this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Technology
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There are tons of young millionaire youtubers who I've never heard of. It's pretty cool actually that there are so many niches to fill.
And plenty of poor low-subscriber channels that are actually really good and could blow up at some point.
I’ve certainly watched some people from before they were big and from memory their content was more or less just as good in the “early” days. Which all up makes for a pile of stuff!
Probably doing stupid things like posting with useful titles and thumbnails without agape mouths...
That seems to be the only kind of trash content that Google is interested in pushing these days.
I can't remember what channel, but somebody did an experiment with not doing the ridiculous thumbnails and got way fewer views. Which sort of gets at the point of this article: the are huge swaths of people that are clicking on them and that sounds super foreign to a lot of us.
It was Veritaseum. I don't argue that they're not effective. I argue that Google has full control of them and Google could easily derate those types of videos to make a better experience for their users. But they do the opposite.
By what mechanism? Manual curation? Do you have any idea how much content is on that platform?
By the same mechanism they use for everything: the algorithm
waves hands magic
Wat.
Youtube "pushes" whatever gets more views and longer watch time.
If trashy crap is being suggested, that means other people are watching it in increased numbers.
No YouTube pushes what people will click on. They don't care about the quality of the content, whether the people who watch it actually enjoy it (dislike = "engagement"), or what kind of content people are actually subscribed to because the ads come first.
That's pretty much what I said.
No it's not what you said. You specifically mentioned "longer watch time" where clickbait titles and thumbnails result in the opposite, but also plenty of ad views.
Google pushes what you click. Stop watching this kind of content and it'll probably stop being recommended to you
Not true. I don't watch it.
And even if I did, it doesn't mean that I liked it. None of these tech companies' algorithms seem to account for that little fact, even when I directly express otherwise.
they are not optimizing for your enjoyment, they''re optimizing for your engagement. they don't give a fuck if you hate what you're watching as long as you watch it for longer.
Yes that's my point.
Don't know about you but I don't spend my free time torturing myself.
Well I practically never see these kinds of thumbnails, it's absolutely influenced by your behaviour whatever it may be.