Ways in which YouTube is still shit

[Blue Jam]

Just finished listening to the 7" version of a song? Well what you'll definitely want to hear next is the 12" version of the same song.

Also getting an ad for some music you would never, ever buy in a million years. I'm not a fan of creepy targeted ads but come on, with YouTube it doesn't matter if you've been listening to Sunn O))) or Autechre or Beethoven, the algorithm will still try and flog you Ed Sheeran's new one or some insipid R'n'B that's been AutoTuned to within an inch of its life, and if you're listening to a whole album or playlist it'll completely disrupt the flow. If I was a musician I'd think twice about advertising on YouTube, you'd at least think they'd target users who clearly like the same genre.

Also the comments. As nasty today as they've always been.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The dreaded algorithm doesn't seem to work with me at all, as the adverts I get are way off the mark. I've got ad/script blockers on my PC, but I'd have assumed my Android devices would have taken up the slack. Not that I'm complaining - it makes it all the easier to ignore them.

I was going to complain that there wasn't a "play next" feature, for queueing up videos without creating a playlist in advance, but I just discovered that there is. Which was nice.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I imagine this is less about the algorithms being crap and matching things you're not interested in and more to do with them taking money to show the same campaigns to as many demographics as they can.

When I worked in digital streaming our "ad ops" people were not to be trusted and had all sorts of tricks up their sleeve to bilk more money out of people paying for ads, a common one to use up ads in a campaign was to turn off 'collision detection', which stopped the ad server from caring about whether showed you a load of adverts for the same sort of product/service all in one reel.

Ad positions aren't borne equal and the 'pre-roll' is the coveted spot so ad purchasers might be going all-in on that on quite broad criteria.

lt;dr the people making claims about being able to target people closely have a lot to gain by targetting people broadly to sell more ads.

[beanheadmcginty]

Since I moved to Amsterdam, pretty much every advert I have been served up on YouTube has been in Dutch. Surely Google should have it written down somewhere that I can't yet speak Dutch? All of the videos I watch and all my search history is in English and I lived in England for nearly 40 years.

[Famous Mortimer]

Youtube is mostly alright with me, it tends to give me things related to the things I see, and even though I don't much care for them, it's a reasonable bet. Plus, every now and again they'll drop an absolute gem in my recommendations, like the Star Trek Acid Party that had me in stitches.

[pcsjwgm]

- Can't search for videos within a YouTube channel on the mobile app (but you can do that on the YouTube website in a web browser on mobile).

[Jim_MacLaine]

Has youtube updated recently because I can't download videos anymore with the usual addons/websites. All I keep getting is failed - network error apart from the odd try working?

Tried it with different browsers (chrome and Firefox) and two different laptops.

Seems very odd as I did all the usual stuff (firewall on and off, cleared cache, cookies) 

Do I just need to wait until the add ons/websites update?

[JesusAndYourBush]

This site still works for most videos, as does the youtube-dl command line tool, although the latter doesn't work with some videos (I've a feeling the ones it doesn't work for are the ones where music has been auto-recognised by the algorithm and is listed under the description. Presumably it *could* download these but it's honouring the wishes of youtube in not wanting people to download copyright material, or something. Y2mate can usually download those ones anyway.)  With both methods, if fails always try again as sometimes a 2nd attempt works.

[Jim_MacLaine]

Getting network failed on  Y2mate too. That dl line thing looks a bit complicated for me.

I wonder if it has something to do with the recent chrome update. Then again it failed on Firefox too.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

- Can't search for videos within a YouTube channel on the mobile app (but you can do that on the YouTube website in a web browser on mobile).

Ah yes, that's a fairly frequent annoyance.

[pcsjwgm]

That dl line thing looks a bit complicated for me.

I use youtube-dl-gui. Extremely simple to use, just copy and paste the URL, click Add, and click the download button.
https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/

[JesusAndYourBush]

On someones youtube page, when you're looking at what videos they've uploaded it used to number the pages so you could quickly click forwards to get to the videos they uploaded longest ago... but for a long time now it just puts them on one long endless page.  If the person has been uploading videos for a long time it takes forever to scroll down to the end, and the longer the page gets the more sluggish the browser gets.  Is there an easier way?  Perhaps a browser addon that forces it to list it in numbered pages again like it used to??

[Sebastian Cobb]

On someones youtube page, when you're looking at what videos they've uploaded it used to number the pages so you could quickly click forwards to get to the videos they uploaded longest ago... but for a long time now it just puts them on one long endless page.  If the person has been uploading videos for a long time it takes forever to scroll down to the end, and the longer the page gets the more sluggish the browser gets.  Is there an easier way?  Perhaps a browser addon that forces it to list it in numbered pages again like it used to??

You can sort by reverse chronological order, unlucky if it's in the middle I guess.

[pcsjwgm]

They've now changed how you can access your search history. Before, you would click "History" in the sidebar, which shows your Watch history, and you then click "Search history", which shows only your search history (obviously). Now, you click "History", which still shows your watch history, but you then have to click "Watch and search history", which takes you to a myactivity.google.com page, which shows you your search history and watch history in a single list. This makes looking through my search history inconvenient because I watch videos far more often than I search.

what the fuck is motivating them to make these shitty changes

can't click 'like' when viewing fullscreen

And the mobile app used to allow you to add the video you're watching to a playlist while in fullscreen, a feature they've recently removed for no reason.

[An tSaoi]

I've turned autoplay off a million times, but it resets itself every time I log in. That fucking little blue sliding button.

[evilcommiedictator]

Remember when fullscreen locked you into something fullscreen? "No", I hear you say "I'd like to show the search bar and scroll down into the description and comments whilst I'm in fullscreen, thank you"

[JesusAndYourBush]

When you're on someones youtube channel and do a search there, instead of giving you a list (as per your search terms) of that persons uploads, it now fills the results with other videos that they didn't upload.  I don't know if it's also searching the persons favourites, or the whole of youtube, but it not what I want, it's broken.

And when I do a youtube search and use a filter of >20 minutes (or is it >25? Whatever) the results also contain videos of considerably less time.  Again, it worked, and now it's broken.

[beanheadmcginty]

I would very much like some more time options to choose from in that search. Why can't we search for just videos that are over an hour?

[the]

When you're on someones youtube channel and do a search there, instead of giving you a list (as per your search terms) of that persons uploads, it now fills the results with other videos that they didn't upload.  I don't know if it's also searching the persons favourites, or the whole of youtube, but it not what I want, it's broken.

And when I do a youtube search and use a filter of >20 minutes (or is it >25? Whatever) the results also contain videos of considerably less time.  Again, it worked, and now it's broken.

I suspect if you search for something and what you asked for only returns, say, 2 items, instead of giving you only those 2 items and nothing else, it fills the rest of the results list with things that don't match but that it deems to be relevant.

Which is balls if you're hunting for something very specific, because you're not eliminating anything that doesn't contain what you were looking for.

[Blumf]

I've turned autoplay off a million times, but it resets itself every time I log in. That fucking little blue sliding button.

The weird thing is, they insist on flipping the autoplay back on all the time (you can get browser extensions to force it off) so they want you to endlessly watch videos, but if you watch something over 40 mins long, they will pop up a little question asking you if you want to continue watching and stop playback if you don't click it.

[Blumf]

And just like that, Google falls over:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55299779

Google applications including YouTube, email and Docs are suffering a rare service outage, with users unable to access many of the company's services.

Seems you can view YT in incognito mode, so presumably it's something to do with it's user accounts system.

[Camp Tramp]

Maybe it is the update to the system that made YouTube crash. I got asked to verify my age earlier, had to provide my credit card details or photo ID.

[Replies From View]

YouTube still hasn't learned how to fuck off with its adverts - one of the easiest things it should be able to achieve.


Have an option:  Do you deliberately avoid any product that you find advertised to you on YouTube?  Yes, I do.  Oh okay; best not advertise to you then as it's counterproductive.

[the]

Sign in to YouTube
NO, THANKS
Sign in to YouTube
NO, THANKS
Sign in to YouTube
NO, THANKS
Sign in to YouTube
NO, THANKS
Sign in to YouTube
NO, THANKS
Sign in to YouTube

[the]

Maybe it is the update to the system that made YouTube crash. I got asked to verify my age earlier, had to provide my credit card details or photo ID.

Seems entirely reasonable, did they ask for a scanned PDF of your genitals and a pair of worn grundies as well

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Maybe I've just got really freakishly blunt fingertips, or there's something wrong with my screen, but I find it nearly impossible to use the time slider on the Android app. The little red dot just does not seem to register that I'm trying to press it, even though there's no other reason to give that area a fingering. I end up having to repeatedly tap the sides of the screen to fast forward or rewind, which is a tedious pain the arse on longer videos.

[Dex Sawash]

^I just assumed they had disabled sliding the thing and I gave up trying.

Overwhelming majority of yt content is shit. World's worst minefield

[beanheadmcginty]

I wish YouTube would scan your video for copyright warnings before you uploaded the thing.

[Lungpuddle]

Overwhelming majority of yt content is shit. World's worst minefield

Youtube seems to be mainly be people talking about "X is great/shit and here is the reason why because you haven't been to film school and so you can't possibly know." Not all of it, but too much. I was recommended a long video about why Zack Snyder's films are bad, but I know why they're bad.

So for me, youtube is mainly people talking about other people's content, whereas Vimeo is actual content. I like Vimeo. No Homestar Runner on there, though.

[the]

I wish YouTube would scan your video for copyright warnings before you uploaded the thing.

But if you haven't uploaded the file yet, how can YT access it to read its contents? Either it's been transferred to YT's servers or it hasn't.

So for me, youtube is mainly people talking about other people's content, whereas Vimeo is actual content.

YT has a lot of 'meta' stuff (ie. people talking about other people's work) because that's the quickest and most voluminous way to create content yourself whilst trading on the huge popularity of something else, but without treading on its copyright (which means the YT channel can be monetised). Cash for watched opinions.