Technology

What surprised me the most was the statistic that only 3% of author's views come from the subscriptions feed. This is wild to me because subscriptions are pretty much the only way I have ever used YouTube.

Considering that my biggest issue with YouTube is the fact that subscribing to a channel means fucking nothing now, it doesn't surprise me at all.

Being subscribed to a channel used to actually inform you when that channel uploaded something new, every time without fail. Now, that system is a separate thing (the bell) and it doesn't even fucking work 100% of the time. I subscribe to and have notifications enabled for about 13 channels that upload every single day; I only get notified like once a month about a random video whenever YouTube decides it wants to actually do the thing I have told it to do.

Like, I am subscribed to Technology Connections and have notifications enabled but this post is how I have come to know this video was uploaded.

Great video, as always. I would suggest PocketTube for Firefox for controlling the chaos of YouTube subscriptions. I don't see shorts at all, and if I'm not looking for, say, music or Star Trek content, I can just turn those categories off.

It's a really good video. He did a very good job putting words to my thoughts too, I've struggled to say why I don't like AI beyond "it's not very good at things", but as he touches on in the video, that is only one small part.

I was also very surprised by the 3% statistic, I think I watch nearly everything from my subscriptions, the recommended is either completely useless from whatever the algorithm has decided I want or showing me videos I intentionally didn't watch.

I went and followed him on Mastodon, and in that thread learned you can just add a channel to an RSS feed by using the link to their channel. I'm sure that's old news to some, but as I already use an RSS app, I'm going to start switching over I think.

There is this interesting push and pull with algorithms, they need to show content users will engage with, but, their main value to the companies is that it allows them to easily manipulate what is seen.

They push people to hard they stop using the algorithm, but if they just let the algorithm act purely one what people engage with, then they can’t monetize it.

There is a third access of preventing people from going down self destructive rabbit holes, but they don’t care about that until people start talking about regulating them or start moving away.

I’ve felt this. YouTube tried to radicalise me to the left ( Yes, I do realise the irony of saying this on this particular server, but it’s my story, and merits telling regardless), and I felt myself spiralling. I realised it, and cut off all of the algorithms. Now I use Freetube on the desktop, so that I only have the content I choose, and the fediverse as other social media.

I think I read somewhere that the majority of views typically come from videos being recommended on users’ home pages. That is the reason why content creators focus so much on the youtube algorithm, since if their videos don’t get recommended, they don’t get as many views.

(I haven’t watched the linked video, so that may be exactly what they talk about)

I can say that while I near exclusively use the subscriptions feed to start browsing, and will add interesting videos from it to the watch later list, once i’m nearing the end of a video I’ll often choose from the recommended videos on that video rather than going back to the subscriptions page.