- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- technews@radiation.party
You must log in or # to comment.
Honestly, it’s the terrible content moderation policies that are going to kill YouTube, not a certain type of video.
Bingo. I don’t find shorts all that appealing (especially since I can’t cast them to a TV! Wtf, seems like core function there) but I agree, the REAL problem with YouTube is how much creators have to top toe around demonization.
they’re all paying the bills by hawking raid shadow legends anyways, may as well not rely on youtube monetization anyways and host elsewhere
I’m not even sure it is bad policies. I am pretty sure that they just don’t have moderators.
I doubt anyone reads 99.9% of reports.
So you get bigotry and hate, you get insane and deadly DIYs, you get 12yo girls being creeped while posting random 5s clips from their lives.
Not to mention just the vast amount of extraordinarily low-quality content YouTube serves up. It’s amazing how bad a lot of the videos it thinks you will like are. The algorithm makes no sense.
But hey, here’s 16 different Joe Rogan clips with sigma male music in the background.
The algorithm seems like it is optimized for profit, not for actually being a good platform.
That should mean engagement. It serves up such bad videos that I disengage.
Once in a while I’ll realize I just spent 20, 30 minutes looking at a streak of pretty decent stuff. Rare enough to be remarkable. Usually after just 3 or 4 consecutive crap clips I’ll close it down and get back to work.
I doubt anything disengages a user faster than low-quality content. I bet it does it even faster than the authoritarian politics and bigotry YouTube seems to inexorable serve you.
If that were true, it wouldn’t be the way it is.
Just because it causes your disengagement, doesn’t mean it causes disengagement with the vast majority of their userbase.
They’re also more concerned with ad views and clicks, so if you’re not the kind of person who gives a crap about ads… they don’t really care that much about you.
This is predicated on the belief that Google/YouTube is run in a 100% hyper-competent way. I don’t buy that.
Google does things the easiest way possible to make tons of money. They make unforced errors all the damn time.
They don’t have to be 100% competent, but they are very competent at what they want to do… which is monetize the technologies and services they provide. They’re not trying to make something that people can use well and enjoy… they’re making things to make a shit-ton of money. The two goals are not generally mutually inclusive.
Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they’re all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever… which is confusing considering they’re a multi-billion dollar company and not just some guy in a shack banging rocks together to see how they sound.
Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they’re all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever
Nope. It’s only this specific thing that I necessarily think they’re doing a bad job of. And I’m right; they are. Their algorithm is a struggling baby compared to TikTok and YouTube at large is not a major profit center (and indeed may not be profitable at all – but they maintain it because abandoning it would be too costly for them).
TikTok is so good at doing this thing that it is a profitable business for them. YouTube is struggling, and we can clearly see why.
The terrible content moderation policies are what keep it alive. No one subscribes to youtube so it’s primary customers are the ad agencies. And they want content moderation
deleted by creator
Not just terrible, but incredibly hypocritical.
This Shorts issue seems to have measurable, constant and immediate effect in ad revenue and therefore platform profitability. Bad content moderation may or may not decrease engagement but in the end Google is a commercial enterprise that’s looking at the numbers at hand.
I’m mostly fine with shorts, except for two things:
-
You can’t move around in them, it’s either play or pause and repeat, which sucks (as shorts don’t have to be short…)
-
On the homepage it doesn’t show who the short is from (which channel) without opening them
You also can’t adjust the volume in browser. You have to go to a normal video, change it, and then go back.
Install Better YouTube Shorts. You can thank me later.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/better-youtube-shorts/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/better-youtube-shorts/pehohlhkhbcfdneocgnfbnilppmfncdg
Just use the system audio control?
But why do I have to do that when every other video player has a volume slider?
On the contrary, why bother hunting the down the slider for every different player when you could just use the system?
Just curious, since I use the youtube slider like once a month.
I’m not the guy you asked, but I assume they do as I do. My system volume is calibrated for all the various applications I use day to day, including video conferencing. If I have to adjust that, it means everything else is the wrong volume. I’d rather modify YouTube to be the right volume than everything else.
This. My system volume is calibrated to be similar across all applications, games, etc. This means all apps are individually adjusted to reach similar volume level. Why should I have to mess with all of my other volumes just random manager at Youtube decided a volume slider on shorts isn’t necessary despite the site still using volume from regular videos where it can be adjusted? This isn’t an issue with any other app or platform. Maybe the last Youtube video I watched had overly quiet or loud audio compared to the norm and I either have insanely loud audio or I can’t hear a damned thing and I can’t fix it quickly like on any other Youtube page.
Not everyone had a set of dedicated volume buttons, or wheel, etc. on their keyboard, and Windows now makes it much more difficult to change a single application’s volume level without touching all audio levels.
It’s also annoying that you can’t save them without using the hack where you change the URL.
You can move around in them. Atleast on Android, there is a hidden red bar at the bottom which becomes visible if you pause the video.
You can scrub around in them. Look for the red bar on the bottom after the short starts. You can tap and drag on it and a little red circle will appear that will show briefly after you release.
This is a problem with all of these Tik Tok clones (and even Tik Tok let’s you do it for some videos). It’d so annoying to be watching a 45 second reel but if I miss something, I have to watch the whole thing again
I have the exact opposite problem? I can skip around just fine in shorts, but can’t in reels… Is this due to A/B testing or am I dumb?
I simply prefer TikTok for short form videos due to unique community and reasonably entertaining algorithm.
I enjoy YouTube to the point of paying for Premium but I hate that my YouTube subscriptions feed on TV is littered with shorts that I have no way of disabling other than hiding them one by one (which I do to make a point).
Suits at Google will try to shove it into everyone’s throats until they get bored and someone adds it to killedbygoogle.com so why would anyone even bother with it.
This is why I use LibreTube. It just filters all the Shorts
I’m deep in Apple ecosystem and unfortunately this is not an option on Apple TV as far as I know.
You should consider leaving.
In case of Apple TV, it’s the smoothest TV software experience, leaps and bounds above any ad-ridden smart TV or aging Nvidia Shield. I used Android TV and it’s just jank. For a time I had HTPC with Kodi too, it’s been relegated to hosting Plex and downloading stuff from Usenet. I enjoyed freedom to install anything but ultimately this didn’t outweight better audio codec support on Apple TV.
ad-ridden smart TV
Oh the irony…
Not sure what you’re making a stab at.
Apple software is obviously ad free and I have no problem with paying for YouTube Premium due to value it provides. Some good soul on Lemmy also recommended me a way to block sponsored content via isponsorblocktv which is a script that runs on my server and skips sponsored segments by reading YouTube app state and sending fast forward commands like a remote would.
It’s amazing how much social credit you possibly have. Xi Jinping is proud of you.
Are you alright there mate?
-
What if we fucked over all of the people that like our website to try and cater to people that don’t like it?
Seems to be the current trend in social media this year…
This is to perfectly put.
Using revanced. Disabled shorts. Watching these YT shorts & recommendations decays my brain cells
I don’t mind grabbing my pitchfork and joining the “YouTube is already ruined party”, but two thoughts first:
That headline is so deliberately vague. It could literally be one employee who said “eh, I don’t think YouTube shorts is a good idea”.
The article itself doesn’t really give you any information that isn’t in the headline. It feels like an attempt to stoke anti-YouTube sentiment without providing any useful information.
…okay, with that out of the way…
Yeah, the current YouTube situation is pretty crap.
Yeah honestly these are some great points, and really it’s one of these reasons as to why I just dislike modern journalism today with the headlines as such.
It does cite internal metrics on ad revenues going down for three consecutive quarters due to lower potential to show ads in short videos compared to longer ones. It’s anonymous and doesn’t give solid figures but that’s what this article is about.
Mind you those are (at least some of) the guys that killed animation and comedy sketches on youtube because they made it necessary for videos to be 10+ minutes long to be relevant.
Which I get a laugh out of, because in the early days youtube would not let you post any video longer than 10 minutes, unless you were a “special” approved account. Now, only 10+ minute videos matter. A complete about face.
deleted by creator
As a viewer I agree with their assessment.
Shorts is (for me) a worse viewing experience and it’s just more useless junk tha clutter up my youtube main page.
That’s why I have a Firefox extension that automatically redirects from shorts. Although, if Google’s new Web Environment Integrity goes through I guess I could kiss stuff like that goodbye.
Yeah I usually watch YouTube on my shield and it clutters up every channel with junk I have no desire to watch.
I don’t disagree but there are some channels that do great shorts. For example check out squat university shorts.
Guys, I think I found The Algorithm’s Lemmy account!!!
God I hate shorts. Luckily you can disable them. But youtube is so riddled with ads in general, it makes watching without adblock impossible. If they’d go back to one 3 second ad at the very beginning, I might even tolerate it. But the current shitshow? Not on my system.
Doesn’t help that they have a whooping 113 trackers running simultaneously.
Wait how do you disable shorts this is the first I’m hearing of this
with uBlock Origin, right click on the shorts area > click on ublock’s “Block element” > select the Shorts section > Block
Blocking with uBlock really isn’t the same as disabling. Disabling implies you’re using the app and it’s a setting.
You can disable them in Vanced and Revanced. NewPipe either disables them by default or doesn’t even support them, which is fine with me.
None of those apps are the original and official app. Which is pretty obviously what this was about. I used to use Vanced and it never worked as easily as everyone seems to imply, and I never could get it to cast. Vanced is no longer available on the PlayStore btw, and the same can be expected for every app that tries to offer YouTube content, modified.
Right, well, it seems like you don’t want solutions and would rather just whine about something.
deleted by creator
Modded apps and extensions. Revanced, Smarttubenext, shortsblock, etc.
I target the Shorts container row element with uBlock, so it’s removed permanently from the grid.
Details please!
deleted by creator
YouTube shorts was the dumbest fucking idea. They have a niche: long-form (as in >1min) video content. They are dominant in that niche. Then they saw TikTok was popular and dominating the short-form video scene, and their response was… “we should switch to making more short form”. WTF?! And on top of that, they’ve diverted resources away from their main product (longer videos) as the article says. It just seems like such a catastrophic unforced error.
YouTube have such a stranglehold on the >1m market, that’s why they can afford to stagnate in that area and look into other markets. They don’t have to fear a competitor threatening their core market any time soon.
not only is the shorts UI shitty but the shorts themselves are often shitty imo, or at least the “scroll through shorts one at a time” linear format means you see a lot more videos you wouldn’t click on intentionally.
“No YouTube I do not want to watch Jordon Fucking Peterson. I will NEVER want that. Fuck all the way off.”
I stopped watching shorts because of the unwanted boosts of fascist content.
Silver lining: It gave me the opportunity to “dislike” Jordan Peterson, which was not an opportunity I previously had.
I mean, I guess I always HAD the option, but there’s something to be said about having somebody serve it up on a platter like that.
Hey, boosts engagement, he’s happy all the same.
I watch shorts but I never swipe up. I pick which ones I want to watch.
I hate that I get such random shit in my feed when I really only look at art videos - like my scrolling should be nothing but people drawing but random shit like slime videos or some ass hat and his kid.
Yeah YouTube really likes to inject videos you wouldn’t normally watch into your algorithm. It’s pretty annoying. I would never seek out religious videos, and never have on YouTube, yet they keep making their way into my feed. Even voting them down doesn’t seem to change the frequency.
For real. I’ve never searched a prank video in my life but they come up during shorts.
The interface isn’t consistent between videos and shorts.
You can rewind and fast forward videos on phones by double tapping the left or right hand side of the video, but doing that on shorts just likes it.
I literally could not understand what half the ones I saw were even supposed to be about last time I went on YouTube. Like they were just random people doing shit with no punchline or point.
Advertising ruined YouTube years ago.
YouTube ruined YouTube
I swear to god these dumb social media sites are going to hell faster every day.
I used to like YouTube because I could watch all sorts of interesting things … funny things … informative things … things actually liked
Now my main YouTube recommended feed is filled with clickbait thumbnails of idiots making surprised or shocked faces to try to get your attention to get you to look at their dumb video of nonsense that has zero information and is not entertaining at all.
Google ruined YouTube years ago.
Might ruin YouTube? Brother. It’s already ruined.
having no proper competitor is the only thing that’s still keeping youtube on the boat.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
It’s the hustle culture that’s been ingrained into society at this point. Every industry has it now. Get in, make as much as possible (with little to no regard for others), get out, retire early.
After that just become an influencer showing off your lavish lifestyle for brand sponsorships for even more money.
Shit like Tiktok and Youtube Shorts are only making things worse, faster.
Get in, make as much as possible (with little to no regard for others), get out, retire early.
Arguably, this is what the American dream has become. It used to be we wanted middle class wealth, 2.1 kids, and a nice suburban house. But now all we want to do is sell out, retire, and never have to work again. I can relate, even if I lack the skills to play the game.
That’s where we got antiwork, FIRE, etc. It’s true: nobody wants to work anymore. I sure don’t. Maybe we never did.
deleted by creator
Aka capitalists doin capitalism
I like and hate their shorts page. I like the fast pace consumption of good content but half of it is rage bait, onlyfans bait, low effort content theft, and people acting obnoxious for attention. I wish I had more control over what shows in shorts because the don’t recommend button doesn’t seem to do anything.
Shorts suggestions are based on what you watch. If you spend less time watching rage/OF bait shorts or just scroll past them, they will show you less of these. 95% of my shorts scrollpage is from creators and topics that I’m interested in.
Soo looks like you just like to watch this type of content if this is what the app is serving you.
I don’t like blaming the user, but I can confirm I only get shorts from creators I follow but then I also don’t tiktok scroll once I open a short, I will see a short on my home screen open it and then back out and watch the other one in the side scrolling list if it interests me
I know how it works and I’m saying it doesn’t work good enough. It shows things I like and subscribed to but it also shows me things I don’t want to see more often than I expect.
my feed should be all art videos then but its not. They throw in shit that I never look at.
Instagram reels never does this to me btw. I never really stray from watching speed paints/drawing tutorials/artist reels so that’s what I see.
Shorts are far from being the biggest problem, the ads are much much worse.
YouTube ads are so mild compared to other free content platforms though, even some paid services tbh.
Where have you seen ads worse than YouTube?
In freemium mobile games
Hulu
And what’s worse about Hulu is you pay to see those ads.
Cable TV has crazy long adverts about mesothelioma, the radio has big long ad breaks with police car sirens and nonsence in, have you been on a news site recently? It’s hard up find the story there are so many auto playing adverts and banners.
I think even twitch is worse, they randomly throw thirty seconds adverts up over the top of content so one moment you’re watching the key moment of a vital battle and the next you’re pulling your hair out while watching chat say ‘oh wow that was the funniest thing ever!’
What acceptable quality free content provider has less obnoxious ads? You can even skip most the YouTube ones after five seconds.
If we are starting to compare YouTube with TV and Radio ads, it’s a sign of how much worse it’s getting. A lot of people started got into the habit of watching YouTube because they were sick of TV ads.
The problem here is, just as it happened with TV itself, as the executives want ever growing profits over a saturated market, they add more and more ads. It used to be even Cable TV was sold with the promise of no ads, and so were streaming services. I remember when YouTube had 5 seconds of ads every hour. Now it’s pushing for two 7 second ads every 10 minutes, that is, when they don’t put longer unskippable ads there too. Wasn’t it enough to pay for the service before? Ads keep getting longer all the time, while our lives only get shorter.
Tubi is remarkable good about ads. Long watch times between ads.
