[HN Gopher] Clickbait is unreasonably effective [video]
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Clickbait is unreasonably effective [video]
Author : underscore_ku
Score : 109 points
Date : 2021-08-22 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| pininja wrote:
| And here Veritasium already practiced an idea in this video! When
| I watched this a few days ago it was still called "We Need To
| Talk About Clickbait." I guess that didn't convert enough, so
| they tweaked the name to "Clickbait Is Unreasonably Effective,"
| but kept the thumbnail the same (for now).
| Leftium wrote:
| Veritasium also tested different versions of the thumbnail.
| Here's a snapshot of when the thumbnail said "It's important;
| I'll explain with data:" https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuUES.png
|
| I saw the video shortly after it was released, and I thought it
| was ironic the video had a relatively weak thumbnail and title.
| lawl wrote:
| > Veritasium also tested different versions of the thumbnail
|
| Pretty sure there automated tools that A/B test thumbs and
| titles and most big youtubers use them and then just add a
| bunch of titles and thumbs that are automatically tested.
| SimeVidas wrote:
| I was actually confused for a few seconds whether I already
| watched this video because the title changed.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| The Veritasium channel does this with all its videos; it lets
| Derek test which thumbnail/titles are effective and which
| aren't. He talks about it in this
| videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 at about the
| 15:50-16:00 mark
| nonfamous wrote:
| There was a section near the end of video where the background
| flashed dozens of images in rapid succession. I'm not familiar
| with the process of setting thumbnails in YT videos - do you
| have to choose a frame from the actual video, and is this a
| trick to provide many potential thumbnails to choose from?
| Laremere wrote:
| This used to be the case but isn't anymore.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _" Now there seems to be a paradox when it comes to clickbait.
| People almost universally claim to hate it, but you also see it
| everywhere."_
|
| His paradox of clickbait is very... interesting. I propose a
| similar paradox of used car salesmen: _People say they hate it
| when used car salesmen lie to them, yet used car salesmen who lie
| the most sell the most cars!_
| ewag wrote:
| I think the more people we educate on critical thinking, the
| less effective click bait will be.
|
| Today though, if a used car salesman has some truly great cars
| that people really need but nobody buys them because Donald
| down the street is pulling people in to buy lemons with bald
| faced lies...well, that's sort of the conundrum we find
| ourselves in, isn't it?
| grumbel wrote:
| The core issue isn't education, but that as a user you have
| little to no control over the recommendation system and the
| rest of the Youtube experience. So even if you hate clickbait
| and want to get rid of it, there is nothing that you can do
| to make it disappear from your Youtube. Google fully controls
| what you get to see and they don't care if you feel happy or
| educated from watching videos, they only care that you keep
| watching so that they can show you ads.
|
| To have any hope of fixing this we'd need to separate the
| curation of content from the hosting of content.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I really appreciate his current title of that example video "The
| Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - The Collatz Conjecture"
| because the thing that pisses me off most about clickbait is that
| I just don't know what the video or article is even about. It
| just creates an immediate dilemma which I personally find
| stressful. I think it actually violates the principle of autonomy
| because they're intentionally taking away your ability to make an
| informed decision. People mention deception but it's a little bit
| more than that because of this.
|
| Maybe that's me, but I think the worst offenders are the ones who
| actually disappoint (Veritasium not being one.) How can we
| disincentivize them doing that? Currently, there seems to be
| little downside for them completely misrepresenting their
| content.
| nonfamous wrote:
| At least in that particular case the image (if not the title)
| gave you, personally, the information you needed about the
| video topic. If you know what the Collatz Conjecture is, the
| image "3x+1" makes the topic obvious. If you don't, your
| curiosity is piqued.
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What's left out of most discussions of clickbait are the
| questions of consequence and of engineered promotionn.
|
| Clickbait is effective _where it can be employed without
| consequence_. YouTube is one such domain.
|
| It's _inordinately_ effective where algorithms promote material
| based on short-term appeal rather than long-term benefit.
|
| Where either or both of these factors are addressed, clickbait
| doesn't disappear entirely (it _does_ hook into human
| psychology), but its effectiveness and power fall markedly.
|
| YouTube does not support blocking of individual channels by
| users, or at least didn't as of the last time I used it whilst
| logged in (some years ago). If I'm presented with content that is
| absolute bilgewater, I cannot in any way indicate to the system
| "do not show me content from this source at all ever". This is
| the equivalent of a _privately-functioning_ super-downvote, and
| is an exceedingly strong signal YouTUbe are denying themselves
| over content quality. Its availability would be among the very
| few possible reasons I 'd consider accessing the service other
| than anonymously (and preferably through a front-end such as
| Invidious or FixYT, or commandline / terminal tools such as
| youtube-dl, mpv, or mps-youtube). Eventually, YouTube might
| themselves consider re-jiggering their recommendations away from
| channels which are consistently blocked.
|
| In the absence, attention and misdirection games can be played,
| repeatedly, without risk.
|
| (Oh: and quality contributors such as Derek Muller are also
| harmed by this as they're competing with scum-sucking bottom
| feeders for their own far superior productions.)
|
| The other aspect is that the algorithm itself promotes short-term
| engagement at the cost of not only long-term value and quality,
| but genuine social harm, as has been well documented over recent
| years. (Including by Destin Sandler in an excellent 3-part series
| on online disinformation, the YouTube segment is here:
| https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4) This means that the
| _existing_ psychological highjacking is further juiced
| algorithmically.
|
| On desktop systems where the option is available to me, I use CSS
| hacks to remove _both_ recommendations _and_ comments from
| YouTube. The experience improves tremendously. (Stylish:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-the...
| though the uBlock Origin elements remover can also be used for
| this.)
|
| I've just had an exchange with dang about a recent submission and
| site which makes no bones about its dedication to pseudoscience
| and disinformation. Hacker News _does_ have a policy of
| penalising (though not completely blocking) such sites. In our
| back-and-forth, dang offered (tongue-in-cheek, I 'm pretty sure),
| that any strict "no bullshit" rule would render much of the
| present-day Internet inadmissable on HN. The longer I think that
| over, the more my response is "Yes, and that would be a Good
| Thing."
|
| (I'm well aware if issues with truth-determination, epistemology,
| simple errors, politically-motivated censorship, and more. I'm
| referring here to publishers and authors who specifically and
| categorically defend posting of bullshit, though that's not the
| full extent of what I'd object to. I refer to Dante's _Inferno_
| in which it is the 8th of the 9 circles to which false
| counselors, falsifiers, hypocrits, schismatics, corrupt
| politicians, flatterers, pimps, and seducers are consigned.
| Violations of trust strike at the very heart of polity and
| civilisation.)
|
| http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/dante-alighieris-i...
|
| In my experience on the non-commerial, non-algorithmic, and
| distributed social platforms of Mastodon / the Fediverse and
| Diaspora, I find that whilst bullshit isn't entirely absent, its
| role is much reduced.
|
| There is no algorithm to juice its spread.
|
| On Mastodon, instances can elect to federate fully, partially, or
| not at all with others. Smaller instances can define and tune
| their interactions with others quite specifically. (The instance
| I'm on, toot.cat, run by a long-time online friend, has a
| substantial list of limited and silenced servers:
| https://toot.cat/about/more)
|
| Diaspora dates from somewhat earlier, and has a more open
| philosophy toward content, though repeat disinformation, attacks
| and threats, and spam _are_ dealt with in at least part. Among my
| contacts, we share information on block-worthy profiles based on
| various criteria. (Such informal lists are a frequent occurrence,
| especially in the absence of more powerful tools. They 're not
| without their own risks and failure modes, including inadvertent
| or unwarranted inclusion.)
|
| The larger point though is that clickbait is a phenomenon
| actively and intentionally supported by algorithmic social media
| to serve its short-term benefits. It does so at its own long-term
| cost.
| shadilay wrote:
| >YouTube does not support blocking of individual channels by
| users, or at least didn't as of the last time I used it whilst
| logged in (some years ago).
|
| They do have this now and I've blocked dozens of channels. It's
| the only thing that makes YT watchable. I do wish I could see
| the list of blocked channels though. Promotion for niche
| content on other channels is also not great.
| freemint wrote:
| > It's inordinately effective where algorithms promote material
| based on short-term appeal rather than long-term benefit.
|
| Could propose a way to measure long-term benefit?
|
| If you have an proposal for a metric, can it be used to make
| decisions which video to show now, without needing to access to
| information from the future?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Where is the clue and creator talent going?
|
| Is current usage an indication of attraction (appeal) or of
| frustration (lack of a viable alternative)?
|
| That said, the problematique of distinguishing short-term and
| long-term benefits (or harms) is a difficult one. It's
| inherently one that markets fail at fairly spectacularly,
| though so do numerous other systems.
|
| I'd ... expect ... that there's some prior literature on this
| in the media space. It's also in large part the domain of
| aesthetics in philosophy.
|
| There are a few institutions which have managed to retain a
| high quality standard over time. At the scale of the
| Internet, I'd nominate HN, and largely credit its moderation
| for that. Having principles, values, and an enforcement
| mechanism for those helps.
|
| At a larger and longer-term scale, universities are among the
| very longest-lived and highly-durable human and social
| institutions. I'm not sure of all the reasons for this, and
| it's possible that in some cases this is a historical
| accident. It's also true that there have historicially been
| tremendous barriers to entry. Oxford and Cambridge in England
| / the UK had a chartered monopoly on _all_ higher education
| _until the 19th century_. Even after the removal of that
| protection, they 've remained highly durable as elite
| institutions.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Click bait is why I click on any title. I, like many others here
| spend 12-18hours a day on the internet for work and otherwise,
| can almost sense a BS title from experience.
| karmakaze wrote:
| OT: Youtube should adopt Github-like URLs so you could know that
| this was a Veritasium video just by looking at the link.
| Secondly, HN should show more of the URL for such sites.
| [deleted]
| jstanley wrote:
| Which part of the URL would you want to see more of? YouTube
| doesn't include the creator's username in the URL
| unfortunately. Maybe they should!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _IF_ Youtube revealed the creator 's channel on the URL
| _THEN_ HN could (and should) show that element.
|
| Note that the suggested change would also better enable my
| requested feature of being able to block specific channels by
| providing the in-URL hooks to do so.
|
| (Not OP.)
| AvocadoCake wrote:
| Furthermore, it would allow me to turn off my ad-block for
| certain creators, without making me suffer through ads on
| videos made by creators I'm not willing to support in that
| way.
| nett18 wrote:
| He even renamed _that_ video, it was called something along the
| lines of "We need to talk about clickbait" previously.
| hartator wrote:
| Veritasium is an awesome channel. Check his videos out if you
| haven't already.
|
| Derek wrote a PHD on how to make videos interesting while
| learning and his YouTube reflects some deep thoughts on how to do
| that. Quality is awesome, he is personable, and you feel you
| always learn some deep insider knowledge.
| [deleted]
| paulpauper wrote:
| Didn't know you could get a phd in that
| TchoBeer wrote:
| some quick research says that he got a PhD in physics
| education research from the University of Sydney. You can
| read his PhD thesis, "Designing Effective Multimedia for
| Physics Education", right here: https://www.sydney.edu.au/sci
| ence/physics/pdfs/research/supe...
| latexr wrote:
| He has a short (6 minutes) TED talk on the subject. "The
| key to effective educational science videos":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQaW2bFieo8
| cturhan wrote:
| It's so interesting that YouTube doesn't support A/B test for
| title and graphics.
| LordAtlas wrote:
| External paid tools like TubeBuddy and VidIQ allow you to do
| that. Most large channels use them for constant testing.
| spuz wrote:
| How can an external tool do this? As far as I know, there is
| no way to show half of your audience a title/thumbnail and
| the other half another title/thumbnail. If they are not
| testing different variants at the same time, it limits what
| can be learnt from the experiment.
| Cipater wrote:
| _TubeBuddy 's A/B Testing works by having you create a
| variation of a video's metadata (this could include the
| Thumbnail, Title, Tags or Description). We then alternate
| your video's metadata every 24 hours at Midnight PST (to
| line up with YouTube Analytics statistics). The test
| completes either based on a certain number of days that you
| picked or based on statistical significance being
| achieved._
|
| _In an ideal world, we 'd be able to have each impression
| throughout the day alternate between the Original and
| Variation which would be a 'true' A/B test. Since YouTube
| analytics are only provided in 24 hours blocks, our current
| system is basically the best that can be done taking into
| account YouTube's limitations._
|
| https://tubebuddy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/
| 5...
| nexuist wrote:
| If you think about it, every video listed as a search result is
| a title/thumbnail test, except instead of an A/B test it's
| A/B/C/D/E...
| TchoBeer wrote:
| I think GP meant A/B for your own thumbnails, so you'd be
| able to randomly show two different thumbnail/titles to
| viewers and then see stats for each one. They can come
| clarify if that's incorrect.
| colechristensen wrote:
| His justifications bother me, it's still making money from
| manipulation, and in at least one example he makes, fear.
|
| One thing that doesn't get mention is how clickbait changes your
| audience, usually in a race to the bottom. It alienates fewer
| people than it attracts, but then your new audience reacts
| differently to your content.
| Laremere wrote:
| Any title will change the state of the reader's mind. The
| question is what is the split of benefits or harms between the
| reader and the writer. This goes beyond Youtube, and even
| interactions motivated by money.
|
| This is an area where I was initially very bothered, but over
| time have arrived at the opinion that it is very nuanced, and
| that things like this can be incredibly positive.
|
| If I go to the grocery store, they have a display of fruit, and
| I decide to buy a few, I have been manipulated. They were
| motivated by profit (sell more fruit). This required consuming
| some of my attention (I had intended to go to the store and buy
| different items). However, both I (yummy healthy fruit) and the
| grocery store (money to owners, employees, suppliers) benefit
| from this interaction.
|
| There are other types of interactions where one or more parties
| are negatively affected in the sum of the overall interaction.
| This are obviously bad, but are besides the point.
|
| If someone has a product with the highest value for the
| opportunity cost, I want to be manipulated into using it.
| However I also want to avoid manipulation where I gain little,
| zero, or negative benefit. It's a complicated problem, and I
| have found that the maximum benefit to me (and everyone
| involved) sits squarely (and very annoyingly) in the grey area.
|
| As for Veritasium, I have watched his videos for roughly a
| decade. Any video of his in my subscription feed is going to be
| watched. Any increase in viewership which allows him to
| increase his budget and quality only benefits me, provided he's
| behaving ethically. I see from this video that he's examining
| the problem and at least trying to be ethical, which I
| appreciate.
| forty wrote:
| Haha it's a great example, though in practice the stuff in
| display are rarely the healthy stuff ;)
| emerged wrote:
| I took the video as a long winded "don't hate the player hate
| the game" and assume he wants external validation that it's
| okay to manipulate people if everyone else is doing it.
|
| I like him and watch all his videos, but the ease of that
| justification is why we are on a long slippery slide straight
| into dystopia.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| What do you expect people to do? Let their YouTube careers
| bleed to death because of their principle? The only one at
| fault here is YouTube and their algorithm.
| raziel2p wrote:
| On the other hand, judging people for actions/justifications
| like these makes it easier to postpone or avoid making
| demands for systematic changes. Blaming individuals is
| easier, and has a higher chance of getting results. The
| fossil fuel industry is great at utilizing this, placing
| blame on individuals of the general public for pollution.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| If you're a race car driver who takes sponsorships from
| Ford to promote car culture and sell more gas guzzlers to
| the general public, shouldn't your chosen role in this
| system that earn you some ire? That's just "the player
| playing the game", except the game is a big problem. And if
| the game is a problem, then so are the players who _choose_
| to play it.
|
| Maybe that race car driver is a brainlet who would
| otherwise be living in poverty, so we shouldn't give him
| too much grief for it. Probably not, but maybe. But the
| veritasium guy? He's surely a bright guy with plenty of
| opportunities; he could have chosen another line of work.
| raziel2p wrote:
| I think your points are valid, and it's an interesting
| problem, but I think a few key differences are worth
| noting.
|
| A race driver is a much more elite position. There are
| less of them than there are Youtubers, and there's a lot
| more attention on you. A dismissal of a sponsorship could
| be spun into a big PR move, if they wanted to. Compare
| that to a single social media actor, you'd have to be an
| absolute huge name to make any sort of difference, simply
| because there are so many others out there that will
| immediately fill the gap you'd leave.
|
| Maybe Derek (I had to google his name) would be able to
| choose another line of work, but what if your passion is
| to spread knowledge about science and such to the general
| public? As much as I dislike them myself, I really do
| believe that social media such as Youtube, Instagram,
| Tiktok, is the best way to achieve that goal today.
| jjj123 wrote:
| I hear that, but it seems like in the video he doesn't
| place any blame on the platforms, and treats it as a kind
| of natural phenomenon (I stopped watching after he compared
| it to evolution).
|
| I don't think anything he said is incorrect, but he does
| seem to miss the world of possible incentive structures
| that would reduce clickbait.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The challenge, as he mentions a bit at the end, is that "no
| manipulation" isn't an option. He didn't have to climb up on a
| ladder, or post-edit 3D labels on top of his presentation, or
| make a cute little animation of a present unwrapping into
| another present. He did all of that to make the video more
| engaging, which means nothing more or less than manipulating
| people to keep watching. Crazy titles bug me personally a lot
| more than fancy editing or weird props, but as long as they're
| not so misleading I can't make an informed decision on what to
| watch, it's hard to begrudge content creators an engagement
| tool that can make such a difference.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Many content creators on YouTube succumb to creating a clickbait
| title because their video stats reveal which of their videos are
| popular. Naturally, this encourages the creator to make more
| videos on that theme or topic.
|
| But how many videos on the same topic (in the same channel) can
| you regurgitate over and over? To give an example, how many
| videos on the topic of 'productivity' can you cram into the same
| channel? As many as possible it seems given the high subscriber
| counts for some channels that talk mostly about 'productivity'.
|
| The somewhat uncomfortable truth is that the high subscriber
| counts for those channels prove clickbait titles work (as
| discussed in the video). The distinction between Type I and II
| clickbait titles in the video is useful though.
|
| For programming channels, the clickbait tendency seems lower than
| other types of channels (based purely on anecdotal impressions).
| There is plenty of clickbait in the wider computing/technology
| channel space on YouTube.
|
| This YouTube video is an honest look at creating content for
| YouTube from one Software Engineer (watch at 2x if the video is
| too long):
|
| _I almost burnt out creating software engineering content on
| YouTube, here is what I learned_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJJORDSlho
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| While I like the channel in general, these attempts at justifying
| click bait are just annoying. Just do it if you deem it
| necessary, but don't pretend like you have the moral high ground
| for doing it. You don't.
|
| That being said, Veritasium is among the least clickbaity
| clickbaiters.
| m_ke wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated but I think there should be a law to force all
| of these big corps to give people an opt out button to disable
| algorithmic feeds and recommendations.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| While Youtube doesn't have a full opt-out it does at least have
| a reverse chronological feed still available[0]. You can get
| quite close to an algorithm free experience by using that feed,
| combined with blocking sections that include recommendations
| with ublock origin.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
| dredmorbius wrote:
| You can block the Recommendations (and Comments) portions of
| the page, provided you're using a browser that supports
| extensions, using uBlock Origin or Stylish, amongst others.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266550
| m_ke wrote:
| Yes I already do that. My issue is with recommendations in
| app, I mostly watch CS / ML lectures and for some reason
| youtube keeps recommending right wingers and other
| sensational clickbait no matter how much I click "not
| interested" and "don't recommend channel".
| TchoBeer wrote:
| how odd, I don't find this true for me at all. For a while
| I turned off watch history (which means that the
| recommendations are only based on your subscriptions) and
| that was... not an objection improvement, it made it harder
| to find content that was unlike the stuff I'm subscribed
| to, but it also made my recommendations more focused.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| All the more reason to ditch the app.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I mean how else do you plan to filter millions of videos?
| dnissley wrote:
| Is this basically what you want?
| https://www.google.com/videohp?hl=en
|
| Or do you want just a list of videos from channels you've
| subscribed to?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I have found this video to be cope, it's trying to justify
| clickbait as "making an effective title". I think it's important
| to have in mind what was the purpose of the internet: to
| accelerate the access to relevant information so that the world
| can move forward faster. Clickbaiting people to watch 10 minutes
| videos for tiddly little bits of information is a colossal waste
| of potential there.
| antasvara wrote:
| Some of your criticism seems to be directed at video length and
| not a clickbaity title. If a video takes 10 minutes to tell me
| a single piece of information, the title isn't the issue with
| that video.
| infogulch wrote:
| Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but what if
| there's a _human_ reason why 10m videos are popular. Maybe 10
| minutes is just the minimum time needed to get across a non-
| trivial idea to a broad audience. Sure, the platform itself
| encourages that length implicitly but maybe that 's not an
| arbitrary decision and is based on the human capacity to
| absorb information.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A discussion between @ghaff and myself a few months ago on
| this aspect. I find 10--30 minutes a sweet spot as well,
| with an information-dense 10 minutes highly preferable.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337668
|
| For a deeper discussion pulling in more references and
| nuances, 20--60 minutes can work, but the content's got to
| deserve it. Excessive filler content ("Mayday: Air
| Disaster", _The History Channel_ , "The Gift Shop Sketch"
| is of course the exemplar:
| https://yewtu.be/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc) is absolutely
| maddening.
| jrootabega wrote:
| 10 minutes is the original minimum video length youtube
| required before you could place midroll ads. It's now 8
| minutes, but 10 is still a goal that many "creators" aim
| for. What it mostly results in is low-quality, low-
| information videos that are padded out to be just long
| enough to show you:
|
| - pre-roll ads
|
| - embedded sponsored content
|
| - plug for your patreon/other videos
|
| - reminder to like/subscribe/comment
|
| - a tiny nugget of actual content SOMETIMES
|
| - mid-roll ads
|
| - post-roll ads
|
| I agree that 10 minutes feels about right if you were
| actually trying to convey a good chunk of information in
| good faith, but that's just not what happens on youtube.
| Maybe 10 minutes was a good threshold for midroll ads for
| the same reason that it would have been a good threshold
| for quality videos.
|
| Videos like the linked one, while technically longer, just
| result in more and more mid-roll ads. In fact while
| attempting to watch this one, I got just past his embedded
| sponsorship plug, when youtube ambushed me with the "Ads in
| 3... 2... 1..." type of ad that makes it impossible to tell
| just how much of the video is compromised by ads before
| watching it.
| ghaff wrote:
| 10-25 minutes or so seems like the sweet spot for a lot
| of podcasts, informational videos, presentations, and the
| like when they're genuinely trying to inform/entertain.
| It's hard to really communicate a lot of information or
| have a meaningful discussion in a shorter period of time
| unless it's very focused (how to...) and a lot of those
| would better be text and a photo. And a lot of hour long
| interviews etc. tend to feel like they go on too long.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Feels right to me. You can sink that amount of time into
| something without really feeling like it's a large
| commitment of time or energy, while also feeling
| satisfied if you liked it. It's just a shame that on
| youtube, the advertising pressure erodes such content
| away.
| ghaff wrote:
| While there are logistical issues with shorter
| presentations at multi-track physical events, I've come
| to think that 25-30 minutes is a better sweet spot for
| conference presentations than 45-50 minutes. (With the
| exception of workshops/tutorials in most cases.)
|
| And it's where I've ended up with my podcasts. Less than
| 12 or so feels like you're barely getting started and get
| past about 30 and, as a listener, I'm generally losing
| interest. It's no coincidence that longer professionally
| produced podcasts almost always have segments or
| otherwise break up the content.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think within the video in question is the beginnings of
| a good justification for this. He views his job as
| getting his educational content in front as many people
| that can learn from it as possible.
|
| Part of that is making sure he can afford to do so, so we
| should consider holistically whether breaking from the ad
| roll time format is better in the end or not. if he can
| keep up the quantity and quality of videos, then maybe
| it's worth breaking with that format. If he can't, then
| maybe it's not.
|
| The is a similar question as to whether scientists should
| break from universities and corporate labs and fund their
| research and experiments without ties to those
| institutions, which will necessarily have some impact on
| the science being carried out in small and sometimes
| large ways. Personally, I suspect that there would be a
| large drop in both quality and quantity if this were to
| become the norm.
| infogulch wrote:
| So you're saying that if it's 10m then it's only because
| ads, and if it's longer it's only because more ads.
| There's _no_ valid reason for a video to be longer than 9
| minutes according to you. That sounds absurd to me. You
| 're not actually arguing a point, you're just complaining
| about ads.
|
| I also despise YT ads. (Embedded ads are less annoying
| because they can be at least _slightly_ relevant to the
| content.) How much time do you spend watching ads? How
| much is your time worth?
|
| Some recommend valuing your personal time at $50/h.
| YouTube Premium family membership is $18 and gives 6
| people ad-free viewing which comes to $3/person/month. At
| these rates you break even at 3.6 minutes of ads. That
| could be just 2 videos.
| mannerheim wrote:
| > and gives 6 people ad-free viewing which comes to
| $3/person/month
|
| Six people who live in the same household, to be clear.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I think there are valid reasons, just that you will
| rarely encounter such videos, be able to identify them if
| you do, be able to seek them out consistently, and that
| those who produce them will probably not do so for very
| long.
| epidemian wrote:
| Have you also found other videos by the author to be "10
| minutes of tiddly little bits of information"?
|
| I think Veritasium makes some of the most valuable and
| informative videos out there. Definitely not the kind of
| channel that i would consider "baiting" with titles and then
| disappointing with the video content itself.
|
| His views on video titles' "clickbaitiness", given the state of
| affairs of Youtube recommendation algorithms and the
| "competition" for viewers' attention, seem pretty on point to
| me.
| nett18 wrote:
| A shame he doesn't name them properly to make the "most
| valuable and informative" videoes more easily accessible to
| those in need of information on the topic
| [deleted]
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Veritasium is good but it's definitely on the fluffy/filler
| content side of things. I wouldn't exactly call it the most
| valuable and informative videos out there. It's more breath
| than depth.
|
| Here's an example of someone low-key having really valuable
| and informative content, with very little fluff:
| https://youtube.com/channel/UCGKe6VmbFOX-3C30JjEsV-g
| nearbuy wrote:
| Veritasium has about 2800x more subscribers than the linked
| channel.
|
| I wonder if removing all the engaging "fluff" and just
| listing information reduces the impact of videos. Like,
| maybe the trade-off is between having a shorter, denser
| video so the few people who watch it can get their
| information in less time, versus having 10x more people
| watch and learn the information.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| He specifically said in the video that he hasn't been doing
| this in the past, but plans to "get better at it".
|
| I think one of his videos that qualifies as pure clickbait is
| "Can a Wind-Powered Car Go Faster Than The Wind?". It was 20
| minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any real
| information. Certainly not 20 minutes worth, and very
| different from the rest of his videos. It did spawn more
| videos about how the car actually worked that were worth
| watching.
| 4ad wrote:
| > It was 20 minutes, and nearly completely devoid of any
| real information.
|
| It's entertainment, not a scientific lecture. As
| entertainment, it contained far more information that the
| vast majority of competing entertainment.
|
| > and very different from the rest of his videos.
|
| I must disagree here, I think most of his videos contain
| very little information as well. Less than I would like, in
| any case.
|
| > It did spawn more videos about how the car actually
| worked that were worth watching.
|
| How is this not a good thing? It's great for people who
| actually want more information, and it's great for the
| creators who provide said information. It makes the creator
| community (I hate that term) healthy.
| epidemian wrote:
| I understood that he's been doing more clickbaity titles
| for the past year or two, but maybe i misunderstood.
|
| For the first video about the wind powered vehicle, yes i
| agree. It was more of a story and spectacle than any actual
| information. Still quite entertaining i think, but maybe
| disappointing if you wanted to learn something, which is
| usually the spirit of the channel.
| kbenson wrote:
| > It did spawn more videos about how the car actually
| worked that were worth watching.
|
| Yes, including one by him, in which he specifically
| addresses the shortcoming of the video you are referencing
| and notes it's an example of what he considers a failure of
| him providing enough information in the video.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| I never understood this type of reasoning, where just
| because the creator(s) acknowledge their shortcomings,
| you're not allow to not like the video because of it, or
| complain about it. So I'll repeat, "I didn't like the
| video", don't take it personally.
| kbenson wrote:
| If it's a criticism of the video in isolation, then that
| holds merit. It sounded to me like it was a criticism of
| his technique and how he does things. That he
| acknowledged that as a mistake to rectify makes it less
| valid as a critique of that as long as he actually
| changes.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| The person I was replying to asked for a specific
| example, I provided one. I still like his content, still
| subscribe, and have watch most of his videos since. Seems
| like some people are just taking this as a "hate on
| Vertasium" post.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I know that he makes good videos, but he seems to give a free
| pass to clickbait here. We know how clickbait works from SEO:
| thousands of articles with same clickbait titles, which ends
| up in content mattering less and less, creates SEO farms,
| leads to content makers having to buy ads to feature their
| content etc. Also, even the title of this video becomes
| confusing: this video will now show up for someone searching
| for Wigner's famous speech with the same name, plus the title
| is factually incorrect, clickbait is reasonably effective,
| not unreasonably.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| > _Have you also found other videos by the author to be "10
| minutes of tiddly little bits of information"?_
|
| Yes. His videos are personable and pleasant to watch, but
| information sparse. They are more likely to leave me with the
| _feeling_ of learning something than they are to impart
| lasting knowledge (ironically, I believe this is a problem he
| has discussed before, I guess that much stuck with me at
| least.)
| infogulch wrote:
| This one is almost 20 minutes. Here's a histogram of video
| lengths of Veritasium videos over the last year:
| 3 videos 10m or less 8 videos from 11m-14m 11
| videos from 15m-19m 5 videos from 20m-22m 1
| video at 34m
| noahtallen wrote:
| > to accelerate the access to relevant information so that the
| world can move forward faster.
|
| While I would love this to be true, we have to remember that so
| much of the internet is a business in our capitalist economy.
| To many YouTube channels (especially the big ones), the primary
| purpose of the title is to get someone to watch the video to
| make money. Sharing information is only a secondary purpose.
|
| This is true across basically every business. The primary
| purpose of anything is profit, and every other thing is
| secondary. This is why health care is difficult to privatize,
| as the primary purpose of profit is very easily at odds with
| the secondary purpose of health outcomes.
|
| I feel like I see this purpose thing come up all the time in
| different parts of businesses, and it really makes me wonder
| whether this system is sustainable. The YouTube channel is
| justified in writing a clickbait title, because other types of
| titles reduce profit. And because of the way our society and
| economy works, reducing profit is always a "bad" thing. You
| could say that with more profit, the creators could expand the
| business and provide even more value to their viewers. Maybe
| that's true in this case, but that's basically the whole reason
| clickbait exists. I'm not sure we should be that happy about
| it.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >I have found this video to be cope,
|
| I am not familiar with this phrase - is it a typo or is this
| just a bit of slang I have missed out on - is it a variant of
| this https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cope
| ryeights wrote:
| Cope (noun, slang) is any thought used as a coping mechanism
| against an emotional stressor or perceived shortcoming.
|
| For example:
|
| Alice: I may be ugly, but at least I'm not superficial.
|
| Bob: Cope
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I'm aware of this usage of cope, and I guess I might use it
| myself if the opportunity arose - it's just 'to be cope'
| seems a different usage.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| OP responds here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28266767
| dredmorbius wrote:
| How are you using "cope" in this context?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I mean as a coping mechanism for not admitting that clickbait
| is manipulation of humans. "But look it's working" is not an
| excuse
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| That's rather unclear and nonstandard, in my view.
| Aulig wrote:
| Sounds like one of the modern colloquial definitions:
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cope
|
| Tough to put in words really. Maybe it could be rephrased to
| "I found that he is trying to legitimize clickbait", however
| the second part of the sentence says that too.
| _bohm wrote:
| or maybe: "rationalizing his use of clickbait as a means of
| coping with the weight it places on his conscience"
| newbamboo wrote:
| Unreasonably.
| dnissley wrote:
| cope = sour grapes
| LegitGandalf wrote:
| My grandfather, who I respected very much, was an accomplished
| career bureaucrat and considered any sort of promotion beneath
| him, and for sure crafting clickbait would earn his scorn. Thus
| marketing, promotion and crafting clickbait goes against
| everything I come from.
|
| But, making something that I think will actually help people, and
| then watching it go unseen because I wouldn't do the thing
| required to spread the message via the network effect is a far
| worse fate.
|
| So, I do the thing.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Could we please ban the words "unreasonably effective" in a
| title?
| s9w wrote:
| It's effective in the same way as robbing a bank is effective. It
| is also effective at driving away your core audience.
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