and the lack of likes/dislikes makes it harder to determine quality, which is probably some dark pattern to try and drive more engagement by forcing people to watch multiple videos. Dark patterns work short term, long term they result in TikTok or the equivalent eating your market share
No, I do not want to watch wedding videos that I've said I'm not interested in at least 50 times. No, there isn't anyone in my household watching wedding videos.
No, I do not want to rewatch a 6 hour long lecture I watched last month.
Yet it just doesn't bloody care. I am truly terrified to click on anything outside my regular comfort zone for fear that that's what I'll be recommended for the next 12 months. Youtube is the worst product I have to keep paying for — I tried going adblock, but good luck if you have Apple devices. I'd rather be held hostage to Youtube Premium than being brainwashed with ads every 5 minutes.
All of Google search is dogshit these days. You can't search for anything these days without a crap ton of ads and pages of SEO optimized wrong answers.
And people think chatgpt is going to save us, when all it's going to do is make the web, and therefore search results, ever more nonsensical.
Youtube was fine years ago. People make stuff, I subscribe and watch it. Sure throw in some algorithmic discovery on the side. Bring back dislike count.
Other than that I don't care for any innovation. Just keep the lights on.
Basically, it's users are very entitled.
Nothing about Youtube the platform needs to change. It just works.
The algorithm's goal is to maximize revenue or profit, and what does that doesn't change that dynamically. This means the metagame is inevitable. You're essentially asking for YouTube to cut their goal for an unclear long term benefit, and we all know how those conversations tend to go.
Every corporation owning more than 50% of a market should be broken up. But then, USA wouldn’t reign on the international culture.
Not to mention "sort by oldest first".
would you like to remove the ability to add labeled chapters to your videos? would you like to remove browseable transcriptions to videos?
Youtube has a ton of things that it still needs to add, such as embedding multiple audio streams so you can have more than one audio language in the same video (I think they are testing it currently), or being able to better modify a video after you've uploaded it. Adding audio normalization to ads so they are not louder than the video they appear in? Still waiting.
Point is, there is a ton to innovate and I think you are quickly forgetting all those useful features that came in the last 10 years that were't there before
That's because Youtube prioritizes engagement over quality. You make more money that way.
Like they innovated by blatantly ripping off tiktok and added "shorts"? Yeah best if they just stay exactly what they are.
Example: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-piano
https://youtu.be/ljjWeHmeVE8?t=157
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pub+piano+playi...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shopping+mall+p...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=public+piano+pl...
- Why does seemingly every channel I follow, whether it be JCS Criminal Psychology or The 8-bit Guy, have to mention the YouTube Algorithm, Content ID, Copyright Strikes, or Community Guidelines? If almost every creator is struggling and not just the fringe and edgy, you've screwed up big time.
- Removal of the dislike count. Extremely unpopular decision. Also YouTube's API is still answering dislike counts making extensions to bring it back still function, despite over a year later, almost implying it was about keeping up appearances. Now... who could be so worried about keeping up appearances...
- Completely blowing up YouTube Rewind into an increasingly corporate affair that quickly started heading downhill until the absolute train wreck of 2018, where it became the most disliked video in YouTube history at that point. Rewind never recovered and YouTube has now given up trying to engage with the community in such a way.
- Taking a 5-second ad at the beginning of her tenure, and leaving it with multiple, constant, unskippable, rampant advertising; and a subscription plan that started at $10/mo. turning into $23/mo. for equivalent service (5 users).
- Launched YouTube Kids to provide a curated experience for younger individuals, then decided to make it run on automation. Which then screwed up big time and started serving kids extremely inappropriate content causing a brief congressional inquiry. Then YouTube settled as guilty to violating COPAA, and decided to shift all the responsibility on the creators by disabling comments and other features on any video that may possibly be seen by kids.
Some "success"...
Whatever algorithm YouTube uses professional uploaders will try to maximize their views, which goes by acting as the algorithm requires. In a competitive environment there is a inherent struggle.
They probably want to show viewers, but you can’t reveal the stats to only one group.
For some searches, it's baffling that the top results are clearly intuitively wrong (e.g. showing videos where dislike to like ratio is very high, compared to clearly better alternatives that you can find if you wade through the results)