As a mass YouTube users probably spend more time on the site if they can't find what they want; I get the impression this sort of thing happens a lot online now, string users along so you can feed them ads from your customers.

I assume that's why they made Google search results so bad, rather than send you straight where you want to go they drive you around the block to run the meter up.

Its backfiring for them in my case. Usually if I can’t find something easy within a few seconds, I decide its not worth the trouble to go on this research assignment of a search query and just close the tab. The little bit of trivia I wanted an answer for usually isn’t that important anyhow.

Netflix is managing to do this for me on AppleTV … it’s the one thing more annoying than the stupid YouTube app requiring an entire two extra button presses to switch accounts. Every god damn time I go to switch accounts I push the “select” button on the username in the username list, then remember “oh that’s right, fuck this stupid app” and click to the side and click the button again.

Every damn time… for years… every time. It’s that counterintuitive to my brain.

But as sand in the lettuce as that is. The Netflix app completely stubbornly refusing to give me a “mark as watched” and blatantly refusing to use the AppleTV SDK features to integrate with the “up next” and TV app… I’m getting pretty close to just cancelling the subscription, because I’m sick of having to go and specifically check Netflix… they are not that special I want to go out if my way, I’m sick of them being slow to load my list I’m sick of them not fitting into my relaxation time in a smooth seamless way and most of all I’m sick of having to waste time specifically opening their app, waiting for my list to load, being reminded which stuff from my big watch list is leaving soon, seeing there’s nothing I want to watch right now from my current partially completed tv show list and then leaving the app. Im just really annoyed by paying someone to waste my time… If they didn’t have just barely enough interesting stuff I’d have dumped them, but it’s just teetering in the balance.

Why the Netflix rant? Easy answer. I can see an exit potentially in the future. YouTube is shit and pisses me off but it’s basically a monopoly on hosting video content which means everyone else who makes interesting stuff uses it and unless I want to ignore the wonderful array of diverse and interesting and intelligent cont I have managed to find on there… I have no exit in sight for all the dumb shit google cancels I don’t see them cancelling YouTube.

Which is why I force myself to be more zen about its failings… This bread sure sucks but it sure beats starvation!

I think Google's search results have declined as Google has deployed more and more ML systems to support it. Perhaps something similar has happened with YouTube.

It seems to me that Google is expecting more from ML/AI than the tech is actually able to deliver. That is, of course, hardly a problem limited to Google.