I had to delete my Youtube App - How Youtube Shorts destroyed my life (at least, a little tiny bit)

[Motifator]

Youtube should have never made shorter videos "shorts". This screwed up the old, non-meme recordings and put them straight next to the garbage bin of Tiktok material. Stupid, and irritating. Why is the full player not available for something like a short portion of a song like You can leave your hat on saxophone section? At least don't mess with those.

[Kisai]

On 11/6/2022 at 3:14 PM, Neroon said:

As someone who always hated people who have the attention span of a goldfish, and kept changing the channel every 5 seconds, I absolutely hate how Tiktok is a thing, and how YT is pushing this shit on us.

 

I don't want it, I want proper content, I don't mind 20 minute+ videos.

 

I definitely think shorts should be removable or have it's own section, but they way they push it, is highly problematic.

I don't mind "short videos" but the quality is super-super low. It has to be, because shorts only have a lifespan of 24 hours and then Youtube no longer pushes it to anyone. Why would you spend two hours on a video that will be seen for only one day?

 

Unfortunately the long-form youtubers, twitch streamers, and so forth haven't understood how it works and just use shorts as like 30s-1m promos for longer content. Which, kind of works for youtube (since you can go to the channel from the short,) but not for tiktok.

 

The other problem is that people who do know tiktok don't know youtube and vice versa. Tiktok only pushes tagged posts. If you don't put any tags in your video, it gets pushed to nobody, not even your followers. Your followers will only see if it they explicitly click on your profile.

 

As an aside for this, youtube has done exactly what it shouldn't have. It has game-ified shorts so people are just figuring out how to wrangle traffic from it, and when your content isn't exclusively shorts, people aren't gonna stay. I'm only aware of one tiktok user who has had any traffic cross over (with twitch) and that's because the content they post to tiktok is largely abuse hurled at them from their twitch chat.

 

The App should have defaulted to a ballot box "Long form, Short form, Kids Long form, Kids short form" and then stick with it on that device.

[Just that Mario]

On 11/10/2022 at 2:28 AM, Neroon said:

Well apparently, that's what you look for the most/longest.

I just scrolled through like 20 vids, and only 1 video of specifically a chick, which was Lady Gaga (no clue why, I don't watch her stuff), and while there was some other random stuff in there from men, most of it aligned with video content I watch.

I actually only watch tech, construction, DIY and automotive stuff on YT. Only shorts are some random ass people I've never seen before.

[Neroon]

1 hour ago, Just that Mario said:

I actually only watch tech, construction, DIY and automotive stuff on YT. Only shorts are some random ass people I've never seen before.

Maybe so, but you seemed to have stuck around longer.

 

These algorithms are pretty crazy, the reason why Tiktok is so addictive, is because they know what to offer you. You watch something a second longer then it usually takes you to scroll through, and they know you're interested. You probably looked a little longer than normal to those girls, and Youtube knows it.

[Just that Mario]

On 11/11/2022 at 9:32 PM, Neroon said:

Maybe so, but you seemed to have stuck around longer.

 

These algorithms are pretty crazy, the reason why Tiktok is so addictive, is because they know what to offer you. You watch something a second longer then it usually takes you to scroll through, and they know you're interested. You probably looked a little longer than normal to those girls, and Youtube knows it.

I haven't even played 99% of suggestions, lol. I just don't care to play them.

[Neroon]

2 hours ago, Just that Mario said:

I haven't even played 99% of suggestions, lol. I just don't care to play them.

So it uses the data from the 1%.

[Lurking]

On 11/10/2022 at 12:50 AM, Kisai said:

I don't mind "short videos" but the quality is super-super low. It has to be, because shorts only have a lifespan of 24 hours and then Youtube no longer pushes it to anyone. Why would you spend two hours on a video that will be seen for only one day?

That isn't true. I see the same short suggestions over and over. Sometimes the same one re-appear after some weeks. 

 

Maybe tha algorithm favors newer shorts. But some for sure get suggested for a long time. 

[Just that Mario]

6 hours ago, Lurking said:

That isn't true. I see the same short suggestions over and over. Sometimes the same one re-appear after some weeks. 

 

Maybe tha algorithm favors newer shorts. But some for sure get suggested for a long time. 

YT algorithm is garbage. Even for "regular" videos it regularly just adds something that is trending. TikTok algorithm works pretty good though.

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, Lurking said:

That isn't true. I see the same short suggestions over and over. Sometimes the same one re-appear after some weeks. 

 

Maybe tha algorithm favors newer shorts. But some for sure get suggested for a long time. 

Any short I've made has had a life span of one day and then it just poofs after that.

 

From the watcher-side, occasionally it re-pops up some video, but it does so in the same way it does with regular videos. "wow this thing is trending, I'll pop it up again for more ad revenue"

 

I kid you not, If I'm logged into youtube I will see the same videos, I've already seen, recommended over and over and over.

 

This is what youtube looks like at this very moment:

So this part of youtube right now is more or less "show me a video or two of every channel I've watched at least once in the last 3 years", Okay, but it doesn't understand why I've clicked on these channels at any point. Now take a closer look at the shorts section. Oh wait, you can't. It immediately switches to the scrolling "app" mode. Though if you're lucky there will be a hidden down-arrow, which you can see under the "top news" section in the screen shot, but also shows up under other sections.

 

If I force a refresh, watch what happens:

Red line, video was recommended immediately previous. Teal line Channel was recommended immediately previously. Yellow lines, channels I know I watched a video from in the last month. More than half the videos being pushed by youtube are either the same video, or from the same channel previously watched. If I force a refresh, every video with a red line on it, will be shown again, and the videos that are teal may show up again.

 

Youtube keeps pushing these because they get clicks, and thus ad revenue. This is why you never see "new" stuff, because youtube just does not promote if it doesn't do well the first time. Add to that complication that if a video gets content ID flagged, it will just not show up at all.

 

[HAFBlade]

The way how I use:

Check the new videos of my subscriptions (over 150 channels) if there is something interesting and add them to "watch later". Than I only "watch later" videos. I completely ignore every "fancy cool new yeah yeah hype" content. And I would never watch any shorts. The first thing to do is click on subscriptions and don't watch anything from the front page. In the german version it is called "Mediathek". I don't know the english versions name.

[Sarra]

Every now and then, I have to spend an hour going through the homepage and freaking 'not interested' in 70-90% of the videos. Why? Because I've already seen them, and don't want to watch them again. Why it does this is anyone's guess, my guess is something breaks in the back-end and it just vomits up already watched videos.

 

Having some actual input and control over what is displayed would be really nice. I doubt they will ever do that, though.

[Lurking]

22 hours ago, Kisai said:

Any short I've made has had a life span of one day and then it just poofs after that.

 

Youtube keeps pushing these because they get clicks, and thus ad revenue. This is why you never see "new" stuff, because youtube just does not promote if it doesn't do well the first time. Add to that complication that if a video gets content ID flagged, it will just not show up at all.

 

Thanks for contributing to the pollution of YT by making more shorts..... Maybe YOUR shorts are just not considered popular by YT. Just because YOUR shorts are not popular doesn't mean they are not popular in general (at least in the yes of the YT advertisers). If you want your videos to be watched, make better ones (better as judged by people watching them). 

 

I use a browser expansion called "Hide Youtube watched videos". That makes YT not show videos i already watched (you can set that it considers 70% watched to watched etc.). In addition, I manually select the "don't recommend this channel" from suggested videos I know don't like in general or the genre. Both these methods cleaned up the suggested page a lot. I also make an effort to like and finish watching the suggested videos that actually are good. All this trains the algorithm very well. but it takes some effort on the user side. 

 

YT keeps pushing on you what they think you will watch. Obviously it isn't perfect, but their goal is to give you what you want. Blame you previous action for what you get suggested. If you watch what they suggest, don't blame YT, blame yourself. They gave you what you wanted. 

 

I'm overall happy with what I get suggested on YT. At least it is 1000x better than what Netflix suggests to me. by doing wha ti said above, it got noticeable better within a few days.