[HN Gopher] YouTube, the jewel of the internet
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       YouTube, the jewel of the internet
        
       Author : gumby
       Score  : 130 points
       Date   : 2023-04-23 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
        
       | lawrenceyan wrote:
       | Deriving pearls from the complex oyster that is our world.
        
       | grensley wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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!
        
           | SteveDR wrote:
           | 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
        
           | spydum wrote:
           | 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.
        
       | xrd wrote:
       | 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?
        
         | kmfrk wrote:
         | 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-...
        
         | sp332 wrote:
         | Well, YouTube Kids?
        
         | timbit42 wrote:
         | The following are all web browser add-ons:
         | 
         | "Unhook" hides the related videos, comments, shorts tab,
         | suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending tab and
         | other distractions on YouTube pages.
         | 
         | "BlockTube" lets you block channels or videos by ID, title
         | keywords, or comment content.
         | 
         | "Channel Blocker" puts an X next to the channel name on each
         | video. Clicking the X instantly and permanently removes the
         | channel from search results.
         | 
         | "uBlock Origin" removes ads from the beginning and within
         | videos.
         | 
         | "SponsorBlock" skips over a variety of uninteresting sections
         | of videos via crowdsourcing. You can choose which types of
         | sections you want to skip.
        
         | sgu999 wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | > And there is so much shit in between the good stuff.
         | 
         | Yeah discovery is really hard on there. So much loud crap :(
        
         | Jolter wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | tambourine_man wrote:
       | Why didn't the author linked to the examples he cites? It's
       | almost cruel.
        
         | ur-whale wrote:
         | > 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?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tus666 wrote:
       | No, no, surely it's Facebook!
       | 
       | I joke, I joke.
        
       | tambourine_man wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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 !)
        
         | throw_m239339 wrote:
         | > 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.
         | 
         | It's not uncommon to get spam from bots trying to impersonate
         | the video creator (same username, same avatar) and trying to
         | push crypto scams everytime one answers a comment. Youtube
         | hardly does anything about it.
        
         | jasmer wrote:
         | I see masses of bots and dregs in support of authoritarian
         | states.
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | The real comments are wholesome but a significant portion of
         | them are obvious scammers. It looks like such an easy problem
         | to solve, they are by accounts that literally post exactly the
         | same comment with a link on loads of videos.
        
         | mastax wrote:
         | Yeah. They seem to have had problems recently with some very
         | obvious spam bots, but other than that the quality is alright.
         | 
         | On some niche nerd channels the comments are often exceptional
         | and informative. Usually they're at least pleasant or amusing.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | petilon wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | jutrewag wrote:
         | YouTube's video player is the best and most responsive video
         | player online. I don't think I want any UI changes around it.
        
         | snug wrote:
         | 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
        
       | asdfman123 wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | zh3 wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | > 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?"
        
       | hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | causality0 wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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.
        
       | stolenmerch wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | jackcosgrove wrote:
       | > 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.
        
       | belter wrote:
       | https://archive.is/kUh3M
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | You can't even read the subtitle now. Focus on the clickbait.
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | waboremo wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | > 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
         | 
         | * 1x <1min
         | 
         | * 3x 4-6min
         | 
         | * 1x 10-12min
         | 
         | * 6x 13-20min
         | 
         | * 7x 20-40min
        
           | Zetice wrote:
           | 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.
        
       | turtleyacht wrote:
       | Recently:
       | 
       |  _YouTube, the Jewel of the Internet_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670162 - yesterday (1
       | comment)
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | This website has no connection to Internet Archive.
        
           | sp332 wrote:
           | No, but it does have a paywall that you can get around by
           | reading the archived version.
        
             | Kye wrote:
             | I didn't comment on that. Just the mistake about having
             | something to do with Internet Archive.
        
               | turtleyacht wrote:
               | (Edited the above.)
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | YinLuck- wrote:
             | [dead]
        
       | bdangubic wrote:
       | 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 :)
        
       | skywal_l wrote:
       | HN is the jewel of the internet. Youtube might be the amethyst
       | maybe?
        
         | crop_rotation wrote:
         | HN is too small to be the jewel of "the internet", and
         | irrelevant compared to YouTube for impact.
        
       | rcarr wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | bmitc wrote:
         | > 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.
         | 
         | I'm not convinced for YouTube. For the most part, I just see
         | Gen Zers teaching other Gen Zers. It is very rare to find
         | someone older on YouTube with actual, professional, real-world
         | experience, and if you do, the channel is not popular and is
         | thus buried in search results.
        
         | jjtheblunt wrote:
         | > They can literally leave school and already be professionally
         | competent.
         | 
         | How? (I'm misunderstanding.)
        
         | ZephyrBlu wrote:
         | YT helped me learn a lot about software engineering before I
         | had a professional SWE job, but it was nowhere near a
         | replacement for a bit of experience. My first 6mo at a good
         | company was very formative.
        
         | mkaic wrote:
         | 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...
        
         | tinyhouse wrote:
         | > Pretty soon I'm going to cancel Netflix and Prime too
         | 
         | No one is paying Prime for their video services...
        
         | menzoic wrote:
         | > No other generation in history has had such an opportunity.
         | 
         | I'm a milllenial that learned how to code at 14 using the
         | internet. To be fair to your point about "free" I did use
         | pirated software and a few pirated video courses
        
           | makapuf wrote:
           | At 14 I learned to code for "free" - minus very expensive
           | computer m y parents bought and a pirated copy of turbo
           | pascal and computer magazines. Magazines and books were not
           | as good but remember Internet made some other resources
           | disappear or rendered them less visible.
        
         | NickBusey wrote:
         | > 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.
         | 
         | I'm a millennial and I spent my youth learning everything there
         | is to know about my passions for free. YouTube is not they only
         | avenue of free online education.
        
         | waboremo wrote:
         | The resources that makes someone professionally competent are
         | gatekept until you enter the industry and no amount of video
         | content will change this. This means that despite a hire
         | potentially being extremely competent in the subject matter,
         | everything else around that is likely to be a "red flag" in the
         | hiring process and prevent them from gaining that professional
         | competency.
         | 
         | Which I hope changes, I suppose we'll see if millennials-as-
         | managers can change enough about the process to find and hire
         | these talents to nurture their professional competency. MAM's
         | also generally will also be less strict about traditional
         | processes which is exactly the type of environment these
         | talents need.
        
         | coliveira wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | wolverine876 wrote:
         | > They can literally leave school and already be professionally
         | competent.
         | 
         | Do you have evidence for that?
         | 
         | No training makes someone professionally competent, only being
         | a professional does. Even people who go through intense years
         | of law school or medical school, studying directly and
         | interactively with world-class scholars and peers, in actual
         | labs and courtrooms, are not professionally competent lawyers
         | or doctors. People with PhDs are not professionally competent
         | professors.
         | 
         | But focusing on training: I don't just accept any training when
         | hiring. What evidence do you have that videos on YouTube
         | provide a similarly high level of training? The Internet is
         | filled with nonsense, misinformation, and disinformation, and
         | it's clear that people don't make the effort to discrminate
         | between that and truth, and between just any truth and the best
         | knowledge and training. I'm certainly not giving someone or
         | YouTube the benefit of the doubt.
         | 
         | A strong counter-signal is someone saying they learned from
         | "YouTube", which is like saying they learned from "a book", and
         | demonstrates a lack of discrimination or even an awareness of
         | it - here is someone who lacks even the awareness that it's
         | problematic.
         | 
         | And learning from a video or a book has never been a high
         | standard of training; it's been a pejorative - 'they learned to
         | be a doctor from a book'. It's just not the same at all as
         | interactive learning with an expert (a professor), with peers,
         | with a diverse cirriculum, resources such as labs, an
         | institution geared toward creating effective learning programs.
         | Again, it shows a lack of discrimination and judgment, and of
         | even enough thought and skepticism to be aware of the issue.
         | 
         | People like YouTube because it's convenient, and because it's
         | trendy they can get away with not questioning it (and
         | dismissing these issues). I hire people who are committed to
         | being the best, who think deeply, skeptically, and
         | insightfully. I don't want to hire those who make serious
         | decisions - such as their career preparation - based on
         | convenience and who turn over analysis and decisions to the
         | Internet crowd-think.
         | 
         | Anecdotally, I've had people assert that to me how informative
         | certain YouTube videos are and show me them. When I take the
         | time to research it, most are nonsense - I just lack expertise
         | in the field and couldn't tell by watching (research
         | establishes that people are very poor at that, and I'd guess
         | that the obviously false ones don't get views). I have sought
         | and used some videos from specific sources, but then I'm not
         | learning from YouTube, I'm learning from that person. YouTube
         | as nothing to do with it; the medium has nothing to do with it;
         | if they wrote a book or article I'd have used that.
         | 
         | One way of thinking about the problem: Why is learning from
         | YouTube any better than learning from a book before YouTube?
        
         | irrational wrote:
         | > 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.
        
           | somethoughts wrote:
           | One trick I've used is to disable Youtube on all of the kids'
           | devices [1] and only enable it on the family living room TV.
           | 
           | Then rotate video selection powers to each family member so
           | that there's an equal mix of Mr Beast and Practical
           | Engineering/Vertasium/Tom Scott/City Beautiful/Sebastian
           | Lague etc.
           | 
           | [1] Chromebook with Family Link to only enable specific
           | websites.
        
           | AlbertCory wrote:
           | The lesson I get from all these replies is (shock & horror!):
           | 
           |  _Kids are different_. I hear of kids who are intelligent,
           | energetic, curious... all those good things. Probably NURTURE
           | (i.e. the parents) has something to do with that.
           | 
           | But then: also NATURE. Not having any kids myself, I'm not
           | going to preach.
        
             | durandal1 wrote:
             | The variety in temperament, interests and ability between
             | even siblings varies greatly. The people most eager to
             | share parenting advice is usually parents only one child
             | who is calm and attentive :) I've seen several parents in
             | that category have a second child and come out shocked.
             | 
             | I'm believe that beyond a base level of food, clean clothes
             | and love, your influence as a parent is marginal. It's also
             | a wildly unpopular but intelligence is highly genetic (at
             | least 50% of outcome determined by genes).
        
           | brewtide wrote:
           | I have a 9 and 7 year old and we are constantly enjoying such
           | YouTube channels as "smarter every day", "veritasium"
           | (spelling?), "Stuff made here", to some extent Colin furze,
           | "technology connections", and other such edutainment.
           | 
           | Not sure it speaks about differences in kids, in ages, in
           | households, or likely a combination of sorts.
           | 
           | Also, not a judgement on your kids, just a counterpoint about
           | the resources available and how some people will tend to
           | gravitate in different directions.
           | 
           | 7 year old daughter is learning to knit and forgot how to
           | "cast on" , so she jumped on YouTube to search a how-to and
           | had one of the methods figured out in 20 minutes.
           | 
           | So, perhaps it does have more to do with the availability of
           | such edutainment since they were very young -- we've been on
           | this path for 5 years or so and it has just become "the norm"
           | if we are to use YouTube as a household.
           | 
           | (I will admit that as Dad, my time on YouTube is split
           | between learning about whatever new hobby has peaked my
           | interest , currently SDR related stuff, and car related
           | material for fun. I've also fallen into the LTT universe, but
           | am aiming to back away because it, in my opinion , is just
           | providing that mindless watching which I aimed to get rid of
           | around 16 years old (ie, decades ago) to better use available
           | free time.
           | 
           | Seems everyone is just different, but the resources are for
           | sure there!
        
             | stormfather wrote:
             | Can you attribute your kids' behavior to any actions you
             | took or policies you had? Please don't be shy about it, I
             | would love to inculcate that into my kids as well.
        
           | MonaroVXR wrote:
           | > 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.
           | 
           | Anyone good suggestions?
        
           | brightball wrote:
           | This. It's the entire reason that I'm the unpopular parent
           | that doesn't let my kids have unlimited YouTube.
        
           | evanchisholm wrote:
           | I am currently in high school, you definitely are right that
           | the majority of people my age do just waste their time on
           | YouTube (I do too sometimes) but there are a few of us that
           | really take advantage of it. I have personally spent a large
           | amount of time on YouTube learning to program over the past
           | few years, I have now become quite competent and built some
           | pretty cool things on my own (search engines, chess bots,
           | personal web apps, competitive programming, etc.) My brother
           | older brother spent a lot of time watching videos about
           | physics and math to the point where he is now doing a physics
           | degree. A lot of my other friends have used it to cultivate
           | other skills and knowledge for free too.
        
             | EGreg wrote:
             | Do you think this would help your classsmates get more
             | interested:
             | 
             | https://teaching.app
        
               | 867-5309 wrote:
               | disclaimer: this is yours
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | Yes. That's why I am asking
        
               | Kye wrote:
               | It's good form to say you're the person behind the thing
               | you're recommending. Making stuff to solve problems is
               | the point of most of the domain this little website is
               | under, so self-promotion is fine, but not saying that's
               | what it is looks bad.
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | Right. But I'm not promoting it. I am definitely NOT
               | recommending it. It isn't even launched. I was attempting
               | to ask in an unbiased way whether it would help. That
               | would require one person (the one I am asking) to go and
               | check it out.
               | 
               | Yes, I omitted saying it's mine, not because of any
               | nefarious reason. Just didn't realize it was necessary to
               | simply ask an opinion of one person about whether it
               | would have the intended effect. And in my opinion it
               | would actually be counterproductive to reveal that I made
               | it.
        
               | Kye wrote:
               | That's promotion, though. It would be promotion if you
               | _didn 't_ make it. I've been accused of being a shill for
               | enough things I was enthusiastic about to be 100% sure of
               | this. And since you did make it, it's hard to argue you
               | don't benefit in some way from sharing it. That's why
               | disclosure is good form.
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | I don't think asking someone a question about their own
               | specific opinion about whether a particular website could
               | help their peers OR NOT, is the same as promotion. For
               | example, earlier today I promoted a service that I built
               | (see my comment history) and clearly disclosed that it's
               | mine.
               | 
               | In fact, sometimes you don't WANT the person to know
               | whether what you're asking about is yours, so they can
               | give a more honest assessment without worrying about
               | hurting your feelings. It should not matter, and for some
               | purposes it shoild be disclosed, whether you made it.
               | 
               | As for being accused of shilling... sounds like the crowd
               | accusing you was pretty extreme. The definition of a
               | shill from Wikipedia is indeed nefarious:
               | 
               |  _In most uses, shill refers to someone who purposely
               | gives onlookers, participants or "marks" the impression
               | of an enthusiastic customer independent of the seller,
               | marketer or con artist, for whom they are secretly
               | working. The person or group in league with the shill
               | relies on crowd psychology to encourage other onlookers
               | or audience members to do business with the seller or
               | accept the ideas they are promoting. Shills may be
               | employed by salespeople and professional marketing
               | campaigns. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to a
               | person who is secretly in league with another person or
               | outside organization while pretending to be neutral or
               | part of the organization in which they are planted, such
               | as a magician's audience, a political party, or an
               | intelligence organization_
        
               | Kye wrote:
               | All you're doing here is turning what looked innocent and
               | well-intentioned into something suspicious. I hope you
               | learn to take feedback better before your app is big
               | enough that handling it poorly does real damage.
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | This is Hacker News. It is reasonable to have substantive
               | discussion and correct mistakes. We are deep in a comment
               | thread hardly anyone will see. So I think it's OK to
               | explain where I am coming from.
               | 
               | It _was_ innocent and well-intentioned. You just
               | misunderstood the intention. If people say there is a
               | systemic problem X in high school, and a high schooler
               | confirms most of their friends have problem X, what do
               | you think is more well-intentioned:
               | 
               | 1) Promotion: Hey high school student! I built Y! Check
               | it out! Tell all your friends! I think it might help
               | them! Or...
               | 
               | 2) Feedback: Hey high school student, do you THINK this
               | COULD help your friends or not: Y
               | 
               | My purpose was 2. I sometimes do 1, but here that was not
               | my intent. When I'm promoting something, you know it. Now
               | that you highlighted that I made it, though, it defeats
               | much of the original intent. So now it has turned into a
               | conversation about whether people can have purposes other
               | than promotion. That's fine. It is somewhat useful for me
               | to get this straightened out. I won't get an unbiased
               | answer anymore, but I can get them elsewhere when I do
               | case studies and beta testing.
               | 
               | bottom line: doing a clinical trial or experiment or beta
               | testing or asking someone's opinion isn't always
               | primarily about promotion.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | zo1 wrote:
               | Be careful what you do on the internet. This thread will
               | forever be connected to this "teaching.app" website, your
               | down-votes, and your tone-def responses to the people
               | trying to explain why they think you should have
               | disclosed that you made the website, and also the name
               | "EGreg"..
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | That is a fairly good point, zo1. Sadly I think that,
               | with generative AI and fake bot accounts, it will become
               | very easy to create all kinds of negative associations
               | and destroy reputations. A thread somewhere deep inside
               | Hacker News won't rank highly for teaching.app when it
               | launches - but in a year from now, far worse things would
               | be going on (primarily because of generative AI making
               | such attacks cheap).
               | 
               | My entire comment history has been one of discussing in
               | good faith and standing up for what I believe in. You
               | prefer that I back down and agree to something when I can
               | correct the misunderstanding. That's your prerogative. I
               | see nothing to be ashamed of.
               | 
               | If someone wants to misinterpret what I say or take it
               | out of context, I can't stop it. Most celebrities cause
               | far worse outrage when they get famous, I am rather
               | careful with my words. I have made a decision for myself
               | long ago that integrity and standing for what you believe
               | in, in good faith, is worth it to me more than attempting
               | to be too political. I could be wrong. We'll see.
        
               | froggit wrote:
               | Nah, no one is saying you're being nefarious. We just
               | don't understand why you aren't proud enough to openly
               | declare that's your work that you're not not promoting.
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | It's not that I am not proud enough.
               | 
               | I was simply interested in the opinion of a thoughtful
               | high schooler who is aware of what his friends are doing.
               | I want to help fix society, including teenage education.
               | This is how I do it -- using software. I encountered an
               | opportunity to ask an unbiased question and I took it --
               | without biasing it with "Heey, what do you think of MY
               | project that I clearly worked hard on?" That wouldn't be
               | neutral and thus defeat the purpose of asking the
               | question. Reading into this that I am somehow looking to
               | promote it is wrong. It would be a terrible way to
               | promite, anyway. There can be other reasons for asking a
               | question deep inside a comment thread that hardly anyone
               | sees, than low key trying to draw attention to a project
               | for purposes of promoting it. Besides, it isn't even
               | launched yet.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | hyperliner wrote:
             | [dead]
        
           | shriek wrote:
           | Yep, same with my nephews and nieces too. It doesn't help
           | that YT algo pushes these contents to the front and center as
           | trending content.
           | 
           | But, those who do put some effort on actually making good use
           | of this platform definitely has huge advantage than our
           | generation growing up though. So, in that regard I'm still
           | optimistic that our future generation will be much smarter
           | than us.
        
           | ur-whale wrote:
           | > They are passionate about cheap mindless entertainment.
           | 
           | Everyone hopes that their kids will be exceptional.
           | 
           | You just have normal kids, get over it.
        
           | kubectl_h wrote:
           | Watching kids watch youtube is like watching zombies.
           | 
           | I know a kid who is a big fan of any kind of sports. He is
           | constantly watching youtube videos that are basically stats
           | and clips packaged up with some slight humor but very little
           | analysis. This kid has basically an encyclopedic knowledge of
           | sports... stats. All from youtube. I was also like this to a
           | degree as a kid, but I got my info from stats
           | books/magazines/newspaper sports sections. So in a way the
           | outcomes are the similar -- young kids love looking at the
           | numbers -- but I can't help but feel icky about the way
           | youtube can just lock a kid in for hours and hours.
           | 
           | * Example video about Tim Lincecum that basically enumerates
           | the stats of his career but doesn't discuss anything else --
           | his personality, his pitches, his unconventional delivery,
           | etc. Just clips (that repeat) and stats. It's bizarre.
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgaPKJIF_Zo
        
             | meken wrote:
             | Not really sure what you're talking about when you say that
             | vid just enumerates stats. There's a lot of narrative and
             | comparison and context put into that video. Comparing it to
             | how I grew up watching ESPN Sportscenter, I find that YT
             | video much richer and varied
        
             | expertentipp wrote:
             | > Watching kids watch youtube is like watching zombies.
             | 
             | My heart breaks when I see nephews playing dumb mobile
             | games and watch youtube videos of someone playing games,
             | all these interrupted with multiple full screen ads which
             | they also diligently watch. Fuck these platforms and all
             | their creators.
        
               | api wrote:
               | We banned YouTube after the kids would do nothing but
               | watch junk like PrestonPlayz for hours and hours. It was
               | really rotting their brains. We have seen positive growth
               | in their interests and behavior since it was banned.
               | 
               | YT is full of good content but the good content is not
               | addictive or viral and the viral addictive content is not
               | good. There might be a few kids that will gravitate
               | toward substance but I have yet to see one. If we visit a
               | home with YT enabled the kids are watching hours and
               | hours of trash.
        
           | momirlan wrote:
           | totally in agreement, my kids are just the same. me and wife,
           | we read a lot of literature, poetry, classics, they don't
           | touch books.
        
           | mchaynes wrote:
           | Gen Z here. I grew up on YouTube. I'm 25 now, so technically
           | a cusper but had an iPod touch and YouTube since third grade.
           | 
           | Videos of travel have a lot of value. I was stuck behind a
           | desk for 4 years at my programming job. The last 7 months of
           | travel has done so much for the rest of my entire human
           | experience that I could never get from a textbook. Plus it's
           | fun to see people explore the world. We've been fascinated by
           | this stuff since the beginning of humanity.
           | 
           | Reality videos and reality TV all show elements of how
           | relationship dynamics work. They often are fraught with bad
           | narratives, but they model conflict and resolution between
           | people. This can be helpful as a guide to understanding human
           | interaction.
           | 
           | I'm not saying that it is all bringing value to their lives,
           | but there is something inherently interesting about the
           | content they're consuming. Otherwise, they wouldn't be.
           | 
           | The challenge for you is to go into their world and
           | understand what they value. You might even change your
           | definition of the word "value"
        
           | radicaldreamer wrote:
           | A lot of that stuff is going to be AI generated in the future
           | and it'll hit those dopamine circuits better than human
           | generated content ever could
        
             | api wrote:
             | Now we know what all the Borg were doing in their cube
             | ships. Between occasional bouts of conquest and
             | assimilation they were all frying in a sizzling bath of
             | repetitive dopamine triggering meme soup created by AIs and
             | other members of the hive mind.
             | 
             | Maybe they lurched out and attacked or assimilated someone
             | when a new trending channel appeared that urged such
             | activities.
             | 
             | I joke but it really is a bit spooky how _plausible_ the
             | Borg are today to the point that I can imagine what it
             | would be like to be part of them. It'd be like scrolling
             | TikTok but with Neuralink.
        
           | SnowHill9902 wrote:
           | It's your responsibility to guide them.
        
             | djaychela wrote:
             | If only it was that simple. In my experience (with four
             | step kids aging from 23 down to 16, and I've been in that
             | position for over 13 years), I'd say my input has had maybe
             | 5-10% influence, if that.
             | 
             | If they're not interested in that area (and mine aren't),
             | then there's not much you can do, even if you spend a lot
             | of time and effort trying.
        
             | irrational wrote:
             | Like I said, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't
             | make them drink. Agency is a double edged sword.
        
               | zo1 wrote:
               | The "agency" that is dominated by the influence of their
               | peers, schooling, and media you allow them to consume as
               | impressionable and _innocent_ individuals.
               | 
               | Normally I'd say let them grow, have their own agency and
               | learn the world in their own eyes with parental
               | supervision. But right now, the media and culture are so
               | highly toxic and degenerate, that I say it's our duty as
               | parents (and humans) to shield them from that, and
               | instilling positive values.
        
         | pcthrowaway wrote:
         | > 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
         | 
         | I don't follow this. I'm a millennial, graduated university 10
         | years ago, and by my estimation, that was the golden age of
         | MOOCs (many of the courses available for free back then require
         | payment now, and several of the MOOC platforms have shut down)
         | 
         | I don't consider bespoke youtube videos to be as rigorous with
         | regards to structuring a topic
        
           | BlueTemplar wrote:
           | Yeah, including Wikibooks... and why hasn't anyone brought up
           | Wikipedia yet ?!
           | 
           | It's when I discovered it in 2006 when it _really_ dawned on
           | me just how immense the potential of the Internet was !
        
           | raincole wrote:
           | Youtube videos are good for "fixing your own pipelines" kinda
           | of problem.
           | 
           | I don't think they're good for, for example, programmering.
        
         | yodsanklai wrote:
         | > They can literally leave school and already be professionally
         | competent.
         | 
         | I really wonder about that. Learning anything requires active
         | participation and motivation. YouTube provides great content,
         | but I'd say it's the easy part. BTW, public libraries existed
         | before youtube.
         | 
         | My personal example, I graduated in maths 20 years ago and
         | spent countless hours solving problems. Nowadays, I'm a youtube
         | addict, I casually watch lots of videos, but I have very little
         | attention span left, and don't build serious knowledge about
         | anything.
         | 
         | But your hypothesis could be assessed based on data. I may be
         | wrong, but I suspect students math proficiency has declined in
         | most western countries.
        
           | wildrhythms wrote:
           | School is less about learning a subject to any serious
           | degree, and more about socialization and exposure to a
           | breadth of subjects. I am suspect of people who view school
           | purely as an educational experience.
        
             | inkywatcher wrote:
             | You say "socialization" but I think the real word is
             | "conformity".
        
               | dmreedy wrote:
               | Yes, societal institutions have a flywheel effect of
               | normalization on those who pass through them. This is
               | foundational to a cooperative society. They provide a
               | background context to evaluate actions within, and define
               | oneself in, or against.
               | 
               | Consider your Shannon Information. Meaning does not exist
               | without context.
        
             | jjtheblunt wrote:
             | Is "calculus" a hard core counterexample?
        
             | yadingus wrote:
             | I think the socialization argument is a fallacy, in my
             | experience there is absolutely no effort to guide or
             | educate or provide any sort of understanding or framework
             | of _how_ to socialize, how to cope with interactions, your
             | own feelings, etc.
             | 
             | It's just putting them all together and taking action if
             | something too drastic happens, but there's no actual
             | dedicated time for teaching how to socialize, you're on
             | your own.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | imbnwa wrote:
             | Socialization is an artifact, not the purpose, of most
             | modern schooling in America; not like kids weren't
             | socializing in mines and factories, though they likely had
             | way more sense of consequence for their behavior in those
             | environments. That said, education is also secondary except
             | for, in urban public schools at least, the tier of students
             | that are filtered for to benefit.
        
         | liendolucas wrote:
         | I can't understand people paying for streaming services like
         | Netflix & competition, where all their catalogs are region-
         | locked and every single one of them producing mostly crappy
         | shows/movies (at least that's the Netflix I experienced last
         | time I was able to use someone else's account on someone else's
         | computer many years ago, so I must assume as everything else,
         | things get worse, not better).
         | 
         | What would I pay for? A good streaming service where I can
         | choose movies that at least for me are worth watching: good
         | stories, classics, italian, french, spanish movies, independent
         | productions, low-budget productions and non-mainstream
         | gargantuan productions. Definitely not a service that literally
         | invites you to consume whatever crap they produce and put in
         | front of your screen to keep people paying for subscriptions.
         | What I would also pay for? A service that after watching a
         | movie allows me to actually purchase a digital DRM-free copy of
         | the movie for some extra few bucks. Any suggestions?
         | 
         | I've heavily switched my screen habit, now I find myself most
         | of the time reading books, as my father used to say: "You
         | produce your very own version of the film in your head". I used
         | to read regularly as a kid, then there's a huge gap where I
         | haven't touched books for years. The only regret I have is that
         | I haven't kept this habit all this time.
         | 
         | Edit: Some corrections.
        
           | schrectacular wrote:
           | You might like the Criterion Collection streaming service.
           | Not a customer but love their movie collection.
        
             | liendolucas wrote:
             | LOL. I'm currently in Italy and I'm getting: "Sorry. This
             | is currently unavailable in your region. Type in your email
             | below and tell the producers you want it in your country!"
             | (when trying to sign in, don't know if it's worth trying
             | with a VPN service tough)
        
           | BlueTemplar wrote:
           | My local cinema does that DRM-free movie on USB key thing...
           | even if you do not watch the movie first !
           | 
           | (As you can imagine, it doesn't show _any_ Marvel movies or
           | the like...)
        
         | submeta wrote:
         | > just cancelled Spotify and got YouTube Premium
         | 
         | Did this some time ago. Never looked back.
        
         | flandish wrote:
         | My problem with yt music is that certain albums will ask you if
         | you approve playing, even with age and content restrictions
         | off.
         | 
         | Rage Against The Machine's first album has "disturbing" album
         | art.
         | 
         | It asks for EVERY song.
         | 
         | Song in a playlist?
         | 
         | Playlist stopped waiting for you to ask.
         | 
         | Terrible UX, imho.
        
           | porkbeer wrote:
           | Its soft censorship, yt is famous for it.
        
         | noloblo wrote:
         | archive link unpaywall :
         | https://archive.is/20230422002004/https://www.ft.com/content...
        
       | alex_young wrote:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline
        
       | rolph wrote:
       | a cavity concealed jewel perhaps?
        
       | 1023bytes wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | Yes, I often now use another search engine, such as DDG, to
         | search YouTube.
        
       | mastax wrote:
       | 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."
        
         | seanalltogether wrote:
         | I feel like i used to rely on reddit to surface all the new and
         | interesting content creators on youtube, but nowadays i just go
         | to youtube itself when I'm looking for something new to watch.
         | I think all of the new content creators I've found in the past
         | year have come from youtube recommendations
        
         | mgfist wrote:
         | It's decent but I feel like it lacks granularity. Everything is
         | either genre A or genre B or genre C, with each being very
         | narrow fields - sometimes a "genre" might contain a few select
         | youtubers, even though there are thousands of channels that
         | feature similar content.
         | 
         | Whereas twitter for me is much more nuanced, and I'm constantly
         | being exposed to the fringes of my interests which helps me
         | organically grow my feed.
        
         | deepzn wrote:
         | oh wow exactly. When i go on incognito, im terrified at all the
         | "viral" kinds of news,etc type of vids recommended to me.
        
         | deepzn wrote:
         | btw has anyone tried YT (& premium specifically) on an iPad?
         | it's like 10x better. I don't use it enough. Just in my bed
         | haha.
        
         | robinsonb5 wrote:
         | I do have some admiration for the algorithm - but I also wish
         | that refreshing the home page would show me some more of the
         | many thousands of videos that I'd likely find interesting,
         | rather than the same 20 just in a different order.
        
           | sebzim4500 wrote:
           | I think I'd be anxious then that if I saw two videos that I
           | really wanted to watch I'd have to one in a background tabs,
           | rather than just trust that the other one will almost
           | certainly be recommended again.
        
           | kccqzy wrote:
           | That is not what I want. There should be an explicit button
           | to refresh the recommendations. What I hate is a
           | recommendation page that displayed what I liked but made them
           | disappear just because I temporarily navigated away.
        
           | TheAceOfHearts wrote:
           | It's very well hidden, but if you scroll to the end of the
           | filter tags there's a button to show "New For You", which
           | shows a screen full of new recommendations each time you
           | refresh. Sometimes I'll roll the dice a few times with that
           | page and find really interesting stuff.
        
           | mastax wrote:
           | I'm glad that the home page is semi-stable because I'll often
           | click on a video and then go back and want to queue up
           | another that looked interesting but if it were gone it might
           | be hard to find again. (Yes there are strategies to work
           | around this but I don't always use them).
           | 
           | They do have the "New to You" category on the home page now
           | which you might find useful.
        
             | silvestrov wrote:
             | The should have a page with "recently shown on home page"
             | like the history page for actually shown videos.
        
             | deepzn wrote:
             | i had this happen to me. ive lost videos I wanted to see
             | when i clicked one instead of another.
        
             | deepzn wrote:
             | also being new to TikTok, I didn't realize scrolling up at
             | first would refresh the queue of videos. And I would lose
             | the vid being watched which was a bit terrifying to lose an
             | interesting video.
        
         | WanderPanda wrote:
         | Watching one ,,wrong" video can mess everything up for a couple
         | of weeks though, which always gives me some level of anxiety :D
        
           | deepzn wrote:
           | true, I have to say "Not interested" a couple times
        
           | GalenErso wrote:
           | I open Incognito mode when I'm about to watch a video like
           | that.
        
           | kevingadd wrote:
           | You can usually go into your history and remove it to fix it.
        
         | ur-whale wrote:
         | >I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube
         | algorithm is great.
         | 
         | I agree with the minor caveat that I'd like a "broaden" button
         | and a "change theme" menu.
         | 
         | My search algorithm presents me with content that I find quite
         | enjoyable, but I'd like to be exposed to a little more stuff
         | that's outside of my bubble.
         | 
         | It knows what I like based on what I've watched, but it doesn't
         | _know me_ and therefore can 't infer stuff I don't know but
         | would enjoy if I was exposed to it.
        
           | mastax wrote:
           | On the top of the home page they have a category control that
           | lets you look for different genres of stuff from your
           | algorithm plus a "new to you" category. I think that's
           | supposed to be what you're after. I hardly ever use it
           | because I forget it's there or don't need it to steer the
           | algorithm my way.
        
             | natebc wrote:
             | I always see that when visiting the YouTube site but it's
             | very inconsistent in the Android app.
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | Yup, I'm the same. I've totally given up on navigating anything
         | except my home page, I'm actually astonished at how good it is.
         | 
         | The newest videos from my favorite channels are always listed
         | first, and then it's a smattering of older popular ones from
         | the topics and channels I watch the most, and a handful of
         | things "adjacent" to those that are sometimes not for me but
         | sometimes become my new favorite rabbit hole, so I'm very
         | thankful they're there. (For me it's a lot of educational
         | content like architecture tours and urban engineering and how-
         | it's-made, plus content from certain comedians and sketch
         | comedy groups.)
         | 
         | I know there's supposed to be a bunch of clickbait garbage on
         | YouTube but I just wouldn't know, because I literally never see
         | it.
         | 
         | (Plus there are new tabs at the top that actually _list_ the
         | topics it 's learned I like, so if I want to see 20
         | architecture videos instead of just 2, it's a single tap to
         | filter. It's remarkably clever.)
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | > I know there's supposed to be a bunch of clickbait garbage
           | on YouTube but I just wouldn't know, because I literally
           | never see it.
           | 
           | Just sort by view count for any common english word and
           | filter out the music videos.
           | 
           | Well, even including music videos there appear to be several
           | dozen or hundred accounts dedicated to reposting the exact
           | same Indian music videos, film trailers, clips, etc...
           | 
           | Not even small variations of the same content, the exact same
           | video.
           | 
           | Some of the accounts look like plausible media
           | distributors/producers in India but quite a large fraction
           | seem to be bots or individuals spamming.
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | Yeah, I really have no complaints. Of all "we feed you content"
         | thingies online, YouTube has been the most adequate.
         | 
         | The only complaint I have is what human behaviour forces even
         | the intelligent creators to do: have a title card with an
         | excited looking person.
        
           | fsckboy wrote:
           | this is how low we've sunk, you don't even say that youtube
           | is adequate, you say it's the most adequate
           | 
           | Just to add my anecdata to the mix, I'm waist deep in
           | logging-in to gmail and workplace apps, etc, but to
           | compensate have abandoned android for iPhone, and I never use
           | google search, and while I watch plenty on youtube, it's
           | never required me to log in so I've never logged in, I don't
           | even have any idea how much it "integrates" with other google
           | logins or not at all. Am I missing out on something, is there
           | some benefit to logging in?
           | 
           | My main complaint about youtube is that it used to be fun and
           | quirky and have lots of "raw" content, and now everything is
           | overproduced, festooned with graphics and clickbait. So many
           | channels I would like to blacklist but nothing like that is
           | possible. Technologically it works well, and I know there's
           | content out there that I'll like, but unless I have a link to
           | it or know exactly what to search for, it's very hard to find
           | things. If there are channels I like and watch regularly, I
           | sure don't need the algorithm showing them to me, but any
           | sort of "maybe you'd like this too" seems totally broken, or
           | at least completely lowest common denominator.
        
             | disntthinkthis wrote:
             | YouTube has been showing me a ton of channels with low
             | Hundreds of views recently, and they're very to my taste.
             | Ymmv but they're doing well at exactly what you're
             | complaining about in my experience
        
         | gambiting wrote:
         | Same here. I pretty much only watch car channels and some meme
         | compilations and that's exactly what YouTube shows me, nothing
         | else.
        
         | smeagull wrote:
         | If I hear "not what you think", "may surprise you" or "what
         | happens when" then I just close the tab as a reflex.
        
       | wwarner wrote:
       | btw the feynman lecture mentioned in the article is first rate, a
       | bit mind blowing
        
       | kubectl_h wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | You can pay for YT premium from Google play dollars which have
         | gift cards. It's a little bit annoying to set up though.
        
       | loloquwowndueo wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | Zetice wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | > 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 wrote:
             | 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.
        
       | jasmer wrote:
       | What is truly astonishing is that there are not many other
       | competitors that are consistently as good.
        
       | logicallee wrote:
       | (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?
        
       | cypherpunks01 wrote:
       | Sans paywall:
       | 
       | https://t.co/ZyQ4Xz9zX9
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-23 23:00 UTC)