Comment by swatcoder
7 months ago
> Do what I tell you to do!
Maybe a good opportunity to remember that you watching the videos you want to watch is actually just a workaround Google suffers through in the YouTube product.
They have to do it so that you come to the site, but it costs them money and makes it harder for them to optimize the revenue they get from your eyeballs.
Strycturally, their goal is to push the line as far as they can, and they spend a lot of product design and engineering effort to do so. They're only going to get better at it as time goes by.
And of course this principle doesn't just apply to YouTube, but at pretty much all media sites once they get large enough to pivot from growing their audience to optimizing its profitability.
> is actually just a workaround Google suffers through in the YouTube product.
It used to be a Google mantra that "focus on the user and all else will follow." They are so far beyond that they've wrapped around. They actively hate users now.
All Google really cares about is making advertisers happy. Literally nothing else registers as a priority.
If people stop watching, advertisers will not be happy
Unfortunately this seems to be what people want.
There's plenty of YouTube competitors (Substack, Patreon, Vimeo, Twitch etc.) Unfortunately, they just don't have the traction of YouTube
I think we need to be careful with the language like “this is what the users want” when something along the lines of “this is what triggers of pattern of compulsive behavior in users” is closer to the truth
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In the same way that compulsive gamblers "want" to feed their retirement savings into slot machines.
I think it's more fair to say that this is a behavior that is profitable to exploit if you care more about making money than what you do to your customers' or society's wellbeing.