D, Davis RL, DeStefano F. Prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and immunoglobulins and risk of autism. Pediatrics 2010; 126(4): 656-64. 26. Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N. The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and the total number of vaccines are not associated with development of autism spectrum disorder: the first case-control study in Asia. Vaccine 2012; 30(28): 4292-8. 27. DeStefano F, Price CS, Weintraub ES. Increasing exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides in vaccines is not associated with risk of autism. J Pediatr 2013; 163(2): 561-7. From this site https://www.vaccinesafety.edu/do-vaccines-cause-autism/ https://www.vaccinesafety.edu/do-vaccines-cause-autism/

hnburnsy 1y ago

>You are able to turn these ads off, but only individually by editing the videos one by one. I spent hours going through my backlog of videos disabling ads I didn’t place. This is like my Google Wallet where I have hundreds of old boarding passes that can only be deletion d by editing each on. No delete all, no multi select. I consider this malicious compliance, where Google sees a way to store your history (travel in this case) despite having all other location history off.

rkomorn 1y ago
> I consider this malicious compliance Hadn't thought of it that way before but this sounds spot-on.
- skylurk 1y ago
  Google Photos too
  - ikeashark 1y ago
    I'm not sure what platform of Google Photos you were trying, but on the web and mobile app, you can drag to select sequential photos (i.e multi-select).
    - skylurk 1y ago
      What if you are trying to delete all 30k of them after a google takeout?