Youtube is also pretty boring though. I mean, there are ton of interesting content and quality content too, but the stuff that gets recommended, the "hype stuff" is full of false information, clickbait, tweaked reality to conform some narrative...
YouTube is as good as you make it. If you watch a lot of a type of content, it does a great job at finding similar content, including relevant things that you didn't know existed. If you just watch random popular stuff, then yeah, it's pretty trashy.
Unfortunately, it'll pick up recommendations from watching one thing one time, so watching that one video your weird uncle sent you is enough to pollute your algorithm with his weirdo shit.
Yes but you have to go and do that. GP was making it sound like GGP was watching crazy uncle videos to make the algorithm do that, when in reality, one errant click will pollute your suggestions unless you know to go and delete it.
New prank on someone that left their laptop unlocked. Open YouTube to something they hate and then close it before they get back.
You do need to take care in pruning videos you don't normally watch. Either remove from watch history, mark as not interested, or just thumbs downing the video.
But at least you still have that ability compared to most platforms.
On the internet before YouTube existed, I remember there were no "recommendations" by default. Methods for finding "similar" content existed and were being improved, but it was not assumed that _every_ computer user was _always_ seeking "recommendations", i.e., recommendations by default
One problem with an internet where people expect, accept and rely on "recommendations" from so-called "tech" companies is that it ignores and disincentivises people who know how to search and find good stuff. Often these people want to tell others about, and share, what they find. Before so-called "tech" companies existed, these people could be excellent sources of recommendations. IMHO, they still are
Other HN comments have suggested recommendations should be an exception to Section 230 (cf. publishing user-generated content without commercially-motivated favoritism)
I highly recommend using the "Not interested" button on anything you don't want to see. It's actually pretty effective at pruning unwanted things from your recommendations. If I get anything political or slop related, it gets the not interested button.
I also have a second channel for language learning where I used it to prune out any videos in English. It's not perfect and recommends a few still, but they get more rare as time passes.
I don't know about everyone else's experience but I find Youtube to be pretty good at finding interesting content, especially for music. Curation is necessary but it does work.
Interesting. One of my many many complaints with YTMusic is that it does discovery very poorly. It fills any radio/discovery queue with one or two new songs followed by all the songs already on my playlists.
Other big complaints include no ability to prevent it from substantially using my cell data despite telling it to do everything over wifi. I've taken to just removing network permissions from the app unless I want to add something.
IMO you don’t need curation/algo - you need social network effect where you follow people who repost similar content you like. Your graph grows and if you don’t like something - cut them off. This is how soundcloud works.
Works fine for me recommending interesting educational and edutainment content.
I'm quite aggressively removing videos I don't like from my watch history, or flag "don't recommend" channels I know won't be for me. If I'm not careful it'll recommend crap for a while.
YouTube Premium is the best ~~$11.99~~ ~~$13.00~~ $15.17 I spend per month...
I actually don't care that much about YouTube content and it's not a place I go and hang out, but I'll pay just about anything to avoid seeing ads. Yes, I know ad blockers exist, but getting them to work on laptop, phone, Apple TV directly, Apple TV via casting, etc is not easy or even possible in some cases. If I had to guess I watch ~1hr of YouTube a week, if I watch more than that I'm watching longer-form content, but mostly it's because everyone hosts their videos there so the 3-7min here and there add up to ~1hr (tutorials, product launch, help/documentation video, etc). As much as it pains me to fork over $15+/mo for that, I hate being interrupted by ads more.
Firefox + uBlock Origin on smartphone and desktop = no ads (though I personally prefer Vivaldi on desktop, but for simplicity just recommend Firefox)
SmartTube on Android TV has no ads and skip sponsors
so all you need to remember are two apps FF (+uBO) and SmartTune on TV, you install it once and don't care anymore, comparably difficult with payment for YT
More channels are fighting for attention though, so finding more channels are "creating buzz" or "news" based on mediocre information ie. taking things out of context and making unwarranted conclusions or blowing things out of proportions for clickbait titles.
I've started putting together a curated directory of (subjectively) good YouTube channels and videos [1]. It's literally the 3rd day, so not many entries yet, but I plan to continue growing it like I did with Minifeed [2].
That’s not an argument against the comment you responded to.
If I just took any random 20 creators I’m subscribed to on YouTube, the premium membership fee, which includes YT Music, is more valuable than any of the other streaming services.
The only other streaming service I’ve been a paying member even longer than YouTube is di.fm
I also occasionally pay for a few months or bassdrive.com and or soma.fm
I heavily use the "Not interested" and the "Do not recommend this channel" options a lot and don't click on clickbait, and use the DeArrow extension, and this way my front page looks quite good.
No, I often get nice recommendations from the long tail, like interesting academic talks or tinkerer channels, videos sometimes with only a few hundred views or even fewer.
Disabled recommendations. Disabled comments (firefox plugin). Use subscriptions page as the homepage (firefox plugin). Only subscribe to channels that interest me (and aren't annoying like that).
For those of us who are too cheap to pay the subscription:
On my iPhone I almost never see YTube ads. I don’t use the YTube app and instead I install Chrome and watch YT that way. I lose notifications—which is perfect for me, since I don’t want many notifications on my phone anyway.
This might also work in Safari but I haven’t tested it.
> ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician
that is being done as open source community efforts now: NewPipe for mobile, SmartTube for smart TVs etc.
All you have to do is update them once in a while
I mean it’s just $10. People are making livelihoods based off from YouTube. I get not liking ads, but if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it? Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
>if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it?
It requires the use of a google account and there is no way to even request opting out of the accompanying data harvesting. Any "curation" or "recommendation" that would inevitably happen is also an anti-feature.
>Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
I find that all of Google’s ad products are under-moderated for malicious ads. It’s a choice on their part to not tightly control this—they certainly could, though it would harm their incredible profitability if they did more scrutiny on the ads they show. I personally don’t especially care to pay a premium not to see deepfakes of celebrities promoting crypto scams.
I find YT to be very sloppy nowadays. Not so much AI content as content that is over-optimized for clicks and revenue. 80% filler and maybe 20% substance.
YT is huge, and there is plenty of good stuff. You just need to subscribe to good channels that are not so easy to find. And block the clickbait channels when they appear.
I wish we could collectively move over to some decentralized alternative. Even if we make sure to disable the bad parts, relying on these few actors that have such revenue optimized and enshitification-prone business models does not sit right.
Although decentralization by itself does probably not protect from this trap in the long run.
Nothing is really stopping us the consumer. But given that YouTube seems to be the only one in its "medium" (compared to Twitch and TikTok being different formats) that pays creators, it's hard to ask all of them to impact their potential livelihoods.
Nebula as a premium service seems to be the best in terms of paying creators and keeping non-perverse incentives. But Nebula is for very specific kinds of content.
You can do this manually on the free plan. Mouse over the playhead and you'll see a graph. You can click the highest point in the graph which is where most people clicked through to.
Also, though not a benefit to you in particular, apparently any creator you watch with Premium gets a way bigger payout for your view. Only heard about this anecdotally but it seems to track.
Video is a terrible learning format for most information. I actually judge people who learn primarily through video as having very low information parsing throughput.
These seem to be the main relevant insights from the "Adults' Media Lives" report [0] (and they are backed with some good quotes from the participants):
> Participants claimed to be streaming more and viewing less linear TV. This is part of a medium-term trend we have seen over recent years. Participants also reported more of their viewing as being on their own, with less shared/communal viewing overall.Many participants claimed to be viewing more YouTube, in particular, in the past year. For some men, YouTube is now their main (or only) form of viewing.
- p 20.
> Whilst in previous years YouTube was predominantly being used to access specialist content around users' personal interests, it now also seems to serve a broader range of viewing needs. These include “background” viewing (sometimes as a replacement for daytime TV) and videos about random, eclectic, interesting topics – serendipitous content discoveries traditionally associated with linear TV channels.
Youtube charges $10 per month and doesn't produce a single video. It's an amazing money maker for them and the only media subscription i pay for (to avoid ads on TVs). They should quit it with the Shorts though, nobody likes those
> Youtube charges $10 per month and doesn't produce a single video.
This is like complaining that your fridge takes money to run even though it produces none of the stuffs you put in your fridge. Serving video is enormously expensive especially if you let practically everyone use your platform as permanent storage for videos that will never be watched and will never generate ad revenue. There is a reason why no real competitor to YouTube has emerged and the alternative platforms that do exist target professional content creators even more than YouTube.
> They should quit it with the Shorts though, nobody likes those
No one on this website likes them, sure. The number of likes and comments some of those short videos get suggests that there are enough people who like them for YouTube to keep pushing them. They just don't tend to get very vocal about it on a nerd social media.
It didn't used to be like this though, and it feels bad to feel like a rat in a cage with YT. It's an un-winnable situation, choosing between excessive ads and paying the racketeer to be safe from the racket. It just really exemplifies their de-facto monopoly on internet video, and it makes me feel bad.
I used to be vehemently opposed to shorts, but with recommendations disabled it is tolerable, because only shorts from people I subscribe to are in there.
The only reason I really watch shorts is because Vsauce started using them a lot, and his content is definitely worth a watch every time in any format.
> Youtube charges $10 per month and doesn't produce a single video
It is different from Netflix (that pays upfront for production costs), but there's of course a revenue share + the bulk of the revenue for creators is actually from sponsorships (which YT doesn't take a share of).
Long long time ago buddy, I ditched TV 15+ years ago, can't even remember exactly when.
I only buy large monitors and mount them on my wall.
At first I only watched selfhosted media, but last 8 years it's been more and more Youtube. I'm not too happy about it, would like to wean myself off it.
I'm speaking from my own perspective here but scripted media is something I only watch socially, if my partner wants to watch with me. And I end up on my computer trying to type softly next to them.
All scripted media just seems so predictable now, I'm like Stan in that one South Park episode lol.
It also seems manipulative. I can see how a lot of shows just milk the story for more episodes until they can't milk it anymore. It doesn't seem genuine anymore, maybe it never was? Ratings have always existed, in my lifetime.
But the point is that the only newly produced content I watch is just regular people. One example is Antiques Roadshow, it's boring, maybe even "slow" TV, but it's real people. I much prefer watching real people than characters.
Something that really bugs me now is live action characters, I'd actually prefer cartoon characters. Because everything is so unreal and over the top, it might as well be a cartoon.
The thing is very simple: when watching TV I need to adjust my schedule to the shows I'd like to watch. With youtube (or any streaming platform), I can see them whenever I want, the platform adapts to my schedule.
Of course there are some exceptions, for example when I want to watch my national football team, I'd like to watch it live. Luckily, that won't be a problem anymore this year (Italy).
I don’t think the schedule argument is a strong one these days. DVRs have been around for decades now, and built into satellite and cable services too. In fact, some TVs even have DVR functionality built in.
What annoys me is when streaming services release shows on a weekly basis. Which makes them just as inconvenient to watch as traditional broadcasting.
You used to be able to set your VCR to record the show at a certain time (and skip the ads by fast-forwarding). DVRs exist too. We have lost a lot of freedom.
I consume a probably unhealthy amount of YouTube and have for years now. I’ve had Premium since the beginning (still only paying $7.99 a month). At least there’s studies that show directed consumption that I do when I manually search and find stuff to watch is less harmful than the idle scrolling for shorts that you get on TikTok and YouTube shorts.
So Ofcom publishes a factual report with the positively dull actual title of "Passive social media use, AI companionship, and online side hustles: UK adults’ media and online lives revealed"
A report that makes zero comment on controlling how people use YouTube or any other social media.
this are not congruent, you are shown way more AI slop in YT than TV, where it is growing - but still no match. If anything, AI fatigue must be making people spend less time on the web. The write-up in the article itself is contradicting this title. Bad title.
Because you can't get doomlooped into right-wing podcasts and "citizen journalism" on the TV.
Sample quotes from men in the study:
"Who tells me what's right and what's wrong... is it true or is it not true?
Some of the things on YouTube are independent. I find I would listen to
them more, because they're on the ground. They're telling you the story. "
"If you see something on social media, whether you believe it or not, you
can go to the comments and see everyone's points… If most people agree
with it, you know you should be at least somewhat agreeing with it. "
"It seems to everyone that it's an agenda, like the government's behind
an agenda… it's like a brainwashing tool for the government. An illegal
immigrant killed someone in the street the other day, stabbed them to
death… And it's all over Facebook, all over YouTube. And the news
hasn’t even said anything about it"
Only one man mentioned using YouTube for entertainment.
Those comments are something... I take the most issue with the second one. I wonder if the person knows they're directly describing group-think. That's something that would theoretically get you called a "sheeple" in some places, unless you agree with the general opinion held by most people there, of course. :)
> Because you can't get doomlooped into right-wing podcasts and "citizen journalism" on the TV.
FoxNews, NewsMax, AM Radio are already good enough for that. I’ve also noticed that most of the guests on TV News are now YouTubers, so even if you are watching TV, you are going to see them.
Citizen journalism can be a bad thing, like the Nick Shirley example, but the alternative seems to be that only news Larry Ellison or some other billionaire approves will get on TV, that seems like a far worse scenario to me.
For the Iran war, on YouTube, you can see Canadian journalists sailing in the strait of Hormuz and interviews with real Iranians. You cannot see this on CBS.
I can only speak from a UK perspective, but all broadcast media here is regulated. So the things you might see in the US just can't happen and don't happen here. Everything has to be editorially balanced. Online media doesn't fall under the same regulations.
GB News gets a lot of criticism, but I watch the odd show and I've always found it to be balanced. There's a lot of political and regulatory pressure against them, so much so that GB News took Ofcom to the High Court and overturned illegal actions that Ofcom had taken.
I noticed this about my Dad, he's 66. Growing up he was always in front of the TV watching whatever show was on. Today he's never there, now he's always in front of his iPad watching YouTube, watching videos of tractors excavating things.
There's a lot of AI slop on YouTube unfortunately. But with YT Premium (or adblockers) I can't think of a better platform currently for finding distraction free content focused on your interests.
I kinda start to feel a but opposite. I’m 20 years off TV this year. But youtube is full of misinformation and garbage while TV is somewhat vetted form of information.
Ofcom emitting anti-social media statements shouldn't surprise anyone at this point. There is an ongoing EU-wide war against uncensored communication channels in the form of chat control, age verification, and anti anonymity. All to Protect The Children, of course.
Youtube is also pretty boring though. I mean, there are ton of interesting content and quality content too, but the stuff that gets recommended, the "hype stuff" is full of false information, clickbait, tweaked reality to conform some narrative...
YouTube is as good as you make it. If you watch a lot of a type of content, it does a great job at finding similar content, including relevant things that you didn't know existed. If you just watch random popular stuff, then yeah, it's pretty trashy.
Unfortunately, it'll pick up recommendations from watching one thing one time, so watching that one video your weird uncle sent you is enough to pollute your algorithm with his weirdo shit.
You can mark a video as not to influence your recommendations or delete it from your YouTube history.
Yes but you have to go and do that. GP was making it sound like GGP was watching crazy uncle videos to make the algorithm do that, when in reality, one errant click will pollute your suggestions unless you know to go and delete it.
New prank on someone that left their laptop unlocked. Open YouTube to something they hate and then close it before they get back.
You do need to take care in pruning videos you don't normally watch. Either remove from watch history, mark as not interested, or just thumbs downing the video.
But at least you still have that ability compared to most platforms.
[dead]
Imagine this option:
Or this option: On the internet before YouTube existed, I remember there were no "recommendations" by default. Methods for finding "similar" content existed and were being improved, but it was not assumed that _every_ computer user was _always_ seeking "recommendations", i.e., recommendations by defaultOne problem with an internet where people expect, accept and rely on "recommendations" from so-called "tech" companies is that it ignores and disincentivises people who know how to search and find good stuff. Often these people want to tell others about, and share, what they find. Before so-called "tech" companies existed, these people could be excellent sources of recommendations. IMHO, they still are
Other HN comments have suggested recommendations should be an exception to Section 230 (cf. publishing user-generated content without commercially-motivated favoritism)
I highly recommend using the "Not interested" button on anything you don't want to see. It's actually pretty effective at pruning unwanted things from your recommendations. If I get anything political or slop related, it gets the not interested button.
I also have a second channel for language learning where I used it to prune out any videos in English. It's not perfect and recommends a few still, but they get more rare as time passes.
I will try this. I have no idea what is wrong with the algo, but I've honestly thought youtube has gone way downhill since the pandemic.
Agree, their algorithm sucks, I wish I could have more freedom to customize it
This is the only downside. You really need to curate good content.
I don't know about everyone else's experience but I find Youtube to be pretty good at finding interesting content, especially for music. Curation is necessary but it does work.
Interesting. One of my many many complaints with YTMusic is that it does discovery very poorly. It fills any radio/discovery queue with one or two new songs followed by all the songs already on my playlists.
Other big complaints include no ability to prevent it from substantially using my cell data despite telling it to do everything over wifi. I've taken to just removing network permissions from the app unless I want to add something.
IMO you don’t need curation/algo - you need social network effect where you follow people who repost similar content you like. Your graph grows and if you don’t like something - cut them off. This is how soundcloud works.
I'm not using Youtube Music, just regular free Youtube with an ad blocker.
Works fine for me recommending interesting educational and edutainment content.
I'm quite aggressively removing videos I don't like from my watch history, or flag "don't recommend" channels I know won't be for me. If I'm not careful it'll recommend crap for a while.
Agree! So many great genuine creators, but the algo keeps pushing only clickbaity shit
Everyone was a genuine creator but was corrupted at some point. It will happen to your favorite creator too.
EthosLab is immune to this
I have a friend that sends me lunatic fringe videos every day that youtube recommends. It's tiring
YouTube Premium is the best $10 I spend per month. Nowhere else can I consistently find the sort of niche content that interests me.
YouTube Premium is the best ~~$11.99~~ ~~$13.00~~ $15.17 I spend per month...
I actually don't care that much about YouTube content and it's not a place I go and hang out, but I'll pay just about anything to avoid seeing ads. Yes, I know ad blockers exist, but getting them to work on laptop, phone, Apple TV directly, Apple TV via casting, etc is not easy or even possible in some cases. If I had to guess I watch ~1hr of YouTube a week, if I watch more than that I'm watching longer-form content, but mostly it's because everyone hosts their videos there so the 3-7min here and there add up to ~1hr (tutorials, product launch, help/documentation video, etc). As much as it pains me to fork over $15+/mo for that, I hate being interrupted by ads more.
Firefox + uBlock Origin on smartphone and desktop = no ads (though I personally prefer Vivaldi on desktop, but for simplicity just recommend Firefox)
SmartTube on Android TV has no ads and skip sponsors
so all you need to remember are two apps FF (+uBO) and SmartTune on TV, you install it once and don't care anymore, comparably difficult with payment for YT
More channels are fighting for attention though, so finding more channels are "creating buzz" or "news" based on mediocre information ie. taking things out of context and making unwarranted conclusions or blowing things out of proportions for clickbait titles.
"This changes everything!!"
Getting youtube fatigue.
I've started putting together a curated directory of (subjectively) good YouTube channels and videos [1]. It's literally the 3rd day, so not many entries yet, but I plan to continue growing it like I did with Minifeed [2].
1. https://skyshelf.app/
2. https://minifeed.net/
That’s not an argument against the comment you responded to.
If I just took any random 20 creators I’m subscribed to on YouTube, the premium membership fee, which includes YT Music, is more valuable than any of the other streaming services.
The only other streaming service I’ve been a paying member even longer than YouTube is di.fm
I also occasionally pay for a few months or bassdrive.com and or soma.fm
For movies / series, I’m back to sharing.
I heavily use the "Not interested" and the "Do not recommend this channel" options a lot and don't click on clickbait, and use the DeArrow extension, and this way my front page looks quite good.
At this point you’re doing almost as much work as if you handpicked a few channels and put them in your RSS reader.
Algorithms are sold as “curation is hard, the algorithm does it for you” but getting the algorithm to do a good job is actually a lot of work
No, I often get nice recommendations from the long tail, like interesting academic talks or tinkerer channels, videos sometimes with only a few hundred views or even fewer.
Disabled recommendations. Disabled comments (firefox plugin). Use subscriptions page as the homepage (firefox plugin). Only subscribe to channels that interest me (and aren't annoying like that).
The browser extension "DeArrow" is well worth a look.
Fully agree. There is so much good content and being ad-free is just a really great experience.
I'd pay that, but it's about $22 in my country...
I prefer newpipe for $0/mo
nowhere near comparable experience if you want to seamlessly use your YT account across a TV + phone + computer
i'd rather pay the $10 than pay with my time by being an ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician
For those of us who are too cheap to pay the subscription:
On my iPhone I almost never see YTube ads. I don’t use the YTube app and instead I install Chrome and watch YT that way. I lose notifications—which is perfect for me, since I don’t want many notifications on my phone anyway.
This might also work in Safari but I haven’t tested it.
On Android, Firefox with sponsorblock. I do pay for Premium though. In since YouTube Red.
> ad-block whack-a-mole diagnostician that is being done as open source community efforts now: NewPipe for mobile, SmartTube for smart TVs etc. All you have to do is update them once in a while
It's not comparable, it's superior! The youtube app stinks! And I don't care about "seamlessly" using it across my devices.
I mean it’s just $10. People are making livelihoods based off from YouTube. I get not liking ads, but if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it? Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
>if you have the option to go ad free for a low cost, why not do it?
It requires the use of a google account and there is no way to even request opting out of the accompanying data harvesting. Any "curation" or "recommendation" that would inevitably happen is also an anti-feature.
>Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
No
I find that all of Google’s ad products are under-moderated for malicious ads. It’s a choice on their part to not tightly control this—they certainly could, though it would harm their incredible profitability if they did more scrutiny on the ads they show. I personally don’t especially care to pay a premium not to see deepfakes of celebrities promoting crypto scams.
It's a 15 now.
And yes, thars the issue. I pretty much unsubscribed from Disney+, HBO, and Netflix becsuse I can't just have multiple 15 dollar subscriptions add up.
As of now, YouTube, Rider, and Google One are my only subs. And I should really shuffle around space so I can unsub from One.
I refuse to give google any cent (and I also do not use youtube at all, so at least I’m consistent).
I would prefer to pay that money to creators directly than to pay it to an adtech firm and trust that they'll dole it out fairly.
Isn’t it a hassle to pay everyone for each video you watch? Do you use the Super Thanks feature or do it some other way?
> Do you pay for any of Netflix, Paramount, AppleTV, etc.?
No.
Edit: I do pay $5/mo for PBS
I prefer Tubular with Sponsorblock
Do you know how it compares to LibreTube[1]? For the SponsorBlock integration; it works well for me, but I kinda miss the newpipe interface.
[1]: https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube
I've never tried LibreTube. I am used to the new pipe interface and had all my subscriptions managed their so the move to Tubular was easy.
uBlock origin + SponsorBlock has a much better price to performance ratio imo.
i judge ppl who dont have youtube premium as a not curious ppl :D
I find YT to be very sloppy nowadays. Not so much AI content as content that is over-optimized for clicks and revenue. 80% filler and maybe 20% substance.
I should probably de-algoify my YT experience.
YT is huge, and there is plenty of good stuff. You just need to subscribe to good channels that are not so easy to find. And block the clickbait channels when they appear.
I wish we could collectively move over to some decentralized alternative. Even if we make sure to disable the bad parts, relying on these few actors that have such revenue optimized and enshitification-prone business models does not sit right.
Although decentralization by itself does probably not protect from this trap in the long run.
Nothing is really stopping us the consumer. But given that YouTube seems to be the only one in its "medium" (compared to Twitch and TikTok being different formats) that pays creators, it's hard to ask all of them to impact their potential livelihoods.
Nebula as a premium service seems to be the best in terms of paying creators and keeping non-perverse incentives. But Nebula is for very specific kinds of content.
Ask Mode is pretty great. Wish they’d just summarise all the video titles for me so I could avoid bait.
I judge ppl who are brainwashed enough to pay for youtube premium and watch videos based on their thumbnails.
There are problems with YouTube and the library is free.
https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01dz010t34x
Is there anything you can watch on premium that can’t watch on YouTube for free?
I think not, mostly just removes ads, and a few other features
its more about what you dont want to watch
If you don't watch on mobile, is there anything that YouTube Premiums gives you that an ad-blocker doesn't?
YouTube music, higher quality video, and the ‘jump ahead’ feature to skip portions of a video that others usually skip.
You can do this manually on the free plan. Mouse over the playhead and you'll see a graph. You can click the highest point in the graph which is where most people clicked through to.
Also, though not a benefit to you in particular, apparently any creator you watch with Premium gets a way bigger payout for your view. Only heard about this anecdotally but it seems to track.
is there a difference between youtube premium and youtube-with-adblocking?
It's harder to block ads on mobile.
That's why I pay.
That's your right; I consider myself a very curious person but I never watch YouTube (I have watched less than 10 minutes in 2026).
I prefer to read news and information. What little exposure to YouTube personalities and editing styles I've had annoys me to no end.
Video is a terrible learning format for most information. I actually judge people who learn primarily through video as having very low information parsing throughput.
I judge people who watch that much youtube as susceptible to disinformation.
These seem to be the main relevant insights from the "Adults' Media Lives" report [0] (and they are backed with some good quotes from the participants):
> Participants claimed to be streaming more and viewing less linear TV. This is part of a medium-term trend we have seen over recent years. Participants also reported more of their viewing as being on their own, with less shared/communal viewing overall.Many participants claimed to be viewing more YouTube, in particular, in the past year. For some men, YouTube is now their main (or only) form of viewing.
- p 20.
> Whilst in previous years YouTube was predominantly being used to access specialist content around users' personal interests, it now also seems to serve a broader range of viewing needs. These include “background” viewing (sometimes as a replacement for daytime TV) and videos about random, eclectic, interesting topics – serendipitous content discoveries traditionally associated with linear TV channels.
- p 21.
[0] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/rese...
Youtube charges $10 per month and doesn't produce a single video. It's an amazing money maker for them and the only media subscription i pay for (to avoid ads on TVs). They should quit it with the Shorts though, nobody likes those
> Youtube charges $10 per month and doesn't produce a single video.
This is like complaining that your fridge takes money to run even though it produces none of the stuffs you put in your fridge. Serving video is enormously expensive especially if you let practically everyone use your platform as permanent storage for videos that will never be watched and will never generate ad revenue. There is a reason why no real competitor to YouTube has emerged and the alternative platforms that do exist target professional content creators even more than YouTube.
> They should quit it with the Shorts though, nobody likes those
No one on this website likes them, sure. The number of likes and comments some of those short videos get suggests that there are enough people who like them for YouTube to keep pushing them. They just don't tend to get very vocal about it on a nerd social media.
It didn't used to be like this though, and it feels bad to feel like a rat in a cage with YT. It's an un-winnable situation, choosing between excessive ads and paying the racketeer to be safe from the racket. It just really exemplifies their de-facto monopoly on internet video, and it makes me feel bad.
They get paid to display ads, and they get paid to hide ads. What a fantastic business model.
I'm also in the same bucket, happy to pay my subscription.
I used to be vehemently opposed to shorts, but with recommendations disabled it is tolerable, because only shorts from people I subscribe to are in there.
The only reason I really watch shorts is because Vsauce started using them a lot, and his content is definitely worth a watch every time in any format.
> Youtube charges $10 per month and doesn't produce a single video
It is different from Netflix (that pays upfront for production costs), but there's of course a revenue share + the bulk of the revenue for creators is actually from sponsorships (which YT doesn't take a share of).
And they steal all the content for AI training. You couldn't buy their archive for all the money in the world.
Long long time ago buddy, I ditched TV 15+ years ago, can't even remember exactly when.
I only buy large monitors and mount them on my wall.
At first I only watched selfhosted media, but last 8 years it's been more and more Youtube. I'm not too happy about it, would like to wean myself off it.
I'm speaking from my own perspective here but scripted media is something I only watch socially, if my partner wants to watch with me. And I end up on my computer trying to type softly next to them.
All scripted media just seems so predictable now, I'm like Stan in that one South Park episode lol.
It also seems manipulative. I can see how a lot of shows just milk the story for more episodes until they can't milk it anymore. It doesn't seem genuine anymore, maybe it never was? Ratings have always existed, in my lifetime.
But the point is that the only newly produced content I watch is just regular people. One example is Antiques Roadshow, it's boring, maybe even "slow" TV, but it's real people. I much prefer watching real people than characters.
Something that really bugs me now is live action characters, I'd actually prefer cartoon characters. Because everything is so unreal and over the top, it might as well be a cartoon.
The thing is very simple: when watching TV I need to adjust my schedule to the shows I'd like to watch. With youtube (or any streaming platform), I can see them whenever I want, the platform adapts to my schedule.
Of course there are some exceptions, for example when I want to watch my national football team, I'd like to watch it live. Luckily, that won't be a problem anymore this year (Italy).
I don’t think the schedule argument is a strong one these days. DVRs have been around for decades now, and built into satellite and cable services too. In fact, some TVs even have DVR functionality built in.
What annoys me is when streaming services release shows on a weekly basis. Which makes them just as inconvenient to watch as traditional broadcasting.
you could just, like, watch it the next day
do you need to binge all of the episodes at once?
But my point was that you cannot watch it the next day. You have to wait until the following week.
And why shouldn’t people binge all the episodes at once? If that’s how they want to watch a series then who are we to say it’s wrong?
Let’s also not forget that the entire point of this tangent was people wanting to watch shows on their own schedule.
You used to be able to set your VCR to record the show at a certain time (and skip the ads by fast-forwarding). DVRs exist too. We have lost a lot of freedom.
I consume a probably unhealthy amount of YouTube and have for years now. I’ve had Premium since the beginning (still only paying $7.99 a month). At least there’s studies that show directed consumption that I do when I manually search and find stuff to watch is less harmful than the idle scrolling for shorts that you get on TikTok and YouTube shorts.
Next in Ofcom’s authoritarian sights: YouTube.
Only 20 years too late. They should have been involved from the start
Ofcom is a disgrace to humanity. I guess this is an early signal that they plan to control how people use YouTube.
UK voters get what they vote for.
Literally untrue as we don't have proportional representation.
So Ofcom publishes a factual report with the positively dull actual title of "Passive social media use, AI companionship, and online side hustles: UK adults’ media and online lives revealed"
A report that makes zero comment on controlling how people use YouTube or any other social media.
And yet somehow they are "a disgrace to humanity"
Really?
I think your disgrace-level calibration needs adjusting given everything else that's going on rn buddy.
> Men are ditching TV for YouTube
this, and
> as AI usage and social media fatigue grow
this are not congruent, you are shown way more AI slop in YT than TV, where it is growing - but still no match. If anything, AI fatigue must be making people spend less time on the web. The write-up in the article itself is contradicting this title. Bad title.
the slop has been in regular TV for decades.
and even if it's not algorithmically generated in a direct sense it is clearly subject matter made and selected by algorithm.
I have access to more content at the touch of a button than ever before.
I struggle to find content I actually want to watch. It's really weird.
I can't tell if it's me, or the content, or a combination.
I think part of it is our attention span, or lack thereof.
57 Channels And Nothin' On
youtube is good when there's adblockers
Because you can't get doomlooped into right-wing podcasts and "citizen journalism" on the TV.
Sample quotes from men in the study:
"Who tells me what's right and what's wrong... is it true or is it not true? Some of the things on YouTube are independent. I find I would listen to them more, because they're on the ground. They're telling you the story. "
"If you see something on social media, whether you believe it or not, you can go to the comments and see everyone's points… If most people agree with it, you know you should be at least somewhat agreeing with it. "
"It seems to everyone that it's an agenda, like the government's behind an agenda… it's like a brainwashing tool for the government. An illegal immigrant killed someone in the street the other day, stabbed them to death… And it's all over Facebook, all over YouTube. And the news hasn’t even said anything about it"
Only one man mentioned using YouTube for entertainment.
Those quotes read like the quotes you'd read from someone's facebook after they've committed an atrocity
Those comments are something... I take the most issue with the second one. I wonder if the person knows they're directly describing group-think. That's something that would theoretically get you called a "sheeple" in some places, unless you agree with the general opinion held by most people there, of course. :)
> Because you can't get doomlooped into right-wing podcasts and "citizen journalism" on the TV.
FoxNews, NewsMax, AM Radio are already good enough for that. I’ve also noticed that most of the guests on TV News are now YouTubers, so even if you are watching TV, you are going to see them.
Citizen journalism can be a bad thing, like the Nick Shirley example, but the alternative seems to be that only news Larry Ellison or some other billionaire approves will get on TV, that seems like a far worse scenario to me.
For the Iran war, on YouTube, you can see Canadian journalists sailing in the strait of Hormuz and interviews with real Iranians. You cannot see this on CBS.
I can only speak from a UK perspective, but all broadcast media here is regulated. So the things you might see in the US just can't happen and don't happen here. Everything has to be editorially balanced. Online media doesn't fall under the same regulations.
GB News?
GB News gets a lot of criticism, but I watch the odd show and I've always found it to be balanced. There's a lot of political and regulatory pressure against them, so much so that GB News took Ofcom to the High Court and overturned illegal actions that Ofcom had taken.
Sigh. Those comments are truly something.
"UK adults’ media and online lives revealed"
Adults are the focus here, not men.
I noticed this about my Dad, he's 66. Growing up he was always in front of the TV watching whatever show was on. Today he's never there, now he's always in front of his iPad watching YouTube, watching videos of tractors excavating things.
There's a lot of AI slop on YouTube unfortunately. But with YT Premium (or adblockers) I can't think of a better platform currently for finding distraction free content focused on your interests.
I kinda start to feel a but opposite. I’m 20 years off TV this year. But youtube is full of misinformation and garbage while TV is somewhat vetted form of information.
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Ofcom emitting anti-social media statements shouldn't surprise anyone at this point. There is an ongoing EU-wide war against uncensored communication channels in the form of chat control, age verification, and anti anonymity. All to Protect The Children, of course.
> Ofcom emitting anti-social media statements shouldn't surprise anyone at this point.
Where was there anything in that story that was ant-social media?
I will pay anything to watch styropyro!