Videos

Its horrible. I search all the time on YouTube and instead of giving me the results I searched for YouTube serves me my recommendations

It's like 50% ads and 45% similar-searches (which I assume are mostly just subtle ads). So in the end, each search gets you like 2 real results and 38 pieces of bullshit.

They're just keeping up with Google search

Platforms like YouTube and Reddit have the fundamental issue that they feel entitled to incredible amounts of money for serving content they didn't create. They make lots off money off the back of creators, then find new and malicious ways to be a platform that's just painful to be on.

I disabled watch and search history on my Google accounts (recommend everyone do that), and now there's this passive aggressive blank home page when I open YouTube as if that's the best experience they could come up with. Don't show me content I'm subscribed to or anything, just a blank page like fuck you.

There should be a way for creators like the author here to be compensated, while the platform gets a fair cut for hosting it and making it easy to find the content you want. Google, across all their platforms, has forgotten that getting people to the right content was what made them the best platform in the past. Instead, it's forcing you through a swath of shit you don't want, in hopes they make more ad revenue.

Fuck the decision makers at these platforms.

Drives me crazy. I tried to find an old video the other day and only found reuploads despite getting other results from the channel and I assumed it was just deleted.

Not to mention corporate news. It's impossible to find anyone else discussing particular events or raw video or even live streams without wading through what seems like thousands of every damn news channel with their talking heads and editors about any topic. I certainly understand why it's important to have news easily accessible, but it kills me that I used to be able to find news media critique and videos of happenings from everyday people, and I just can't anymore, at least not without serious digging. Obviously the rise of other video platforms plays a role, as does the need to ensure accurate information for specific things, like a pandemic or climate change, but I can't help but see just how homogenized and corporatized it's all become.

This isn't to say there aren't great channels out there that meet my needs, I just miss being able to type a keyword in and finding regular people, not trying to game the algorithm, not trying to make youtube a career, just getting their voices out there.

King Dragon sends his regards.

Why though

I liked youtube better in the era when its leading star was a talking orange.

I tried watching a video today and couldn't even get it to load. Firefox with adblock, so there's my (their) problem probably.