5 ms·

Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources. I can find anything from precision machining, LLM internals, historical footage of WWI, music

by foruhar 6mo ago

Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources. I can find anything from precision machining, LLM internals, historical footage of WWI, music performances from pretty much any era, and on, and on. There are so many things that I didn't know there was any footage of or that I didn't a single thing about that I find there pretty much daily. I wish the BBC would publish their whole archive through YT. The few things that they do put up are often so mind expanding whether it's Berty Russel, The Beatles, or some cracking Scottish chap going for a bike ride with a bottle of whisky.

wiether 6mo ago
> some cracking Scottish chap going for a bike ride with a bottle of whisky. I've seen that one!
- deanputney 6mo ago
  Here it is for those who haven't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk2jV5gJbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk2jV5gJbM When I looked it up, turns out I've seen it too!
- HerbManic 6mo ago
  I hope he is doing well, or at least had a great ride through life.
pjc50 6mo ago
Quite a lot of stuff is on iPlayer. But as always, licensing is the killer. (Not to mention reputational risk, which is why so many episodes of Top Of The Pops are hidden)
BloondAndDoom 6mo ago
Lowkey one the best things about LLMs, finally we have truly indexed YouTube which made up a massive amount of knowledge consumable and searchable in text format. I hate watching YouTube videos but like the information they provide between Youtube’s AI feature and Perplexitiy etc. Video indexing, it’s been a life saver.
- jamesfinlayson 6mo ago
  Agreed - I've never followed YouTube that closely but apparently there was a time where everyone thought that YouTube favoured videos that were around 10 minutes in length... so everyone padded their short videos to 10 minutes.
  - xboxnolifes 6mo ago
    It wasn't about favoring them. Videos needed to be 10 minutes long to get mid-roll ads.
kang 6mo ago
It was in pre-tiktok world(push to regular content update) & before the purge. A lot of content is now gone. Its a great resource but very loosely coupled with humanity/human knowledge (and arguably a pretty poor resource for it, both theoretically (linear information with contant velocity such as video) and practically (the content just isn't there on youtube, search is truncated etc.)). > I didn't a single thing about that I find there pretty much daily. Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, however its a great source of joy/emotions/slop.
- FartyMcFarter 6mo ago
  > Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, Did you ever try? There are experts in many fields posting about all kinds of stuff in there, from professional knowledge, to the most mainstream of hobbies, to very obscure stuff.
- dbcurtis 6mo ago
  > Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, however its a great source of joy/emotions/slop. I suspect you are not looking very hard. I have learned a tremendous amount about everything from stone cutting to metalworking to welding to Kalman filters to linear algebra. There is a lot out there. The main annoyance I have is keeping AI slop out of my feed so that I can instead learn from genuine experts. There is a huge amount out there.
  - viewtransform 6mo ago
    Appending 'before:2024' to your search term works on YouTube and gives results from the pre-slopocine era.
- crazygringo 6mo ago
  What purge? I'm searching Google trying to figure out what you're talking about but not getting any meaningful results.
  - jamesfinlayson 6mo ago
lairv 6mo ago
Worth noting that most of youtube videos can no longer be discovered through search. Search results can now only be sorted by "Relevance" and "Popularity" while you used to be able to sort by release date Search results are also non-exhaustive and biased towards recent videos as noted in this study https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727 Basically many videos can no longer be discovered if you don't have a url to the video or the channel, and the algorithm doesn't recommend it
- dyauspitr 6mo ago
  The non exhaustive thing is annoying as hell. You might as well delete old videos because there’s no way to get to them if you don’t remember the link. I used to be able to find this video I took in college 20 years ago. There’s just no way for me to get to it anymore.
  - rschneid 6mo ago
    Sounds like a good opportunity for a big indexing company to add some value by using thei- Wait...
  - mixmastamyk 6mo ago
    Is that related to freetube removing the video tab (of a channel), sort by age dropdown menu?
    - dyauspitr 6mo ago
      I don’t know. All I know is the video I’m looking for has a very unique title and used to come up as the main search result less than 3 years ago and it’s unfindable now. It’s from 2006.
- squishy47 6mo ago
  you can add search filters to the search bar in youtube. e.g this will return videos published in that time range with a duration longer than 2m cat videos after:2014-01-01 before:2014-12-31 >2m [edit] - the duration doesn't remove shorts I think there's just no shorts published in that time range.
gerdesj 6mo ago
"Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources." The content is one of humani .... oh it is all of ... oh its in the hands of ... a commercial company renowned for adverts. Is there not a better place for human creativity than ... Google? Should my TV license fee fund Google? Fuck off (hyperbolically)!
- fooker 6mo ago
  > oh it is all of ... oh its in the hands of ... a commercial company renowned for adverts. As opposed to governments renowned for colonizing half the world, destroying countless cultures, committing genocide in living memory?
  - wolvesechoes 6mo ago
    > As opposed to governments renowned for colonizing half the world, destroying countless cultures, committing genocide in living memory? Yes. Private companies are capable of the same, with addition of having profit as a sole purpose of existence.
casey2 6mo ago
It's one of the US's (or some future world government) greatest future public utilities for sure. Right now it's ruining it's own content by overoptimizing for engagement slop. Making the creators dumber and consumers poorer, limiting ad growth in the long term.
smusamashah 6mo ago
There is a subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/ which brings up channels and videos with negligible number of views usually in range of 100 or less. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3emFAf3jqQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3emFAf3jqQQ for example is from 15 years ago with 102 views right now.
ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
One really stunning deep dive into the bowels of weird YT content: https://youtu.be/JAALDob9Ev0?si=vooePQoQM0TURpNK https://youtu.be/JAALDob9Ev0?si=vooePQoQM0TURpNK Grady Smith published an investigative video titled "This TikTok Girl Band Ruined My Life" on October 18, 2022. The project focuses on Taylor Red, a group of triplet sisters with red hair who originally started as a traditional country band. Smith's video explores their transition from serious musicians to creators of surreal, fast-paced TikTok and YouTube content that appears specifically designed to capture the attention of toddlers and children.

by foruhar 6mo ago

wiether 6mo ago

> some cracking Scottish chap going for a bike ride with a bottle of whisky. I've seen that one!

deanputney 6mo ago
Here it is for those who haven't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk2jV5gJbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk2jV5gJbM When I looked it up, turns out I've seen it too!
HerbManic 6mo ago
I hope he is doing well, or at least had a great ride through life.

pjc50 6mo ago

Quite a lot of stuff is on iPlayer. But as always, licensing is the killer. (Not to mention reputational risk, which is why so many episodes of Top Of The Pops are hidden)

BloondAndDoom 6mo ago

Lowkey one the best things about LLMs, finally we have truly indexed YouTube which made up a massive amount of knowledge consumable and searchable in text format. I hate watching YouTube videos but like the information they provide between Youtube’s AI feature and Perplexitiy etc. Video indexing, it’s been a life saver.

jamesfinlayson 6mo ago
Agreed - I've never followed YouTube that closely but apparently there was a time where everyone thought that YouTube favoured videos that were around 10 minutes in length... so everyone padded their short videos to 10 minutes.
- xboxnolifes 6mo ago
  It wasn't about favoring them. Videos needed to be 10 minutes long to get mid-roll ads.

kang 6mo ago

It was in pre-tiktok world(push to regular content update) & before the purge. A lot of content is now gone. Its a great resource but very loosely coupled with humanity/human knowledge (and arguably a pretty poor resource for it, both theoretically (linear information with contant velocity such as video) and practically (the content just isn't there on youtube, search is truncated etc.)). > I didn't a single thing about that I find there pretty much daily. Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, however its a great source of joy/emotions/slop.

FartyMcFarter 6mo ago
> Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, Did you ever try? There are experts in many fields posting about all kinds of stuff in there, from professional knowledge, to the most mainstream of hobbies, to very obscure stuff.
dbcurtis 6mo ago
> Rarely(never?) have I found new knowledge on youtube, however its a great source of joy/emotions/slop. I suspect you are not looking very hard. I have learned a tremendous amount about everything from stone cutting to metalworking to welding to Kalman filters to linear algebra. There is a lot out there. The main annoyance I have is keeping AI slop out of my feed so that I can instead learn from genuine experts. There is a huge amount out there.
- viewtransform 6mo ago
  Appending 'before:2024' to your search term works on YouTube and gives results from the pre-slopocine era.
crazygringo 6mo ago
What purge? I'm searching Google trying to figure out what you're talking about but not getting any meaningful results.
- jamesfinlayson 6mo ago

lairv 6mo ago

Worth noting that most of youtube videos can no longer be discovered through search. Search results can now only be sorted by "Relevance" and "Popularity" while you used to be able to sort by release date Search results are also non-exhaustive and biased towards recent videos as noted in this study https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11727 Basically many videos can no longer be discovered if you don't have a url to the video or the channel, and the algorithm doesn't recommend it

dyauspitr 6mo ago
The non exhaustive thing is annoying as hell. You might as well delete old videos because there’s no way to get to them if you don’t remember the link. I used to be able to find this video I took in college 20 years ago. There’s just no way for me to get to it anymore.
- rschneid 6mo ago
  Sounds like a good opportunity for a big indexing company to add some value by using thei- Wait...
- mixmastamyk 6mo ago
  Is that related to freetube removing the video tab (of a channel), sort by age dropdown menu?
  - dyauspitr 6mo ago
    I don’t know. All I know is the video I’m looking for has a very unique title and used to come up as the main search result less than 3 years ago and it’s unfindable now. It’s from 2006.
squishy47 6mo ago
you can add search filters to the search bar in youtube. e.g this will return videos published in that time range with a duration longer than 2m cat videos after:2014-01-01 before:2014-12-31 >2m [edit] - the duration doesn't remove shorts I think there's just no shorts published in that time range.

gerdesj 6mo ago

"Hyperbolically, I think it's one of humanity's greatest resources." The content is one of humani .... oh it is all of ... oh its in the hands of ... a commercial company renowned for adverts. Is there not a better place for human creativity than ... Google? Should my TV license fee fund Google? Fuck off (hyperbolically)!

fooker 6mo ago
> oh it is all of ... oh its in the hands of ... a commercial company renowned for adverts. As opposed to governments renowned for colonizing half the world, destroying countless cultures, committing genocide in living memory?
- wolvesechoes 6mo ago
  > As opposed to governments renowned for colonizing half the world, destroying countless cultures, committing genocide in living memory? Yes. Private companies are capable of the same, with addition of having profit as a sole purpose of existence.

casey2 6mo ago

It's one of the US's (or some future world government) greatest future public utilities for sure. Right now it's ruining it's own content by overoptimizing for engagement slop. Making the creators dumber and consumers poorer, limiting ad growth in the long term.

smusamashah 6mo ago

There is a subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepIntoYouTube/ which brings up channels and videos with negligible number of views usually in range of 100 or less. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3emFAf3jqQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3emFAf3jqQQ for example is from 15 years ago with 102 views right now.

ButlerianJihad 6mo ago

One really stunning deep dive into the bowels of weird YT content: https://youtu.be/JAALDob9Ev0?si=vooePQoQM0TURpNK https://youtu.be/JAALDob9Ev0?si=vooePQoQM0TURpNK Grady Smith published an investigative video titled "This TikTok Girl Band Ruined My Life" on October 18, 2022. The project focuses on Taylor Red, a group of triplet sisters with red hair who originally started as a traditional country band. Smith's video explores their transition from serious musicians to creators of surreal, fast-paced TikTok and YouTube content that appears specifically designed to capture the attention of toddlers and children.