Comment by Crashumbc@lemmy.world on [Hardware Unboxed] I Tested Every Game I Own on an Intel Arc GPU

Someone is trying to pump up their YT views.

You’re welcome.

Yeah that’s called having a YouTube channel. You try to make content that people want to watch. How very nefarious.

Why not? The internet is for sharing stuff.

Sharing stuff one has interest in is good. Making use of SEO or “the algorithm” is a cashgrab. You can do so but I won’t support you.

The need to compete in popularity is something that kills good things efficiently and regularly.

Hard disagree. The need to compete drives unique content. You may not like that content, but it’s usually easy to avoid. I sub to channels that routinely put out good content, and avoid those that don’t.

Without the motive to compete, we wouldn’t have nearly as high of production value or variety of content.

So while I also hate the clickbait titles and whatnot, they make it easy for me to avoid stuff I likely won’t like anyway.

This isn’t only the need to compete for viewers, this is the need to comply to YouTube’s search algorithm. It enforces similar content just like SEO is enforced for Google Search. There sometimes will be new stuff, but all as a means to keep being relevant, not because the stuff is interesting. That means that most new stuff will be entertainment, or “infotainment”, which is fine in itself, but drowns out anything else. If you don’t see the danger in that, the US government does in their strive to sabotage TikTok (not saying it’s undeserved).

Production value is indeed up, which is a good thing, but not enough. This is presentation over the actual stuff. However variety is way down in the more successful youtubers. The variety comes from people who mostly don’t give a shit about the performance of their videos; or from people trying to be successful while tending to a niche. The latter however will still implement most stuff from the top youtubers. If something seems successful it will be implemented by the more successful youtubers, but they mostly won’t experiment as it costs money and normally negatively impacts viewer counts. YouTube’s search algorithm has driven people to comply to presentation, nothing more.

Clickbait, asking for subscription, adding ads and more are all symptoms of this compliance to the platform. Do you sub to a channel that has never done any of those?

SEO and “algorithms” like YouTube are tuned for maximum user engagement, which means people watching more videos for longer. That’s a pretty decent proxy for enjoying what you watch.

variety is way down in the more successful youtubers

I honestly don’t watch any of the top YouTube channels. I don’t sub to any of these, and I don’t think I’ve watched a full video of any of them, aside from maybe a few music videos. In fact, the channel with the most subs that I sub to is JerryRigEverything, and I mostly sub because he’s local (we’re both in Utah). Here’s a selection of channels I sub to that I watch the most:

Gamers Nexus
Digital Foundry
Louis Rossmann
Stand-up Maths
The Money Guy Show
Naomi Brockwell TV
Level1Techs
Audit the Audit - starting to do more clickbait titles and thumbnails, but quality remains high
The Phawx
Leo Vader
Mental Outlaw
Optimum Tech
Mr. Puzzle

They do a pretty good job of keeping titles informative instead of clickbaity and thumbnails relevant (I honestly don’t care about thumbnails). I have abandoned a lot of channels because they do that nonsense and don’t go as in-depth as I’d like, such as SomeOrdinaryGamers, LTT, and Jayz2Cents.

I honestly recommend any of those channels, they’re about all I watch on YouTube. Oh, and only 3-4 of those have sponsors (GN, Stand-Up Maths, and Audit the Audit come to mind), and very few of them ask for subs and likes. I block ads and occasionally buy merch from them.

Edit: Forgot Tech Ingredients.

Also, I like your choice in channels. Those I don’t watch from that list are those I don’t yet know. Thank you for the list!

So, you are trying to defend a mechanism you actively try to work against?

It only really drives unique, high quality content when the incentives are aligned to reward unique, high quality content.

The reason every title and thumbnail is clickbait is because YouTube effectively forces you to do so or even your subscribers will have to manually go to your page to see your content consistently.

YouTube doesn’t force anything, those happen to get more clicks and watches, so that’s what you need to do to get more clicks and watches. YouTube isn’t arbitrarily deciding to make the experience more corny, that’s just what attracts people to videos.

Each channel has a target audience, and it’s really easy to tell that I’m not the target audience for a lot of the content there. I have a curated set of channels with high quality content that aligns with my interests (i.e. less click-baity thumbnails and titles). If their content sucked, I wouldn’t sub, that is their incentive to do a good job. The market on YouTube is big enough that there’s plenty of content for a variety of tastes, so channels specialize in their particular demographic niche.

So yeah, I think competition absolutely is helping video content be better, but perhaps YouTube could do better to segment their offerings to specific tastes, so even if most people click on click-baity thumbnails and whatnot, those that don’t appreciate it can still get boosted enough to reach their target niche.

If you don’t have a ridiculously high click through every time your content is displayed, your video will be displayed massively less, including to your own subscribers on the places that are supposed to be based on their subscriptions.

The only way for your actual subscribers to even be exposed to your content, on the YouTube platform, if you do not do clickbait bullshit, is literally browsing the subscription view, which people don’t do.

People have done loads of A/B testing. YouTube deliberately and systematically makes it impossible to survive on the platform without clickbait.

YouTube does indeed force things. It’s called the search algorithm and it effectively selects the people who get the money. Comply or get payed accordingly less. If you think otherwise why do you think YouTube has any say over how to “segment their offerings”?

Competition here is done for money, which is abstracted into viewer count metrics as provided by YouTube. The clickbait, call for subscription and the ads are what has been created as the result of competition.

Competition made the sales pitch for every video better, also lifted the standard on production quality in video and audio. But it drowns out most unique ideas.

Somebody is showing us a video that took effort to make and gives us interesting information. That we get to watch for free. How evil.

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