Comment by HellDunkel

1 year ago

Can you please explain what this optimized video ecosystem of youtube is actually optimized for other than clickbait? Maybe it works for others but i fell into this for a while and now i look at it in disgust.

17 comments

HellDunkel

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keiferski  1 year ago

Clickbait is a part of it, sure. But there are also many other content types that I wouldn’t characterize that way: 3+ hour long video podcasts, ambient music channels, niche indie musicians, short entertaining videos like Mr. Beast, etc. YouTube is increasingly a huge tent that includes tons of different kinds of content.

My point was more that YouTube is increasingly designed for a world in which people have their devices everywhere and jump in and out of watching videos.

Netflix isn’t, because it is still using the “old” model of sitting down for 30-200 minutes to watch a movie.

I’m not saying that the film model is bad or somehow worth getting rid of - I love films myself - just that it’s probably not the future of video content for most people.

  • HellDunkel  1 year ago

    I can see this working for individuals but what about families? And although i dont feel thinking too much about netflixes business it raises the question if this would requre to adapt their model to an ad based model rather than subscription.

    Anyhow- i see a gigantic problem coming towards us caused by rapidly decreasing attention capacities and this does not help.

    • keiferski  1 year ago

      Not sure what you mean by families, but I would be willing to bet that most families today already let their children watch more YouTube family content than Netflix content.

      And I do believe Netflix introduced a cheaper ad tier recently?

      9 replies →

  • binary132  1 year ago

    Unfortunately all content is being optimized for increasingly brief attention spans and availability / focus.

SkyPuncher  1 year ago

Youtube still has massive variety and quality of production. I've largely been able to avoid the clickbait-optimized videos by curating my subscriptions. I've found about a dozen creators who's content I regularly watch. Many of them create YouTube videos as secondary to some other hobby or profession. Most are trending towards the clickbait thumbnail, but few are actually changing their content in that direction.