[HN Gopher] The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash th...
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The YouTube like button glows when you say "smash that like button"
[video]
Author : popcalc
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-08-20 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| If you type "awesome" the progress bar strobes and changes color.
| seydor wrote:
| I wish they used something more than that stupid minimalist icon
| theme. I have again and again smashed the button only to unlike a
| video
| ziml77 wrote:
| I don't understand how... You always have two thumbs there
| which means you can contrast the state of being just an outline
| with the state of being filled in.
| seydor wrote:
| And yet the "join" button is filled in without being joined.
| Let alone, the icons on the video player which have their own
| varied little philosophies
| lxgr wrote:
| It happens to me all the time. I can't explain it either, but
| my hypothesis is me interpreting the highlighted "like"
| button as the encouraged action out of the two?
| xyst wrote:
| Just a YT developer Easter egg. It's become such a cliche phrase
| on that platform in an effort to pump creator stats.
|
| I think there's a similar effect for the subscribe button. But I
| don't remember which phrase triggers it
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Why does it only work for some videos?
| sholladay wrote:
| It is probably AI with suboptimal training, despite the
| massive dataset available to them.
|
| It might even just be conventional speech-to-text, which can
| struggle with accents and poor acoustics, etc.
| sltkr wrote:
| YouTube already generates transcripts of uploaded videos
| (though not super accurate ones). A simple and
| straightforward implementation would just pattern match in
| the transcript text.
|
| No need for fancy AI, on top of whatever technology powers
| the transcription feature.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| It will be the STT they use for their automatic captioning
| so it should be as accurate as whatever that produces. It
| would be the height of inefficiency to do a separate STT
| run over the entire audio just for this gimmick.
| aimazon wrote:
| Not all videos have transcripts.
| sircastor wrote:
| I noticed a few weeks ago that when people said "subscribe" the
| subscribe button had a little light show that was kind of cool.
|
| From a technical perspective I like the attention mechanism and
| that it's automated.
| dishsoap wrote:
| This has been happening for at least a year, probably more. I
| always assumed it was something the creator had to manually mark,
| never considered that it might be automatic.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| My TV's YT app is useless and buggy. It doesn't have
| automatically generated & automatically translated subtitles.
| The YT app on my mi-box does. So it wouldn't be impossible to
| have the VTT prescan the audio and "if VTT has the phrase so-
| and-so then display animation lalala.gif"
|
| (I use the VTT on my Firefox, I use IDM to download the auto-
| generated English language scripts for lengthy videos).
|
| I remember listening to Chomsky saying that he prefers to read
| the transcripts than listening/watching speeches.
| dylan604 wrote:
| why would these auto generated subs be the apps purview?
| wouldn't it be YT platform doing all of this work and
| providing a CC button if the data is available. i can't
| imagine this being done in real time and not just some post
| process that is run against new content at time up upload
| processing.
| amiga386 wrote:
| > Button doesn't glow when when you say "SLAP like NOW"
|
| > Davie504 in pieces
| vijucat wrote:
| What about if I say, "Please don't smash that like button" or
| "Smash that like button if you're an idiot"? Just wondering if it
| is based on transcript-grepping or does it even consider sentence
| semantics? (I know, overkill. Please don't implement that, YT
| engineers. You've heard of "boiling the ocean to make a cup of
| tea", right?)
| Axsuul wrote:
| It should still highlight it to clarify which button they're
| referring to
| boneitis wrote:
| I can't be the only one who finds this and the subscribe
| animations distracting, to put it politely.
|
| I'm sure many here would love to make use of some uBlock Origin
| rulesets to disable them?
| system2 wrote:
| I wouldn't bother dealing with it. But you can use something
| like StyleBot or Tampermonkey to override the css:
|
| Before Animation: <yt-smartimation class="smartimation
| smartimation--experiment-enabled smartimation--enable-masking">
|
| While Animation: <yt-smartimation class="smartimation
| smartimation--experiment-enabled smartimation--active-border
| smartimation--active-background smartimation--enable-masking">
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| They pour money into engineering and hardware resources into
| stuff like this but still claim that DMCA abuse (by media
| companies, blackmailers, griefers, and reputation management
| activity) is an unsolvable problem?
|
| Yet...they can't hire more staff, implement databases to track
| malicious/unreliable DMCA submitters, and falsely-targeted
| creators for whom complaints are likely BS, and implement AI-
| powered tools to assist with all of this?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| There is no incentive for them.
|
| Example: Over here there is a huge problem with rented
| e-scooters being left wherever.
|
| Every scooter company asks you to take a photo of the parking.
| NOBODY ever checks those.
|
| I did a quick test with GPT-4 and it could tell me if a scooter
| was parked in a considerate way about 90% of the time (10
| photos, some with multiple scooters).
|
| Could they implement this in an afternoon? Yes. Will they? No.
| Because it'd be used to penalise their own customers.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Every scooter company asks you to take a photo of the
| parking. NOBODY ever checks those.
|
| Only a semi-scooter company but Lime, at least in London, do
| sometimes check the photos because I once got dinged for
| "incorrect parking" (wrongly, mind, it was parked identically
| to the Santander bikes a few metres away and thus incapable
| of inconveniencing anyone.)
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| I have never once hit that bell
| ars wrote:
| You've never found a single content creator that put out stuff
| you liked so much you wanted to see everything they did? Not a
| single one? Do you prefer TV instead?
| pino82 wrote:
| If it's just about keeping a link to a handful of content
| creators, and you aren't a multiple-hours-per-day yt addict,
| there is already a nice solution for that, which universally
| works for all web resources and is well supported by all
| browsers under the sun.
|
| I'm sure thay's not ideal (e.g. not for Google trying to
| understand you better) for the addicts, but for the other
| ones, this can be the perfect solution.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I never use the bell. I just subscribe and go through my
| subscribed list to watch videos, and for some I add to my rss
| reader.
| rcxdude wrote:
| RSS works much better, and youtube still supports it despite
| hiding it well
| Cordiali wrote:
| I've never used a YouTube account, I've always just used the
| site as-is. For a (very few) accounts, that I want to know
| when they release a new video, I just add them to my RSS feed
| reader.
| slg wrote:
| I know this is just a fun little easter egg, but features like
| this seems a little risky to me. It calls attention to the fact
| that Youtube isn't just serving me videos neutrally, it knows
| what is being said in those videos at the exact moment it is
| said. It highlights how much Google analyses the content of its
| videos in a way that more neutral features like automatic
| transcripts don't and in turn how much that can teach Google
| about me based on the videos I watch. It isn't that I didn't know
| Google had this ability, but foregrounding it underlines Google's
| Big Brother nature in a way that makes me want to use Youtube
| less and not more.
| gruez wrote:
| > It calls attention to the fact that Youtube isn't just
| serving me videos neutrally, it knows what is being said in
| those videos at the exact moment it is said. It highlights how
| much Google analyses the content of its videos in a way that
| more neutral features like automatic transcripts don't and in
| turn how much that can teach Google about me based on the
| videos I watch.
|
| How else do you think the "up next" and "recommended videos for
| you" feature works? Did you think they were serving up relevant
| videos purely out of chance? If anything a dumb rule like
| "highlight the subscribe button if the transcript mentions it"
| is much more benign then a recommendation engine that can
| somehow always serve you a relevant video.
| queuebert wrote:
| The simplest recommender would use videos that were commonly
| watched afterwards by other people.
| Minor49er wrote:
| That would be fun to exploit. Just get a few hundred
| accounts, have them watch a Mr. Beast video followed by a
| video you want to boost, and watch the numbers grow
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Not sure even a few thousand accounts would make a dent
| in a Mr beast video count. Recommendation would go toward
| the 1 million accounts who watch another Mr beast video
| after.
| Minor49er wrote:
| True, though the recommendation engine on YouTube will
| suggest other alternatives that are not on the same
| channel. There would still be a positive effect
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| You don't necessarily need to analyze every word in every
| video for recommendations- it could be as simple as 'users
| who liked this video also liked these other videos'
| conductr wrote:
| You can also turn on subtitles and even have them
| translated, it's pretty obvious Google is doing a lot with
| the audio part of videos
| everforward wrote:
| Up Next and recommended videos don't require understanding
| the content of the videos. They could, as an example, find
| other users that watch similar videos and pick a video you
| haven't seen out of the things the other users have watched.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if they use transcripts, but neither
| feature strictly requires it.
|
| I think the real risk here is users extrapolating from
| "YouTube can automatically respond to the content of videos".
| The Mr Beast thing is still blowing up, could they
| automatically identify illegal lotteries? Could they identify
| things that aren't suitable for YouTube Kids but end up there
| anyways? So on and so forth, YouTube's moderation is
| basically always under fire.
|
| This seems like a risky mixed message to send. Being able to
| light up the Subscribe button doesn't imply the technical
| ability to do better moderation, but I also wouldn't want to
| be the guy that has to explain that and how it works to the
| Senate.
| xattt wrote:
| It speaks to the fact that things that are most beneficial
| to Google have been finetuned to exploit eyeballs and
| pocketbooks. If they wanted to, or if their hand was
| forced, they'd be able to do the things that benefit the
| greater good.
|
| Don't get started with the "it's a slippery slope" kind of
| shit. Short of living in some society where it's every man
| for himself, kids shouldn't be playing lotteries
| chgs wrote:
| Many people in tech are big proponents of the "every man
| for himself" randian distopyas
| mathverse wrote:
| If u are from a small country and you travel a lot it
| absolutely throws google off.
|
| I never get any relevant ads or videos for me :(.
| conductr wrote:
| I mostly use Youtube to watch home improvement / DIY /
| construction related stuff. They show me ads in Spanish.
| I'm probably the most stereotypical American white dude in
| Finance that speaks only English. What's weird is I've been
| using Google Search/Gmail basically since they became
| available and have bought their products and services for
| other stuff over the years and they have me pretty dialed
| in on their marketing elsewhere. YT specifically thinks
| otherwise.
| slg wrote:
| >How else do you think the "up next" and "recommended videos
| for you" feature works? Did you think they were serving up
| relevant videos purely out of chance?
|
| It is absolutely possible to serve recommendations in a
| content agnostic way based on other user behavior. That is
| how the Youtube's recommendations worked at least initially.
| It should be obvious that they didn't have this ability to
| analyze content when Youtube started almost 20 years ago.
|
| And even in a content aware system, there is a difference
| between matching up keywords and understanding what those
| words mean. That is why an automatic transcript feels more
| neutral. That just transcribes what is being said. There is
| no implication of any analysis on the meaning of what is
| being said.
|
| >If anything a dumb rule like "highlight the subscribe button
| if the transcript mentions it" is much more benign then a
| recommendation engine that can somehow always serve you a
| relevant video.
|
| I'm not saying this feature is scarier than the
| recommendation engine. I'm saying Google revealing how much
| they know about the content of the video makes everything
| they do, including their recommendation engine, a little
| scarier.
| 8note wrote:
| around 20 years ago mark all kinds of things would happen
| at different times of a video, with the tool tips, and end
| cards and what have you.
|
| CSS animations werent there I guess, but given a manual
| transcription, either by the submitter, or by a person
| watching, youtube definitely had the capability to do
| exactly this, maybe with the button being some flash
| animation.
| slg wrote:
| >...but given a manual transcription... youtube
| definitely had the capability to do exactly this...
|
| I mean the "given a manual transcription" condition means
| the very much didn't have "the capability to do _exactly_
| this ". The animation itself isn't the interesting part
| here.
| OJFord wrote:
| I'm not saying I thought this was the case, but I can think
| of:
|
| 1) similarity to other users (people who watched this also
| watched)
|
| 2) similarity in words in title or description (or the
| generated transcript)
| munk-a wrote:
| Was this not already highlighted by ContentID, automatic topic
| tagging/recommendations, and auto-caption?
|
| I honestly suspect this feature is just implemented as a side
| effect as the auto-captioning... and now I'm a bit curious if
| carefully crafted manual captions can trigger it to go off
| continuously.
| vngzs wrote:
| It's not a complete mitigation, but you can pause your video
| history which may decrease the amount of information Google
| retains over time from this sort of analytics. I haven't dug
| into the privacy policy and I'm not sure it mentions if this
| feature affects backend data collection, however.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I mean, they have auto generated subtitles so of course they
| have a text to reference.
| crawshaw wrote:
| There isn't a feature a company as scrutinized as Google could
| launch that can't be described as "a little risky".
| johnfn wrote:
| > it knows what is being said in those videos at the exact
| moment it is said.
|
| How did you think they did automated closed captioning..?
| slg wrote:
| I don't know why you quoted this snippet to ask this question
| when I addressed it literally in the next sentence of my
| original comment, but I guess I need to reiterate it.
| Automatic transcripts/ closed captioning suggest Google heard
| what was said. This feature suggests Google understands what
| was said.
|
| Think of it like reading a foreign language that uses the
| same alphabet. You can give me some French text and I can
| read it well enough for a French speaker to understand it.
| That doesn't mean that I myself understand what I read.
| Transcripts are the former and this feature is the latter.
| 8note wrote:
| Does this feature suggest they understand what was said?
|
| I'd expect the button to light up at random times in a
| video about "smash the like button" causing the button to
| light up, rather than in the end call to action for the
| video where the video author actually wants the watcher to
| click the button.
|
| Similarly, I doubt it can properly understand when the
| video presenter implies the term "smash the like button"
| while instead say, leaving an empty space where they would
| usually say such a thing.
|
| If I pointed you at some french text and asked you to point
| at the term "le Chateau" you'd be able to do that without
| understanding french.
| slg wrote:
| Now this is just a semantic debate about whether a
| computer can even "understand" anything. The system is
| conditionally responding based upon the content of what
| was said. That indicates a level of sophistication in
| analyzing the content of the video that a transcript does
| not. I don't really care if you define that as
| "understanding" or not.
| pb7 wrote:
| Does it understand it or does it have a regex for "smash
| that subscribe button"?
| dylan604 wrote:
| do you really think that Googs has implemented a regex
| for this little easter egg without parsing the rest of
| the content in a much more meaningful manner as the
| original comment is suggesting? i'm in agreement that the
| levels of what these platforms can infer about the
| content you consume is beyond creepy.
| johnfn wrote:
| The reason I didn't respond to the rest of your post is
| because I can't understand its relationship to your
| argument. There is no need for deeper understanding here.
| It's just a substring match.
| slg wrote:
| Ironically you seem to be focusing too much on the exact
| words and phrases I used rather than the deeper meaning.
| So let's just get completely away from words like "knows"
| and "understanding" which seem to be tripping multiple
| people up.
|
| > It's just a substring match.
|
| Let's just say this is true. That is a super simply
| process, but what would it look like?
|
| Step 1: Transcribe the audio into text
|
| Step 2: Run substring match on text
|
| The transcribing/close captioning feature only does step
| 1. This shows that a step 2 is possible. I think you
| would have to be naive to think the capability to do this
| type of analysis on the transcribed text was designed for
| only this feature and would never be used for anything
| else. This feature is announcing that Youtube isn't
| merely creating transcripts of the audio in videos, it is
| running some unknown amount of analysis on that data.
|
| As I said in my original comment, "it isn't that I didn't
| know Google had this ability", but this is literally a
| glowing sign pointing to this fact. I think the danger of
| Google reminding people of this has potential to outweigh
| the benefit of the "that's cute" reaction that this is
| designed to elicit.
| jrvieira wrote:
| so you're not so worried that they do this analysis (this
| is very tame comparing to what they really do), but
| rather that they are transparent about it?
| johnfn wrote:
| > I think you would have to be naive to think the
| capability to do this type of analysis on the transcribed
| text was designed for only this feature and would never
| be used for anything else.
|
| Why would you have to be naive to believe this? The
| subtitles, with timings, are available on the client-side
| already. You seem to allude that doing this work would
| require some sort of deep analysis work. I think it's
| really more like 5 lines of JS, and 4 of them are
| producing the fun animated gradient :P
| slg wrote:
| It isn't about this requiring "deep analysis work". It is
| the difference between some analysis and no analysis.
| That increase from 0 to 1 is always the biggest hurdle to
| clear when it comes to any corporate behavior like this.
|
| This feature is like walking into your kitchen one day to
| find a dead cockroach. I'm saying that is an indication
| of a cockroach problem while you're effectively
| responding with "it's fine, the one cockroach is dead and
| there is no reason to believe there are any others."
| zamadatix wrote:
| You've overlooked that automatic transcription also
| includes the filtering of certain words based on match
| lists as well.
| seydor wrote:
| > at the exact moment it is said.
|
| I mean, it has autogenerated captions, translated (which i use
| to learn languages, fun)
| hammock wrote:
| I've got bad news about your Gmail...
| seanthemon wrote:
| This is why I keep a buffer if 20k emails of junk. Goodluck
| finding out anything, I can't.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Apart from whether or not it's really something new to users,
| it'd be interesting how many are actually concerned with the
| concept Google/YouTube has analyzed the content of videos it
| serves vs interested in what things that means are done
| (automatic video sections, better find in video, automatic
| summaries, whatever it is someone might want).
|
| The biggest issues tend to be when "Big Brother" style
| companies perform that kind of analysis on your content like
| the Microsoft AI screenshotting backlash.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| I never noticed this, is it just when they say "smash this like
| button" or just the term "like button"?
| vizzier wrote:
| Unsure on the specific phrases, but it has been happening for a
| while. Subscribe highlights with certain phrases too.
| sprobertson wrote:
| It might just be the word "like" said with a certain affect,
| I've seen it glow in the wrong context a few times.
| kklisura wrote:
| All that AI CapEx: for a button to glow! WOW. ROI will be off the
| charts!
| stnmtn wrote:
| I think this is more like a developer was bored one afternoon
| and implemented this for fun, and then everyone else thought it
| was fun enough to put into the main codebase.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Given that YouTube uses the like and subscribe buttons as inputs
| for its recommendation algorithm, doesn't this feature just aid
| and abet content creators in gaming YouTube's system?
| skybrian wrote:
| Many entertainers on YouTube do that routinely. It seems way
| too late to start worrying about it.
|
| I'm wondering what an unbiased survey would even look like.
| rft wrote:
| I have noticed multiple YT content creators just casually
| mentioning things like "like and subscribe for the algorithm"
| and even "leave a comment for the algorithm", which people do,
| sometimes just saying "comment for the algorithm". One creator
| I remember did a "if you watched until the end comment 'boat'"
| or similar, which of course is again just baiting more
| comments. It also nudges recurring viewers who know that spiel
| to watch until the end, because they get to enjoy the dopamine
| from being one of the people who can comment the word. This
| increases watch time, which apparently is again one of the
| things the algorithm uses.
|
| Maybe I have just become more attentive to these things or they
| have become more prevalent, but I notice this blatant
| optimization for the Algorithm(tm) more and more. I guess this
| is the meta you need to play in order to stand out/make it in
| the torrent of content that is YT or social media in general. I
| also see this as an example of Goodhart's law as creators try
| to optimize for reach and thus likes etc. while the original
| intention of the YT Algorithm(tm) was (or should have been) to
| serve you content you will enjoy.
| SllX wrote:
| Just yesterday I discovered a channel that asks for people
| who watched all the way to the end to replay the video at
| 0.25x speed to support the channel. I have zero clue if that
| would work and I'm not going to do that, but he makes good
| videos so I mean, if others want to do, it's whatever I
| guess. I no longer care about crap like that, YouTube is
| essentially its own medium at this point.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Youtube definitely switched at some point from rewarding
| number of views (which incentivized short content: 10
| minutes was a bit of a meme for a bit because that was the
| minimum for monetizing) to rewarding watch time (which
| incentivizes longer content: suddenly people noticed VODs
| of 6 hour livestreams doing numbers), as far as their
| recommendations and ad rewards worked. I wouldn't be
| surprised if they take the video speed adjustment into
| consideration such that the suggested action would
| contribute.
| superjan wrote:
| I have recently been wondering how it is possible that they can
| make features like that, and provide closed captions, but that
| they continue to insert ads halfway a speaker's sentence.
| waveBidder wrote:
| Well if that doesn't demonstrate their priorities I don't know
| what would.
| stnmtn wrote:
| One of the metrics I'm sure they want to avoid is a user
| clicking away. If they inserted ads only when a speaker has
| finished a thought, it would probably result in more click
| aways than ads where a user wants to hear how a
| sentence/thought ends.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| As someone who runs a startup in the video market (and most of
| our users use our software for marketing purposes), I think
| it's pretty likely they might actually use the transcript... to
| insert ads halfway the speaker's sentence on purpose.
|
| The best calls to action inside a video take advantage of the
| Zeigarnik effect : once they're invested in the content, people
| really want to find out the
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Any company that takes financial advantage of that should
| just fu
| seydor wrote:
| Maybe it's meant to be annoying so you get Premium
| netsharc wrote:
| When I caught a movie after not watching them on German TV for
| a few years, I noticed a terrible new thing: ads in the middle
| of scenes. In one very memorable one, 2 guys are waiting for a
| girl at the airport. One of them says "There she is!" Cut to:
| not the girl going through the arrivals door, but a beer ad!
|
| I turned the TV off and walked away...
| ziml77 wrote:
| I've only noticed this a couple of times, I guess because it
| needs to specifically be that phrase about "smashing" the button.
|
| The thing that I do see on every video that reminds me to hit the
| like button is seeing the counter move. I'm way more likely to
| see that and think "yeah I do like this video, I should hit this
| button" when I see the counter change than I am to have a similar
| reaction when explicitly told by the person in the video to do
| it.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Well, yes, this has been going on for quite a while, perhaps even
| a year before this HN post. It's cool that this article
| references it, though, but it's definitely not the end of times,
| as some might proclaim, especially as it legitimately increases
| traction for those who want to subscribe (and those who might
| not, but might perhaps want to, which is all YouTube cares
| about).
| karaterobot wrote:
| Invidious and FreeTube do not do this, so I hadn't noticed. Kind
| of a neat touch, although I wonder if they do any kind of
| analysis to figure out whether someone is using the phrase as a
| call to action, or if they're, you know, making fun of the speech
| patterns of annoying influencers.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Ugh. If they can detect when people say that in videos, I'd
| prefer that they used it to penalize the video in the algorithm,
| rather than leaning into this irritating gaming of the system.
|
| I don't blame creators for doing this: creators have to say this
| to compete (this is an example of Moloch[1]). The point isn't to
| hurt creators who do this, it's to remove the incentive so that
| creators no longer have to do this. So I think the proper way to
| do this is to announce that videos that ask for likes or
| subscribes will be penalized, and only penalize videos that come
| out _after_ the announcement.
|
| But, YouTube serves advertisers, not viewers, so they'll never do
| anything that benefits viewers but hurts advertisers.
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
| sam_goody wrote:
| My computer does not have a speaker (none built in, and none
| attached). I watched the clip a few times. Each time, as the
| button glowed in his video, the button also glowed below the
| video in the youtube UI.
|
| So, at first I thought that Google is parsing the text of the
| video being played, but is not listening to your mic.
|
| However, several comments both here and on YT imply that Google
| is ALSO listening to what you say on your mic. Which, frankly, is
| much more scary - though I cannot currently test.
| lxgr wrote:
| Are you saying they are recording what _viewers_ are saying?
| That would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary
| proof.
|
| Other than that, why wouldn't they know what's being said in a
| video they host?
| maxglute wrote:
| Meanwhile useful features like sleep timer only availalbe until
| sep if you're premium. Also had slightly better UI experiment
| last month.
| seydor wrote:
| Has anyone tried the other buttons?
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