this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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So, first they rewarded YouTubers for wasting ever more of your time, making you watch as many ads as possible, and now they're building a tool to sort through that whole crap content?
You're not wrong, even the way the YouTube algorithm works pushes video creators to follow certain things to ensure they're videos get suggested by the algorithm. Shit like, someone's video is about making some crazy RC helicopter, I'd like to watch the video in chronological order, with discussion, planning, the build, then see the helicopter. But nearly every single YouTube video like this starts with 5-10 second clip of the end product, kinda removes the build up.
So years of that bullshit has forced video makers to do insanely fast jump cuts during dialog, because we can't have a normal human amount of pauses in speech, and all these other trends which have objectively made videos worse. On top of that, the inclusion of "video sponsors" so we can baked in advertising, and sometimes to the tune of quite a few minutes long. Algorithms seem like they make a lot of difference services objectively worse under the guise of improving the users experience.
To play devils advocate, a lot of what you described is just about the hustle culture of YouTubers and how the platform has evolved aside in its meta. People figured out that using an essay-like format and having a video hook gets more views. And that slow videos with less information get less views. All of that would’ve happened regardless of the company.
There’s also a hustle culture where these fun side projects are now jobs because YouTube pays their creators. That’s led to some good content, but also a mountain of trash. All of that happens regardless as long as YouTube is paying anybody.
The algorithm absolutely does a lot but the algorithm would exist regardless. All of this is inevitable because it’s how humans work. Also a lot of the content you ask for still exists, you just have to sift to find it.
YouTube is an interesting case because most of what they do wrong has little to do with algorithm and all to do with DMCA protections and poor discoverability (separate algorithms).
Thankfully... But ads will be interlaced seamlessly into the resulting summary.