Wanted to ask you about this article, how do you remember the early days of the internet (I was sadly too young at that time). Do you wish it back? And do you think it can ever be like that again? I would be very interested

  • deejay4am
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    271 year ago

    YT algorithm favors videos that are at least 10 minutes (they fit more ads in) so those get recommended more. As a result, runtimes get padded with fluff so you get recommended to more viewers.

    • @flipthetube
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      121 year ago

      That’s disgusting.

      I feel like relying on the algorithms completely misses the human elements.

      If I need an answer to something, I want my top results to be short and sweet. If I want a documentary or dj set, I don’t want a 3-10 minute version.

      • swan_pr
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        11 year ago

        Of course, it all depends on the context. A tutorial for a specific knitting stitch can be done in under 5 minutes, other stuff not so much! There was also an interesting thread somewhere yesterday asking why don’t people use their subscription feed on YT and the answers were a good representation of the user base here, ie: most do use it and avoid the algo at all costs! So I think we’re all on the same page here, we search and use YT in a way that is most efficient but not the most common :)

    • Noah Gibbs
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      11 year ago

      @4am @swan_pr And it’s much harder to sell ads on text instructions 😞

      The ad-driven nature of the internet means we get that instead of what we want.

        • Noah Gibbs
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          11 year ago

          @keith @4am @swan_pr

          It’s still hard that it cuts off the early internet. Ads driven by search engines means SEO, which mean making it *very* hard to find the kind of instructions you can’t sell ads on.

          It’s understandable that people write what they can get paid for. It’s hard that the early Internet methods of doing this are now effectively dead, with no replacement.

            • Noah Gibbs
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              11 year ago

              @Tooden @keith @4am @swan_pr

              Unfortunately, no. The answer to “ads drive off good content with ad-friendly content” is not going to be more ad-friendly content.

              That’s already driven the payments for ads down well below liveable levels. Making the content more cheaply is only going to increase that trend.

              You can still make content better than what makes sense for ad-supported. But it’s going to be buried even deeper in the ad-ecosystem deluge, so it won’t really be findable.