[HN Gopher] YouTube Oddities
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube Oddities
Author : xk3
Score : 291 points
Date : 2024-02-14 09:37 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| Okay just in case someone who knows reads this. Why doesn't
| Youtube Premium background play work with members-only videos?
|
| Became a member of a channel with spoken content and can't even
| lock my phone when playing a member's only video.
|
| Posts and complaints on this go back years, with zero explanation
| from Youtube as to why this is, if it's intentional or a bug,
| etc.
| pomian wrote:
| If you can, install an old version of Firefox, and that allows
| you continue playing the YouTube video, with screen off, etc.
| (For example 68 esr)
| noisem4ker wrote:
| ...or use an up-to-date version with this recommended
| extension:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/video-
| backgro...
|
| ...or use NewPipe instead:
|
| https://newpipe.net/
|
| (also available with SponsorBlock integration)
| beeboobaa wrote:
| Or install the latest Firefox with
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-
| backgro... (also available on Android)
| sosodev wrote:
| YouTube premium is ridiculously janky for the price. I've
| gotten ads in weird, new parts of the app multiple times as
| they're experimenting with new strategies. Like while scrolling
| shorts for example.
| optymizer wrote:
| I didnt see ads on my main account, but a few times they
| played ads on my kids profiles on Chromecast, which was
| puzzling.
| p1necone wrote:
| Youtube background play being a paid feature is so brazen.
| Google are disabling a basic UX feature in their OS and then
| letting you pay for it in one app that they control.
| rezonant wrote:
| This is somewhat true, and frustrates me to no end as someone
| who builds web video stuff. For what it's worth it's only
| somewhat true. If you exit the browser while video is
| playing, the video is paused. If you then go to the Media
| Notification that Chrome added for the video and hit play, it
| will continue playing in the background.
|
| The same is true on iOS, but using the media center instead
| of the media notification, in which case it will work.
|
| On Android native apps this isn't really true at all, but you
| should use a background service to handle playback to avoid
| getting killed by the OS on low memory situations. This does
| not work for YouTube on the web, because they simply use the
| web visibility API to stop you from resuming the video if you
| try, unless you have premium.
| NolF wrote:
| My understanding was that ads pay to be viewed, they can't
| get paid if you have it on background play and not watching.
| So they made it a premium feature and get paid by the
| subscription.
| rezonant wrote:
| Yes this is perplexing. I have asked YouTube reps point blank
| about this but have never received any useful answer. As far as
| I can tell, it seems to be because the members only stuff uses
| the same system as YouTube's paid video rentals/purchasing
| system. If you rent a video on YouTube (or if you own one)
| you'll note that the behavior is the exact same: it acts as if
| you don't pay for YouTube Premium.
|
| My guess is that the original "YouTube Sponsors" feature (which
| is now "YouTube Memberships") was built on top of the video
| rental/purchase system and now it is too hairy / not worth it
| to fix it in the eyes of the YouTube product managers.
|
| I really wish they'd fix it.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Man I don't do rentals but I'd be pissed if I did and
| background play didn't work considering how much I've paid
| for premium over the years.
| rezonant wrote:
| Agreed, but I imagine this might be a licensing restriction
| or something.
| Suppafly wrote:
| I think that's why the merged google music into youtube
| for youtube music, I imagine they had much better
| licensing terms on the youtube side.
| troupo wrote:
| > However, it is possible for 249 countries to appear in the
| allowed list. It's not clear why this happens as it is the same
| has having no restriction at all. It seems to occur most
| frequently with music videos, potentially they had actual blocks
| at one point and the only way it can be undone is to move
| everything to allowed?
|
| Most likely this is the list sent by the rights holder.
| bombcar wrote:
| Or they're carefully prepared for new countries to appear. No
| need to allow break-away rebellious countries the ability to
| watch the latest music video.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I like to imagine there being some orthodox regime that gets
| so offended by the video that they form a new country to stop
| people from watching it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've had to deal with rights, and it is annoying that they list
| them out individually. They also have a restricted list. They
| totally do not seem to understand the concepts of how white
| listings and black listings work. Rather than white listing all
| of them, just black list none. I've fought this for well over a
| decade. It's just a shit show to deal with.
| zb3 wrote:
| Let me recommend this song: https://www.youtube.com/wach
| user_7832 wrote:
| That's a weird thing... but a solid song, thanks!
| verticalscaler wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/wath
|
| ^ And that one pops a "confirm channel subscription" pop up -
| is this an inside joke or bug?
| PetitPrince wrote:
| > Roel Van de Paar, at this current time has 2,035,484 videos
| uploaded. > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-
| oYb2-xN5FbCXy0167Gg
|
| What the hell. It doesn't seems to be autogenerated video.
| rwmj wrote:
| It looks like the kind of video spam that now shows up in
| searches for technical questions.
| jsheard wrote:
| Those seem to be getting more common, it's very annoying.
| Another genre is autogenerated "product review" or
| "comparison" videos that are just ChatGPT-generated fluff
| copy read out by text-to-speech voice over a slideshow of
| product images, presumably to push an affiliate link in the
| description. Most of them get few if any views but they're so
| easy to make they just take the shotgun approach and hope
| some win the SEO lottery: https://i.imgur.com/xebU9os.png
|
| That channel has some hits, they posted a monitor "review"
| which pulled 20k views and a few dozen comments from real-
| looking people seemingly unaware the channel is run by a
| Python script.
| k12sosse wrote:
| It pays to have an account if you don't - train that shit
| into oblivion!
| imp0cat wrote:
| These reviews where the whole video is a slideshow +
| robotic voiceover are so annoying. They contain 0%
| information, they're just a delivery vehicle for ads.
|
| And there is a ton of them!
| rasz wrote:
| Its ok, you can recognize them by looking at number of
| downvo... oh, right.
| vdaea wrote:
| They are automatically generated I would say. The text is
| copied from somewhere else.
|
| For instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLWJ0spQ5q0 the
| text is from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62840146/unix-
| create-mul...
|
| There are several different intros with him talking but he has
| the same cold sore in every one of them...
| h4ch1 wrote:
| The videos seem to be done through a turk farm imo.
|
| The start has a random intro to seem more human-like and the
| Question/Answer is basically copypasted and the font/style of
| delivery is very mediocre (and very distinctly cheap SEA
| format). The comments are the biggest giveaway though with
| multiple "Love from Bangladesh"s.
| throwaway4roel wrote:
| I worked with him and he was as weird as you'd expect. He got
| let go after getting in someone's face for saying "oh my god",
| because it's "taking god's name in vain". (:
|
| He used to do that back then too, AFAIK they were absolutely
| autogenerated.
|
| (throwaway because I don't want him to harass me, he does do
| that too)
| user_7832 wrote:
| Would you be okay sharing if he is/was he based in the US?
| His name seems a bit European/Dutch to me.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Australia it seems:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zCmAXjlJb8g
|
| Also he specifically links Au version of Linkedin in his
| bio.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks!
| Suppafly wrote:
| >His name seems a bit European/Dutch to me.
|
| We allow those sorts of names in the US.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I'm aware, which is why I asked if they knew/could share
| info/details.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| Of course it's an autogenerated video lol.
|
| What makes you think its not?
| huvarda wrote:
| I've come across that channel while looking for answers to
| programming problems and it's so annoying. He just rips
| stackoverflow questions/answers and puts a little intro at the
| beginning
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Interesting that YouTube seems unable to sort his videos my
| most popular - at least on my iOS app.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| This appears to me to be just a compilation of rejected bug
| bounty reports that were marked as "informational / NA" and are
| now being disclosed by the author.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Youtube Movies is such a wonderful product, it's crazy how I
| can't pay them $10/month and watch whatever I want in their
| ubiquitous apps. Even the comments come into play when watching a
| movie, it's fun to read jokes or some detail I missed. Like look,
| I can quickly watch The 6th Day a perfect Saturday 10AM movie
| while the kids are about to wake up.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdnX-qQIulw
|
| But because of greed all the content is spread across many many
| services, each with their own warty app. What a shame!
| password4321 wrote:
| The ubiquity of YouTube is why if I'm going to "buy" (license)
| a movie I do so there whenever possible.
| dingaling wrote:
| Every single movie on that link for me says "Preview Only" or
| "Not available". I've never found a movie in YouTube that I
| could actually watch.
| GaggiX wrote:
| I remember the 666 video by removing c or h from "watch" from the
| URL of whatever video you were watching. Actually kinda eerie.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of
| pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top
| of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on
| options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And
| it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there
| might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are
| basically gore/grossout videos.
|
| It's still better than when it was constantly recommending the
| daily wire.
| qup wrote:
| I've never seen one recommended, just a counter-point. I watch
| YouTube daily.
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| Do you never see content that has no connection to your
| viewing habits?
|
| It happens all the time and I got hit with the warts and
| pimples a few months back, just a counter point, I watch YT
| daily.
|
| It's mostly shorts where you will see it
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I mostly see content that similar to the things I watch(lot
| of sci-com, some gaming stuff, some sports stuff, a fair
| share of chess content) The only offputting stuff I get
| recommended is these AI generated video essays with
| nonsense claims masquerading as scicom:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ-pztYXH8k
|
| Depresses me that this channel has over 100k subscribers...
|
| But I've never been recommended gross-out stuff. I have
| history enabled because otherwise all I get recommended is
| videos I've already seen.
|
| One thing I would recommend is disabling autoplay. I found
| recommendations improved markedly when the only videos I
| even start watching are ones I decided to. And sometimes
| with autoplay on I'd pass out in front of the TV and wake
| up to some wild shit, and get stranger recommendations
| because of it. But still not getting a bunch of gore or
| gross stuff.
| shmeeed wrote:
| Disabling autoplay is paramount.
|
| I've once tuned into my Chromecast to find my tablet had
| been autoplaying for a week and was in the middle of a
| long streak of middle-eastern folk music with guys
| playing the flute and dancing in a tent. Thankfully, the
| tablet has its own YT account, so my main never gut
| spammed with the corresponding recommendations.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Turn off downloading too. Every time I get a new phone,
| the youtube setting to downvote videos that I might be
| interested in somehow gets re-enabled. Caught it trying
| to download like a gig of random things just in case I
| wanted to watch them on my phone later.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| My recommendations are generally very relevant to the kind
| of stuff I've been watching and like to watch. I've never
| seen something as totally out-of-left-field as pimple
| popping -- even in shorts. I wonder what's causing this
| behavior to be so different for different users?
|
| I am very liberal with the thumbs-down button on anything I
| don't like. I'm also using YouTube premium, although I
| doubt that would significantly affect the quality of recs,
| and the recs were fine before I upgraded.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| The weird thing is that it's only in search results. I'm
| militant about thumbs down/don't recommend on the feed
| and shorts, and in those places I almost never get an
| irrelevant suggestion. It's only an issue in search,
| where there's no option to influence the results, and
| also where it's most irritating.
| josefx wrote:
| Youtube can crawl its way into irrelevancy if you leave
| it running unsupervised for too long. I had autoplay try
| to make me listen to Disney music for a while after
| letting it run over night and the recommendations can
| stick around for ages after that. Not sure how it got
| there, not my usual taste in music.
| adra wrote:
| Never heard of this myself... but the algorithm doesn't
| present you with content based on you watching the video
| but though others that are highly correlated with you.
| Maybe you started watching some weird fringe video channel
| that somewhat mirrors your habits but is also highly linked
| to viewers of these other things? The algo is just going to
| start grouping you into these groups if you like it or not.
| Don't like it? You can always do an rng spin of all posted
| videos and hope to find something you like, or just cut out
| your weirdly correlated video watching preferences.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It's mostly shorts where you will see it
|
| Maybe that says a lot about the type of person that will
| actually watch a short?
| enobrev wrote:
| Maybe because I watch a good deal of youtube almost every day,
| but I do not see these sort of results.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while
| logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your
| viewing history:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/history
|
| Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen
| YouTube recommend one of those in my life.
| cobertos wrote:
| Using YouTube's search through something not tied to your
| account like NewPipe will solve this issue of recommendations
| in search.
| adl wrote:
| I've seen them pop up (hehe) while searching for multi-tools
| and bushcraft videos. Never seen one before.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| > search results
|
| the real problem is that youtube has decided to just put
| normal recommendations on the search result page in the place
| where search results should go. I use the extension 'unhook'
| with the setting 'Hide Inapt Search Results' to remove that
| misfeature.
|
| this feature was presumably somebody's baby and I'd really
| like to read their writeup where they unironically exalt its
| virtues so I can try to gauge how far up their ass their head
| is.
| CBLT wrote:
| My favorite internal Google writeup of that kind was for
| when they doubled the number of screens you needed to click
| through to cancel YouTube Premium. By adding friction
| there, they reduced the number of people who successfully
| canceled their subscription. But the writeup was so very
| sure that all those people, in the middle of the cancel
| process, suddenly realized all the features they value in
| YouTube Premium, and that this change was making people's
| lives better.
| eimrine wrote:
| > I'd really like to read their writeup where they
| unironically exalt its virtues
|
| Increased engagement by putting _content_ after search box.
|
| Reduced search box to such the number that 99.7% searches
| still can accomplish successfully.
|
| Significantly reduced DB load.
|
| New incentive for the AI team to keep pacing its algo
| towards AI-only search.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| > New incentive for the AI team to keep pacing its algo
| towards AI-only search
|
| Please no... Facebook is already doing this in
| marketplace and it's beyond awful. Like "search for an
| oscilloscope and get a vibrator" level of awful.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Considering how popular marketplace is, fb seems to be
| doing everything possible to reduce the utility of it.
| taocoyote wrote:
| I have my childrens accounts under my main account. If they
| watch a lot of certain types of videos, that will show up as
| a suggestion under my main account. I'm positive its not
| because they are using my account, I watch videos with them.
|
| I also have a second account for watching more technical
| videos and that leaks into my main account suggestions.
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| I got those for a bit but it was a couple months back.
|
| YT algo is so messed up and it seems the more they try to
| shape the content people view, the easier it gets for bad
| actors to exploit the algo.
|
| Shorts are the absolute worst for it and it's why I mostly
| stick to my subs page over the home page.
| password4321 wrote:
| Yes it's definitely affected by location (IP) and/or
| specific device metadata, casting videos from an incognito
| window affects future recommendations even though it warns
| about not being signed in to preserve history.
|
| Poison YouTube recommendations at the nearest Starbucks!
| (Actually a marketing hack - encourage followers to log out
| and watch a channel's YouTube videos on public WiFi.)
| not1ofU wrote:
| if you leave the mouse hovering over a video and, if it
| autoplays (previews) an $amount of the video, it will be
| added to your view history and you will then be offered
| more of that "content".
|
| I turn this "feature" off every time I open it, it tells me
| it has saved that configuration, but that is not the case.
| like other poster commented, review your view history and
| delete anything you do not want to see or clear it out
| entirely. There is also option to "don't recommend channel"
| ([3x ...] beside the video)
| twisteriffic wrote:
| > There is also option to "don't recommend channel" ([3x
| ...] beside the video)
|
| This doesn't exist for search results, only for the feed
| twisteriffic wrote:
| I've checked, believe me. They don't show up in the feed,
| only in search results.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Nope. I get the exact same thing (to the point where I no
| longer search for things on YouTube, the thumbnails can be
| pretty disturbing). I've audited my history to check for that
| sort of thing.
|
| I think YouTube has just put me in a gender/age/location
| bucket and figures other people in the same bucket like that
| thing.
|
| (But actually, who the fuck is watching this shit.)
|
| Edit: plus if this was history pollution then this gross shit
| would show up on the home page or else where. It is
| exclusively in the "you might also like" shit that youtube
| hides in the search results.
| nicbou wrote:
| Nope, I got the exact same thing too.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Recommendations also are based on non-YouTube sources, as we
| might expect. I recently watched some things on streaming and
| they showed up in YouTube.
|
| It's possibly coincidence, of course, but why wouldn't
| YouTube use the same profile data as everyone else?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Literally never seen this shit. Not even once. This is like
| someone saying it's horrible that there's porn all over the
| computer and how computers are evil.
| dspillett wrote:
| Never watched them myself, and doubt anyone did with my
| account, but I sometimes get such videos presented as if it
| is something I'd want. I have had lodgers and sometimes have
| guests who will obviously have appeared from my IP addresses
| while on my wireless so that may be part of why I get certain
| things (one of the lodgers was Italian - that was many years
| ago, and I still occasionally get adverts in the language).
| Also it only takes one accidental click to register as
| "engagement" - maybe I have done that with a slip of the
| mouse/finger at some point.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Hint: Allegedly most of the people who watch the pimple
| popping videos are women.
|
| It feels accurate. My middle-aged sister definitely does.
| chii wrote:
| It's also possible that the videos you do watch are similar
| to people who _also_ watch those pimple popping vidoes, and
| so the algorithm guesses that you might also enjoy it.
| dspillett wrote:
| Maybe, in which case I'd be interested to see where the
| cross-over is.
|
| Though I've had them come up on facebook too, which is
| why I'm erring on it being someone more actively engaged
| coming from my main IP address (home has had the same /29
| for the last 10+ years). Unless youtube and facebook are
| fairly directly sharing information, I thought it more
| likely that someone has interacted with such content in
| both places than both algorithms making an obscure link.
| Of course, it could be that there is a cross-over, and it
| is a strong enough signal that both sets of data miners
| have picked up on it.
|
| Edit: too early in the morning and my mind is refusing to
| switch tracks... Thinking about it, liking certain
| horror/scifi films is a potential link. Maybe people more
| heavily into body-horror than I are generally fascinated
| by real aspects of bodily function too.
| adra wrote:
| You can see your YouTube watch history through the account
| settings. I've found the watch recommendations are VERY
| sensitive to oddball videos watched a long time ago.
| Through the same interface though, you should be able to
| seek out and delete watch history for garbage that may
| throw off your recommendations. It's mostly worked for me.
| roygbiv2 wrote:
| Watch history now include videos you've only hovered
| over. Very annoying since if you hover over something and
| then watch it later it doesn't start from the beginning,
| it starts from where it left off from the hover.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Interesting. I have autoplay turned off in my browser, &
| I don't get recommendations of the like you mention,
| which makes me think that that's enough to keep that
| "feature" from activating.
| lupusreal wrote:
| That explaination doesn't hold water. I see the same kind of
| grossout videos occasionally surface in search results. I
| _never_ engage with content anything like that. I don 't use
| an account, but I do have a cookie set for personalized
| suggestions. This cookie is never more than a few months old.
| I don't share this device with anybody. I'm not getting
| recommendations from other people sharing my IP, all my video
| recommendations make sense for me _except_ for these gross
| out videos. There isn 't another trace of other people's
| interests, for instance zero sports content despite sports
| being extremely popular with the general population. Finally,
| several other people have reported this same sort of behavior
| from youtube.
|
| Aside, I find it really disheartening how quickly people on
| this site of all sites are to conclude _" I don't see that,
| so you're holding it wrong"_. The most likely explaination is
| these results are some experimental feature run amok. You
| should know that companies like Google run all kinds of AB
| tests on the unwitting public, so one person not seeing
| something should never be taken as proof that another person
| is imagining it! This kind of _" I'm not seeing it so you
| must be doing something wrong"_ comment is effectively gas-
| lighting when it comes from people who work in or near the
| industry and should know better.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| yt has this weird thing if you click on one vid. it will
| decide you want to see anything related to that one vid.
|
| yt will also throw 'random' things into your feed.
|
| Also I have seen just hovering over a video on desktop
| counting as 'viewed' in my history. So you may have
| inadvertently 'looked'.
|
| Use the do not recommend feature. That seems to calm it down.
| whitakerlol wrote:
| This is why I have my watch history disabled on youtube.
| whitakerlol wrote:
| No. I currently am the only guy using my google account. This
| happens every single time. Definitely a case of IP
| recommendations.
| Suppafly wrote:
| They are super popular so they occasionally float up to the
| top recommendations by the algorithm. There are all sorts of
| niche things that get recommended to people whenever the
| algorithm changes a little. You always seem comments like
| "never thought I'd watch a video about X but the this came up
| on my feed."
| throwanem wrote:
| Do you use the "not interested"/"don't recommend channel"
| options on these, or report them?
|
| If not, it may be worth a try. They seem to do a lot to steer
| Youtube's recommender away from the more gamy regions of its
| latent space; for example, something like a year ago I saw
| recommended such a video, immediately reported it for "violent
| or repulsive content", and thus far haven't seen another. The
| same has been true for the occasional weirdo along the stripe
| of modern Russell Brand.
|
| To be clear, I don't think the report was acted upon by
| Youtube, but I do think the signal inherent in the action must
| be accounted for in its recommendation model.
|
| Also to be clear, this is no defense of Youtube. It's pretty
| trash these days, and even the most innocuous recommendations I
| get have very little to do with anything I'm actually
| interested in, but this does seem to keep it from getting the
| idea I might want to see incels and gore.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| There's no option to block a channel or "don't recommend"
| from search results, at least in the android app. Afaik
| that's only available in the feed.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Yup, no option on desktop either. This is obviously not
| based on viewing history, YouTube is doing something weird
| just with the recommendations embedded into search results.
|
| For me these "you also might like" sections in search
| results are 50 woodworking and 50 gross out garbage.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| It's nice to know my misery has company.
| throwanem wrote:
| It's nice to know that as poorly as I think of Youtube,
| that's still a significant overestimation...
| humblepie wrote:
| You're not alone. I've seen it on my account, and all I watch
| is old jazz stuff and nothing else. My wife's account who just
| watches mostly bakery has been getting these cartoon or AI
| generated "child slavery" depictions.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Do you have history enabled?
| verve_rat wrote:
| Read the rest of the responses here. It's not history.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I have, and I'm not convinced history doesn't play a
| role.
|
| No need to be rude about it.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| If I've ever watched one of those type of videos it's so
| far back in my history that I can't find it any more, as
| in years in the past.
| verve_rat wrote:
| I'm sorry if I came off as rude, but "your holding it
| wrong" doesn't exactly engineer civility.
| yen223 wrote:
| I searched "Fluke 87v power on options" on YouTube in an
| incognito page, and all I got were results around the
| multimeter.
|
| Like literally, my screen only had pictures of multimeters.
|
| For good measure I repeated the search in my main Youtube
| account. Same thing.
| not1ofU wrote:
| google ignores incognito mode
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39078417
| yen223 wrote:
| My front-page recommendations in incognito is a completely
| different set of videos from my front-page recommendations
| in my logged-in main account, except for one (a Veritasium
| video with 14 million views).
|
| So if YouTube is tracking me across incognito mode, then
| they aren't doing a very good job there.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| They can't be _too_ obvious about that. So works as
| intended.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| https://i.postimg.cc/J49KjXZ2/Screenshot-20240215-183710.png
|
| It's likely some coincidence of my previous viewing history,
| though how woodworking, small engine repair and distributed
| systems pointed to grossout videos I have no idea. I've heard
| of at least a dozen other people that this happens to so far
| across a wide range of viewing habits.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Funny, when I run that search in mobile Safari, disable my
| ad blocker, and then request desktop site to see if I can
| repro, I'm immediately redirected to one of the advertised
| sites (a scam/fraudulent site, naturally). Another oddity
| to toss on the pyre.
| yen223 wrote:
| This is what I see: https://imgur.com/tvLgAjQ
|
| Lots of sponsored ads, but they are all multimeter-related.
| vdaea wrote:
| This happens to me even though 1) I never log in and 2) I clear
| my cookies daily.
|
| The other day I was looking for recipes and I had to see
| disgusting video thumbnails of faces full of zits interspersed
| with thumbnails of the food I wanted to cook.
|
| There's a ublock origin filter here that hides suggested videos
| and other crap from the search results page
| https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube...
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't speak web front end so I can't explain, but it seems a
| lot of those are fed from ad system and joined on-browser, "we
| already have a perfect system for this, why not just..." style.
|
| For me, enabling more adblock volunteer maintained filters,
| custom element filters, and parameter removals took it away, at
| costs of YouTube showing me ever niche-er and increasingly
| monotonic selections.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Well not for me
| Tommy430 wrote:
| Honestly, the search has been broken for a while. Half of the
| search results aren't even related and another thing I hate is
| YouTube Shorts.
|
| Anyways, for me, I just loathe how the whole site is designed
| in general. Opening YouTube today on a modern browser is slower
| than opening it on IE6 back then and the whole site relies on a
| JavaScript framework even though frontends like Invidious,
| Piped, and YT2009 (and possibly even more) show that you don't
| need JavaScript or have to make the entire site rely on it just
| to view content.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >Opening YouTube today on a modern browser is slower than
| opening it on IE6 back then
|
| This is true for _so_ many things on computers these days:
| websites, various software, etc.
| mathieuh wrote:
| It keeps recommending me far-right political videos for some
| reason. I think it's because I like watching Forgotten Weapons
| and InRangeTV, even though Forgotten Weapons has essentially
| zero politics in it and InRangeTV is run by a left-libertarian.
|
| Even after doing the "never recommend me this channel" thing it
| keeps recommending me this Jordan Peterson-type shit about
| "leftist woke idiots getting owned".
|
| Plus, no matter how many times I tap "Not interested" on the
| Shorts section every week it's back.
| lupusreal wrote:
| My guess is InRange is to blame in your case. In my
| experience, youtube has an "engages in political content"
| bucket they can put people in that doesn't discriminate
| between the flavor of politics; watch any sort of political
| content and it will start recommending any sort in turn, even
| political content from viewpoints you cannot stand and would
| never watch. I guess a lot of people rage-watch political
| content they dislike, so this sort of category makes
| practical sense for youtube.
|
| This happened to me a few times. Thankfully, clearing cookies
| is an easy fix for me since I don't use an account; people
| who do may have to spend some time sanitizing their view
| history. I now avoid all content that has even a whiff of
| content that might be automatically classified as political
| advocacy. I still watch occasional FW videos, although not
| the ones where I think he'll discuss firearm laws, and
| InRange is out because Karl too frequently discusses the law
| and political landscape w.r.t. online privacy/etc. Since
| reaching the above conclusion and making these changes, my
| front page has been clear of anything with even a suggestion
| of partisan politics. It's all machine and mechanism videos,
| the way I like it.
|
| (Except for the occasional grossout pimple video in the
| search results, but that's another story...)
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I think part of that is just reactionary politics on both
| ends of the spectrum play really well in social media in
| general, which YouTube is (of course) slowly turning into
| because everything fucking is. Anywhere the attention economy
| is, there is always a market for loud, irritating people
| doing loud, irritating things because they attract audiences,
| both in the people who agree with them, and the people who
| think they're fucking jokes.
|
| I honestly wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if in the
| near future we have sociologists who pin the catastrophic
| political divides we now experience down to, at least in
| part, the fact that so many massive institutions in our
| society at this particular moment are finding the absolute
| most ridiculous people and giving them the largest megaphone
| in the history of our species to scream into because it makes
| them money.
| samlinnfer wrote:
| Do you use adblock?
| gwern wrote:
| I wonder how many of these are https://www.hyrumslaw.com/ in
| action? Like the long-channel name seems like something you'd
| lock down as soon as you notice you made the classic error of
| trusting client-side validation of limits, but then you might
| decide to not truncate the offender's name.
| remus wrote:
| Most of them I imagine. To be honest the list is shorter than I
| expected for something as big and old as youtube!
| tech234a wrote:
| > "Interacting with any video from the old channel in the YouTube
| interface will redirect you back to the new one. The old channel
| name and reference will never display except in the API."
|
| On Windows, if you use your the volume keys or the play/pause
| button on your keyboard during one of these videos, you will
| receive a media status pop-up in the corner of your screen
| containing the old channel name along with the video title and
| thumbnail. I've noticed this with a lot of music videos.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >On Windows, if you use your the volume keys or the play/pause
| button on your keyboard during one of these videos, you will
| receive a media status pop-up in the corner of your screen
| containing the old channel name along with the video title and
| thumbnail.
|
| Always wondered why sometimes the pop-up description name was
| different, didn't think about the channel name having changed.
| 015a wrote:
| My favorite YouTube oddity: If you hunt over the CSS the site
| downloads on, IIRC, every page; you'll eventually come across
| this selector: ytd-watch-metadata[video-
| id=QrGrOK8oZG8] h1.ytd-watch-metadata { color:#e6d140;
| font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:250%;
| font-variant:small-caps; font-weight:normal;
| transform:skew(-5deg,0deg); text-shadow:1px 1px
| #000,1px 1px .1px #000 }
|
| A selector that appears to be referencing a very specific video
| ID; as far as I can tell, the only video in the billions of
| videos on YouTube to receive this treatment (at least, in terms
| of a "css selector with video-id in it").
|
| The video: Adult Swim's "Too Many Cooks" skit
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8)
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That is fascinating. Wonder why that video in particular (or
| any single video that in theory) would need its text style
| changed.
| chch wrote:
| Less a need, more an easter egg.
|
| The short itself is based on the stereotypical American
| family sitcom;s opening credits, which would tend to show a
| character doing something 'representative' of their
| character, while showing the actor's name on screen that
| played that character. Without too much spoilers for the
| video itself, the names popping up is a pretty key aspect of
| the video itself. It gained a pretty good following in 2014
| when it came out, and I guess someone on the YouTube UI team
| thought it would be a fun addition to add the text style from
| the video onto the video page itself. I remember being
| happily surprised the first time I saw it (similarly to the
| first time I saw someone added the Wadsworth Constant[1] as
| an actual feature, though that's unfortunately since been
| removed).
|
| [1] A user on Reddit once posited in 2011 that the first 30%
| of every YouTube video was a waste, so they would just click
| to around the 30% mark to skip to the important part. A reply
| deemed this the "Wadsworth Constant", after the user, and it
| tumbled from there. Eventually, YouTube had an official
| feature where if you added ""&wadsworth=1" to a URL, it would
| start the video 30% in, for any video! I'd used it several
| times when sending instructional videos to friends who didn't
| need to see the intros.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Also, YouTube implemented Randall Munroe's "Listen to
| Yourself"[0] at one point, however it's sadly removed
| later.
|
| [0]: https://xkcd.com/481/
| pests wrote:
| There is another video, that I can't find right now, where
| YouTube has paused the views in the <100s. It's part of the
| joke or title but I always thought that was neat too. Not
| sure if it was just cosmetic or they did something in the
| backend.
| cedilla wrote:
| You probably think of Numberphile explanation of why
| YouTube videos (used to) stay at 301 views for a while -
| leading to lots of confusion when the site showed 301
| views with 5728 comments and 37592 likes.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI
| pests wrote:
| Yes! That's it!
|
| I was a little off on the number but I knew it was along
| those lines.
|
| Thanks.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| It don't work [1].
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYgsVCfLhWg&wadsworth=1
| 015a wrote:
| Watch the video; its definitely just 'someone at YouTube
| really liked this video'. The styling of the title is
| attempting to mirror the actor nameplates in the video.
| joe_hills wrote:
| Wow, I was wondering at first how good a video had to be
| for a YouTube engineer to add css like this--and after
| watching this twice now, I'm deeply startled by how many
| brilliant and resonant choices were made by the folks who
| created it.
|
| A piece this artistic deserves a curative touch.
| geoelectric wrote:
| Next Christmas, or next time you're feeling Christmas-
| minded, find the Adult Swim Yule Log movie, aka The
| Fireplace. It's on Max, among other places.
|
| It's Casper Kelly's (the creator of Too Many Cooks) first
| full length feature--a 90 minute horror-comedy film that
| Adult Swim stealth-released a couple of years ago
| disguised as an airing of a Christmas fireplace video. It
| actually has very little to do with Christmas, though a
| surprising lot to do with Yule logs.
|
| Max also has an Adult Swim series called "Infomercials,"
| which is where Too Many Cooks originally debuted a decade
| or two ago.
|
| The series consists of a bunch of other very creative
| short films in a similar vein that aired very late at
| night. The TV guide block Adult Swim created for them
| just said Infomercials, much like what every other basic
| cable station scheduled after hours, except these were
| all designed to go off the rails partway through and mess
| with your head.
|
| Too Many Cooks is the only one with a catchy theme song
| though!
| from-nibly wrote:
| Wow Georgia font for a movie about Georgia actors
| Narushia wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but back when Gangnam Style passed 1
| billion views, they added a small looping animation besides the
| video title (it was PSY doing the dance). Not sure how long it
| was there, certainly not anymore.
|
| Edit: I found a video of it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Di3sxO8zw
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean I like easter eggs, but why not make it so that CSS is
| only downloaded on that page? Adding 286 bytes to every one of
| the billions of pageviews YT gets every day seems wasteful.
| xenophonf wrote:
| That would entail adding a branch instruction and risking a
| cache miss on every single video playback in order to save a
| couple hundred bytes in a data stream at least four orders of
| magnitude larger.
| refibrillator wrote:
| Speculating? I think branch predictors would eat this for
| lunch
| kazinator wrote:
| Why not also show the same video title, thumbnail, content,
| comments and side bar regardless of the video URL?
| xenophonf wrote:
| I mean, it's an Easter egg. These things aren't known for
| their practicability. If one were to object to this, it's
| because it pushes unnecessary computational costs on
| every single end-user device that has to render that CSS
| since the comparison and branch now happens client-side
| at page styling time. I wonder how many billions of CPU
| cycles that's wasted.
| smashah wrote:
| Did you all notice that when the video says "like and subscribe",
| the subscribe button is highlighted with a rainbow border? must
| be new.
|
| Example: https://youtu.be/z815XfakQCE?t=26
| albert_e wrote:
| Yes i noticed this a few weeks ago
|
| And I confirmed it by rewinding a few times and getting the
| behaviour to repeat (most if the times)
| micael_dias wrote:
| Since October so relatively new, the like button also gets
| animations: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-67137492.amp
| atesti wrote:
| Are there not more videos that got corrupted? With this amount of
| data, youtube must have lost several videos statistically.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Interesting but I was hoping this was about bugs. Because youtube
| has some bugs.
|
| I use it a lot, it's my primary source of entertainment. Here is
| a list of issues; 1. Casting disconnects after
| smartphone has been charging for 1+ hour. 2. Small player
| window covers playlists. 3. In profile tab of Youtube
| Android app Watch Later and Liked Videos will randomly switch
| places. 4. Shorts are the worst thing ever for people who
| cast a lot. 5. On desktop the "Add to watch later" and
| "Add to queue" buttons will switch locations depending on where
| you are in the feed.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| My favorite: if you have a Short video opened and look at
| comments in the notification window in the top right, a click
| on any "load more comments" button will instantly teleport you
| to a random other Short video and close the notifications. This
| bug exists since Shorts as far as I can tell.
|
| And after at least 5+ years the newline cursor bug in the
| comment text fields still exists.
| pests wrote:
| Android YouTube really needs to allow you to continue using the
| app and watching videos while casting.
|
| Its a modern thing to have something playing while also maybe
| scrolling your phone. You can't even view comments or video
| descriptions without playing the video on the cast device.
|
| Just let me browse and build my playlists or, god forbid, watch
| two videos at the same time.
| pests wrote:
| Can someone tell me how @Seed has so many subs but no videos and
| odd content / comments?
|
| Buying / deleting videos / etc?
|
| He has people in his comments accusing him of commenting on their
| private videos / videos in private playlists.
| whitakerlol wrote:
| I haven't heard about this channel specifically but channels
| like that usually either sub bot or buy channels from seedy
| hacker forums.
|
| - 10k subscribers - idiotic comments - "Who is..."/ "Why is...
| everywhere?" video
| zeptonix wrote:
| LOL 3 month long videos ...
| rasz wrote:
| >Video without a title
|
| nice, this one breaks one of my userscripts
|
| >Knowledge Base, at this current time has 1,054,762 videos
| uploaded.
|
| Randomly GPT generated clickbait titles to 3-5 minute clips form
| some livestreams. If I was in control of YT such channels would
| be dropped for violating policy.
| Hunpeter wrote:
| A friend told me that the third video in the recommended list
| (the one that you see on the side when playing a video) often
| seems to be a (sometimes) barely related one from a small channel
| you've never watched. I can confirm the same happens to me.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-16 23:02 UTC)