It’s already really difficult to engage with the content you want to see, but now they’re also taking away the only immediately noticeable metric of a successful video? Genuinely just why
They removed the star system a long time ago. They removed the down votes again a few years back.
They want their algorithm to be the only thing that decides whether you watch a video or not.
That’ll work excellent for all those people trying to find tutorial videos for ‘XYZ’ when you have no verification data to determine whether it’s even a legit tutorial.
People who watch tutorial videos only get on, watch the video and then leave. How are they supposed to make tons of advertising revenue from that? No, we must sacrifice that class of video from the platform, in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
I mean you joke, but they’re literally doing that to reaction video channels. MXRPlays had his entire channel deleted, despite having millions of subscribers. It was clear for years that someone at youtube had a grudge against them.
Especially since they deleted their channel. Gave strikes to all their videos, and took the videos down. Buuuuuuut, someone ELSE illegally reuploaded their content, and they can’t even report the video because their channel is deleted. The illegal re-uploads have no strikes, no issues, the content stay up, and some OTHER person makes money off of MXRPlays years old content.
the content creator isn’t following the proper system then. You don’t need YouTube to do a copyright/IP violation claim. Google is actually opening themselves up to significantly hot water if they are indeed refusing to allow a process for DMCA on creators that are deleted off the platform, as there are severe penalties for not reacting to a DMCA claim when you are a content provider.
If they actually owned the rights to the videos, that creators first step when learning that Youtube is not going to do anything about the violation, is to manually file it themselves, and honestly they should state that Youtube at that point is intentionally allowing it which would perhaps pull Youtube into it as well
just because YouTube decides that they aren’t going to do anything, doesn’t invalidate your claim to copyright. I’m surprised that the channel hasn’t seeked legal action against anyone regarding it.
My two cents on the matter is that it’s likely the channel is worried that their videos aren’t transformative enough fair use wise and that they themselves may get into legal troubles if they attempted to. A lot of commentary artists stay borderline on fair-use and not fair use, however if this was not the case, they have a pretty decent chance of winning that suit.
Oh, if you follow the channel, it’s CLEAR someone, probably just the one person, has a clear vendetta against Henry And Jeannie (MXRPlays). They used to know one person at youtube. So when they’d get their channel strike, they’d email him, and he’d review what the strike was for.
It was stuff like “Advocating child harm”.
The guy would look at the video in question, and see no evidence of that. No children in the video. No discussions of child harm. Any human without a grudge could see it was a false autobot ID. So he would remove the strike. Then the next day, the strike would be back. He’d email the guy, and the guy would look through the logs, and find it was done by a human working for youtube. He’d remove the strike again, but he’d tell them "I can’t remove it again. If he puts the strike back, it goes above me. Then the strike would be put back…and it would have to be waited out. The strike stays on your account I think they said 30 days. And if you get 3 strikes at the same time, the channel gets suspended.
So they wouldn’t upload any more videos, and then 3 days later they’d get another strike on a video that was 4 years old. Clearly not a bot, since bots generally don’t seek out old content with no activity.
And the same situation would ensue. They hung on, and kept doing this cat and mouse game for 8 years. Until the guy they knew at youtube left the company. And then they had no one to delete strikes. Any calls to anyone at youtube were ignored. And the channel wasn’t even suspended, it was terminated.
And when this other guy is reuploading their old stuff on his own personal channel, youtube says they have no way to DMCA it because the original source file, the proof that he has to say it’s his content, was deleted. Because his channel was terminated.
What type of reaction content? If it wasn’t using the minimum amount of copyrighted material needed to comment or being transformative, and was distributing the majority of a work, then at any point a DMCA will nuke em. Google might not think it’s worth the risk hosting that reaction content forever.
Basically they go on reddit, and will browse subs like “instant regret” or “maybe maybe maybe” or “yes yes no”. Basically just subs where people post videos of themselves, doing whatever. Essentially it’s just Americas Funniest Home Videos, but with their commentary using reddit as the source of the videos.
So, I’m not sure anything is actually “copyrighted”.
I doubt that would be the reason for their ban. If it is a creative work then in some countries it’s automatically copyrighted, but it’s not like most would go out of their way to stop it (unlike with like people reacting to other YouTube videos, films, anime, etc).
LOL. You clearly have never heard of G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome). You get on YouTube to learn how to play guitar and next thing you know you’ve bought three guitars, a closet full of pedals, amps, amp modelers, etc., and you still don’t know how to play.
That does not benefit specifically Alphabet though…
Of course it does. You go in for a lesson and fall down the gear rabbit hole. Next thing you know you are watching endless hours of gear reviews and demos. A lesson is a single video where gear videos is an entire genre.
Oh, thanks for the correction!:-)
I guess I was thinking of how to videos like how to fix a part on your car. But yeah I can see how how to videos like that still being an opportunity for Google to make money.
Just trust the algorithm, bro!
To be fair, the star system was garbage. I agree with the rest though
Too hard to manipulate the algorithm with ai spam, disguised ads and propaganda if users can see all the videos at the top of their recommended feed have 20 views.
You must only view what the Corporation approves.
Sir, please put this empty verification can into your anus. Video coming up right after!
Last time someone did that it triggered a conflict between Serbia and Albania!
They want to decide what you like and don’t like. You WILL watch what THEY show you.
some internal metric and testing said this increases engagement by 2.1% so now we are stuck with it.
To hope you find new content. YouTube had been putting random low watch count videos in my feed. I never click on them because of their low view count. The thumbsnails make them look like they’re high quality videos. Without the view count I have no idea if they have 1,000 views or millions. They’re hoping I will click on them, subscribe, and spend more time in the app.
I’m curious how this will affect things like sub-a-thons where people stream for charity and so on.
Personally I find the highest viewed videos on YT to be the absolute shittiest ones.
Yeah, that’s kinda the problem too
The data will have to be there for sorting reasons and such, so this is just an extra nod to using an app like Grayjay, which will almost assuredly still pull the data and display it for you to see.
YT Exec - /rips massive line of coke off Intern’s ass/ - “Remove View Count”
YT Engineer - “But Sir, users will hate that. It will actively make the user experience worse”
YT Exec - “That’s the goddamn point!”
Intern - “You could at least give me reacharound while you’re doing that”
This is inane but damn if it didn’t give me a good laugh :D
sounds like another job for the return youtube dislikes guy
Seems like a sure way to lose my engagement. I don’t understand what Google thinks they’re getting out of this except for flooding you with more ads between video recommendations at the cost of people actually watching anything and using the damn website.
Between removing the dislike counter, a defect search bar that shoves garbage down your throat, recommendations of decreasing quality on my end and shorts (which I hesitantly gave a try but ultimately lost all interest in because it remained mostly low effort content despite my efforts to train my algorithm), this is just another reason why I find myself spending more time enjoying other things lately.
Maybe I am just out of touch, but I smell another bubble bursting when I look at how enshittified all major web services are simultaneously becoming.
Maybe I am just out of touch, but I smell another bubble bursting when I look at how enshittified all major web services are simultaneously becoming.
It feels like something has to give, right?
We have YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and more just racing to enshittify like I can’t even believe, Google Search is racing to destroy the internet, yet they’re also at the ‘critical mass’ of ‘too big to fail’ and shoved out all their major competitors already (other than Discord I guess).
except for flooding you with more ads between video recommendations
That’s literally it. The advertising and marketing teams within Google have politically maneuvered themselves into running the show, and the software/product engineering teams that want to maximize the quality of the system they work on (search, youtube) are overridden by insipid metrics that advertising needs more user interaction with ads.
They literally have been commanding that things be made more shitty to optimize their malformed metrics. You absolutely can get more people to click the sponsored search results… if you keep making them less distinct from the actual results. And advertising needs those good click through rates nooooow!
There are email chains documenting this sort of shit going on that have become part of the public record due to various court cases.
I think the second part of my sentence you cropped was the more important one to get across. It doesn’t matter how indistinguishable ads become from regular content when nobody is even willing to use your billboard for an excuse of a website anymore. Besides, institutions like the EU and even the FTC in the US will step in and break apart those dark patterns when they keep getting out of hand. We already grand Google way too much leeway but there’s only so much Silicon Valley giants can get away with before getting slapped with fines and bans. There are already strict rules in the EU about transparency when it comes to advertisements and not even Youtube can ignore them for a very long time.
I guess I’d rather have it than not have it, but I don’t really understand how it would make YT unusable to me if I didn’t know how many other people viewed a video. How often are you using those numbers to make important decisions between videos about what to watch? I tend to go by the topic and subscribe to creators whose videos I like. Very occasionally I might be looking for a guide to an obscure level in an obscure game and there may be 3 similar looking videos about it, but one has 200 views and the others have single digits, and I agree in that situation it means something. But otherwise I just never pay attention to it. What do I care if 2000 or 200,000 people watched a video that looks interesting to me? Some creators I subscribe to have just a couple hundred followers. I don’t care.
Next What??? Removing Title, Only Thumbnail.
It’s currently a race-to-the-bottom in big IT & tech, where they don’t look how they get you to like them but how much they can get away with, without repelling most of their userbase.
In this case YouTube can do literally anything they want due to the lack of real alternatives. Hosting videos for free, for anyone (and any number of viewers) to watch, for free, is rather predictably not a very profitable business model. If you want to see what it takes to actually be profitable with such a model, look at the average free porn site. Extremely intrusive ads everywhere. If you don’t want to pay, and ads are the only revenue, advertisers are the customer, not you.
Gemini Ai makes up a title for you.
That’s as cursed as I can make it.
The endgame will be Gemini generating videos based on the information they’ve harvested off you.
Remove the user generated videos. Only title, videoads and comments allowed.
Removing the homepage entirely, replacing the entire UI with the shorts-style format of “view video right now, tap button to see next/previous video”. If you want a specific video, you must search for it.
In 5 years:
Youtube tests small ads in the top corner during video playback.
In 10 years:
Youtube tests small increase in size of well established corner ads.
In 15 years:
Youtube graciously allows video playback inbetween ads
In 20 years, “YouTube was an online video sharing platform…”
I doubt they can make it to the next 20 years, the way they are controlling everything.
“We can sell 80 percent of the screen before inducing seizures!”
86% if you disregard the mild ones!
In 20 years:
Users can no longer upload and YouTube becomes just a CDN for Adsense.
(and the only way to watch old videos is through the Internet Archive)
If you count the little banner text ads then they already have the ads in the top right corner of the videos and have had those for years.
YouTube/Google and hiding data from the end-user, name a better duo.
Not to mention their “1080p” streams look worse than 2013 480p streams. The site is a dumpster fire.
I thought I was imagining this until I put a 1080p episode on one monitor and a 1080p YT vid on another. The difference was night and day.
That’s why you need to pay for premium so you can get the 1080p premium bitrate.
Return youtube view counts, coming soon
Odyssey is all fascists and crypto bros
Rumble isn’t any better. It’s where my dad gets his COVID conspiracy material after folks got kicked off other platforms.
Isn’t rumble the same? Lul what the fuck is going on with the world.
You can find electroboom in Big Clive on there.
Outside of that it’s pretty much a write off
It’s sad that Odysse has turned to that because it was where I was thinking about uploading content.
Do it anyway, so the shit will be diluted in time.
I might.
Its got a lot of those types for sure, but it has the most normal content of any alt video platform.
That’s what happens to all alternatives at the start, only really the content that isn’t suitable for the main platform migrates there. It requires a mass exodus because of something major, like what happened with reddit 3rd party apps or twitter/X & the block change , to get enough regular users there.
Lemmy literally exists because Dessalines, a “long time Marxist-leninist” decided that “Fuck the while supremacist Reddit admins” and made an alternative to host r/communism because reddit is run by an “anti-tankie scum”.
this would essentially kill my method of viewing videos on the platform, this isn’t a boost to interaction they think it will be, it will ultimately result in me watching less videos as I won’t have the ability to decipher trash from good, so I’ll just stick with content creators that I am used to and no longer branch out like I currently do.
Who makes these retarded decisions?
MBAs
As someone who tries to regularly post videos on YouTube I think this would help me, since I’m sure many people (including me, unfortunately) avoid low view count videos.
But I can absolutely understand why you wouldn’t want it hidden. I’m sure this will lead to major misinformation clickbaiting (as if that isn’t already a problem!), but I believe that the view count will still be visible on the view page.
Is YouTube doing it with small creators actually in mind? Who knows, other than them?
Edit: I do want to clarify that I think hiding the date it was posted is just strange and would probably only lead to problems
I don’t like this idea for the opposite reason. I’m one of the people who are suspicious of videos with millions of views since most of them look manufactured. We all use view counts to gauge if a video is something we’re after, probably in more ways than we can come up with.
If it gives you any encouragement - I’m not discouraged by view counts. I know I like niche stuff and give small channels a try. It’s a chance at having more genuine interaction. As long as a video is not off-putting due to bad diction or very bad production then I’m not going to back out and see what it is about. This can work to your advantage too.
That’s fair, and I’m more inclined to believe people on Lemmy would agree with your view thankfully! A lot of high view videos are for sure manufactured, and from what I can tell usually target children.
I guess we’ll see how the landscape changes if this sticks around? We’re all along for the ride, for the most part!
Is YouTube doing it with small creators actually in mind? Who knows, other than them?
I am pretty confident in guessing that they are not doing it for selfless reasons. Imo the reason is that the less information they give the user, the more you are beholden to the algorithm choosing for you.
But depending how they hide it it actually might not just be users, but also companies that e.g. buy ads from them. The less information they get, the more they need to trust whatever metric google offers them
That makes sense. Youtube has mixed more and more small channels with low views into my feed for a couple of months.
I’ve watched a couple of those, they were really good.
And the comments are all “How does this have so few views?” while it has 10 times more than subscribers.
I subscribed to quite a few small channels recently.
I’m no fan that they try to show me 14 year old videos all the time, though.
I don’t avoid low view count videos because…say I get a notification that RedLetterMedia has just published a new Best of the Worst. It’s been live for 4 minutes. Of course it’s going to have a low view count.
I’m looking for a repair video on the specific make and model of Dell laptop I have. I’ve seen exactly two of them in existence, not a popular model. It’s going to have a low view count.
I think it is useful information to have, it shouldn’t be entirely hidden like the downvotes are, but I don’t think it’s necessary on the home page.
Date uploaded though…that needs to be there.
Yeah, I agree that it shouldn’t be hidden entirely, and luckily as it stands now it’s still visible on the view page if it’s hidden on the home page
I don’t understand why they on such a self destruct path?! I already barely use this fucking platform anymore because of how shitty it has become already, and now they want to bait me into watching some low views garbage on top of all that? WHY?!
Because when you get pissed off at one shitty video and click off it to find a better one, that’s free real estate in which to double your ads.
And what are you gonna do? Go to Peertube? YouTube is too gigantic to have a real competitor no matter how much we try. It is a beast so massive and bloated at this point that we just can’t kill it without legislative interference. And Google knows damn well that they’re basically the only game in town so they aren’t afraid of significant user backlash.
There is a breaking point, eventually. YouTube’s trajectory is gonna make next quarter’s revenue great, but eventually something else will pick up user’s attention instead.
The money must grow.
Thanks Youtube, I hate it. Like I can see some arguments for taking away the view counter, even if I think it’s a bad decision. But the date the video was uploaded? Who does that even help? I guess Youtubers will either need to start properly dating their videos or we’ll just have to use context clues to figure out when a video was uploaded.
But the date the video was uploaded? Who does that even help?
There’s gaming content that expires within a month, especially with frequent balance and other game changes, like with League of Legends. I won’t watch a video that’s weeks old because what’s being featured probably doesn’t work anymore after a patch.
