Has YouTube experienced enshittification?
I don't even mind view count, but why would they even remove upload date? That's the only way to know whether the video is new or not.
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Youtube wants to own what you watch. Thats why they pivot so hard from showing you the subscriber list first and want to bank on their own algorithm to choose what you see.
Once they do, they have a captured audience of millions they get to choose what you think, buy, see ads for and become addicted too.
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The lack of upload date is the thing that already bugs me the most about YouTube Shorts. Well, maybe the second most after the entire concept.
YouTube Shorts have a description, which has the upload date at the top. Though this doesn't show up when searching for Shorts, or having them in your feed.
The English language long has started failing me to accurately describe just how trash the entire YouTube situation as a whole to this date really is
This is just one monopoly, all but a glimpse into the dystopia company's want to become
It seems like some websites think that the more the users know about the quality of the content, the worse it is for the website’s profit
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Taking away information so I can't choose how best to use my time... yeah fuck that enshittification.
Is that a rhetorical question?
I noticed that with music videos. They remove the release date, remove it from the video section of the channel and shove it in something called releases on there. Weird change.
A lot of changes look wierd on the surface from the companies, these are experiments for figuring out how to extract more money.
In this case my guess is people constantly look to seek out new content and avoid older content. If people don't know, that could lead more general engagement then baseline and therefore an increase in revenue.
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If the video is about an ongoing event, say the Titan submarine disaster, I'd rather watch videos posted last week them videos posted a year ago, because the new info makes the old content irrelevant.
If a search for videos about how to perform carbon fiber layups shows one with 1.2m views in the last year and another with 5k views from the past 6 years, I will probably watch the better performing video first.
But if I want to see a video about some esoteric subject like how the bathyscaphe triste worked, that isn't really changing much, I don't care about post date or view count.
Date is relevant information. I need it as part of my decision-making. Same as choosing between videos with 12 views and those with 10k views. It's not everything, but it's part of the equation. Let me fucking choose.
Why the fuck would they even think of doing that? Genuinely what is the purpose? How does it benefit them?
You might (rightly) skip videos many years old that are no longer relevant. Without the date info available to you, you won't know they contain out-of-date useless information, and might watch them (generating more views and ad revenue).
The goal is to make you click and anything that could stop you is considered a problem. I'd say it's a short term strategy that will lead to long term failure but I'm not sure anymore. Tiktok and Instagram are feeding their users a bunch of trash too and it still works.
How much time are people looking through the homepage instead of watching videos?
If youtubes goal was to make people only watch the begging of an episode, which has the most ads(i think, i havent seen an ad on youtube in a long time), why are they promoting videos that make people watch for longer?
Instagrams shows you the date and views/likes. Also 20 seconds cat videos or two minute talk video are vastly different to 10mins to 4 hours youtube videos. The time "lost" by wathcing the wrong thing is just very different.
20 seconds cat videos or two minute talk video are vastly different to 10mins to 4 hours youtube videos. The time “lost” by wathcing the wrong thing is just very different. I think it isn't uncommon for users to spend multiple hours per day watching those short clips only to realize most of it was mildly interesting at best and it's less likely someone sits through a 4h video they dont care about than someone watching 4h worth of a variety of short clips they don't really care for. Either way I think taking transparency/agency away from the user is terrible.
You can't remember watching a video, so you watch it again and give them more ad revenue.
Same reason people choose not to show votes here? Bias? I never really look at beyond title and thumbnail anyway.
Youtube is getting shittier by the minute. Come to think of it, many things are.
As someone that prefers to watch series in order… wtf?
This is the homepage, i.e. youtube.com. If you were watching a series, I would imagine you'd go through the channel page, which should still have the upload date visible.
Except YouTube can't count and will show you episode 3 on the home page then recommend episodes 4 7 5 6 8 in that order even if there is a playlist.
I have encountered so many YouTube playlists of TV shows with everything in reverse order and it's annoying as fuck.
That is on the playlist creator. There is even a button in YouTube studio to flip the order.
I watched a creator having a meltdown today, because his views stats weren't seeming correct, nor his monetary compensation.
how's that even a question?
I've been trying to find browsers extensions that do this so that I would spend less time on youtube. Pretty sweet that youtube is doing it on their own!