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Social media platforms have been paying out for attention seeking behaviour for a long time now. It’s why every YouTube video now has the same lame shocked face

by cedws 2mo ago

Social media platforms have been paying out for attention seeking behaviour for a long time now. It’s why every YouTube video now has the same lame shocked face, red arrows, and clickbait title. It’s why assholes film themselves intentionally pissing people off for TikTok. It’s a whole category called nuisance tubing. I remember during COVID I saw a number of YouTubers swing from producing normal content into conspiracy shit. Their views ballooned. I saw a nasty feedback loop where the more controversial content received more engagement, hence more ad revenue, leading to more of it being produced. These platforms are actively degenerating society; there’s a reason the CCP is keeping tight control and reportedly rebalancing things to promote educational creators on China’s.

shevy-java 2mo ago
Indeed. What I noticed is that the quality of the videos went down on youtube in the last 3 years. Now, the quality was never as great as it used to be anyway, but Google changed various things that made youtube worse. They are slowly killing off youtube without realising it.
- Levitating 2mo ago
  A lot of channels got bought by private equity. YouTube is saturated with similar content so creators have to resort to clickbait to keep up. AI has allowed creators to increase their efficiency writing scripts. I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.
- brrk 2mo ago
  It's difficult for me to understand what people are getting out of the youtube experience, as I'm pretty straight up intolerant of most of the traits of this kind of content - all I hear recently from the neighbours kid's tablets and phones is loads of stuff with too-fast too-intense mono-tone TTS. Such a shame that people take up against AI, rather than the people selecting and serving them slop.
leonidasrup 2mo ago
CCP is keeping tight control over social media platforms first and foremost to prevent spreading information which could topple CCP. "Last month 60 popular celebrity gossip sites were closed overnight for corrupting "core socialist values," and a new regulation released in May requires all online news portals to be managed by Communist Party-sanctioned editorial staff." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40896235 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40896235
- nixon_why69 2mo ago
  No, they actually do have a paternalistic drive to keep things healthy and pro-social above and beyond some Bond villain stuff. I mean, yes, you also can't get away with organizing an opposition, but they really do care about social cohesion and good family values above and beyond that. (Also, one should always note that the BBC is state owned when they write articles full of invective like this).
  - leonidasrup 2mo ago
    The priorities of CCP are suppressing opposition first and social cohesion and good family values second. If you don't like state owned BBC, you can read for example non-state owned Guardian about the state of Chinese media landscape. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/dec/15/jimmy-lai-verdict-hong-kong-court-national-security-charges-live https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/dec/15/jimmy-lai... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/hong-kong-authorities-disrupt-independent-press-inland-revenue-tax-audits https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/hong-kong-auth...
    - nixon_why69 2mo ago
      I respect the BBC's independence actually, I don't think they're meaningfully worse than CNN. It's just a funny detail that they completely gloss over their own status while saying "communist party media" this and that. The Chinese media landscape doesn't support anti-Chinese narratives and the US/UK media landscape, while totally free, somehow never produces anti-Anglo narratives[1]. It's not a conspiracy, it's a culture. [1]: There are safe anti-anglo narratives where various defeated/killed people have a valid grievance and we should all cry about it, as long as they're all dead and a non-threat.

by cedws 2mo ago

shevy-java 2mo ago

Indeed. What I noticed is that the quality of the videos went down on youtube in the last 3 years. Now, the quality was never as great as it used to be anyway, but Google changed various things that made youtube worse. They are slowly killing off youtube without realising it.

Levitating 2mo ago
A lot of channels got bought by private equity. YouTube is saturated with similar content so creators have to resort to clickbait to keep up. AI has allowed creators to increase their efficiency writing scripts. I don't know what you believe Google changed about YouTube, but I believe it has just made itself worse.
brrk 2mo ago
It's difficult for me to understand what people are getting out of the youtube experience, as I'm pretty straight up intolerant of most of the traits of this kind of content - all I hear recently from the neighbours kid's tablets and phones is loads of stuff with too-fast too-intense mono-tone TTS. Such a shame that people take up against AI, rather than the people selecting and serving them slop.

leonidasrup 2mo ago

CCP is keeping tight control over social media platforms first and foremost to prevent spreading information which could topple CCP. "Last month 60 popular celebrity gossip sites were closed overnight for corrupting "core socialist values," and a new regulation released in May requires all online news portals to be managed by Communist Party-sanctioned editorial staff." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40896235 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-40896235

nixon_why69 2mo ago
No, they actually do have a paternalistic drive to keep things healthy and pro-social above and beyond some Bond villain stuff. I mean, yes, you also can't get away with organizing an opposition, but they really do care about social cohesion and good family values above and beyond that. (Also, one should always note that the BBC is state owned when they write articles full of invective like this).
- leonidasrup 2mo ago
  The priorities of CCP are suppressing opposition first and social cohesion and good family values second. If you don't like state owned BBC, you can read for example non-state owned Guardian about the state of Chinese media landscape. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/dec/15/jimmy-lai-verdict-hong-kong-court-national-security-charges-live https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/dec/15/jimmy-lai... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/hong-kong-authorities-disrupt-independent-press-inland-revenue-tax-audits https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/hong-kong-auth...
  - nixon_why69 2mo ago
    I respect the BBC's independence actually, I don't think they're meaningfully worse than CNN. It's just a funny detail that they completely gloss over their own status while saying "communist party media" this and that. The Chinese media landscape doesn't support anti-Chinese narratives and the US/UK media landscape, while totally free, somehow never produces anti-Anglo narratives[1]. It's not a conspiracy, it's a culture. [1]: There are safe anti-anglo narratives where various defeated/killed people have a valid grievance and we should all cry about it, as long as they're all dead and a non-threat.