this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
386 points (82.2% liked)
Technology
59378 readers
3860 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What with the weird freebooting article? This ‘article’ is just a description of Alec’s video with the clickbait cranked up to ten. Gotta love a major corporation using small creators’ work for free ad revenue…
You could add the link so people don't contribute to ad revenue if you feel strongly! https://youtu.be/zsA3X40nz9w 💜
Someone already had, but good point.
EDIT: That was an undeservedly harsh phrasing. The matter touched a nerve, but that's not OPs fault. I'll clarify, but leave the original comment at the end for transparency.
I'm not a fan of videos and much prefer having texts to read. I find them more comfortable to process, interrupt, resume, search for a specific section and consume while not on WiFi (due to a limited data plan, which YT tends to eat through).
Both professionally and privately, I have been frustrated by the number of tutorials and guides that are presented as videos where articles would work well enough. They seem to be more popular too, to the point that useful articles are buried deeper in the results.
I like textual summaries of interesting videos, because I'm curious, but often not enough to warrant clicking a YouTube link. I understand people's frustration with AI ripoffs stealing content, but if the original content creator doesn't cater to a textual medium, then someone else steps into that gap, I don't feel like it's so much ripping off as adapting to a different medium.
If the original creator offered a textual summary, and someone stole that to sell it as their own, I'd share the frustration. But if they didn't, you can't really steal what never existed.
Not that I'm a fan of AI slop specifically, but it's better than nothing. If I can't have a human one, I'd rather have an AI transcription than be excluded.
Sorry about my rudeness. This is a sore spot, but being snarky doesn't help anyone.
Original comment below
Does someone have a content description so I can read instead of having to watch it?
Oh wait, here's an article, nevermind.
For anyone that couldn't bother reading the above comment, I've given a summary...
No, it's about me not being able to arbitrarily sit down and watch a video due to various issues like attention span, hearing issues*, limited mobile data and being at work, where an article or summary is much easier and faster to read and can be interrupted at a moment's notice unlike a video which I'll have to pause, scrub back through if I missed a detail and wait for it to get to the right point, and I can more easily search for stuff.
My point is that there seems to be a habit of dismissing the value of textual summaries in favour of "just watch the video" in much of the online world, where I'll be looking for a quick explanation and get presented with some video instead. Some people don't do so well with videos so it's not "just" watching the video.
There are advantages to text that I hate seeing people ignore.
(Besides, how would you know I'm incapable rather than just unwilling; or why would you assume either in the first place instead of considering inability?)
* That issue applies to voice messages and phone calls too. While videos occasionally have good CC, I haven't found them to be reliable or ubiquitous enough. Additionally, they present the speech in fragments and usually are just as hard to search through. Either way, videos are a "sometimes" thing for me.
Preach brother. One of the best uses of generative AI for me would be transcribing videos into an article or tutorial depending on the content.
Yup, I love this https://www.videogist.co/
If it can make accurate transcriptions, sure. I'd enjoy the option of sending a link to an autotranscriber and get a conveniently readable version out of it.
Guess what you can also read? A transcript of the video dingus. Also there’s a source listed in the description, guess what it is? An article.
And a good day to you too. Not sure why you felt the need to be insulting, but anyway.
Would you happen to have one handy? Or are these autogenerated these days. Are they better than the autogenerated CCs?
Yeah, which would require me to click on YT in the first place, which is already what I want to avoid due to a limited mobile data plan and YT being a wonderful drain on that.
I'm just trying to push the point that "just watch the original video instead" isn't as great a solution for everyone as some people make it out to be.
Dude they matched your tone if you thought that that was insulting that's because your original comment was insulting
How about you be less of a dick and people won't respond to you in a way that you don't like
Yeah, you're right. I got hit on a sore spot, responded impulsively and was a dick about it.
You should be able to disable auto play in Firefox.
In my experience, YT would still end up loading a section of the video along with previews of suggestion. Maybe that has changed.
Sorry I was trying to match the level of insulting tone of your reply, I guess I went too mean.
Technology Connections actually has great CC and Transcripts as I believe Alec adds them directly after proofing an as aired script after his final edit. But I am only guessing based on the level of quality I’ve seen in both after years of watching his channel.
Your point kind of falls apart though because the subject at interest here is not ‘battery testers’ it’s about a crappy ‘news’ site generating a two paragraph summary of a YouTube video and screencaping images from said video in order to generate ad revenue with minimal effort and dubious ethics.
That freebooted content being from a longstanding creator of high quality, educational, video content. If you’re so interested in the subject and want to learn more about the subject why not look for one, or even just ask? Instead of trying to make some lame high horse comment in defense of some crappy ai text that only exists to mooch off of actual people’s work.
Not to mention you didn’t even ask for a source you wanted a ‘content description’ which is like you came in here and went ‘I don’t want video, I want ai slop describing the video.’
Also, you’re a dingus.
Eh, I'd be a hypocrite to point fingers for that. All good.
I don't know this specific creator, or many YT tech creators really, since YT isn't really my main haunt (I've tried to explaing that elsewhere, but it boils down to "I rarely have the mental ability to sit and watch them") and I genuinely prefer articles.
The video having good CC doesn't solve most of my problems, unfortunately. It's a good thing to have, don't get me wrong, just doesn't help me a whole lot.
I'll grant the dubious ethics point. That subtext didn't parse for me. My focus was on the fact that the article, being a textual medium, is more useful to me.
I'm mostly upset at the prevalence of video content and the tendency to push people away from text, like "This guy has a great video" is a useful response to "I'm looking for an article". This topic set me off, but my frustration is independent of the specific context. I've had it happen often enough to make it a sore spot, but that isn't strictly the original comment's fault.
It's not a deep interest so much as a passing "stumble across something interesting", so I wouldn't necessarily seek out content on the topic. But if I were offered an essily digestible format, I'd be curious enough to consume it.
I agree that it would be better not to post cheap ripoffs, but they fill a market gap that I'm the audience for. The solution isn't to complain about the moochers filling the gap, but to fill the gap yourself. I'm not defending sloppy AI text specifically, but the concept of converting content to a different medium.
If the content creators don't want to cater to those who prefer that other medium - perfectly fine, that's their prerogative. But to then complain if someone else adapts your content to a medium you didn't want to, that's what rubs me the wrong way.
Fair enough. My phrasing was harsh and born of a frustration that I didn't really convey.
I'm fairly sure that the image is even a screenshot from the video. Uncredited I notice.
It is, I just watched the video an hour or so ago.
edit: In fact, until I read this thread, I didn't notice the URL and thought this was a link to the video.
That’s what pissed me off the most.
That's enough YouTube videos just recapping an article. But I agree it's lazy
Huh?
I think they mean the same thing happens alot in reverse: YT vids about news articles. Not wrong, but whataboutist.
also not relevant to Alex's content either.
This is how hackaday posts have been… for like a decade. I guess it’s somewhere between articles and link aggregator.
Tbf I hate watching videos, so I found it useful.
Doesn’t mean this is good content I think belongs here. The original video that links to a transcript and a source article do belong here. You want a description cause you don’t want to watch it? go feed the link into chat got. Or ask in the comments. I’m gonna call out corpo freebooting bullshit when I see it and it doesn’t belong on lemmy.
Sorry, I’m pissy rn.
Damn! I never even thought about sending it YouTube links. I might try doing that with some of those "retrospective" videos that are hours long.
Sure, that’s a fair opinion. I just don’t share it. I wouldn’t have known about this video in the first place. Also I don’t care to use AI summaries.
Coincidentally I was also a fan of the described functionality on batteries and I have used it gladly and without hurting myself. So that clearly makes me different from the vast majority of people here in the comments.
I may have been just as happy with the original article the video is based on, who knows. But since that wasn’t shared here I preferred this one over the video.
And Alec's video is mostly a freeboot off someone's article.
So this is a full on article and YouTube circle jerk.
You know there’s a difference between using sources and just regurgitating a summary of something with AI right?
Yes. I didn't misspeak.
ok bud
Yeah you mischaracterized the situation
I guess you're right because I didn't properly look at the hackaday article.
Alec has paraphrased the Tedium article. All of the talking points of Alec's video is in the article.
The hackaday article just summarised the 16 minute video into 4 short paragraphs and linked to Alec's video.
Edit: I like interactions like this (the comment thread since my first comment) because it highlights how easy it is for people to make judgements based on a lack of knowledge. It reminds me to try to not make assumptions.
Alec also clearly says which article he used as a source and credits the author
You clearly haven't looked at either article. Parasocial relationships are weird.