[HN Gopher] YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down
Author : mikece
Score : 328 points
Date : 2023-02-16 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| my suggestions:
|
| 1. make dislikes visible
|
| 2. no more covid warnings/disclaimers on content. Public health
| is important, but this beyond the scope or role of youtube. If
| the CDC, WHO etc. want to buy YouTube ads warning of covid
| misinformation, they can do so, and can afford to.
|
| 3. do more about accounts being hacked and repurposed for elon
| musk livestream scams
|
| 4. fewer ads, or no more 15 second ads. The max length should be
| 10 seconds, and no more than a single ad at a time, instead of
| having two ads back-to-back.
| option wrote:
| I really hate youtube shorts. Can I completely turn them off? And
| whose idea was that??
| [deleted]
| mr90210 wrote:
| +1
|
| I pay a premium subscription to not see ads, and I wish were
| able to disable shorts as well.
| esel2k wrote:
| Reading through the comments the audience seems very split
| between lovers and haters.
|
| At the end Susan managed to have a product on the market that was
| number 1 in its category, created revenue and has survived for so
| long. I think she deserve a fair amount of respect and
| acknowledgement, ad I have not seen any other platform with that
| track record (yep no time for envy, just hard facts).
| tootie wrote:
| It seems to me that YT as a product has vastly improved during
| her tenure and become an incredibly valuable brand that probably
| has more value than "Google" at this point. It's facing an
| existential threat in TikTok and still hanging on. It more or
| less shoved Vimeo aside. It's definitely moved on a bit from the
| early days of purely "home video" amateur content to be a real
| marketplace for professional and aspiring professional content.
| joegahona wrote:
| I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-
| used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price
| doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Same, huge youtube premium fanboy. YouTube has pretty much
| replaced Netflix and all the other streaming platforms for me,
| the content it has is more varied and interesting than yet
| another generic new IP play. Although it doesn't have classic
| time-tested movies, so that still requires a subscription
| somewhere.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| It also doesn't have TV shows like Game of Thrones, House,
| The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc etc
| ThaDood wrote:
| It did, but it wasn't a huge success. Cobra Kai was
| actually a YT OG, it was a gem among a lot of duds.
| joegahona wrote:
| Agreed re: movies, though some have been cropping up there
| recently, and in really good resolution too. I watched
| "Glengary Glen Ross" for the first time in my life last
| weekend on Youtube.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Premium moved me from being a consumer of a content made by
| big companies (including movies, and most of the shows)
| towards more independent content creators. I couldn't be more
| happy about it.
| orangejuice101 wrote:
| If you are on the family plan, they announced in October the
| price will increase for the US to $22.99 starting in April
| chris222 wrote:
| Same! Please do not change it!
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I agree, my wife and I use the YouTube Premium family plan - I
| don't want them to mess with it. I think it is the best deal of
| any monthly subscription with the possible exception of Apple+
| family plan (I use Fitness+, Arcade, iCloud storage - so it is
| also a pretty good deal).
| moffkalast wrote:
| This is Google we're talking about, they'll randomly decide
| to retire Youtube completely out of the blue one day.
| forevergreenyon wrote:
| this wouldn't be as funny if it weren't somewhat
| plausible... :/
| dayvid wrote:
| Enjoy the recent added queue feature as well. There's a few
| products add they could make to keep it a killer product.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I'd happily pay for an ad-free Youtube if they weren't double
| dipping by stealing my data. When do consumers get a choice for
| stalker free content?
| wdroz wrote:
| They should ditch Youtube Original to cut cost and avoiding
| raises for a while.
| schoolornot wrote:
| Why shouldn't your grandfathered price change? I know it's nice
| and all but do you not think Google has rising costs?
| makestuff wrote:
| I subscribed to YT premium when it was bundled with YT music. I
| hate that there is not a plan in the US that allows me to just
| get ad free YT videos. I do not use YT music and don't care to.
|
| I hope whoever takes it over creates an ad free plan that
| doesn't bundle music into it. I hate that all of these tech
| companies are taking the cable route they all rallied agains
| and bundling everything.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| I don't have Premium, but I do have Music; it's an excellent
| service for obscure stuff, because _everything_ ends up on
| YT.
| bredren wrote:
| I am part of a "YouTube family" that shares the premium family
| plan. We collect payment every six months.
|
| Makes the price low enough to beat the hassle of various ad
| blocking methods across many platforms and devices.
| addaon wrote:
| The ads haven't stayed gone, though.
|
| I would pay a substantial premium for an option to filter
| promotions out of videos. I would even pay to just never get
| promoted videos in my steam.
|
| The option to pay for no ads doesn't exist, today, although it
| would be easy to ad. Instead, you get to pay to remove one
| advertiser, and not all the others.
| lolinder wrote:
| A sponsorship in a video paid directly to the YouTuber is
| very different from a targeted ad that YouTube runs. It
| doesn't interrupt the content in unexpected ways (only ways
| planned by the creator), it's targeted based on content
| rather than data mining, and the creator usually tries to add
| a bit of personality to it. Not to mention you can skip them
| using the regular scrubbing controls rather than being forced
| to watch at least 5 seconds.
| addaon wrote:
| Yes. It is a somewhat-less-bad form of even more
| advertising. If you think paying to avoid some advertising
| is reasonable, why is paying more to avoid more advertising
| unreasonable?
| lolinder wrote:
| It's unreasonable to expect YouTube Premium to filter out
| content inserted by the video creator when that's not the
| terms either you or the creator were given. I pay for
| Nebula and don't see any ads or sponsorships there, but I
| don't begrudge the sponsorships on regular YouTube.
|
| If the sponsorships bug you that much, use sponsorblock.
| addaon wrote:
| Yes, I agree that it is unreasonable to expect this of
| Youtube Premium, as that is not the value proposition of
| that product.
|
| The original comment was proposing a new product, at a
| higher price point to reflect its higher costs, that
| /does/ cater to this expectation.
| [deleted]
| taberiand wrote:
| Frequently you can pay more to individual YouTubers for
| that service, many have Patreon or other methods of
| providing early ad free versions of their content.
| addaon wrote:
| Yes. This is a very, very good answer when it's available
| as an option.
|
| I do think, though, that if the best answer to "YouTube
| doesn't let me do <x>" is "pay an alternate service
| provider instead," it might suggest a market opportunity
| for YouTube to provide the same service with much less
| friction.
| f1refly wrote:
| Sponsorblock is a thing that exists if in-video ads annoy
| you.
| addaon wrote:
| I don't believe there's a way to run it on AppleTV, though
| I would love to be wrong.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| That's why i'm happy with SmartTubeNext with Sponsorblock on
| Android TV.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| What? I don't see any ads unless they're embedded in the
| video by the creator...?
| munk-a wrote:
| Those are still ads and there are solutions to filter them
| out that Youtube could be more proactive about surfacing to
| premium users.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I think you're being ridiculous. Like, would you want
| YouTube to skip over this entire scene in the Wayne's
| World movie?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs
|
| Should it not let me see a product review if it was
| sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only
| if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control?
|
| Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else
| would tell you that you drew it wrong.
| addaon wrote:
| I think you're being unnecessarily adversarial here.
|
| Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well
| delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already
| -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start
| and end. They even show them on the timeline, although
| they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most
| replayed"... presumedly because of everyone skipping the
| ad, losing their place, and then having to step back to
| try to find where the content begins again.
|
| Here's how this could work. I would pay an additional
| $10/month for YouTube Scarlet. Content creators would
| have three options -- declare that their videos have no
| sources of revenue outside of YouTube revenue; provide
| start and end time stamps for any external-revenue-
| generating segments; or do nothing.
|
| For my $10/month, videos in the second category would
| skip their promotion. In exchange, some portion of my
| $10/month would go to the video creator, just like
| ad/Premium revenue does today, and the metrics on number
| of videos where this segment was skipped would be made
| available in analytics for sharing with sponsors.
| Finally, I'd have access to a user preference to suppress
| videos in the third category for appearing in
| recommendations, ever.
|
| Does this deal with every case? No. Would it make YouTube
| more pleasant for me and potentially others who share my
| values, without impacting current regular and Premium
| users, and with a neutral or positive impact on content
| creators? I assert yes.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Would it have a negative impact on the businesses who
| promote those videos?
|
| Yes.
|
| If it's a negative impact on the businesses who promote
| videos, how can you say your idea doesn't impact content
| creators?
| addaon wrote:
| Why would it have a negative impact on either the
| promoted businesses or the content creators?
|
| Promoted businesses currently pay based on (an estimate
| of) the number of views that the video will get. This
| would trivially adjust to paying based on the number of
| views that the sponsorship within the video gets --
| that's why I mentioned the requirement to make this
| available through analytics. If the cost per view stays
| the same for sponsors, they're now paying for a self-
| selecting audience of people who are not actively
| bothered by their ads. (I doubt I'm the only person who,
| if I as going to pay money for a VPN, would choose
| literally anything other than Nord VPN just as petty
| "revenge" for how much of my life they've wasted.) If
| this slightly-reduced audience does not sufficiently eat
| their marketing budget, they can find new creators to
| sponsor.
|
| For the content creators, presumedly the target amount
| paid directly per skipped ad would be chosen to slightly
| exceed the expected payout of showing the ad. This is the
| same conceptual model Premium uses today. So even though
| the sponsor may be paying them for a 9.5 M view video
| instead of a 10 M view video -- the payout should more
| than cover the difference.
|
| I agree that these marginal wins run into systematic
| concerns if more than, say, 5% or so of users start
| opting out of embedded advertising this way. But besides
| being incredibly unlikely -- what would it say about the
| business model of embedded advertising if 5% of YouTube
| customers were willing to pay to avoid it!?
| binkHN wrote:
| I too am a fan of YouTube Premium, but the sponsored ads in
| videos are starting to devalue it. Some creators, especially
| those with longer videos, have sponsored ads that pop up every
| 10 minute; they are rather annoying, especially when you're
| specifically paying not see ads.
| mkaic wrote:
| Agreed. I am a massive fan of YouTube Premium and YouTube
| Music. While I am a bit nervous because major change like this
| could lead to those products getting worse, I'm also hopeful
| that it could lead to them getting better! So in general I'm
| just eager to see what happens next, come what may.
| jossclimb wrote:
| can you sell it to a current spotify user?
| dahfizz wrote:
| I pay for youtube premium for ad-free youtube and to
| support creators automatically.
|
| Youtube music is not great, but its "free" to me.
| josteink wrote:
| That's literally it.
|
| It's probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music,
| but if you're going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and
| are able to endure the weird UI... Then it might save you
| a small monthly fee you'd otherwise pay to competing
| services.
|
| It'd never survive in the market as it's own service, and
| it's clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google
| Music.
|
| I have no idea who decided this thing was a good idea.
| taberiand wrote:
| I must have extremely unsophisticated music needs, I've
| never had any complaints using the interface or finding
| any music that I want.
|
| I remember Google Music being pretty good, but YouTube
| Music seems good enough
| what_ever wrote:
| Same. I am always a little surprised to read these
| comments. Moved from Spotify to Google Play Music to
| YouTube Music and never really had many issues...
| myko wrote:
| Google Music was the best of the bunch and I am sad that
| it is gone. Google internal power struggles strike again.
| adra wrote:
| If you can self host, I finally found that koel did a
| relatively decent job covering my old gmusic patterns.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Not sure about inferior to spotify though. Lots of things
| (for me at least) aren't available on spotify, even with
| subscription. More often than not quality is actually
| better on YT music. Major thing is also asking in car for
| 'yo google play me this and that' and spotify just
| returns some nonsense or cover where YT Music always
| returns the right thing. Apple music is absolute crap,
| quality of sound was enough that I didn't even bother
| extending trial into anything more and UI is atrocious.
|
| YT music, for me at least, not perfect but better than
| the two by far. I still keep spotify sub because
| sometimes we share playlists in office etc.. not sure
| I'll extend to be honest. YT Music on the other hand,
| especially in car is essential.
| szopa wrote:
| YouTube's music library feels richer than Spotify. A few
| years ago I was contemplating a switch from YT Music to
| Spotify (I like Spotify's UX), but a lot of stuff I enjoy
| listening to was missing. But I might just have a weird
| taste in music.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I use both, spotify for my main listening and yt music
| for mixes, live shows, and lots of content that plainly
| isn't on spotify.
|
| Yt music also supports tapping the side of the screen to
| jump forwards or backwards in 10 second increments. Seems
| like a trivial feature, but holy shit I have needed it my
| entire life. The ability to both rapidly and finely
| adjust the time is huge when listing to things like live
| shows that are a 2 hour video.
|
| Crazy but I don't think I have ever had a program or
| hardware player that could do both. Always either fast
| forward/rewind or trying to finely slide a slider.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I like recommendation engine better. Also up to 5 people in
| family plan.
| pitaj wrote:
| 5 _additional_ people, so 6 total
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Works like shit. No support for basic features such as
| crossfade. Recommendations are repetitive, uninsightful and
| low-quality. No desktop app, and the web app is as bug-
| complete as any other alphabet property. Enjoy losing
| access to your playlist and album collection when your
| google account gets randomly banned.
|
| Not a spotify fan either, but there's practically no upside
| to switching.
| gourabmi wrote:
| Spotify's catalog for Indian languages is smaller than
| Youtube. Not only is YT Music's collection larger, the
| recommendation system works better for Indian languages
| too. I have been that the autoplay follows the mood/ type
| of the song better than Spotify.
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is the
| recommendation engine is much better in YT Music than
| Spotify IMHO. I've found a surprisingly large number of new
| artists that I enjoy and it's solely due to YTM's
| recommendation engine. Really obscure stuff that I just
| wouldn't have found otherwise.
| buggy6257 wrote:
| When I first compared Spotify/YT Premium (Google Music at
| the time):
|
| - Relatively similar offerings of music, at least when it
| came to my tastes. I have a wide variety and some weird
| stuff in there, but both worked for me to find whatever I
| thought of.
|
| - Relatively similar price ($10 Spotify vs $12 YT), so I
| knew I needed at least some extra value from YT to justify
|
| - YT Premium not only gives me YT Music, but also _HASSLE
| FREE_ ad-free YT. What I mean is -- I don 't have to manage
| extensions for web youtube and apps for Android or iOS or
| using NextDNS or a pihole or something just to get "ad
| free" from YT. It just works. Not having ads, and not
| having to CARE is a big value add for me. This alone is
| well worth $2 a month just in the time it saves me dealing
| with it.
|
| - YT Premium USED to be Google Music, which I loved the UI
| of way more than Spotify. I am still VERY upset at YT Music
| since it's objectively worse than Google Music in every
| way, but it's still the same goddamn company
|
| - AT THE TIME, I was having serious issues getting Spotify
| to play music from cache. Even if I cached, it would still
| default to streaming it as long as I had data. This
| resulted in huge data usage each month. I am SURE this is
| fixed by now. But this went into the calculus for me at the
| time.
|
| Would I move over to Spotify? I think the things that would
| push me back would be an increase in YT price, a further
| degradation in YT Music UX, some new killer feature Spotify
| has/gets (podcasts aren't my thing)
|
| This was a VERY long answer which can TLDR to "Having ad-
| free YouTube + Music all at once for $2 more was well worth
| not having to give a crap about all the infrastructure
| needed to block ads across all my devices forever."
| Steltek wrote:
| YT Premium, definitely yes. However, YT Music is hot garbage.
| The UI is utter crap and the mixing of video and music is
| awful, especially playlists. Why the hell would I want my
| regular YT and music playlists mixed up together anyway? It
| gets worse with kids, as some video-songs (randomly!) trigger
| the inability to play in the background.
| pitaj wrote:
| If you haven't already:
|
| Disable _Settings > Recommendations > Show your liked music
| from Youtube_
|
| Enable _Settings > Data saving > Don't play music videos_
| lwkl wrote:
| I liked Google Play Music when it first came out. But
| development was basically stopped and they replaced it with
| the crappy YT Music App. Unless they majorly change YouTube
| music I'll stay with Spotify.
| adra wrote:
| Dev wasn't just stopped. The whole product was sunset and
| if you wanted to keep a semblance of what you had, you
| were forced to migrate to YouTube music. I saw the end of
| that crap rainbow and finally moved over to koel which
| has done just as much as I ever cared to use in Google
| music, but now I don't fear Google getting bored and
| killing the product in some future.
| toomim wrote:
| What is your grandfathered price?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Mine is $10.73
| sphars wrote:
| If they're like me, I signed up for Google Play Music in the
| beta back in 2013 and am locked in at $7.99 USD, with full
| YT/YTM Premium.
|
| It's the major reason why I'm still subscribed.
| Devasta wrote:
| Youtube Vanced does a good job at blocking most ads, and the
| latest version has a feature that attempts to skip sponsored
| sections on videos. Well worth trying out.
| taberiand wrote:
| I think it's important where possible for people to pay for
| the premium version, while it provides ad free value for
| money, though I don't begrudge people blocking ads in other
| ways if they truly can't afford it.
|
| But I think it's short sighted and selfish to not pay for
| something like YouTube that you use and get value out of
| every day, when you can afford it. Either pay for it and
| support it or don't use it at all.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The tendency is for prices to go up and for services to get
| worse or more restricted. Usually, a service initially runs at
| a loss or some sub-optimum during a trial or rollout phase, and
| then after critical mass, it is degraded or costs are raised to
| some new optimum that maximizes profit at the cost of losing
| some users.
| GNOMES wrote:
| We are also on a grandfathered in family plan.
|
| Converted my under 8$ dollar Google Play Music plan to 14$
| family plan for my Wife, and they honored that 14$ cost when
| YTM rolled out.
|
| While unlikely, I have been hoping for some sort of "we changed
| our mind" PR statement from Google on this before we switch to
| a family Spotify come April.
|
| The price hike doesn't hurt on our monthly finances, but
| considering the 12 month cost vs features compared to
| Spotify... it does hurt. Why pay more for less.
|
| Like others are saying, the no ads Youtube is fantastic. We do
| use adblockers on all of our devices, but it's hard to do on
| Google Homes, casting to Chromecasts, and Youtube Kids.
|
| I am prepared to go Firefox + Ublock/Brave on my Android phone
| if I do go Spotify though....
| ericsoderstrom wrote:
| Looks like youtube premium just gives you no ads and allows for
| video downloads. Which you already can get using ublock and
| youtube-dl if you're watching from a computer. People who are
| big fans of youtube premium is it because you're using youtube
| mostly on mobile device, or is there some other advantage here
| I'm missing?
| orange_joe wrote:
| Having the YouTube on the TV without ads is my personal
| favorite feature.
| delecti wrote:
| It gives me no ads on mobile (both OSs), PC browser (without
| worrying about pre-roll or banner ads sneaking through a
| filter that breaks), Chromecast (without dealing with a pi-
| hole), and the knowledge that my spouse isn't having to deal
| with ads either (she wouldn't mind enough otherwise to deal
| with extensions), plus downloads on all those platforms, and
| background play without using an unofficial app. And it does
| that all while giving a bigger cut of money to people who
| make the videos than they would get even if I watched the
| ads.
| joegahona wrote:
| Downloads and no ads on my mobile device (so I can listen
| while running) and on Roku on my TV. It also allows you to
| play videos with the phone screen off, which I don't think
| the free plan does.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| A collage of corporate platforms that together limit what
| you can do to extract more value from you. Beautiful.
|
| (I.e., you can't use uBlock Origin or youtube-dl on mobile
| devices and TVs easily, and that's the way they want it.)
| haolez wrote:
| Thank you, Susan, for (maybe?) being responsible for the only
| case in Big Tech where you can actually pay to not be the product
| yourself. YouTube Premium is awesome.
| wslh wrote:
| Well, you continue to be a product delivering a lot of metrics
| to the platform beyond the ads you don't see, surely you are
| optimizing others ads. Not saying YouTube Premium is awesome,
| though.
| [deleted]
| kentosi wrote:
| Dear Youtube: Please please please have an option to filter out
| "shorts" on the web version.
|
| None of the normal controls exist: playback speed, jump to
| position, etc. The desktop web interface is a terrible place for
| these.
| kentlyons wrote:
| I use an extension to remove them - no affiliation but it seems
| to work. Chrome: "No YouTube Shorts". Between that, a plugin to
| remove already watched videos and my ad blocker, youtube is a
| way better experience!
| teddyh wrote:
| I use _Remove YouTube Suggestions_ :
| <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> It has settings for a lot of
| customizations, including removing shorts. (You can keep
| suggestions if you want to.)
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I'd like the option to filter out cable tv news designed to
| emotionally outrage from my recommendations.
|
| I'm well aware there is a land war in Europe right now, when I
| turn on the TV at 6pm on a Thursday to watch cooking videos I
| don't need reminders pushed in my face.
|
| Out of all the issues with youtube, this is probably the one
| that has the most real negative cognitive impact for me.
| pentagrama wrote:
| You can remove Shorts with this uBlock Origin script
| https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts
| [deleted]
| MzHN wrote:
| Behind the scenes the shorts are just normal YouTube videos.
| You can change the /shorts/ to /watch?v= in the URL and they
| work fine.
|
| There are addons to do this redirect automatically, but I
| haven't bothered.
|
| Why they force the terrible UI on desktop is beyond me though.
| stewartbutler wrote:
| As a stopgap, you can use a URL redirector:
| Redirect: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/* to:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$1
| [deleted]
| msikora wrote:
| Hopefully Sundar's turn next!
| slt2021 wrote:
| Agree. Google desperately needs to clean house on the
| executive/management/VP side
| muttantt wrote:
| He's busy working on ChaatGPT
| [deleted]
| falcolas wrote:
| Speculation: I wonder if any of this relates to the Supreme Court
| Gonzalez v. Google case?
|
| (basically, the SC is reviewing YouTube's Section 230 protections
| due to the use of recommendation engines)
| [deleted]
| justinzollars wrote:
| Thats awesome! was not aware of this
| https://www.brookings.edu/events/gonzalez-v-google-and-the-f...
| labrador wrote:
| YouTube for the things I enjoy has improved dramatically because
| the comment section is vastly improved. Everyone used to use
| YouTube comments as an example of a comment section dumpster
| fire, but they fixed it.
|
| I've seen the recommendations get better then worse then better
| again as they tweaked the algorithms. Right now it's better than
| it's ever been. Again, for me.
|
| One complaint: I like to upload interesting clips from this or
| that. I got my first copy right strike on a clip of Russel Brand
| talking to Terry Gross of NPR about life on heroin because I
| thought it was helpful for people. YouTube told me I could only
| get 3 strikes before they disabled my account, which I assume
| they mean they will disable my GMail. I can't have that so I
| don't upload interesting clips anymore. In fact, I don't upload
| anything since I don't want to lose my GMail. So the complaint is
| why didn't YouTube tell me when I uploaded it that I couldn't?
| I'd be ok with that.
|
| So I give Ms Wojcicki a people choice grade of B+ overall
| luckylion wrote:
| > Everyone used to use YouTube comments as an example of a
| comment section dumpster fire, but they fixed it.
|
| What do you like about it? Ever since they made comments a
| signal for discovery and openly communicated that, every
| creator and their dog will include call to actions to get
| viewers to comment some mindless nonsense, and users will
| happily oblige ("for the algorithm"). At least half the
| comments I see are completely useless.
|
| Then there's the censorship issue where they hide comments but
| do not adjust the count, so it'll say "2 replies", but none
| will show up because they're hidden.
|
| And last but not least ... it's has no useful nesting, just top
| comment and then everything else below it. With large audiences
| come hundreds or thousands of comments. Yet there's no
| structure. And you can't search in comments.
|
| So I'm really surprised that you think they've been improved
| much and are on a good level. What exactly do you like about
| them?
| labrador wrote:
| I'm older and tend to have tastes that aren't current or
| worth marketing to. Maybe that's a good thing.
| lsllc wrote:
| Agreed on the copyright issues! I got a strike for a short
| screen cast / video I made to demo a new feature I built to my
| boss -- it wasn't public, you had to have the link but I
| happened to feature some music (maybe 45-60 seconds) and it got
| taken down.
|
| Similarly I see YT content creators asking people to turn off
| their FM radios lest they end up with copyrighted music in
| their videos. Surely both of these cases are fair use?
| aeyes wrote:
| Nowadays the comment section on several channels I watch is
| full of spam, oftentimes 50+ fake accounts responding to each
| other in threads.
| [deleted]
| labrador wrote:
| I don't see that on the videos I watch. For example, this
| section from a song I recently listened to. Very nice
| comments.
|
| The Beatles - Within You Without You
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsffxGyY4ck
|
| Do you see a bunch of spam comments? Maybe my ad blocker is
| blocking them?
| jahsome wrote:
| I think the targets for the spammers are are generally
| influencers/solo creators. The spammers create imposter
| profiles to announce phony giveaways, or otherwise appeal
| to the creators' fan base.
| bmarquez wrote:
| I don't think music videos are the top target for spammers.
|
| Most finance videos (like general technical analysis, I
| don't watch crypto content) I watch are full of Whatsapp or
| Telegram scammers. Even a history channel I follow had to
| warn that the creator would never solicit money through
| Whatsapp or Telegram.
| david_allison wrote:
| I see "Video unavailable" + "Comments are turned off"
| labrador wrote:
| Very strange. Yours must be from a different cache.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| > I've seen the recommendations get better then worse then
| better again as they tweaked the algorithms. Right now it's
| better than it's ever been. Again, for me.
|
| Teach me your secret to receiving good recos.
|
| The bad quality of recos is _the_ total downturner for me.
|
| Nothing, absolutely nothing interesting for months.
|
| All that's being recommended is totally generic high view
| stuff, not at all related to my channels or content. Just a
| global dump of "what's being watched".
|
| No topical clustered recommendations of channels I haven't
| watched in the past or am not subscribed to.
|
| Good lord they have so much data. In my experience well over a
| year now, they fail miserably at recommendations.
| labrador wrote:
| To my knowledge no one outside of YouTube has ever sat down
| to analyze the recommendation engine and figure out how to
| use it better. I mark things as "not interested" a lot. I
| also "like" videos. Maybe that's the difference.
| skilled wrote:
| YouTube is an absolute trash platform and has been long before
| Susan became a CEO. Which goes to show just how incapable she was
| for the role.
|
| The same algorithm that YouTube was using for recommendations 10
| years ago is still the same algorithm being used today. An
| absolute disgrace and a spat in the face for the platforms users.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Five days out from the Gonzalez v Google hearing. If the decision
| goes against Google, perhaps some will question YouTube's
| decision-making around recommendations.
| [deleted]
| bitL wrote:
| Bring back the original founders from UIUC instead?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really,
| really long trunks.
| dzonga wrote:
| this should've the person to get the reigns at google and run
| google.
|
| however, they got a chrome pm as ceo. and now the company is
| floundering.
|
| if the youtube CEO made a billion in remuneration, it will be
| well deserved compared to say some CEO / CPO's eg the recent
| Coinbase CPO or Mozilla CEO.
| v3ss0n wrote:
| What most annoying is yt now showing vids that are already
| watched just a day afoy. Including shorts. They can't even do a
| proper sorting now
| [deleted]
| robbiet480 wrote:
| Discussion of her actual announcement at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34821472
| mouzogu wrote:
| - increasingly ignores your search keywords, instead shoving
| unrelated stuff at you
|
| - removed ability to sort videos by date
|
| - removed dislikes
|
| what else.....youtube UX has being getting worse for a few years.
| beardog wrote:
| In the early days, YouTube had a 5 star rating system which I
| think is better than a binary like/dislike. You also could
| customize your channel more including custom backgrounds.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Worse for power users seeking specific things.
|
| Better for advertisers looking to push non-sense to toddler-
| level users.
| throwaway3245 wrote:
| [dead]
| voisin wrote:
| Fear not! Just serve more ads before and between every video!
| Sacrifice your user at the altar of advertisers and all will be
| fine in the world.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Worse for whom? Everything you listed is favourable for cutting
| costs and pleasing/attracting advertisers[1]. There are not a
| lot of alternatives to YouTube, certainly nothing with the same
| size of audience, so squeezing the users and creators to
| improve revenue makes business sense.
|
| YouTube users are the product being sold, not the customers.
|
| [1] The recent crackdown on swearing falls in the same
| category.
| the_af wrote:
| I've no use for the dislike button in YouTube ("never show me
| this channel again" is more useful) but its search/sort
| functions are getting increasingly broken.
| wankle wrote:
| Just like the shorts panel, they will show them again. It's
| inevitable.
| the_af wrote:
| Ah, the shorts panel. A terrible, terrible idea I always
| close in the hopes YouTube gets the message. Thanks for
| reminding me!
| tekno45 wrote:
| You can still sort a search by date...
| [deleted]
| Ataraxic wrote:
| I am personally completely unable to understand the decision to
| remove the ability for me to search a youtuber's videos. I
| didn't even know this was something a video website could take
| away!
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Is that specific to the app? I still see the video search
| inside the web UI for each creator's page.
| Ataraxic wrote:
| hmm I'm going to admit my mistake here.
|
| It does exist but it's hidden in the tabs. My m1 mac screen
| is not large enough to show the search icon which I must
| click on the right chevron icon to see as it's on the far
| right.
|
| I'm glad it's there but it wasn't always like this. I
| wonder if I'm just an idiot (totally possible), a dark
| pattern, or just a bad UI change.
| Arrath wrote:
| You can only hide the SUGGESTED SHORTS section temporarily,
| they pop up again like a nasty smell every week or so.
| adra wrote:
| I couldn't care 2 shits about the dislike gauge (felt more
| there to wax the ego of the powerless).
|
| Search as little as I use it is fine. Maybe you just don't have
| a ton of matching content left to watch, maybe it is worse but
| this all feels too subjective/situational to speak
| qualitatively about.
|
| Sort by date of me is only really relevant in a creators page,
| and the "uploads" stream is always by date recent to oldest, so
| profits?
|
| The only thing that has significantly gotten worse over the
| years is their ridiculous increase in ad placement throughout
| videos. I'm guessing you block ads or have premium because it
| HAS to be the #1 most hated change in YouTube over the past few
| years.
| posharma wrote:
| Curious why this is important enough to be on the front page.
| Even as a techie I don't find this news interesting, at least not
| HN front-page worthy. (Instead of down voting it would be nice to
| hear what others think as valid reasons). How does this affect
| our day-day lives?
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| A change in leadership of what is almost surely a top 10 online
| property and something that >98% of HN readers use?
|
| That seems like something that would be of enough interest to
| make the top-30 stories for a period of time.
| mkaic wrote:
| YouTube is one of the largest and most influential tech
| companies in the world, and wields huge social power. Some of
| the greatest content on the internet is hosted there, so it
| makes sense to me that HN readers would find a major change
| like this of interest. Wojcicki has been in charge of YouTube
| for a _long_ time now, so hearing that she is stepping down and
| will be replaced opens up tons of space for speculation about
| where YouTube could be heading in the near future. Personally,
| as someone who spends _many_ hours a week using YouTube, I find
| this article to be absolutely HN-front-page-worthy!
| posharma wrote:
| [flagged]
| mkaic wrote:
| If it's in the company of curious, smart people like the
| kind I routinely encounter here on HN, then yes!
| Absolutely! I greatly enjoy a good round of civil
| speculation and discussion with my fellow hackers :P
| posharma wrote:
| * There's absolutely nothing we could do to influence
| YouTube's leadership changes. * There's very little you
| can do to influence changes in the product YouTube as
| well. * There's very little we know about the internals
| of upper C-level leadership changes.
|
| Speculating is an utter waste of time. I don't see a
| point. For me this news was just another passable piece
| of information. Meh! Definitely not HN front-page worthy.
| enneff wrote:
| If speculating is a waste of time then this sub-thread is
| spectacularly pointless (and against HN guidelines btw).
| Think before you post.
| posharma wrote:
| Care to elaborate how I violated the HN guidelines?
| [deleted]
| yazzku wrote:
| It's not, but there is a large Big Tech fanbase on HN. Posts
| like these caters mostly to them.
| mkaic wrote:
| What "belongs" on the front page of HN is whatever ends up on
| the front page without being moderated or flagged. At the end
| of the day, HN is a community and it decides for itself what
| it wants to see and share with its members! Like the
| guidelines for submissions say, anything that is
| intellectually stimulating or interesting to hackers is fair
| game! Vox populi vox dei :P
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| To be honest... good riddance. Her tenure will probably be
| remembered for YouTube's slowly increasing decline into
| irrelevancy among the young enamored with TikTok and Instagram,
| increasing and significant censorship misfires (the moment almost
| every creator has to mention Content ID and the YouTube algorithm
| or the community guidelines, you've screwed up), the removal of
| the dislike button despite overwhelming negative feedback to the
| change in what appears to have been a method of placating
| advertisers, and the total butchering of YouTube Rewind into a
| corporate affair before finally giving up.
| DeltaCoast wrote:
| Youtube is the top platform for teens, according to pew
| research.
|
| "YouTube tops the 2022 teen online landscape among the
| platforms covered in the Center's new survey, as it is used by
| 95% of teens. TikTok is next on the list of platforms that were
| asked about in this survey (67%), followed by Instagram and
| Snapchat, which are both used by about six-in-ten teens. After
| those platforms come Facebook with 32% and smaller shares who
| use Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr."
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...
| bioemerl wrote:
| Being replaced by someone with years of working on ads, who was
| brought into the company as a result of the purchase of
| DoubleClick.
|
| I would broadly expect YouTube to get worse as a result of this.
| [deleted]
| sagarm wrote:
| Susan also came from ads.
| [deleted]
| robmusial wrote:
| Hopefully this brings back the dislike button. Intellectually I
| know a change of CEO shouldn't/wouldn't impact a feature like
| this, but I am still annoyed at its absence and find it makes
| YouTube substantially less useful.
|
| Edit: I understand the dislike button is still there, I misspoke.
| But for my purposes of seeing like/dislike ratio, it might as
| well not be there.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The stated reason for getting rid of dislike visibility was
| very suspicious to me. While I don't deny that targeted
| harassment and bandwagoning with dislikes on certain
| channels/videos happens, there's no way it was happening
| frequently enough to warrant removing the feature from _all_
| videos. I saw no reason why individual creators couldn 't stick
| with hiding the controls on a per-video or per-channel basis.
|
| Removing the dislike count takes away a valuable indicator of
| low quality and/or time wasting videos. Yes, it has false
| positives on charged topics, but I use it to help determine if
| an intriguing recommendation or search result is actually
| worthwhile or just clickbait. I suspect YouTube was pleased to
| remove the like/dislike visibility because it would boost
| engagement metrics. I assume any concerns about quality or the
| viewing experience are secondary or considered inconsequential.
|
| Edit: They removed the dislike visibility, not the dislike
| button.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| I've never really found the like/dislike buttons useful, and
| tbh they could get rid of ratings altogether and not much
| would change for me.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Just a counter opinion, I find them fairly useful. Not 100%
| useful, but more often then not very useful.
| Minor49er wrote:
| As someone who looks up tutorials on various pieces of
| software, the dislike ratio was a pretty good indicator as
| to whether or not a particular video would help me do what
| the title of it says without me having to sit or scrub
| through the whole thing
| z3c0 wrote:
| Thanks to the idea of disliking as a meme, the ratings are
| essentially meaningless. An overwhelmingly disliked video
| is probably worth watching, if for the humor alone.
| beebmam wrote:
| The dislike button was never removed, that is not accurate.
| The dislike count is no longer being displayed to viewers.
| Dislikes still exist. In my opinion, it is important to be
| accurate with language.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Isn't this a distinction without a difference? The point of
| having likes/dislikes is it's supposed to be a social
| signal for quality of the content? I have found dislikes
| useful for knowing which videos to skip if I am crunched
| for time and do not want to watch all of them, like music.
| DeltaCoast wrote:
| I believe disliking it also influences whether or not you
| are recommended similar content.
| capableweb wrote:
| Author/owner of the video would still be able to see it,
| so they can judge if their audience liked the video or
| not. But still, the biggest value proposition of having
| the likes vs dislikes is for viewers, not content
| producers, so it really sucked it went away.
| wruza wrote:
| I regularly dislike decent content based on my idea of
| what youtube thinks of my recommendation preferences.
| It's baffling how much I need to manually participate in
| their "engagement" metrics to be able to go to
| youtube.com without closing it shortly thereafter. And I
| wonder how much more echo chamber-y it is for less tech-
| savvy users who rarely touch these controls.
|
| 80% of regulars are not subscribed and don't "like"
| videos according to content creators, that's why they nag
| for "like, subscribe" five times per minute. Developers
| tend to think that bigcorps' data analysis is at a rocket
| science level, when in reality it's probably less
| efficient than SQL LIKE query could be on some
| `video.tags` field.
| msikora wrote:
| There is a chrome plugin that brings the dislikes back.
| toddmorey wrote:
| My hope is that coming AI can be used to help better discern
| and classify content. Essentially, "prewatch" videos and help
| filter spam. I would love to see incentives for creators reset
| towards making quality content rather than sensationalized
| content. So, so fatigued on the stupid thumbnails with
| surprised faces and shocking claims and they are everywhere
| from home repair guides to physics tutorials.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| I am curious - Why shouldn't a CEO impact a feature like this?
| sparrish wrote:
| Are you missing the dislike button? I still see it on Youtube
| and I'm not running any plugins.
| sadjad wrote:
| The button is still there, you just don't see the number of
| dislikes without a plugin.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Is it? I see in the network requests where the "likes"
| button data is returned, but not the dislikes. It's
| possible I just can't find it though - there's a lot of
| data in a lot of shapes.
| gowld wrote:
| The dislike count is from an external tracker, not
| YouTube's own data.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That makes way more sense, but seems like it's a useless
| feature. I would assume that in that case it would be
| dislikes from the add-on (or some sort of federated
| dislike space?), which is really just going to tell you
| the opinions of people who like disliking things so much
| they downloaded an add-ons just to see others down-vote
| it as well.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| aliqot wrote:
| http://returnyoutubedislike.com/
| queuebert wrote:
| Do these extensions track the dislikes externally, or do they
| somehow bring it back on YouTube's side?
| fkarg wrote:
| they track externally and extrapolate, so it's skewed based
| on audience (they also made a 'backup' from when yt still
| showed them)
|
| still, I found it more useful than not
| kerpotgh wrote:
| Completely disagree. Getting rid of that button has
| significantly cleaned up the associated comments sections. I've
| also noticed a general improvement in my recommendations. Great
| move imo.
| 10xDev wrote:
| The dislike crowd just came in and demonstrated exactly why
| dislikes were removed all while trying to defend their
| position.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| There's a lot more to YouTube than political videos. I'd
| estimate over 90% of "reviews" for exercise equipment are
| automated videos based on data scraped from Amazon. These
| used to get downvoted heavily, so you could quickly see which
| videos were worth watching and which ones were created by
| bots. Now you have to slog through a dozen bot videos to find
| even one created by a human, giving their actual review. But
| fuck those of us who use YouTube for something other than
| political porn because some politician got their feelings
| hurt by a high dislike count.
| robmusial wrote:
| I'm not expert on YouTube's algorithms, how did getting rid
| of visible dislikes help improve recommendations?
|
| I could see it having an impact on the comment section
| because rather than just dislike and move on people feel
| compelled to say what is wrong with the video, but I could
| also see the opposite effect where instead of just disliking
| and moving on now people spam the comment section with
| unhelpful attacks on the video/creator.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| Because people would brigade videos they politically
| disagreed with even if it was good content. I'm seeing
| those videos now. Taking away dislikes has a chilling
| effect on brigading.
| rolobio wrote:
| How can you tell when a video contains something misleading?
| For example, I struggle to find quality DIY videos without
| the dislikes warning me away. Dislikes are a great way for
| the community to clean house.
| khazhoux wrote:
| But YouTube is already using the dislikes to push content
| down, it's just not showing you the count (nor does it show
| you the many-other engagement signals it uses for its
| rankings and recommendations).
|
| Personally, I see the removal of visible dislikes as a net
| positive. They were used to rain down negativity and
| meanness on well-intentioned videos. I think YouTube is now
| a happier place when a kid's crappy singing video gets
| quietly ranked down, versus being shown to have 34
| classmates (or 34,000 strangers) that hated it.
| robmusial wrote:
| DIY videos are my primary concern on this as well. It is
| also why browser extensions don't help me too much because
| my use case is usually in the garage, half way through a
| project having issues, on my phone furiously trying to get
| a solution to the problem I'm having.
|
| I had this exact scenario yesterday trying to remove
| rounded/stripped lug nuts off my wheels. It would've been
| very helpful to be able to see if the video I was watching
| had 1000 likes but 6000 dislikes to know if what I was
| about to do was advisable or not. Yes, I read the comments
| and it ended up being a simple fix with the right tools,
| but the like/dislike ratio is a great way to filter
| dangerous/dumb/unhelpful videos.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Isn't YouTube already pushing down the bad-ratio videos,
| though? I know it's not the same as you being able to
| filter the counts yourself... but the data _is_ being
| used to try to hide crap.
| strgrd wrote:
| same experience trying to find videos that answer a
| technical question - there's no immediate gauge on whether
| or not the video's useful, and it's easy (and often
| automatic on YouTube's part) to hide any comments with a
| negative sentiment
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sure, we all got fucked by that but just think of the
| political porn addicts who now get to have their feelings
| protected. Ensuring the integrity of their ideological
| bubbles is much more important than preventing videos
| with dangerous instructions in them from being promoted.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| YouTube still uses dislikes to keep those out of your
| stream.
| 10xDev wrote:
| Comments and general channel credibility. If channel
| deletes comments or is often misleading people will likely
| catch on and avoid.
| strgrd wrote:
| ...how can you tell if a channel deletes comments?
| ciberado wrote:
| Can anyone please explain me why the parent comment deserves
| being voted down?
| gowld wrote:
| It's a bizarre assertion without evidence.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| There is evidence, it's just anecdotal and every contrary
| comment is the same.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Wow only now I noticed that the dislike button disappeared.
| That's a terrible decision. All social media should have
| dislike buttons. To many people with large following think they
| are clever because they only ever see likes and retweets, but
| if we could downvote/dislike some of their idiot comments on
| Twitter the world would be a better place.
| ajorgensen wrote:
| I've been using this chrome extension [1] and actually forgot
| they removed the dislike button.
|
| [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-
| dis...
| joenathanone wrote:
| It's just made-up or out of date data, the feature has been
| removed, not just hidden.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not just made up, it tracks downvotes from extension
| users and combines them with a historical database. And I
| think some creators share new info with the database to
| help the accuracy.
| progbits wrote:
| Creators can only share own counts and would be heavily
| incentivized to lower their dislike count, no? How is
| this supposed to work?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't think many people are going to go through the
| trouble of offering to help and then feed in fake info,
| especially if they make awful videos and it's easy to
| guess what they're doing.
| bugfix wrote:
| Many videos had the dislike count collected by the
| extension and stored before YouTube completely removed
| the counter from the videos. That number is now combined
| with dislikes sent by the users.
|
| New videos will only show dislikes sent by people using
| the extension. There's no way to know the real number
| anymore.
| ajorgensen wrote:
| ah, good point. I thought when this originally came out the
| data was still available via api call but it appears thats
| not the case anymore, or possibly never was.
|
| From the FAQ
|
| > Where does the extension get its data?
|
| > A combination of archived data from before the offical
| YouTube dislike API shut down, and extrapolated extension
| user behavior.
| jmyeet wrote:
| My experience in this space is you would be surprised how many
| thing slike this only exist because of as few as one person
| wants it to be that way. It's not even the leader necessary. A
| mid-level VP can have an outsized impact just based on their
| area of responsibility.
|
| It can be purely emotional too, no data whatsoever. If there is
| data it's just selectively chosen to support the preconceived
| view. It literally happens all the time.
|
| Just look at the changes to the Macbook following Johy Ive's
| departure or even the iOS UI changes following Forstall's
| departure. In the latter case, the removal of skeuomorphic
| design was so impactful Apple engineers called it "de-Forstall-
| ation".
|
| In this case, I see it being big brands pushing for the removal
| of dislike button. They simply don't want to be dislike-bombed
| for doing something unpopular. That's it. So I wouldn't bet on
| Wijicki leaving impacts this.
| lvl102 wrote:
| She quite literally got this far because of family. Geez I wonder
| why Youtube remains one of the most underperforming media assets.
|
| Edit: SV is full of nepotism.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well given that Youtube gets its money from making the user
| experience terrible via ad bombardment... that sounds like a
| good thing?
|
| They'd get more revenue by breaking things like uBlock origin
| being able to completely remove all ads. Not something we
| really want them to do I think.
| robk wrote:
| Not true. Her sister met Sergey because they were in her
| garage. She got the job fair and square.
| sosodev wrote:
| How do you figure? She worked for Google for nearly 15 years
| before becoming the CEO of YT. If anything it sounds like she
| was peter principled.
| [deleted]
| breck wrote:
| YouTube started out as a site that gave the middle finger to
| (c)opywrong laws, and it still has that spirit alive, while
| growing into an incredible resource to learn and grow. It's also
| damn fast and easy to publish to.
|
| Thank you Susan!
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > YouTube started out as a site that gave the middle finger to
| (c)opywrong laws, and it still has that spirit alive,
|
| no it doesn't has that spirit anymore, channels who get too
| many copyright strikes get banned.
|
| Why do you even credit "Susan" for any of that? She isn't a
| Youtube founder, but a pure product of Google culture.
| MKGoogle wrote:
| [dead]
| daltont wrote:
| Hopefully, the "stop showing me this ad" feature gets fixed. I'm
| tired of always being presented with an ad for the "Dixie Store".
| No, I don't want to shop for Confederate flags and other garbage.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm tired of the ads asking "Are you gay? Take this 10-minute
| quiz!"
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Or alcohol ads when you have given up the juice.
| radiojasper wrote:
| Hopefully the new CEO will give a push for more / better live
| contents on the platform and for a better navigation structure on
| the website.
| nperez wrote:
| There is so much untapped potential in Youtube right now.
| Hopefully new leadership means improvements in YT Live and YT
| Music, both of which feel like afterthoughts even though they
| have large competitors.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| They have Sunday ticket now which could be a game changer.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| > Wojcicki, who joined Alphabet nearly 25 years ago...
|
| I'm not a journalist, but that doesn't sound right.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| michaelt wrote:
| _> In September 1998, the same month that Google was
| incorporated, its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up
| office in Wojcicki 's parents' garage in Menlo Park,
| California._ [1]
|
| 2023-1998=25
|
| Sounds right to me.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Wojcicki#Career
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| Yes, Alphabet was created less than 8 years ago. She probably
| joined Google.
| thetinguy wrote:
| >Google was founded on September 4, 1998
|
| Maybe she was an early employee?
| [deleted]
| flebron wrote:
| I think k8sToGo's point is that she never "joined Alphabet",
| Alphabet did not exist when she joined Larry and Sergey. She
| joined concurrent with Google's founding as a company, she
| probably joined when the search engine was named Backrub.
| Alphabet would be created decades later.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Exactly. But I guess people don't care about accuracy
| anymore.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken she was Sergei's girl friend back then or
| maybe it was her sister. Not sure but I remember his first
| wife had this last name.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Anne, sister, founded 23andme.
| [deleted]
| mikece wrote:
| Google is that old, Alphabet isn't.
| Arrath wrote:
| Splitting hairs. "Joined the entity that would later become
| <a part of> Alphabet", big deal.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
| [deleted]
| nickelpro wrote:
| ?
|
| Google's first office was in her parents' garage
| jonny_eh wrote:
| No, her garage.
|
| > With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the
| upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in
| suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki
|
| https://about.google/intl/en_us/our-story/
| ejvincent wrote:
| Read the article: Wojcicki has been involved
| with Google practically since the beginning. The company's
| founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, set up office in her
| parents' garage soon after they incorporated Google in 1998.
| Wojcicki became Google's first marketing manager the following
| year and played a role in the earliest Google Doodles. In 2006,
| she encouraged Google to buy YouTube, which launched a year
| earlier.
| joewhatkins wrote:
| It's accurate. Google was started out of her parent's garage,
| and she became involved around then.
| yurylifshits wrote:
| Google started as a research project in 1995 and incorporated
| in 1998. Susan was an employee number 16. 25 years sounds about
| right.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pradn wrote:
| Positives:
|
| * Presided over a vast increase in revenue, from $4 to $29
| billion
|
| * Steered the ship through a number of content controversies
|
| * Anecdotally, the brand value of YouTube remains good
|
| * YouTube Premium seems to have good uptake
|
| * Presided over enormous cost savings with custom encoder
| hardware
|
| * Few major technical outages, good streaming performance
| generally
|
| * Relationships with advertisers and content creators generally
| remain good
|
| Negatives:
|
| * Missed the Twitch/streaming wave
|
| * Missed the TikTok, short video wave
|
| * YouTube Originals flopped (partly bc they didn't commit hard
| enough, not like Netflix or Amazon)
|
| * Overall low user experience - slow/complex website and apps
|
| * Issues for content creators - overly aggressive ContentID, not
| rewarding short but valuable videos enough (indie animation),
| opaque demonetization rules
|
| * No shrinking of the algorithmic filter bubble
| ris58h wrote:
| > Overall low user experience
|
| I literally have to wait for 5 seconds for 3 dot menus under
| videos to load on the main page. It's ridiculous.
| lackbeard wrote:
| > YouTube Originals flopped
|
| Maybe as a whole, but Cobra Kai was excellent and very popular!
|
| Also, in the long-run, will having "missed" streaming & shorts
| necessarily be a bad thing? Time will tell.
|
| I wish they never introduced shorts. Why do all platforms need
| to be everything to everyone? Why can't they focus on just
| being the best platform for user-created long-form video? I
| probably know the answer, but it makes me sad that that's the
| reality we live in.
| [deleted]
| numlocked wrote:
| It seems likely that YouTube TV is also going well.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Some numbers would be helpful. I recently got it for
| Superbowl, because I couldn't be bothered to find pirate
| stream and cancelled it shortly thereafter. I did look at
| what else they offer why I had access. Nothing that would
| make me think of staying anyway.
|
| I tend to think all those services rely heavily on old TV-
| addicts like my wife.
| pradn wrote:
| It's worth getting a TV antenna for events like this. If
| you don't have a TV, YouTube TV is a good option but
| expensive.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Just discovered something very interesting: She is resigning
| _one day_ after Google received a subpoena from the U.S. House
| of Representatives demanding answers to questions on censorship
| of conservative voices, and _specifically_ on content
| moderation decisions.
|
| Yes, just yesterday. Subpoena to resignation.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-republicans-subpoena...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/15/house-r...
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3859762-house-gop-subp...
|
| That's actually a really bad look (pro PR tip: Don't resign
| immediately after bad press - delay your resignation to avoid
| association if possible - or, if you know a certain political
| group doesn't like you and you're planning to retire, maybe
| resign _before_ they get into power). Particularly important
| because Twitter is _all over_ that "connection" right now that
| was pretty unnecessary. It appears that the subpoena was
| directed at Google, but her resignation means she may not have
| to personally have to personally testify, as Google could send
| the new CEO in.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Wow, that literally doesn't matter at all.
|
| There's absolutely nothing stopping Congress from issuing her
| a direct subpoena.
| ctvo wrote:
| Do you think this is as big or even bigger than the silencing
| of conservative voices revealed in the "Twitter Files"?
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't think this press looks bad, it merely looks like
| partisan bickering without substance. Particularly with how
| widely publicized it is that YouTube facilitates
| radicalization towards right wing ideologies in the past.
| Resigning after those allegations wouldn't have looked bad
| either.
| doh wrote:
| It's a coincidence. This had to be in works for months (or
| something substantial had to go down). Also, they get
| subpoenaed all the time across various committees.
| MisterPea wrote:
| Yeah exactly, this level of resignation is in the works for
| months
| majormajor wrote:
| Republicans have been complaining about perceived persecution
| for years (decades), there's no real Youtube-related news in
| the fact that they are asking companies about it now that
| they have a house majority...
| ldldkdosp wrote:
| [flagged]
| majormajor wrote:
| There's a dead reply to this calling the phrasing
| "perceived persecution" "gaslighting" that I think is
| somewhat interesting for a couple of reasons:
|
| 1) It's undeniable that Republicans have been complaining
| about this shit. It's also something not everyone agrees
| happens at the level of the complaint. So "perceived" seems
| like an accurate description of the situation.
|
| 2) There's mention of a "strangehold" on journalism from
| Democrats which is exactly one of the sorts of complaints I
| was mentioning: but it's also one that seems no truer today
| than it was when I was hearing it on radio stations 25
| years ago. Mainstream media personalities complaining that
| no personalities like themselves existed in the mainstream
| media. From Rush on the radio then to today's wave either
| on cable TV or online, the song remains the same. This is
| why personally I think the claims of persecution is wildly
| overblown.
| ctvo wrote:
| Imagine going through life giving "pro PR tip"s when you're
| this ignorant of where true power lies.
|
| Tech companies have not feared the US government in decades.
| They embarrass or ignore US senators and representatives. See
| _former_ (yes, they can subpoena you after you leave the
| company) Twitter employees embarrassing Donald Trump at these
| same hearings last week.
|
| The more likely conspiracy theory is Wojcicki lost an
| internal power struggle. Google hasn't been doing great.
| Pichai hasn't been doing great. Wojcicki going for the top
| job and not getting it, and leaving is a much more believable
| scenario.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| She _wasn 't_ subpoenaed, and as a CEO of a multinational,
| there is _always_ recent bad press you could point to that
| makes it a "bad time" to resign.
|
| Googling "republicans subpoena sundar" returns similar
| articles from 2020 and 2018 (such as
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/senate-republicans-vote-
| to-s... and https://theprint.in/india/governance/google-ceo-
| sundar-picha...).
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| She's resigning days after a bad quarterly result came out
| for YouTube, which seems much more likely to be related. I
| can't imagine the subpoena thing being relevant for a number
| of reasons:
|
| 1) Wojcicki wasn't subpoenated, 2) everyone expected
| subpoenas to come, and if she wanted to avoid them, it would
| have been smarter to resign the day before, not the day
| after, 3) the panels are political theater and aren't based
| on any sort of evidence or reality, 4) Even if this was a
| super real issue and Wojcicki sat down and confessed to
| illegally murdering Republicans on Joe Biden's orders, there
| would be no consequences, since Democrats control the Senate.
| The news coverage from both sides would be roughly the same
| either way.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| It's interesting timing but she will still have to testify
| about all the time she was in charge, resigning doesn't
| really change anything.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Not as bad as the look of conservative voices since 2016
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Is this a form of synesthesia?
| tehwebguy wrote:
| * Missed out on stand up comedy!
|
| Netflix became the comedy powerhouse by, most likely, just
| looking at what unofficial standup uploads had the most views
| on YouTube and making appropriate offers.
| golemotron wrote:
| To be fair, Netflix had already built out original
| programming. YouTube hasn't.
| 40acres wrote:
| Funnily enough I really like YouTube shorts. A lot of Tiktokers
| cross post and because of this I haven't found a reason to
| download TikTok.
| rr888 wrote:
| > I haven't found a reason to download TikTok
|
| Its a good business. My daughter isn't allowed Tiktok, but
| youtube comes with every phone and ipad already...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| [flagged]
| IshKebab wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure about TikTok. YouTube Shorts seems to be
| quite good and popular.
| thegrim22 wrote:
| Last I checked there were multiple direct replies to this
| commenting on how censorship issues weren't mentioned as
| negative, and now those replies are mysteriously all completely
| missing, which is about as ironic as you can possibly get.
| Comments complaining about censorship issues are themselves
| censored.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| [flagged]
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Yeah. I love YouTube and admire it as a business, but the
| censorship undermines everything and anecdotally seems to be
| getting worse.
| drusepth wrote:
| YouTube has forever had a moderation problem. What some
| people call censorship, others call moderating. I'm glad
| the comments/videos have improved significantly in quality
| the last ~year, due to what I assume is being attributed to
| censorship here.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > * Relationships with advertisers and content creators
| generally remain good
|
| I'd say this is due to lack of competition and network effects
| than a good relationship. CuriosityStream, Nebula, and even
| channels as benign as Linus Tech Tips trying to get Floatplane
| off the ground show this relationship is far from strong. Your
| _non-edgy_ creators wouldn 't be trying to replace you if they
| thought you were doing a good job.
| pradn wrote:
| It's not perfect, but it's not terrible either. Millions of
| creators and billions of users generally have a good
| experience on YouTube. There's been no "let's try Mastodon"
| moment.
| repple wrote:
| UX gripe: It would be nice if YouTube remembered where I
| stopped watching a 3 hour video, so that I would not have to
| seek myself next time I resume. Spotify does it and it's so
| convenient!!!
| coding123 wrote:
| It does resume on the desktop. It does not on Android. Go
| figure.
| [deleted]
| mrkramer wrote:
| >She's 'starting a new chapter' to focus on her family, health
| and passion projects.
|
| So YouTube wasn't her passion project?! C'mon.
| dtx1 wrote:
| We can all hate Youtube here for sure but when you listen to for
| example Linus from LTT he is very adamant that while youtube does
| have it's fair share of problems, when it comes to compensating
| creators fairly on their platform, they are much better than
| almost all others.
|
| And I personally enjoy Youtube very much. So much great content
| for free. If I need to learn about something i find myself
| looking into youtube first quite often.
| mkaic wrote:
| Agreed. I would not be where I am in life today without the
| skills and knowledge I learned from YouTube. I am a huge fan of
| the way they compensate creators and align their incentives
| with creators' incentives, and generally just very pleased with
| the product they provide. I pay for Premium and it's the best
| monthly subscription I have imo -- the sheer quantity of
| expertly-produced content on YT is unparalleled, and I've
| discovered so many new hobbies, interests, and people through
| it.
| bredren wrote:
| I'm not familiar w the compensation mechanism but am part of
| a YouTube premium family subscription and agree on the
| overall value.
|
| The content is unparalleled. Home repair is one of my most
| valued content types on the site.
|
| There are many, many different types of house problems and
| solutions covered by videos.
|
| Even when you get to something that seemingly has no person
| describing the problem and fix, you can often get close
| enough to improvise based on other people's ideas.
|
| YouTube is a skill building platform. You can save money by
| becoming more self-reliant.
|
| Despite other comments here, I think the search is quite
| good. It sometimes ignores keywords but returns the video I
| _intended_ to seek.
|
| I don't care for shorts, though and would hide them
| completely if able.
|
| It would also be good to have relatively anonymous ways to
| upload video. Sometimes I'll establish a novel solution and
| would post the information but wouldn't want it associated
| with my identity--or even to monetize it.
| joenathanone wrote:
| If you have a large channel sure, but they cut off smaller
| creators a while back with their new monetization requirements.
| seydor wrote:
| Sure, Youtube is talking handsome faces, and that works very
| well, like it did for TV back then. But AI will ruin all that
| because you can't beat it. Youtube had a great run, but it is
| optional for the future
| [deleted]
| throw7 wrote:
| youtube has run its course. it's basically a medium for corporate
| (read: tv). everything can be disabled and, most importantly,
| dislikes are globally disabled.
|
| It says Mohan launched 'youtube music' and 'shorts' et al. well,
| youtube music killed google play music, so not a fan; and shorts
| are the most recent annoying unfilterable addition to youtube.
|
| ah well.
| anonreeeeplor wrote:
| I believe it is related to this movement to subpoena big tech
| about "collusion with government"
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/15/jim-jordan-subpoenas-alphabe...
|
| Either she is being blamed, or she is deeply guilty and wants to
| try to avoid the publicity, or they anticipate this will become
| extremely ugly.
|
| Or sundar is blaming her for lining him up for a firing squad.
|
| Or she is a liability due to her past work.
|
| Regardless, it seems like she is leaving because what she had to
| do to make the government happy previously is now going to be
| used against Google.
|
| Someone else mentioned the theory that she might be the best
| Sundar replacement. Maybe she found out it's not her or Sundar is
| eliminating competition here.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Just nonsense.. nobody takes the bizarro republican show-trials
| seriously, and in the fantasy world where there was something
| of consequence 'hidden' by these companies, resigning now
| wouldn't absolve anyone of liability for what had happened in
| the past.
| fullshark wrote:
| Maybe, but I also think a lot of these people that hit the
| jackpot from the maturation of the internet the last 25 years
| are just going to quit cause the job is going to suck going
| forward. Being an internet tech executive when the industry is
| no longer growing ridiculously and is just another sector of
| the economy like durable good manufacturing, or real estate
| development or whatever might not be very fun anymore.
|
| The founders themselves of these companies have already gotten
| a headstart.
| minimaxir wrote:
| YouTube has been under far more dangerous regulatory scrutiny
| than that.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Nobody is falling on the sword for that circus. The "Twitter
| Files" were not very meaningful.
|
| After 25 years and being worst case a hundred-millionaire,
| what's the point?
| [deleted]
| gpt5 wrote:
| I always saw her as one of the best candidates to become the
| Twitter CEO. She has the industry credence, and the experience of
| leading and making both google ads and YouTube successful (the
| two parts that Twitter needs help with).
|
| I wonder if Elon Musk would notice.
| vnchr wrote:
| I think there's some conflict in their philosophies on free
| speech.
| verteu wrote:
| Would you really want Twitter run by Sergei Brin's sister-in-
| law?
| gpt5 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that she is less qualified because of her
| sister's past relationships?
| verteu wrote:
| No. I'm worried competition/antitrust will suffer when a
| small number of dominant media companies are run by close
| relatives.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| It would be ironic if Twitter turned into a graveyard for
| former Googlers, considering how many of them have been shut
| out from ever working at Google again/being rehired by the
| company end of their respective non-compete periods.
| ez_mmk wrote:
| W
| rurp wrote:
| After winning the Free Expression award[0] there just wasn't much
| left for her to accomplish there.
|
| https://www.theblaze.com/news/youtube-ceo-receives-free-expr...
| [deleted]
| ramraj07 wrote:
| So much hate for her on all fronts, yet she made the most
| rewarding media platform today on the internet. Any creator or
| consumer who has half a brain should realize the magnitude of the
| feat and how unobvious it is that YouTube exists as it does
| today.
| pzduniak wrote:
| Rewarding to who? And _she_ made it? To me YT continued its
| successful streak despite of the poor changes with not much to
| attribute to people actually making the calls.
| ncann wrote:
| Exactly, she was only CEO since 2014. Saying she made YT is
| laughable, if anything most of the annoying things at YT
| happened under her reign, from bogus DMCAs to dislike button
| removal to the force fed YT shorts and so on.
| causi wrote:
| Don't forget having to have a fucking Google+ account. I'm
| proudly one of the few who spent half a decade being unable
| to comment or send direct messages because I refused to
| assent to the Google+ account creation pop-up.
| nostrademons wrote:
| That wasn't under her. Google+ launched in 2011; Salar
| Kamangar was CEO of YouTube at the time.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Youtube before 2014 was great, I definitely feel like there
| was a big decline in quality in both content, the app, and
| the website since then.
| [deleted]
| ecf wrote:
| She didn't "make" anything. Your average employee working at
| YouTube did.
| nus07 wrote:
| Ever heard of Jawed Karim?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"yet she made the most rewarding media platform today on the
| internet."
|
| I think TikTok holds this position, not YouTube. Indeed,
| YouTube seems to be pushing really hard for Shorts to be a
| viable competitor but it doesn't seem to be working.
|
| Or, do you mean rewarding in terms of monetization for creators
| and not engagement?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| YouTube was an acquisition. Susan had zero input in its
| creation, she was working at Google at the time.
| benatkin wrote:
| I disagree. She was the CEO and was clearly not great from the
| perspective of users, in part because the real customers are
| advertisers. People who say "um, ok" when a CEO at a user-
| hostile corporation leaves are not haters. I know there are
| plenty of actual haters but I don't see "so much hate".
|
| Also from Wikipedia: "YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad
| Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were early employees of
| PayPal, which left them enriched after the company was bought
| by eBay. Hurley had studied design at the Indiana University of
| Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science
| together at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign."
| queuebert wrote:
| She didn't build anything. She got Google to buy it.
| [deleted]
| thanatropism wrote:
| > focus on family
|
| Maybe just wants kids?
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| I'm sorry, what?
| [deleted]
| tasubotadas wrote:
| That crazy push for 10min and longer videos was a sole reason why
| tiktok happened.
|
| I still remember that there used to be short and super
| informative videos before but now everything is so stretched out
| with low info density
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| There is quite some value in longer videos.
|
| However there seems to be a thing that you need 10 minutes for
| monetisation, so people stretch content not needing much time
| to those 10 minutes ...
| robotnikman wrote:
| I remember some of the best youtube content I've seen was less
| than 10 minutes in length, like short animations and other
| content which took a lot of time to produce in small amounts.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Khan academy videos are one of the best examples for this.
| [deleted]
| xnx wrote:
| This is exactly right. Youtube has been trying so hard to turn
| itself into a tv network. Tiktok (for now) is a classic
| disrupter and has had tremendous success by making something
| great that people liked. Vine is the more embarassing failure,
| but YouTube is a close second. For those who dismis tiktok
| without even trying it, it is hard to convey how fun,
| interesting, and surprising it can be.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Does TikTok make a profit though?
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| i'm not sure if vine was a true failure. the only difference
| i see between that and tiktok is the focus on music and the
| less rigid length requirement.
|
| the users loved vine and it's still quoted in tiktoks
|
| i think it's because china is able to dump money it was able
| to take off more
| andsoitis wrote:
| > i'm not sure if vine was a true failure
|
| it isn't around anymore.
| argiopetech wrote:
| Google Reader wasn't a failure, but it's also not around
| any more.
|
| Sometimes companies shutter successful products.
| [deleted]
| tempnow987 wrote:
| God, I wondered why these youtubers can't stop with the super
| long introductions, walkarounds to tell us something basic that
| could be explained in 2-3 minutes TOPS.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| game_the0ry wrote:
| I was big time addicted to youtube for a while starting around
| 2010, mostly bc the recommended videos were so good and content
| that was uploaded was more raw and silly then now. But at some
| point the recommendations got really bad, so much so that it made
| it a lot less enjoyable. I miss those days.
| ManlyBread wrote:
| Same here, it's really hard to get "lost" in YouTube nowadays
| forevergreenyon wrote:
| arguably, this is a good thing
| yesco wrote:
| In what way? Getting "lost" on youtube just meant following
| your interests until it strayed far away from the original
| video. Jumping video to video was fairly similar to
| "surfing" the web by jumping hyperlink to hyperlink.
|
| Now it feels like Youtube controls the tide towards some
| fixed direction outside of the user control, which is
| frankly really boring. It's almost like the opposite of
| TickTock if comparing to other platforms.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| What could the argument against seeing more things, and
| thus more ads, possibly be?
| ozten wrote:
| Same here. I assumed there was less good content being made on
| YT. Or is it that the recommendation engine has gotten worse?
| xnx wrote:
| 10 minute minimum length for monetization killed short good
| content. There's still good content, but it doesnt respect your
| time.
| jedberg wrote:
| Seriously. I've seen videos with two minutes of very
| interesting content and 8 minutes of fluff. It's so
| frustrating.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Now they're pushing shorts, which are (in my opinion) too
| short to convey all the relevant info. Not sure how
| monetization works with shorts, since I use an adblock, but
| 50%+ of my subscription feed is shorts on some days and it
| suck (for me personally)
| grapesurgeon wrote:
| [dead]
| cft wrote:
| Does this mean even more censorship or less?
| uSoldering wrote:
| Considering the lead of the Trust and Safety team is taking
| over, less is unlikely.
| jokoon wrote:
| I wonder if demonetization practices caused youtube to bleed
| creators.
|
| There was so much drama around youtubers and how youtube treated
| them.
|
| I guess Youtube must always obey its advertisers.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Due to demonitization some types of videos (especially
| political, "current affairs", medical, anything (even comedy)
| using curse words, etc.) almost always get demonetized and many
| people have stopped such content since it's not worth it.
| During covid times it was so bad, that even mentioning "covid"
| in a video got some of them demonetized (even in non-medical
| context, eg. "shippments from china got delayed due to covid").
| mablopoule wrote:
| Yes, I wonder how we went from "9/11 never forget" to "Don't
| even mention the subject if you want to keep earning money
| for your effort in creating content" [1].
|
| YouTube is weird when it comes to completely arbitrary
| demonetization (and the absolutely braindead idea of removing
| the downvote counter) because it's one of the rare plateform
| that get so much negative goodwill from content creator who
| depends on it to make some money.
|
| [1] One famous french Youtubeur, "Joueur du Grenier" has to
| playfully bypass the subject by joking that "Nothing
| whatsoever happened between the 10th and the 12th September"
| while showing 2 plastic bottles being hit by paper airplane
| and then crumbling. He originally put real images of 9/11
| while describing the early 00's zeitgeist, but had to do that
| instead since it caused the video to not be sent to
| subscribers (or demonetized to oblivion, I forgot which)
| gsatic wrote:
| She got us to 100 miilion 'how to boil egg' videos. Hopefully the
| next corporate robot in charge or Bard (if the rumors are true)
| can take us to 1 billion.
| [deleted]
| CSDude wrote:
| Can I get my dislike button back now? Youtube has been a
| significantly worse place since that.
| droptablemain wrote:
| YouTube has become such an unfree, restricted platform in recent
| years. Hopefully that changes, although I doubt it.
| [deleted]
| dmonitor wrote:
| You can thank the concerted media effort to paint Youtube as a
| host for terrorist propaganda for that. The adpocalypse changed
| the site permanently for the worse, and a lot of people seem to
| overlook that.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/ads-shown-isis...
|
| this was a huge story overnight with tons of advertisers
| pulling out of youtube. the site became a lot more locked down
| after this and a few more advertiser threats in the following
| years.
| neosat wrote:
| YouTube has been riding it's content momentum for too long. It
| really needs a change of leadership to continue to innovate.
|
| For some searches, it's baffling that the top results are clearly
| intuitively wrong (e.g. showing videos where dislike to like
| ratio is very high, compared to clearly better alternatives that
| you can find if you wade through the results)
| theGnuMe wrote:
| By all metrics except TikTok YouTube is the 900 pound gorilla
| eating streaming.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > to continue to innovate
|
| Like they innovated by blatantly ripping off tiktok and added
| "shorts"? Yeah best if they just stay exactly what they are.
| moremetadata wrote:
| I'm noticing that traditional media & news outlets are
| getting their idea's from what is popular on social media
| outlets like Youtube.
|
| Example: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-piano
|
| https://youtu.be/ljjWeHmeVE8?t=157
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pub+piano+playi.
| ..
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shopping+mall+p.
| ..
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=public+piano+pl.
| ..
| zxienin wrote:
| Change of leadership is _not necessarily_ = innovation
| progbits wrote:
| Why does everything have to keep innovating?
|
| Youtube was fine years ago. People make stuff, I subscribe and
| watch it. Sure throw in some algorithmic discovery on the side.
| Bring back dislike count.
|
| Other than that I don't care for any innovation. Just keep the
| lights on.
| dmonitor wrote:
| The nature of The Algorithm and its tendency to decide who
| gets to be a millionaire leads to a TON of metagaming. I
| think the algorithm needs to be non-static just so content on
| the website doesn't homogenize. They often make subtle tweaks
| to the website for seemingly no reason, but I think a lot of
| it is just to prevent metagaming.
| xxpor wrote:
| There's no incentive there (until users start leaving)
|
| The algorithm's goal is to maximize revenue or profit, and
| what does that doesn't change that dynamically. This means
| the metagame is inevitable. You're essentially asking for
| YouTube to cut their goal for an unclear long term benefit,
| and we all know how those conversations tend to go.
| eastbound wrote:
| > The nature of The Algorithm and its tendency to decide
| who gets to be a millionaire leads to a TON of metagaming.
|
| Every corporation owning more than 50% of a market should
| be broken up. But then, USA wouldn't reign on the
| international culture.
| kleiba wrote:
| _> Bring back dislike count._
|
| Not to mention "sort by oldest first".
| kbns wrote:
| use 'before:$year' ( eg. "funny clips before:2018" ) is our
| current saviour.
| kleiba wrote:
| Is there a key to restrict the search results to a
| specific channel?
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| >Why does everything have to keep innovating?
|
| would you like to remove the ability to add labeled chapters
| to your videos? would you like to remove browseable
| transcriptions to videos?
|
| Youtube has a ton of things that it still needs to add, such
| as embedding multiple audio streams so you can have more than
| one audio language in the same video (I think they are
| testing it currently), or being able to better modify a video
| after you've uploaded it. Adding audio normalization to ads
| so they are not louder than the video they appear in? Still
| waiting.
|
| Point is, there is a ton to innovate and I think you are
| quickly forgetting all those useful features that came in the
| last 10 years that were't there before
| llampx wrote:
| Those are technical improvements. Most people complain
| about changes to the UX that make things worse or change
| things around for seemingly no reason.
| bobro wrote:
| I think theres a difference between innovating and
| polishing. I would love YT to polish the product, but don't
| want it to innovate itself into something other than a
| medium length video hosting platform.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| yea I'm a daily users of YT. Pay for premium. Don't produce.
| Only consume. Probably their ideal customer and I think the
| app is great. No idea what people are bitching about.
| bobro wrote:
| Same. Really like YT. The algorithm is not great, but
| compared to other parts of the internet, YT is top tier for
| me.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The main criticism I see with YouTube is that it has too
| many ads, and the idea of paying for youtube is laughable.
|
| Basically, it's users are very entitled.
|
| Edit: I have had premium since day 1, I'm speaking about
| others.
| voydik wrote:
| Paying for YouTube Premium has been the best $15/month
| I've ever spent. What's laughable is not paying for it.
| It's a good model that works.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Seriously, if you spend any meaningful time on it,
| premium is amazing deal. Variety of the content is
| unbeatable.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| There's premium lite for like half the price as well.
| atlgator wrote:
| You can save $3/mo by canceling your subscription through
| Apple and subscribing directly through the YouTube's
| website ($11.99). Avoids the Apple tax.
| chucksta wrote:
| A major benefit of paying for it is easily supporting
| more creators without directly donating. They get
| pittance for ad rolls but substantially more for premium
| views.
| peruvian wrote:
| If you really don't want to pay $15/mo, sign up using a
| VPN in a developing country. They don't check or care.
| You will need a fake address as well.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Just not ARS. Apparently they now check if the credit
| card making the payment is linked to an Argentinian bank.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I'm happy to part ways with a couple of bucks for an ad
| free experience. I use youtube everyday. Entitlement is
| thinking you should have a certain premium experience on
| someone else's dime (you).
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I don't currently pay for premium, but have and am
| considering it again with Netflix pulling their BS.
|
| Nothing about Youtube the platform needs to change. It just
| works.
| justapassenger wrote:
| I'm in the same boat (as a user - paying for premium and
| consuming a lot of videos). I think app is pretty good, but
| search is horrible. Their recommendations in the feed are
| top notch, so I always have something interesting to watch.
| But searching for new topics returns garbage.
| clircle wrote:
| Because those stock prices gotta go up
| ignoramous wrote:
| I thought YouTube did really well under Wojcicki's leadership.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Well.... not really.
|
| - Why does seemingly every channel I follow, whether it be
| JCS Criminal Psychology or The 8-bit Guy, have to mention the
| YouTube Algorithm, Content ID, Copyright Strikes, or
| Community Guidelines? If almost every creator is struggling
| and not just the fringe and edgy, you've screwed up big time.
|
| - Removal of the dislike count. Extremely unpopular decision.
| Also YouTube's API is still answering dislike counts making
| extensions to bring it back still function, despite over a
| year later, almost implying it was about keeping up
| appearances. Now... who could be so worried about keeping up
| appearances...
|
| - Completely blowing up YouTube Rewind into an increasingly
| corporate affair that quickly started heading downhill until
| the absolute train wreck of 2018, where it became the most
| disliked video in YouTube history at that point. This was, in
| part, because YouTube basically sanitized it of the presence
| of the popular YouTubers at the time because they might not
| be advertiser-friendly. Rewind never recovered and YouTube
| has now given up trying to engage with the community in such
| a way.
|
| - Taking a 5-second ad at the beginning of her tenure, and
| leaving it with multiple, constant, unskippable, rampant
| advertising; and a subscription plan that started at $10/mo.
| turning into $23/mo. for equivalent service (5 users).
|
| - Launched YouTube Kids to provide a curated experience for
| younger individuals, then decided to make it run on
| automation. Which then screwed up big time and started
| serving kids extremely inappropriate content causing a brief
| congressional inquiry. Then YouTube settled as guilty to
| violating COPAA, and decided to shift all the responsibility
| on the creators by disabling comments and other features on
| any video that may possibly be seen by kids.
|
| Some "success"...
| blululu wrote:
| FWIW I think there are more or less two very distinct
| experiences/use cycles of YouTube. There is the one where
| people get to it from outside (mostly Google Search) and
| the one where people get to it from within YouTube itself.
| As someone who falls into the casual Google search category
| the latter class of serious YouTube user is just alien to
| me. The 2018 Rewind video was pretty bonkers stupid to me,
| but, to me, it also looks more or less the same as the 2017
| rewind video. How you feel about YouTube is probably a
| function of how you use it.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > If almost every creator is struggling and not just the
| fringe and edgy, you've screwed up big time.
|
| Whatever algorithm YouTube uses professional uploaders will
| try to maximize their views, which goes by acting as the
| algorithm requires. In a competitive environment there is a
| inherent struggle.
| chippiewill wrote:
| > showing videos where dislike to like ratio is very high
|
| That's because Youtube prioritizes engagement over quality. You
| make more money that way.
| GVIrish wrote:
| Bingo. This has made me spend a lot less time on Youtube
| because recommended content and search are worse for me. If
| I'm searching for a marine biology video I don't want to see
| recommendations for clickbait influencers 3 results in. I
| used to go down random rabbit holes when I found related
| interesting content, but now that just doesn't happen very
| much anymore.
| intrasight wrote:
| For me, as a consumer of video content that I find with google
| video search, YouTube is just a video host and no different
| than any other video host that Google crawl. The vast majority
| of those searches for me pertain to hands-on DIY projects where
| videos are very useful to learn how to perform some process -
| like laying floors (a recent one for me). I would never visit
| youtube.com directly as I've learned that it's incentives are
| very different. But most of the really useful content that I
| find is in fact hosted on YouTube, so the service is in fact
| extremely useful for DIYers. And I do often find in those
| videos tools or supplies that make sense to purchase, and I
| often click on the producers affiliate links in the video.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| YT search is dogshit now, rather than just returning results
| for the keyword you want they mix in random videos you've
| watched before and "suggested" videos that have no relation to
| the search
|
| and the lack of likes/dislikes makes it harder to determine
| quality, which is probably some dark pattern to try and drive
| more engagement by forcing people to watch multiple videos.
| Dark patterns work short term, long term they result in TikTok
| or the equivalent eating your market share
| seydor wrote:
| It's also not SHORTS really trying SHORTS to mix its content
| nicely SHORTS because i seem to find its recommendations
| boring SHORTS and often can't find videos that SHORTS i know
| should be there. Maybe SHORTS i should be using bing search
| to find youtube videos. Yandex also has a nice video search
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The worst part is that they recommend 3 views shorts of
| children uploading random uninteresting moments
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| And if you start browsing shorts you're bound to get the
| same <9 creators ad nauseam with duplicates mixed in all
| the time. It's a terrible experience, honestly.
| sph wrote:
| The YT recommendation system is basically "we know what
| you want to watch better than you do", so it keeps
| blatantly ignoring any opposite signal.
|
| No, I do not want to watch wedding videos that I've said
| I'm not interested in at least 50 times. No, there isn't
| anyone in my household watching wedding videos.
|
| No, I do not want to rewatch a 6 hour long lecture I
| watched last month.
|
| Yet it just doesn't bloody care. I am truly terrified to
| click on anything outside my regular comfort zone for
| fear that that's what I'll be recommended for the next 12
| months. Youtube is the _worst_ product I have to keep
| paying for -- I tried going adblock, but good luck if you
| have Apple devices. I 'd rather be held hostage to
| Youtube Premium than being brainwashed with ads every 5
| minutes.
| vlaxx wrote:
| > YT search is dogshit now...
|
| All of Google search is dogshit these days. You can't search
| for anything these days without a crap ton of ads and pages
| of SEO optimized wrong answers.
| c3534l wrote:
| Downvotes are hidden now. I'm not sure they actually have
| enough information to determine video quality anymore. Its all
| about gaming the algorithm's "engagement" metrics. No one cares
| if you enjoyed yourself any longer.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| The dislike button is still there, they just don't want to
| show the results to advertisers. If advertisers can see the
| ratio, they start complaining about being associated with
| "problematic " content.
|
| They probably want to show viewers, but you can't reveal the
| stats to only one group.
| c3534l wrote:
| Yeah, but because its hidden, people don't use it anymore.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| Maybe they can do something about the endless crypto scams about
| "elon musk projects" that use (really lousy) deep fakes and the
| same script across dozens of different advertising accounts.
|
| Doubt they will though.
| mbrameld wrote:
| Right now YouTube has a big scammer problem. People impersonate
| channel owners and reply to comments on their videos with
| phishing links. Several creators I follow are now putting a
| warning at the beginning of their videos to help educate people,
| but it seems like this is something YouTube could and should fix.
|
| Another probable issue is the upcoming Supreme Court decision
| about Section 230 protections. Maybe Wojcicki sees that writing
| on the wall.
| [deleted]
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > People impersonate channel owners and reply to comments on
| their videos with phishing links
|
| Not only this, YouTube literally allows scammers to run ads and
| you can't report it. I saw an ad with Mr. Beast pop up offering
| $1,000 to the first X people to click on it. I clicked, because
| it sounds like something he would do and I was curious and
| figured YouTube wouldn't let a scammer advertise. Once I landed
| on the page it was immediately clear from the domain that it
| was a scam, but the page looked legit. It's astounding that
| YouTube is alright with openly running scammers ads for them.
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