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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3124 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 27, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm saying a lot of people seem outraged that the people providing content want to make money from it. You can debate the worthiness of any individual creator or platform, and I also agree that I would prefer to give money directly to creators who produce work I like (and I do) rather than Google.

People created great content on YouTube before the era when they could make money on it. And, indeed, I think the monetization era has resulted in worse content:

  • Clickbaity, misleading algorithmically tailored titles and thumbnails
  • Childish antics (because kids are simple creatures who click shiny things and, apparently, people making dick-sucking faces)
  • Padded video lengths (again, the algorithm)
  • Padded video release schedule (again, the algorithm)
  • Sponsored content (and the attendant conflict of interest in cases like tech reviews)
  • Native, in-video ads read from a script by the creator themselves
  • Georestrictions for legal reasons related to monetization
  • Self-censorship to avoid demonetization or stay kid-friendly (profanity, or even apparently non-profane words like "suicide"; content (like guns or violent footage); verboten opinions on culture war issues, especially trans)
  • Niche creators branching out to into the mainstream because that's where the money is, abandoning their focus on the niche topic

And that's just the creator side. On the hosting side there's an army of programmers hell-bent on increasing engagement and ad revenue at any and all cost, from UI changes (removing the dislike button, making everything huge and eye-catching as opposed to information-dense), heavily prioritizing recent videos, playing very fast and loose with search query matching (it shows you results only faintly related to your query if they're extremely popular, because it calculates that you're more likely to click on it), prioritizing well-known and official channels in search results despite not matching your search query as well as a niche channel.

I'd literally pay to return to the pre-monetization YouTube era. I am so fucking disgusted whenever I have to use YouTube to find something (DIY, tech reviews, some old funny thing I saw and want to look up again, footage of some recent event in the news, etc.) I cannot overstate the despair, revulsion, bitterness, and disdain I harbor about how fucking shit YouTube (and essentially the entire internet, honestly) has become over the last decade or so.

This is it, yes. I don't feel like a sucker for paying for a service I use. I feel like a sucker for paying for a service that is continuously enshittified and can afford to do it because they have a virtual monopoly.

On the hosting side there's an army of programmers hell-bent on increasing engagement and ad revenue at any and all cost, from UI changes (removing the dislike button

I still don't understand why they removed the dislike button. Isn't it going to help to serve people better content overall, and thus keep them around the platform longer, if people can downvote bad content? The only reason I could see for them removing the dislike button is if people were using it for what Google would consider to be "hateful" or "harassment", which of course Google is likely usually trying to crack down on to promote a general "we're not the bad guy" image that comes from seeming outwardly progressive.

They would never admit it, but it to me it was obvious Youtube removed visible dislikes because of the regular stream of Big Brand(tm) videos getting publicly tanked and the headlines that came with it. Game sequels revealing they were taking directions unasked for, trailers for movies heavy on The Narrative or nakedly vacuous in their creativity, cringey White House videos - all them and more were a subject to a routine phenomenon where the faceless public (or at least an engaged subset) could throw a big ol' pie the faces of institutions both public and private whenever they did something painfully stupid or miscalculated. And the power in that was knowing that when you thought something was bad, you could be sure you were not alone.

Probably only takes some polite requests to Youtube's management to curb that. And like so much else lately, it can be justified under some bullshit about protecting the little guy from hate - even though I don't think I've heard a single creator big or small being supportive of it.

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