Shorts also cannot be cast from a mobile device. If I’m going through my curated channels while casting, the app give an error and requires me to stop casting before I can watch the short. I just skip it and don’t bother anymore.
Bingo. I don't find shorts all that appealing (especially since I can't cast them to a TV! Wtf, seems like core function there) but I agree, the REAL problem with YouTube is how much creators have to top toe around demonization.
“Demonetization” is just what YouTube’s promises to advertisers look like when they affect video creators.
Money on YouTube flows from advertisers. The revenue from charging advertisers to show ads is split between YouTube/Google and the video creator. If your video is not shown with ads, then there is no revenue to split.
YouTube gives advertisers a very small control over what videos their ads are shown on. They have a few different classifications of videos, and advertisers can choose which ones they want to be seen with. Advertisers are paying for the service of YouTube putting their ads on videos — but only the videos that YouTube thinks the advertiser does want to be seen with.
If your video is fully “demonetized”, that means YouTube has decided that no advertisers want to be seen with it; or that they are not willing to take revenue from showing ads on that video. But they’re still hosting it, making it available to viewers.
Video creators’ revenue is a share of the ad income from YouTube showing the video (and accompanying ads). A “demonetized” video is one that doesn’t show any ads — so there is no revenue to split. It’s not that YouTube is taking all the revenue and leaving none to the video creator. They’re not making any, because they don’t think the advertisers would be okay with being charged to be seen alongside that video.
However, the creator of a “demonetized” video is still receiving value from YouTube. It is not free to host that video — especially if it is popular. Network bandwidth, data storage, and transcoding of video for viewers’ browsers are not free; YouTube covers the cost of these. YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense, rather than censoring those videos by taking them down.
YouTube is willing to host a lot of videos that they make zero money from, at their expense
That’s just not true…they’re hosting it because they data-farm the living shit out of both the creator and anyone that gets tangentially close to their site. More content = more people visit = more data on these people = more money…They make a lot of money on this data, even if no ads are shown on a video, and are by no means doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Yeah, but they aren’t making nearly the amount of money on the video as they would with the ads, and no where near enough to compensate the creators beyond free hosting.
You can still publish demonetized content, just don’t expect to make money from it on YouTube.
I didn’t say it’s charity. I said the video creator (who wants people to see their video) is receiving a service from the video host for no charge, which otherwise the creator would have to pay for. Hosting your own video on your own storage and network bill is not free. If you don’t believe me, go try doing it yourself.
If the creator didn’t think they were receiving any benefit, they would just take that video down. They sometimes do, but usually they don’t.
Publishing a book costs money. Someone has to buy the paper from the paper makers, and the ink from the ink makers. Someone has to line up the print on the page. Those people have to get paid, so they can go buy a sandwich and pay their rent. So, publishers exercise some judgment in not printing books that they don’t expect to sell, because they’ve gotta pay their bills, including parts and labor.
Same goes for video. Hosting a video costs money. Servers cost money. Power costs money. Network connectivity costs money. The people who run those services need to get paid so they can buy a sandwich and pay their rent. If YouTube is hosting your video, even if they’re not paying you a share of any ad revenue (because they’re not getting any), they’re paying bills that otherwise you would have to pay.
I’m not saying you’ve gotta be grateful or something. I’m saying if you want to understand what’s going on in the world, you can’t do that without understanding the actual bills that people are actually paying.
To put it simply: The hosting costs of demonetized videos are paid for by the hosting of monetized videos.
Don’t believe me? Take your video and store it on a server that you pay for, with network connectivity you pay for. That’s a thing you can do. You can even do it with Fediverse technology. However, it will in fact cost you some amount of money.
This Shorts issue seems to have measurable, constant and immediate effect in ad revenue and therefore platform profitability. Bad content moderation may or may not decrease engagement but in the end Google is a commercial enterprise that’s looking at the numbers at hand.
The terrible content moderation policies are what keep it alive. No one subscribes to youtube so it’s primary customers are the ad agencies. And they want content moderation
I'm not even sure it is bad policies. I am pretty sure that they just don't have moderators.
I doubt anyone reads 99.9% of reports.
So you get bigotry and hate, you get insane and deadly DIYs, you get 12yo girls being creeped while posting random 5s clips from their lives.
Not to mention just the vast amount of extraordinarily low-quality content YouTube serves up. It's amazing how bad a lot of the videos it thinks you will like are. The algorithm makes no sense.
But hey, here's 16 different Joe Rogan clips with sigma male music in the background.
That should mean engagement. It serves up such bad videos that I disengage.
Once in a while I'll realize I just spent 20, 30 minutes looking at a streak of pretty decent stuff. Rare enough to be remarkable. Usually after just 3 or 4 consecutive crap clips I'll close it down and get back to work.
I doubt anything disengages a user faster than low-quality content. I bet it does it even faster than the authoritarian politics and bigotry YouTube seems to inexorable serve you.
Just because it causes your disengagement, doesn't mean it causes disengagement with the vast majority of their userbase.
They're also more concerned with ad views and clicks, so if you're not the kind of person who gives a crap about ads... they don't really care that much about you.
They don't have to be 100% competent, but they are very competent at what they want to do... which is monetize the technologies and services they provide. They're not trying to make something that people can use well and enjoy... they're making things to make a shit-ton of money. The two goals are not generally mutually inclusive.
Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they're all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever... which is confusing considering they're a multi-billion dollar company and not just some guy in a shack banging rocks together to see how they sound.
Yours, on the other hand, is predicated on the belief that they're all super-incompetent and have no capability of doing anything right ever
Nope. It's only this specific thing that I necessarily think they're doing a bad job of. And I'm right; they are. Their algorithm is a struggling baby compared to TikTok and YouTube at large is not a major profit center (and indeed may not be profitable at all -- but they maintain it because abandoning it would be too costly for them).
TikTok is so good at doing this thing that it is a profitable business for them. YouTube is struggling, and we can clearly see why.
What specific thing? The entirety of YouTube? Just the algorithm? Either way their algorithm may not be designed to do promote videos you want to watch, in reality it’s most likely designed to promote stuff that will draw them the most ad revenue and not promote really good stuff all the time. If your content is always great people will expect that and there will never be a great video, on the contrary if there is a great video among mediocre ones at best people will engage more in those (especially if they are longer and even if they have more ads), and additionally will engage more in your platform. This means that even if they aren’t making as much per video they are still making more in the long-term. And that’s really all they care about, your experience means nothing to them.
The video in question: The Forgotten Disaster of the SS Eastland. It’s 43 minutes long, both well done, and respectfully done. Her team did a good job on it then some youtube automated system buried it for “violating community guidelines”.
Yup, exactly. Some of the creators I’ve seen tell some horror stories about how YouTube work. Videos being demonised for random bullshit, YouTube giving 0 support to them as it’s Googles usual behaviour.
I feel like if some other big tech makes a decent alternative with ad revenue share it might fuck over YouTube. (And you can see how this can apply to X…)
I’m not the guy you asked, but I assume they do as I do. My system volume is calibrated for all the various applications I use day to day, including video conferencing. If I have to adjust that, it means everything else is the wrong volume. I’d rather modify YouTube to be the right volume than everything else.
This. My system volume is calibrated to be similar across all applications, games, etc. This means all apps are individually adjusted to reach similar volume level. Why should I have to mess with all of my other volumes just random manager at Youtube decided a volume slider on shorts isn’t necessary despite the site still using volume from regular videos where it can be adjusted? This isn’t an issue with any other app or platform. Maybe the last Youtube video I watched had overly quiet or loud audio compared to the norm and I either have insanely loud audio or I can’t hear a damned thing and I can’t fix it quickly like on any other Youtube page.
Not everyone had a set of dedicated volume buttons, or wheel, etc. on their keyboard, so having to go into Windows settings or reach for a knob or button on the speakers themselves to adjust is a lot more than getting a slider like every other website in the world gives you.
You can scrub around in them. Look for the red bar on the bottom after the short starts. You can tap and drag on it and a little red circle will appear that will show briefly after you release.
Hopefully desktop PC hardware will become powerful enough to gain the ability to skip around in 30 second videos someday. I think I read that they expect them to be at parity with smartphone hardware in the next decade or two.
I simply prefer TikTok for short form videos due to unique community and reasonably entertaining algorithm.
I enjoy YouTube to the point of paying for Premium but I hate that my YouTube subscriptions feed on TV is littered with shorts that I have no way of disabling other than hiding them one by one (which I do to make a point).
Suits at Google will try to shove it into everyone’s throats until they get bored and someone adds it to killedbygoogle.com so why would anyone even bother with it.
In case of Apple TV, it’s the smoothest TV software experience, leaps and bounds above any ad-ridden smart TV or aging Nvidia Shield. I used Android TV and it’s just jank. For a time I had HTPC with Kodi too, it’s been relegated to hosting Plex and downloading stuff from Usenet. I enjoyed freedom to install anything but ultimately this didn’t outweight better audio codec support on Apple TV.
Apple software is obviously ad free and I have no problem with paying for YouTube Premium due to value it provides. Some good soul on Lemmy also recommended me a way to block sponsored content via isponsorblocktv which is a script that runs on my server and skips sponsored segments by reading YouTube app state and sending fast forward commands like a remote would.
This is a problem with all of these Tik Tok clones (and even Tik Tok let’s you do it for some videos). It’d so annoying to be watching a 45 second reel but if I miss something, I have to watch the whole thing again
Shorts are fine. Only minor complaint is that they lack descriptions and play like shit on desktop. Some of us like to browse YouTube on a computer on occasion…
There are only about 100 shorts in total on youtube, it seems. I would get 1-100 and even though I’ve disliked all of them, or clicked “don’t show me this channel again”, It will start back at #1 after I reach 100. It’s really, really bad, and most of the shorts videos are advice on how to start a powerwashing business.
what? that’s not my experience with shorts at all. There are plenty of different shorts, and I have no repetition (aisde from the regular copycats). Maybe the algorithm is like “dont like what I’m giving you? well fuck you too” lol
That person is not being honest. They want us to believe they disliked 100 consecutive shorts and on 101 it looped back to the first short? A total lie.
It’s the hustle culture that’s been ingrained into society at this point. Every industry has it now. Get in, make as much as possible (with little to no regard for others), get out, retire early.
After that just become an influencer showing off your lavish lifestyle for brand sponsorships for even more money.
Shit like Tiktok and Youtube Shorts are only making things worse, faster.
Get in, make as much as possible (with little to no regard for others), get out, retire early.
Arguably, this is what the American dream has become. It used to be we wanted middle class wealth, 2.1 kids, and a nice suburban house. But now all we want to do is sell out, retire, and never have to work again. I can relate, even if I lack the skills to play the game.
That’s where we got antiwork, FIRE, etc. It’s true: nobody wants to work anymore. I sure don’t. Maybe we never did.
I wouldn’t know, I have an extensive set of modification over youtube that, among other thing, completely remove them from existence. Now if only I could do the same with the bad automatic translations…
It seems every new feature of youtube is something we have to fight against.
As with every industry, there’s a point where there’s enough growth for a win-win for the company and consumers, so consumers benefit with new features; once that dries up the company starts squeezing, so consumers endure new features and use the product despite the changes.
A lot of channels exist for profit rather than being a hobby
But if you can find the small channels then it’s still worth it. It doesn’t help that you spend more time telling it not to recommend things than actually watching what it recommends
Not sure how small/big of an audience he has but www.youtube.com/ does great Super Mario Maker content. I only ever watch his videos on YouTube, and nothing else.
God damn, have you tried looking for crap that is not just the front page of YouTube not signed in? There are endless streams of amazing content that is incredibly educational or hilarious or mind blowing if you know where to look. People making new music of all different genres with insane levels of skill, people literally sharing PhD level knowledge for free. There are plenty of valid criticisms of YouTube as a platform, and there is certainly some crap content out there, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are tons of incredibly talented and inspired content creators out there on the platform.
I ducking hate how they removed functionality from them. They don’t show when they were posted, you can’t speed them up or slow them down, they repeat forever which is annoying if your going through the comments, the buttons being on top of the video obscures it, I can’t cast them to the TV from my phone (which is weird because it will play them if I select them directly from the TV app), it’s just a terrible UX overall. I never swipe up and I’m starting to get annoyed with how cumbersome it is to exit out to watch regular videos once I’ve watched the short I clicked on. I really don’t understand why YouTube wants to sacrifice everything that makes it great to be more like tiktok. If I wanted that format, I would go to tiktok.
I’m not a fan of how little control there is over Shorts feeds and how they are set to repeat infinitely, but people are way too overly dramatic about Shorts. It seems like it’s culture shock more than anything.
I don’t think it’s going anywhere. People get lost in shorts really quickly, especially on your phone. It’s the algorithm being able to decide who you are and how to get engagement out of you at a much faster rate then regular videos.
Nobody asked for this, nobody wants it on youtube. But it keeps people on the platform longer and it feeds the algorithm fast. So it’s not going anywhere
not only is the shorts UI shitty but the shorts themselves are often shitty imo, or at least the “scroll through shorts one at a time” linear format means you see a lot more videos you wouldn’t click on intentionally.
I hate that I get such random shit in my feed when I really only look at art videos - like my scrolling should be nothing but people drawing but random shit like slime videos or some ass hat and his kid.
Yeah YouTube really likes to inject videos you wouldn’t normally watch into your algorithm. It’s pretty annoying. I would never seek out religious videos, and never have on YouTube, yet they keep making their way into my feed. Even voting them down doesn’t seem to change the frequency.
I literally could not understand what half the ones I saw were even supposed to be about last time I went on YouTube. Like they were just random people doing shit with no punchline or point.
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