Not that YouTube isn’t doing well, but over the last year it seems like there’s been a decline of educational adjacent YouTube and a rise of “teen CW” YouTube. Some of it is creator burnout, but it seems to me that the algorithm is just moving away from educational content and towards portrait TikTok style kid content. Most of the recommends are trash kid stuff.
It seems like behind the scenes YouTube is running scared about TikTok and modifying the platform to compete for that demographic, at the cost of the long form more educational content that YouTube once enabled.
There are some educational channels I still watch but I have to find them deliberately. If I didn’t steady know they exist the algorithm would keep them hidden… and what the algorithm is really pushing is portrait, TikTok style pop culture content.
This might be the most hilariously blinkered thread title I’ve seen here in a while.
Whom do you think YouTube’s target audience is? And whom do you think is the most valued commodity to Youtube when they sell advertising on their platform?
I watch more YT now than ever before. So much so that I paid to get rid of ads. I follow a bunch of channels that are run by older people with similar hobbies (running, photography, cycling, cooking, etc). There is a lot of good stuff on there, it’s just sometimes hard to find new stuff.
The biggest problem is that the algorithm is really bad. It constantly recommends channels to me that I would never watch. Things that don’t align with my interests at all, but I guess that it is probably just showing me popular stuff. It also always recommends videos I have already watched, so I am continually telling it I am not interested because I have already watched said video.
I do watch a lot of YouTube and I haven’t noticed any changes, except that many streamers originate on twitch and then move it or edited content to YouTube.
Same here. YT loves to throw right-wing stuff my way. Plus incel crap like Ribby the Frog, a channel that exists solely to mock women in Tiktok videos.
This is the way. I search for a topic, find what I’m looking for, and go back to what I was doing. That there’s a preponderance of tween-oriented nonsense doesn’t really register.
The Unhook add-on is pretty awesome in this regard, removing a ton of shit like comments, feeds, playlists, and the “recommended” sidebar.
I doubt YouTube will become a backwater any time soon, but even if it does, I expect I’d be fine with it. As long as the cornucopia of “How To” videos doesn’t suddenly disappear, it will be a valuable resource.
My own feed is basically all just music and STEM stuff, because those are all I ever use Youtube for. I haven’t noticed any change though, like others, I don’t browse for new content much - I’m usually deliberately looking for something specific.
Since having a toddler I’ve also found that there’s a tone of pretty good short form kid’s stuff, but I set up a separate account for him so that things don’t get mixed together.
I’ve never looked at TikTok, so can’t speak to any similarity/dissimilarity there. I’d thought it was basically the new Vine.
I primarily watch YouTube for subscribed content - skateboarding, comedy - and it remains as good or a bit better than ever. I do occasionally get sucked into a YouTube hole from a recommendation, then find most following recommendations are trash - but for my daily use it’s a great website.
My entire YouTube homepage is just full of the stuff that I already looked up such as gaming music painting art that sort of thing. You get what you look for as far as I can tell.
Probably 95% of my suggested YT stuff is related to gaming, mini painting, music, book reviews, etc., that sort of stuff. Where the Ben Shapiro or Ribby stuff comes from I have no idea.
Youtube’s algorithm is getting better, but it still struggles mightily with viewer “intent”, for lack of a better word.
To illustrate with an example that can be applied to politics or other areas: let’s say you’re a diehard Boston Red Sox fan, and you start watching a bunch of Boston Red Sox highlight videos, videos of interviews with players, analysis of the Red Sox, etc. At some point the algorithm is going to be looking for videos, and it’s going to find very popular videos with lots of thumbs-ups from Yankee fans dunking on the Red Sox for one thing or another. And it’s going to push them to you.
Now, the algorithm is getting better about this kind of stuff. There seem to be adjustments made along the way with it. If you search for “Boston Red Sox”, it’s going to assume that you want stuff that’s pretty favorable to persons interested in that search term, because most of the people who search that term tend to really want to see stuff that is pro-Boston Red Sox.
But the weakness comes with very polarizing political figures. If you search for “Hillary Clinton”, the algorithm is going to show you a pretty full spectrum of stuff, lots of which – depending on how your feel about that person – you are probably not going to like. That’s because people who are pro-Hillary Clinton and people who are anti-Hillary Clinton tend to search on just her name a fair amount of time, so the algorithm has to do some guessing at your intent. One thing I’ve seen is that in situations like that, it tends to try recommending news-ish stuff and then works to learn your “intent” by the news-ish stuff you watch.
And ancillary stuff you like you may be damned a bit by others who like the things you like who may not be very nice people. The last time I can remember seeing really unwanted political stuff on my personal Youtube account was when a very anticipated TV show with fans who have very strong opinions regarding the IP were pretty upset with some casting decisions made for the show.
I’m struggling to think of a thing I use Youtube for where the valence of the video could affect my results negatively. It’s not like there are people just shitposting about MSFS mods or specific board games all the time.
Edit: It actually seems to be better than other services in that regard. When I watch a shitty movie on Youtube it doesn’t automatically assume I want to watch a bunch of other shitty (but not amusingly so) movies.
There are some categories that absolutely feel like a dammed raging river, ready to burst onto your recommendations list at first provocation. Cute animals, certain standup comedians, K-Pop, etc.
Youtube has been DESPERATE to tell me how Amber Heard was REALLY asking to be smacked around by the saintly meek lamb that is Johnny Depp here lately, and it’s the first totally oddball incursion since the weird influx of gymnastics videos two years ago. Which is to say, the algorithm suddenly deciding to go rogue on you is an oooold problem on YouTube and it’s not really any worse today than before.
