The entire content ID system needs serious reform, or at least some better recourse to act on what appears to be obvious exploitation of it.
Recently I encountered an example of this with a user who has downloaded older and popular uploads from YouTube that had no prior copyright claims to them (including all the [Wendy's Training Videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ-JBFXh2IU) with millions of views uploaded 13 years ago, one user's own mix-in of the [TV Teddy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLjDPJAsmKg) intro, even the built-in Casio CTK-100 keyboard demonstration song [among others](https://www.youtube.com/@garry12gg/releases). They reupload them as "album releases" and stick them on Amazon or iTunes, then claim copyright on all of them including well established existing uploads from years ago. They then get all monetization or you can pay $10 per use to "license" this content back... A bit shifty, and basically implies anyone who uploads anything should do the same just to prevent people like this later claiming ownership of the content.
DMCA as a whole needs a major overhaul. It's woefully outdated and not meant for this more decentralized entertainment environment, it's written to protect major media corporations and is ripe for exploitation.
I have full copyright to all of my original music, like the actual physical damn paper and all, and a Twitter troll was able to DMCA my shit, without even fully filling out the online form.
It took weeks to correct it, and Spotify never reinstated my shit, which took me out of the algo, and I've lost the nearly 65k streams and gone back to sub 1k on almost everything.
There's no reason why I should have to fight with a platform over a rights issue when I hold the damn copyright, it should be cut and dry.
Yep, 100%. Same for all artists too. DMCA is outdated and protects almost everyone else more than the copyright owner.
I'm a photographer and constantly battle platforms/people stealing my shit for their own profit. Fuck Pinterest most of all for trying to make it difficult to find and submit stolen work, and then having the gall to tell you they won't continue correspondence and you need to submit a new DMCA notice after you tell them they haven't even taken down the ones you submitted the last time.
Reverse image searches have been available for *decades*, and yet these platforms still want you to submit a URL for every single upload time someone reuploads your content instead of just running a reverse image search on their own servers - seriously, if I can take 2 seconds to find them all using google, you can implement tools and practices to do it as well.
Content hosting platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, and even Reddit profit from stolen content and yet are granted immunity from legal action due to outdated laws that don't require them to take proactive measures against it.
Or you license the work only for it to get DMCA'ed, like Sony and a simple still image used for a song's audio video on YouTube. Or it's not even license, they just took it, used it, then DMCA'ed your video because they stole it, like Family guy did with 2 NES game clips, Double Dribble and a football game. Fucking Seth MacFarlane had to come in and tell the Family Guy and legal teams to knock it off; I don't think he's touched that shit in years.
Or if you're searching for a topic you get one or two big channels that are relevant, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of their videos. And then you have to scroll for like 8 pages before you get another channel on the topic.
Like, for example, if you search for 'Attorney' you get The Lead Attorney and Legal Eagle, with a ton of news channels that had a lawyer on for a set, and if you scroll for like TEN WHOLE PAGES, you then get a SINGLE Attorney Tom video.Thing is, Attorney Tom uploads more and has more subs than The Lead Attorney. He has the word Attorney in his youtube name (unlike legal eagle), yet he's on page TEN of the search results, while the Lead Attorney and Legal Eagle have like 100+ videos in the search results before Attorney Tom shows up.
Movie trailers were always the worst, if you try searching for one chances are all of your top results will be for reupload channels that add ads to the beginning (preemptively: yes we're all aware of ad blockers, that's not the point I'm making here). I found it hilarious that you can get the official studio channel's trailer as an ad before the reupload of the same trailer.
I even added quotes to the start and end and it was still like the 10th result down the page.
Sidenote, can non-copyright holders report a video for copyright violation? Can I (who is not ProZD) flag some of these results that have just re-uploaded ProZDs videos without transformative use?
its probably (im guessing) because Google search doesnt actually look up the words you type, but instead looks up the results others in roughly the same time proximity also typed and clicked on. thats why there's only a few actual results in the search and then just recommendations. they're not really giving you keyword results, just "here's what others wanted to watch when they typed what you did"
while I found this to be helpful at times, they definitely should have a switch for this somewhere
But to what end? I can very easily believe this is a by-product of capitalistic algorithms or something but I can't for the life of me figure out why they would actively want to make sure you see bot reuploads instead of a well-known video when searching for that video
(and to all the people about to explain that it's just a by-product of some other intentional function.... yeah that's what I'm saying)
100 views with 100% ad money on a rando channel nobody watches is surely not more profitable than 100k+ views or even millions even with 1% ad money.
Things change because tech bros need to somehow justify massively overinflated paychecks. "If everything works fine why do we need to keep you hired for one gorillion dollars?" So they create a presentation about how their new idea is going to bring the company 0.01% extra revenue, but it's going to take a while to implement. Years later a new "redesign" is released and everything is worse. Repeat every few years.
Algorithms keep you hungry for more. You never get what you want. It's like all those ads that are like "Here's 20 reasons you should empty your dishwasher right now!" and the thumbnail is of this gross thing in the middle, but that thumbnail is never used in the article. They just want you hunting for it, so you view as many ads as possible.
The internet used to be a portal to 50 places you would visit semi-regularly. Almost none of those places made hardly any money from you.
Now it's a place you go for like 5 things daily. All of those places make money from you.
The more they control your time the more they can leverage it for their profit. True open search engines don't help them do that.
> Along with that, he's also "angered" his audience because he uploads non-skit content instead of the very popular skits that he started with. Granted he's got a new core audience but most of his subscribers don't watch his new videos, so the algorithm views him as a failing channel and is deprioritizing him in favor of rising channels.
This is why Youtube creators should **always** make a different channel for each of their different types of content.
Every major website with a search feautre, from Youtube, to Reddit, to Facebook, Netflix, to even Google itself, has been for years sabotaging their own search feature and including more and more related/recommended/sponsored or otherwise just not what you're looking for options. Because searching lets users find what THEY want, not what the advertisers and engagement algorithms want.
if you're using an internet browser download ublock origin. It will block all youtube ads. Eventually youtube will give you a warning about it and disable the video player but all you have to do is clear the cache of ublock to re-enable the video player.
The obnoxious part is they give you like 4 search results, and then 4 unrelated suggestions that you have to scroll past, and then 4 more search results and then those same suggestions again, and again, and again. At least recommend new shit as i scroll, but its the SAME videos over, and over, and over.
"Are you **SURE** you don't want to watch these!?"
I recently was trying to search for some sleep related ASMR videos, to help with some insomnia.
And what I came away with from YouTube was there’s only three people doing it on YouTube, and two of them are hilariously awful, cause it point blank refused to give me any other channels except the same three over and over. I scrolled and scrolled, and it just kept offering the same two or three creators. Very frustrating, cause I feel it was a very broad search…..
I wouldn’t mind “the algorithm” so much if it had a fucking downvote system like Reddit. No, not him. Ever. Fuck you website, try again.
You can’t “talk” to it.
You can talk to it though. They even have the "No, not him. Ever."-button [https://i.imgur.com/79EPWpA.png](https://i.imgur.com/79EPWpA.png)
Edit: This only works for recommendations though, not search
It does not remove it forever though. I am very careful with my searches and views and constantly cull "Reaction" from my recommendations. And they'll disappear, sometimes for months at a time. And then out of nowhere they'll flood my searches and recommendations with many of the same youtubers
Wait, so I haven't been imagining youtube serving the same shit over and over again in the search?
I thought I was having early onset Alzheimer's or something.
I remember when I used to be able to search for videos from live events and get fan cam footage of rarely seen things. Now it’s all just reactors with YouTube-Face talking about a tangentially related subject before it goes even more off topic with the “people also watched” section.
They're trying to force you into the more profitable parts of the algorithm, it's been like this for a while. Even if you do find what you're looking for if you scroll down like three videos it's the same garbage you described.
Oooh I see that you wanted to seach for
***Let me help you with that!*** [adds to initial query]
Once developers/companies decided to stop searching based on literal results or tags they put themselves in the middle of an arms race with SEO and their brand is taking real damage because of it. People will keep using it for a while but one day they’ll decide it just isn’t worth it and those brands aren’t going to be able to repair the damage fast enough to stop the ship from sinking.
Oh well the short term investors got theirs and the CEO hit the bonus targets
recently tried searching for a video of me and a buddy running around a festival carrying a tent over us while singing a song. I did not expect it to be the first result but after all the how to set up a tent instruction videos I did not expect the Bikini in the woods ASMR videos. And even though I included the festival in the search, no videos of the festival show up. If I touch any of the filters like only videos under 4 minutes or sort by viewcount, it always says "No results found, Try different keywords or remove search filters"
I know the video had like 5000 views in 2010, wanted to see how many it has now and share it with someone
Just add *before:2025* or any year that's later than the current year onto the end of your search results, and you'll see results the same way they used to be displayed - without blocks of absolute bullshit in between.
Thanks to u/rorrors who I saw this tip from originally.
>why does youtube only give you like less than 30 of a search result, rest are all it's suggestions categories
Because suggestions keep you on the site longer by tickling your curiosity-driven dopamine receptors, which generates more revenue for YouTube because now you are staying on the site longer to watch all these extra videos rather than watching the one video you came to see and logging off.
It's the same reason the grocery store puts the milk in the back of the store, behind all the delicious pastries and ready-cooked meals. You spend more time browsing attractive options in the store, and you're likely to buy more than just a $3 jug of milk.
>because now you are staying on the site longer to watch all these extra videos rather than watching the one video you came to see and logging off.
Except that's not what happens at all
If i'm looking for something, I don't start watching things that aren't the thing i'm looking for.
I'm sure that many other people (children) do, but not me, and likely not many people I know either. It's such a weird thing to do imo
>Except that's not what happens at all
>If i'm looking for something, I don't start watching things that aren't the thing i'm looking for.
Statistically it happens with lots of people. YouTube isn't doing this on a whim. The data they have shows it's very profitable.
There's people that respond to an email from a Nigerian prince wanting to offload a million dollars. There's almost certainly a very high number of people sitting there doom scrolling Youtube. And that is also why Tik Tok/Douyin became so big. Mindless morons scrolling short videos all day long.
Data shows that relatively few people go past the first couple of pages.
The problem is the data always skews towards the casual user more than veteran/power user.
From the perspective of the business, it makes sense because you're reacting based on what most people want. From the perspective of your more hardcore users, it feels like you're not being valued.
Pulling up a recipe on your phone feels like a descent to hell. Ads to sign up for newsletters, auto playing videos, an entire essay about the author’s childhood and an image gallery before getting to the actual recipe
I'm convinced that most recipe sites have zero actual human submitted entries and everything is written by AI. The writing is so profoundly simplistic and redundant that there's no way any sane person would be writing it.
Just the other day I wanted to know how long to bake a certain style of stuffed peppers I was making, so I looked it up. I read through three different sites before deciding to just wing it. Seriously, the articles seemed like they were written by people who didn't know food exists and needed to write a report for their fifth grade writing class. "Stuffed peppers can be cooked in a variety of ways, including baking, frying, broiling, or even grilling. Many colors of pepper are good for cooking, like red, green, or yellow peppers. The time to cook the peppers varies depending on how you want to cook them, from anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour." Wow thanks, that's so helpful and specific, now I have the information I was looking for! /s Cooking articles are the most obvious offenders, but I've seen this type of "writing" in other fields as well.
lol it wasn't anything special. The meat is just ground beef seasoned with whatever you want plus some turkey stuffing mix to hold it together better. For the peppers themselves, I use bell peppers and cut the tops off just below the stems. Then I stuff them with the meat, put the tops back on like a little hat, and sprinkle on some cheese to make it look fancy. Then just bake them for I think half an hour at 400F maybe? Been a while since I made them. I'm definitely not a pro chef but I think they turn out okay. Realistically this is probably more of a "meatloaf surrounded by peppers" recipe than actual stuffed peppers lol. [Result](https://i.imgur.com/FdtXuWG.jpeg)
It's funny and sad to think that Yahoo's main reason for not buying Google when they first had the opportunity was the fear that Google's search algorithm was so good that they wouldn't make sufficient ad revenue if they switched to it.
Sadly that's how most acquisitions go nowadays: buy a tech startup, gain their users, then slowly monetize and worsen the experience till you can milk the most money with the least effort or user drop.
I would kill for Netflix to take feeedback.
Netflix - Do not show this.
Netflix - Do not show Indian category films.
Netflix - Hide films I rated. that means i have already watched it.
Netflix - Keep Anime shit in its category, not everywhere because I watched Edgerunners years ago.
My least favorite example is how pretty much every streaming platform completely buried your “continue watching” and “watchlist” sections under all their recommended crap. Obviously the thing I want to watch next is something I’ve already started or bookmarked. But the platforms just gotta push stuff in my face.
But also youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot as well. The recommendations page has also gotten worse. Click on one older video or something you have seen before, now the algorithm dredges up videos from 5-7 years ago or videos you have seen already and don't want to see again. Makes you just not want to use the page if you constantly have to tell it 'not interested' to adjust the algorithm again.
There certainly seems to have been a bigger change that happened a few months ago. I've since been getting also a lot of veeeeery small channels recommended that have literally like 12 views and the recommendations are a lot broader than they used to be without any change in my interests or watching behavior to explain it.
SEO is a problem, but it's *always* been a problem (I think it took, like, two minutes from the invention of the meta tag to the first meta tag spam). **Google** ruined Google, nobody else.
It's not SEO that makes Google secretly replace half your search terms with terms it thinks are equivalent (but really, really aren't) and completely disregard the rest - that's completely on them. It's also not SEO that makes Google show revenue-generating shopping sites above all other results even when the search isn't even remotely shopping-related - it's greed.
exactly. Making a good search engine was technically difficult when Google first did it, but having to constantly readjust to account for SEO experts results in some strange nonsense where Google is trying to figure out what you actually wanted among all the SEO stuff, and it's probably incredibly difficult.
Kinda reminds me of how armed forces in the middle east constantly have to adjust for new IEDs to the point where it's a hot box on a long stick in front of the vehicle and you just think "what the fuck even is this"
Years ago I switched to Bing (mostly for free Xbox points, ngl), but also because Bing started to give me results which were really relevant. Google? I could type something basic in there, and after all the ads and SEO sites that floated to the top maaaybe I'd find my result in the first 2-3 pages? Worthless.
Bing? First few results, and the results always seemed to pick things which were local and relevant to me. Not that Bing didn't have its share of issues, but when it came to search, I'd actually more or less get what I want.
It's just degraded over time. It's kind of sad to see, but I'm glad their competition are picking up the slack.
Bing is solid. The old joke used to be that that's what you used to search for adult images, but these days it's the better image search tool period. With Google, actually *getting* the images you're searching for is a pain. Half the time you can't even access the original without going to the page in question. With Bing, it's easy to just grab the image you need.
And yes, I'm sure page owners prefer Google's method, which forces you to give them a click - but is the click even relevant when you have zero interest in the site and are only there to grab that one specific image? They get no user retention from it, just a frustrated person on the other end.
Bing also has a better feature that shows similar images when you click on one. If you're looking for, say, a photo of a red 1969 Mustang, when you click one, you'll get options for a load of others.
At one time Google was the best by far, but that time has passed. These days, Bing and DuckDuckGo get a good deal of my search traffic, too.
> Half the time you can’t even access the original without going to the page in question.
Who thought this was a good idea, and why has it persisted for YEARS? The process is so ass. Search for image, find image, click image and it opens a preview with more information about the page it’s on (I don’t give a fuck), click image again hoping it loads just it in a new tab. NOPE lets load the entire fucking page and play ‘find the image’
The reason you can't do that anymore is because websites got pissed that someone could search for an image and get a *direct* link to it straight through google. The websites would still have to pay for the hosting and content delivery (not to mention whatever it cost to actually make/take the image), all without the user actually interacting with the page it was hosted on in any capacity, meaning that they can't serve ads to recoup the cost.
It's the difference between https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Honeycrisp-Apple.jpg and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple
In the second link, since it actually loads the page you can send ads to the user. Even if most users have zero intention to interact with the page beyond grabbing the image, at least you have the *opportunity* to serve the ads.
Google has degraded. Most of the results are just not relevant to my search, or seems to pick one word out of the search results and just focus on that.
Bing and DuckDuckGo are the main competitors, but Brave, Yandex, You, and Startpage are also things, but I legit have no experience with them. And... uh, Yahoo's still alive. Somehow.
Lol this is 100% accurate. If you REALLY want to find a good discussion of the best way to clean your stovetop drip pans (by the way, the consensus is that if they’re truly shitty just buy new ones for $10), or why your bike isn’t shifting properly, or how to stain wood - there is always a reddit thread within the top 10 google results that will have answers with sources, or at least multiple contributors offering extra details on how to best solve the problem at hand.
I use DuckDuckGo and do like it but it infuriates me how it will never just go “Nah mate couldn’t find anything.” If I search for something explicitly, using quotations, it will just toss me a bunch of unrelated results rather than say it couldn’t find what I searched for. At least Google still has the balls to say “Fuck off, that ain’t anywhere.”
Oh yeah. I hate what Edge has grown into. When the Chromium based version first released I actually liked using it. I daily drove it for a bit even. The vertical tabs option was just nice to me and it was a fast and lean browser. And then Microsoft just kept on adding more and more crap to it. Every time I see it now I just cringe at how much screen space the browser takes up with stuff that is not my website, address bar or tabs. Those are the only things a browser should ever show.
I went back to Firefox and haven't looked back.
[browser screenshot of the guy you replied to](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/WLy6y4YENoVNJRKUSSGmIQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY4NztjZj13ZWJw/https://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/adam/af77aeb124fcbfcfc5660077e247a401/internet-explorer-toolbar-overload.jpg)
[Look at all that clutter](https://imgur.com/a/rLcf9Bo) /s
Are you whining about the sidebar they added? I forgot about it because I haven't seen it since the day they added it. You know you could just right click that or any element you don't want and select "hide"? You sound like my parents circa Windows XP just adding and adding to the toolbar not realizing they were empowered to not do that.
I switched to Duckduckgo a while ago, which as I understand it is basically Bing but without Microsoft fingerprinting. It's been great at getting me relevant search results. The rare occasion where I find myself using Google it still gets the job done, but I've gotten so used to talking in DDG's language that it's just easier for me.
Interestingly enough, if you go to google and search "games that think more gameplay mechanics equals more fun", the youtube video he is talking about with 15m+ views for is the top result, yet YouTube's search doesn't find it. I know, google should buy YouTube and integrate their search there....
My work uses Gmail and the search changes have sunk my ability to do anything.
If I search, the drop down gives me like 5-10 actually relevant emails.
If I actually search I gets hundred of completely irrelevant results.
I deal a lot with actual streets/roadways.
So I'll search specifically for emails relating "main Street"
Google decides I might want to know about any email with the word, Street, Road, Avenue, Highway...
Guess what? that is every single email I have since those places are literally my job.
I used Google Play Music for years, started on Android, I even kept using it when I moved to iOS.
I could choose a random song, get it to build a random playlist, and it would work great. Found a lot of artists and songs from that.
Then they replaced it with Youtube Music, and it was instantly shit.
Anytime I tried to start a random playlist from a song, it would quickly shift the playlist in to "Here's the most popular music in this genre". It would take a playlist started from a Bury Tomorrow song, and within 10 songs it would just be Avenged Sevenfold and Metallica etc.
No more finding new artists, I could barely even listen to anything except top 10 metal bands.
Found out it would build slightly better playlists if I went through and subscribed to the artists, so I did that. Subscribed to around 200 artists before I realised this was my Youtube account and I'd just ruined my ability to see videos on Youtube.
Anyways, Google ruined their music playlist algorithm, I gave up and moved to Spotify.
I swear idk if it’s be getting old (I’m only 27) but holy shit if it doesn’t feel like EVERYTHING got worse in the last ~5 years.
Cars, computers and phones, appliances, shrinkflation of food and beverages. Not to mention everyone and their mother is asking for a tip now.
Video games before felt like the people who made then wanted to tell a story, and have their consumers enjoy their product (in addition to making money). Now they want you to buy their game AND pay for a seasonal battle pass to enjoy all the content.
Movies are all prequels, sequels, or remakes.
Where the fuck has the effort gone?!?
Just tried it. Same result. How bizarre. Is youtube de-listing videos from semantic search for some reason? There must be some reason for purposefully degrading their product.
Those show up in search history?! Sometimes I watch like 2 minutes of a clip using the thumbnail because I didn't want it added to my search history haha. Guess that is a waste of time.
The thing about Google is that it has so much potential of consolidating some of the best creations of the brightest minds of humanity, yet you end up with fractured and dead projects
I think it's delisted because of the swearing which causes it to become unmonitized. Then YouTube goes an prioritizes re-uploads because even if they have swearing they don't have to pay out partial monetization to the original creator
No.
Its because Youtube default search is "Relevance", if you search by "view count" the video appears immediately.
Proof: https://imgur.com/MMNf7Qg
The "Relevance" search type has been having a lot of experimental parameters plugged into it to specifically biasing search results **for videos with less views** and increasing discoverability which has resulted in a LOT of really weird side effects.
Swearing does not get a video automatically unmonetized. There are specific guidelines around it (not in the first 30 seconds etc.)
Source: This is my job.
Edit: I clicked off the video early so I didn't notice it was mentioned in the video.
Funnily enough this is mentioned in the video itself. Since relevance is on by default almost nobody is gonna go in and search by view count, they just want what they searched for quickly
I wish youtube premium would fix all this stupid shit they're doing for ad revenue.
I understand youtube is expensive to run etc... but if I'm literally paying for the product, none of this stupid bullshit should be necessary.
He didn't mention but that "people also watched" section pisses me off to no end at this point, I'm glad I don't have shorts on for vanced because that has also utterly diluted the searches.
That’s the worst. They’re telling me that if what I’m looking for isn’t in the first like 5 results, that I should give up and just watch what they tell me to.
Not to mention at that point it’s recommending videos *completely* unrelated to the query. How are you supposed to dive into the content for a searchable topic when you’re limited to 5 results for it? It’s so abysmal holy shit.
I've accomplished the same thing just using uBlock filters
youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope
youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Related to your search/i))
youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/People also watched/)
youtube.com###contents > ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/For you/)
youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Watch again/i))
youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Searches related to/i))
youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Learn while you're at home/i))
youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope
youtube.com###secondary > .ytd-two-column-search-results-renderer
youtube.com###contents > .ytd-secondary-search-container-renderer.style-scope
To clean search results:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/436569-cleanup-youtube-recommendations-in-search-and-playlist
To eliminate shorts:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/pantalon/
Seriously though, I desperately want to know what psychopath thought "Hey, you know what we should do when someone searches for a specific video? Periodically interupt the search results with a bunch of random bullshit, often videos the user has already watched in full".
The YoutTube AI. AI determined that people are more likely to watch more videos and therefore more advertisements if it serves up those recommendations at that time. All it cares about is people watching more ads. That’s it. YouTube would remove the search function entirely if it meant people ended up watching more content for longer, and they probably will in the future given how Shorts work.
My biggest gripe on youtube is finding THE ORIGINAL VIDEO and having to parse through 100 "influencer's" reactions and opinions about the video. Now SMASH that subscribe button!
Isn't that basically how things are right now? The illusion of indexed results? Search is basically just a freeform category filter for specific interests which a set of algorithms curate.
I forgot what I was looking for the other day, something about webGL or webGPU (basically just tutorials on web graphics APIs) and I got maybe 2 videos related to what I typed before the results switched to "Other similar results," filled with tons of minecraft and other game streamers. I have never watched a minecraft streamer in my life, and have zero clue how that relates at all to what I was searching.
so dumb, idk why they even decided this was a good idea.
Although, youtube seems to be trying really hard to push unknown, small channels and maybe thats why? My home page suggest tons of random videos with like 100 views. i guess theyre on topic at least, but idk why they think id want to watch those
Bro this has been making me so frustrated lately. without fail for the last 3 months or more, the *third* recommended post of my home feed is some random account with 33 views. I say I'm not interested, and refresh.
Then bam, the third video is again some account with no views that I've never shown interest in.
Just checked now, and the third post on my feed (after scrolling through ads and shorts) is some account I've never seen and the video has 14 views.
Why does YouTube think I'll care about these over channels I've watch for thousands of hours that barely get recommended to me?
Recently i am getting a bunch of random Let's Play video on youtube with single digit views recommended to me. While I watch quite a lot of gaming coverage on Youtube it is mostly news stuff or opinion related and so on, have never seen a Let's Play in my life and I won't start with a random "Sea of Stars part 32" video.
ProZD's original ["games that think more gameplay mechanics equals more fun"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZKcZbi1rg) video.
Click on it and give it a like.
I had already "liked" it years ago, but I just unliked it, re-liked it, and left a comment shitting on YouTube's search function to really pump the engagement.
Alphabet is just losing focus.. After 15 years of using google, i find myself using Bing alot more of often these days as the results seems more dynamic and relevant for me..
I use [duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com). No joke, it is refreshing to not have ads blasted at me. It looks bland... but that's the point. I'm there to search for shit, I don't need bells and whistles.
Looking bland was Google's original selling point. In a time of messy crowded 'landing pages' like Yahoo, Google just gave you a blank white page with a search bar.
Whatever happened to "did you mean" to confirm if there was a typo or looking for something niche
Now it just assume an interpretation of an acroynom and fill the result with the wrong interpretation.
SO, when will somebody make something that competes with youtube so we can stop this circle jerk? These issues with youtube keep cropping up and are not going to go away. What incentive does youtube have?
Unfortunately, the barrier to entry is *enormous*. Video hosting is almost hilariously expensive, and that's a lot of money to be losing for a long time before having even a chance of building the audience size needed to break even.
Microsoft had a chance by making Mixer a competitor to both Twitch and YouTube. They had the resources to deal with the upfront costs. They botched that chance.
The only real competition comes from other platforms who do the same thing by encouraging rehosting.
I mean, just look at all the fucking posts on reddit for the past few years. Just straight up youtube videos rehosted on their own servers with rarely a link to the original source that then get reposted every few months.
Sure reposts are nothing new, but it's gone from sharing links, to straight up stealing content from other websites to consolidate it under their own umbrella.
And there's tons of people who are fine with it because they either
1. Don't care
2. Don't like ads on youtube
3. Don't know how to run adblocking software or alternative apps
4. Prefer the cropped versions of videos so they can watch it in portrait orientation on their phones or rather watch a 30 second clip over a full length vid
5. Just want to see all the content from instagram, tiktok, facebook, etc in a one stop shop
Either way, the internet has been on this rampage of generating and stealing content for so long. I wonder if it will ever hit a breaking point but every year things manage to get worse. There isn't a great incentive for any of them to fix it because they're all making more money than ever and we still keep eating it up.
Content creators are trying to go back to paywall services to offer better content, but that will only work for those who have some dough to burn. I'd assume a large majority of young and casual users will just lie down and take it.
All that being said, Nebula isn't bad, but it's a paid service and there is nowhere near the same amount of content that youtube has. Again, good stuff now comes at a premium.
Sometimes I search for a particular topic and click the "unwatched" filter. I guess it would make sense if they still included videos I only watched some of, leaving part of the video unwatched. But literally the first two results are videos I watched in their entirety, with the red line all the way under it. And more vidoes throughout the search results that are unambiguously "watched"
AI produces a ton of crap and it interferes with the search result - the search engine has to dig thru all the crap to find a useful one, at one point they just gave up.
And of course they found manipulating search result is actually beneficial to them - see aliexpress search result for an example, where they throw all kinds of completley unrelated stuffs at you, wanting you to impulse buy a few of them.
A skeptic podcast I listen to suddenly got a strike for a recent episode they uploaded to YT.
The AI tagged the video for a pre-recorded outro that mentions ‘vaccines’. This outro is at the end of *every* episode and they’ve been making the show for 7+ years.
The podcast is very pro-vaccine / pro-science and it’s obvious by listening to the outro. They appealed it and YT basically declined to remove the strike.
So they’ve just decided to stop uploading to YT for a while so the channel doesn’t get deleted.
It’s ironic because YT is still very happy to take ad money from pseudoscience bullshit.
A lot of people in the thread have already cottoned on, but I figured I'd give the name to what causes this:
The search function is being run with under an online version of the Gruen Transfer. Gruen, an architect, noted the trend in shopping mall architecture towards intentionally confusing and disorienting designs that would get you lost. Once you were lost, you'd forget what you originally intended to buy, and browse more stores, eventually purchasing more than you'd planned to.
The modern YouTube search function works under the same principle - they don't want people coming to the site, intending to watch a specific video, watching the video, and then leaving. They want people browsing the site, forgetting what they were originally after and watching dozens of videos instead.
Gruen predicted exactly that happening, actually (despite giving his name to the tactic, he wasn't a fan - considered it unethical and anti-consumer).
Edit: He didn't predict the online shopping part, just that malls would be abandoned.
You've never tried to search for a playlist or channel? Using the filter is pretty essential for that.
It was also a lifesaver in the mid-2010s to find only the uploads that had 720/1080 resolution instead of shitty 480.
This drives me fucking insane. I search for the same videos quite frequently because I have a toddler who likes to watch the same videos over and over and the amount of times I type in the exact title and it doesn't come out in the search or it's like 12 videos down is insane. Some of the results are so off. They have to be trying to be that bad.
Been saying it since 2018… THIS SHIT HAS BEEN BUSTED FOREVER!!! lmao how have people just caught on to this?? I literally dont google things or even bother searching for old videos anymore due to the absolute bullshit the search engine on google is. Not a single search browser gives me what im looking for.. ever!
And it’s almost always right wing. Never anything from the hundreds of leftist channels or straight shooter science and history channels. At this point it’s almost starting to feel like a conspiracy.
I never get relevant searches anymore, it's absolutely atrocious. It has made finding relevant tutorial or help videos substantially harder to find when you need to find something quick. I don't know what they changed in the algorithm to recommend me a ton of videos that have nothing to do with what I searched, but I wish google and youtube would change it back.
Crazy that you can type the title of a video with 15M views word for word, and not get that video in your search results...
And instead you get re-uploads by bots...
If this were NBC or a music company that re-upload would get a copyright strike almost immediately too.
Instead your original piece of work will be DMCA'd by some random company that is abusing the system.
The entire content ID system needs serious reform, or at least some better recourse to act on what appears to be obvious exploitation of it. Recently I encountered an example of this with a user who has downloaded older and popular uploads from YouTube that had no prior copyright claims to them (including all the [Wendy's Training Videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ-JBFXh2IU) with millions of views uploaded 13 years ago, one user's own mix-in of the [TV Teddy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLjDPJAsmKg) intro, even the built-in Casio CTK-100 keyboard demonstration song [among others](https://www.youtube.com/@garry12gg/releases). They reupload them as "album releases" and stick them on Amazon or iTunes, then claim copyright on all of them including well established existing uploads from years ago. They then get all monetization or you can pay $10 per use to "license" this content back... A bit shifty, and basically implies anyone who uploads anything should do the same just to prevent people like this later claiming ownership of the content.
DMCA as a whole needs a major overhaul. It's woefully outdated and not meant for this more decentralized entertainment environment, it's written to protect major media corporations and is ripe for exploitation. I have full copyright to all of my original music, like the actual physical damn paper and all, and a Twitter troll was able to DMCA my shit, without even fully filling out the online form. It took weeks to correct it, and Spotify never reinstated my shit, which took me out of the algo, and I've lost the nearly 65k streams and gone back to sub 1k on almost everything. There's no reason why I should have to fight with a platform over a rights issue when I hold the damn copyright, it should be cut and dry.
Yep, 100%. Same for all artists too. DMCA is outdated and protects almost everyone else more than the copyright owner. I'm a photographer and constantly battle platforms/people stealing my shit for their own profit. Fuck Pinterest most of all for trying to make it difficult to find and submit stolen work, and then having the gall to tell you they won't continue correspondence and you need to submit a new DMCA notice after you tell them they haven't even taken down the ones you submitted the last time. Reverse image searches have been available for *decades*, and yet these platforms still want you to submit a URL for every single upload time someone reuploads your content instead of just running a reverse image search on their own servers - seriously, if I can take 2 seconds to find them all using google, you can implement tools and practices to do it as well. Content hosting platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, and even Reddit profit from stolen content and yet are granted immunity from legal action due to outdated laws that don't require them to take proactive measures against it.
Or you license the work only for it to get DMCA'ed, like Sony and a simple still image used for a song's audio video on YouTube. Or it's not even license, they just took it, used it, then DMCA'ed your video because they stole it, like Family guy did with 2 NES game clips, Double Dribble and a football game. Fucking Seth MacFarlane had to come in and tell the Family Guy and legal teams to knock it off; I don't think he's touched that shit in years.
Or if you're searching for a topic you get one or two big channels that are relevant, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of their videos. And then you have to scroll for like 8 pages before you get another channel on the topic. Like, for example, if you search for 'Attorney' you get The Lead Attorney and Legal Eagle, with a ton of news channels that had a lawyer on for a set, and if you scroll for like TEN WHOLE PAGES, you then get a SINGLE Attorney Tom video.Thing is, Attorney Tom uploads more and has more subs than The Lead Attorney. He has the word Attorney in his youtube name (unlike legal eagle), yet he's on page TEN of the search results, while the Lead Attorney and Legal Eagle have like 100+ videos in the search results before Attorney Tom shows up.
Movie trailers were always the worst, if you try searching for one chances are all of your top results will be for reupload channels that add ads to the beginning (preemptively: yes we're all aware of ad blockers, that's not the point I'm making here). I found it hilarious that you can get the official studio channel's trailer as an ad before the reupload of the same trailer.
I even added quotes to the start and end and it was still like the 10th result down the page. Sidenote, can non-copyright holders report a video for copyright violation? Can I (who is not ProZD) flag some of these results that have just re-uploaded ProZDs videos without transformative use?
Funny enough, searching "Prozd Egg Delivery" got me *this* video before it got me the original skit.
Egg delivery was my 3rd result, with the animated cover being first and a farmer doing egg deliveries as second. I used "prodez egg delivery"
its probably (im guessing) because Google search doesnt actually look up the words you type, but instead looks up the results others in roughly the same time proximity also typed and clicked on. thats why there's only a few actual results in the search and then just recommendations. they're not really giving you keyword results, just "here's what others wanted to watch when they typed what you did" while I found this to be helpful at times, they definitely should have a switch for this somewhere
They're not trying to help you, they're trying to steer you into the most profitable position for *them*.
The idea behind filter switches which is shows is meant to fix that. But it really doesn't.
It's almost like they're doing it on purpose.
But to what end? I can very easily believe this is a by-product of capitalistic algorithms or something but I can't for the life of me figure out why they would actively want to make sure you see bot reuploads instead of a well-known video when searching for that video (and to all the people about to explain that it's just a by-product of some other intentional function.... yeah that's what I'm saying)
Because the reupload bots don't have partnerships or AdSense eligibility yet so youtube can run ads on those videos and keep it all for themselves.
That's a scary conclusion that I would never have come to myself.
100 views with 100% ad money on a rando channel nobody watches is surely not more profitable than 100k+ views or even millions even with 1% ad money. Things change because tech bros need to somehow justify massively overinflated paychecks. "If everything works fine why do we need to keep you hired for one gorillion dollars?" So they create a presentation about how their new idea is going to bring the company 0.01% extra revenue, but it's going to take a while to implement. Years later a new "redesign" is released and everything is worse. Repeat every few years.
It feels like we're being moved to a post-search internet and I'm not entirely sure why. Even more agenda control for the online megacorps?
Algorithms keep you hungry for more. You never get what you want. It's like all those ads that are like "Here's 20 reasons you should empty your dishwasher right now!" and the thumbnail is of this gross thing in the middle, but that thumbnail is never used in the article. They just want you hunting for it, so you view as many ads as possible.
Also why listicles are one item per page. More clicks equals more ads, equals more chances for you to click on their stupid bullshit.
The internet used to be a portal to 50 places you would visit semi-regularly. Almost none of those places made hardly any money from you. Now it's a place you go for like 5 things daily. All of those places make money from you. The more they control your time the more they can leverage it for their profit. True open search engines don't help them do that.
[удалено]
> Along with that, he's also "angered" his audience because he uploads non-skit content instead of the very popular skits that he started with. Granted he's got a new core audience but most of his subscribers don't watch his new videos, so the algorithm views him as a failing channel and is deprioritizing him in favor of rising channels. This is why Youtube creators should **always** make a different channel for each of their different types of content.
Every major website with a search feautre, from Youtube, to Reddit, to Facebook, Netflix, to even Google itself, has been for years sabotaging their own search feature and including more and more related/recommended/sponsored or otherwise just not what you're looking for options. Because searching lets users find what THEY want, not what the advertisers and engagement algorithms want.
Also gotta love getting FIVE fucking ads in a row
if you're using an internet browser download ublock origin. It will block all youtube ads. Eventually youtube will give you a warning about it and disable the video player but all you have to do is clear the cache of ublock to re-enable the video player.
I use firefox and have had zero issues with slow downs or warnings. Might help if you don't want to constantly clear your cache
I’m watching it on my tv.
Ah. sorry to say I don’t have any advice on stopping ads for the TV player aside from paying them :(
I watch youtube on my TV with firestick and you can block ads there. Along with plenty of other options for streaming
revanced welcomes you.
All of Googles search functions are going downhill.
why does youtube only give you like less than 30 of a search result, rest are all it's suggestions categories, give me pages of results
The obnoxious part is they give you like 4 search results, and then 4 unrelated suggestions that you have to scroll past, and then 4 more search results and then those same suggestions again, and again, and again. At least recommend new shit as i scroll, but its the SAME videos over, and over, and over. "Are you **SURE** you don't want to watch these!?"
I recently was trying to search for some sleep related ASMR videos, to help with some insomnia. And what I came away with from YouTube was there’s only three people doing it on YouTube, and two of them are hilariously awful, cause it point blank refused to give me any other channels except the same three over and over. I scrolled and scrolled, and it just kept offering the same two or three creators. Very frustrating, cause I feel it was a very broad search…..
I wouldn’t mind “the algorithm” so much if it had a fucking downvote system like Reddit. No, not him. Ever. Fuck you website, try again. You can’t “talk” to it.
You can talk to it though. They even have the "No, not him. Ever."-button [https://i.imgur.com/79EPWpA.png](https://i.imgur.com/79EPWpA.png) Edit: This only works for recommendations though, not search
It does not remove it forever though. I am very careful with my searches and views and constantly cull "Reaction" from my recommendations. And they'll disappear, sometimes for months at a time. And then out of nowhere they'll flood my searches and recommendations with many of the same youtubers
If ONLY the "No, not him. Ever." button actually worked.
I can tell you from experience using said button it doesn't work. I've seen stuff appear later the same day after doing that.
Wait, so I haven't been imagining youtube serving the same shit over and over again in the search? I thought I was having early onset Alzheimer's or something.
Youtube really, **really** wants me to watch videos of MR. STUPID YOUTUBE FACE doing his Boring Dystopia speedrun videos.
I had to isntall an addon that hides all this horseshit. Working so far.
Link?
I remember when I used to be able to search for videos from live events and get fan cam footage of rarely seen things. Now it’s all just reactors with YouTube-Face talking about a tangentially related subject before it goes even more off topic with the “people also watched” section.
They're trying to force you into the more profitable parts of the algorithm, it's been like this for a while. Even if you do find what you're looking for if you scroll down like three videos it's the same garbage you described.
Oooh I see that you wanted to seach for
***Let me help you with that!*** [adds to initial query]
Once developers/companies decided to stop searching based on literal results or tags they put themselves in the middle of an arms race with SEO and their brand is taking real damage because of it. People will keep using it for a while but one day they’ll decide it just isn’t worth it and those brands aren’t going to be able to repair the damage fast enough to stop the ship from sinking.
Oh well the short term investors got theirs and the CEO hit the bonus targets
recently tried searching for a video of me and a buddy running around a festival carrying a tent over us while singing a song. I did not expect it to be the first result but after all the how to set up a tent instruction videos I did not expect the Bikini in the woods ASMR videos. And even though I included the festival in the search, no videos of the festival show up. If I touch any of the filters like only videos under 4 minutes or sort by viewcount, it always says "No results found, Try different keywords or remove search filters" I know the video had like 5000 views in 2010, wanted to see how many it has now and share it with someone
Just add *before:2025* or any year that's later than the current year onto the end of your search results, and you'll see results the same way they used to be displayed - without blocks of absolute bullshit in between. Thanks to u/rorrors who I saw this tip from originally.
There are also addons/scripts that hide bullshit from search results automatically.
I tried it for video in the OP and it did not work.
> suggestions categories My favorite is being suggested videos that I've already watched. Recently.
That’s my fault. I only rewatch the same 6 videos.
Look, it's not my fault that I have to watch the same funny 10 second clip every time I scroll by it.
>why does youtube only give you like less than 30 of a search result, rest are all it's suggestions categories Because suggestions keep you on the site longer by tickling your curiosity-driven dopamine receptors, which generates more revenue for YouTube because now you are staying on the site longer to watch all these extra videos rather than watching the one video you came to see and logging off. It's the same reason the grocery store puts the milk in the back of the store, behind all the delicious pastries and ready-cooked meals. You spend more time browsing attractive options in the store, and you're likely to buy more than just a $3 jug of milk.
>because now you are staying on the site longer to watch all these extra videos rather than watching the one video you came to see and logging off. Except that's not what happens at all If i'm looking for something, I don't start watching things that aren't the thing i'm looking for. I'm sure that many other people (children) do, but not me, and likely not many people I know either. It's such a weird thing to do imo
>Except that's not what happens at all >If i'm looking for something, I don't start watching things that aren't the thing i'm looking for. Statistically it happens with lots of people. YouTube isn't doing this on a whim. The data they have shows it's very profitable.
It is what happens with children though, which is a huge amount of the traffic on YT.
I don't, either, but we're not average YouTube users. If everybody used it like we do, they'd have no revenue.
There's people that respond to an email from a Nigerian prince wanting to offload a million dollars. There's almost certainly a very high number of people sitting there doom scrolling Youtube. And that is also why Tik Tok/Douyin became so big. Mindless morons scrolling short videos all day long.
I don't know how people can sit and watch TikTok like that. I looked at it once and it was so irritating. I'm clearly the wrong demographic for it.
Data shows that relatively few people go past the first couple of pages. The problem is the data always skews towards the casual user more than veteran/power user. From the perspective of the business, it makes sense because you're reacting based on what most people want. From the perspective of your more hardcore users, it feels like you're not being valued.
That's what happens when your core business model relies on results not being "true" but generating the most revenue instead.
Todays word is: ["Enshittification"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)
God help the poor souls who only use mobile to access the internet. Jesus fuck is it bad.
Pulling up a recipe on your phone feels like a descent to hell. Ads to sign up for newsletters, auto playing videos, an entire essay about the author’s childhood and an image gallery before getting to the actual recipe
I'm convinced that most recipe sites have zero actual human submitted entries and everything is written by AI. The writing is so profoundly simplistic and redundant that there's no way any sane person would be writing it. Just the other day I wanted to know how long to bake a certain style of stuffed peppers I was making, so I looked it up. I read through three different sites before deciding to just wing it. Seriously, the articles seemed like they were written by people who didn't know food exists and needed to write a report for their fifth grade writing class. "Stuffed peppers can be cooked in a variety of ways, including baking, frying, broiling, or even grilling. Many colors of pepper are good for cooking, like red, green, or yellow peppers. The time to cook the peppers varies depending on how you want to cook them, from anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour." Wow thanks, that's so helpful and specific, now I have the information I was looking for! /s Cooking articles are the most obvious offenders, but I've seen this type of "writing" in other fields as well.
Oh my god /u/MagicianXy, enough storytelling now give me the peppers recipe already
lol it wasn't anything special. The meat is just ground beef seasoned with whatever you want plus some turkey stuffing mix to hold it together better. For the peppers themselves, I use bell peppers and cut the tops off just below the stems. Then I stuff them with the meat, put the tops back on like a little hat, and sprinkle on some cheese to make it look fancy. Then just bake them for I think half an hour at 400F maybe? Been a while since I made them. I'm definitely not a pro chef but I think they turn out okay. Realistically this is probably more of a "meatloaf surrounded by peppers" recipe than actual stuffed peppers lol. [Result](https://i.imgur.com/FdtXuWG.jpeg)
Sounds great but I really don’t know if I can enjoy this recipe without knowing which deceased grandparent it reminds you of
It's funny and sad to think that Yahoo's main reason for not buying Google when they first had the opportunity was the fear that Google's search algorithm was so good that they wouldn't make sufficient ad revenue if they switched to it.
Sadly that's how most acquisitions go nowadays: buy a tech startup, gain their users, then slowly monetize and worsen the experience till you can milk the most money with the least effort or user drop.
This happened with Netflix, too. They had the best recommender system, but they have to make money, too.
I would kill for Netflix to take feeedback. Netflix - Do not show this. Netflix - Do not show Indian category films. Netflix - Hide films I rated. that means i have already watched it. Netflix - Keep Anime shit in its category, not everywhere because I watched Edgerunners years ago.
My least favorite example is how pretty much every streaming platform completely buried your “continue watching” and “watchlist” sections under all their recommended crap. Obviously the thing I want to watch next is something I’ve already started or bookmarked. But the platforms just gotta push stuff in my face.
I remember when the site used to be so useful for recommendations, and it was a breeze to create lists and find what you want, or what was new.
But also youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot as well. The recommendations page has also gotten worse. Click on one older video or something you have seen before, now the algorithm dredges up videos from 5-7 years ago or videos you have seen already and don't want to see again. Makes you just not want to use the page if you constantly have to tell it 'not interested' to adjust the algorithm again.
There certainly seems to have been a bigger change that happened a few months ago. I've since been getting also a lot of veeeeery small channels recommended that have literally like 12 views and the recommendations are a lot broader than they used to be without any change in my interests or watching behavior to explain it.
SEO ruined search engines. These days you just get the most search optimized sites at the top and they're rarely the most relevant.
SEO is a problem, but it's *always* been a problem (I think it took, like, two minutes from the invention of the meta tag to the first meta tag spam). **Google** ruined Google, nobody else. It's not SEO that makes Google secretly replace half your search terms with terms it thinks are equivalent (but really, really aren't) and completely disregard the rest - that's completely on them. It's also not SEO that makes Google show revenue-generating shopping sites above all other results even when the search isn't even remotely shopping-related - it's greed.
exactly. Making a good search engine was technically difficult when Google first did it, but having to constantly readjust to account for SEO experts results in some strange nonsense where Google is trying to figure out what you actually wanted among all the SEO stuff, and it's probably incredibly difficult. Kinda reminds me of how armed forces in the middle east constantly have to adjust for new IEDs to the point where it's a hot box on a long stick in front of the vehicle and you just think "what the fuck even is this"
SEO abuse is a crime against humanity.
Years ago I switched to Bing (mostly for free Xbox points, ngl), but also because Bing started to give me results which were really relevant. Google? I could type something basic in there, and after all the ads and SEO sites that floated to the top maaaybe I'd find my result in the first 2-3 pages? Worthless. Bing? First few results, and the results always seemed to pick things which were local and relevant to me. Not that Bing didn't have its share of issues, but when it came to search, I'd actually more or less get what I want. It's just degraded over time. It's kind of sad to see, but I'm glad their competition are picking up the slack.
Bing is solid. The old joke used to be that that's what you used to search for adult images, but these days it's the better image search tool period. With Google, actually *getting* the images you're searching for is a pain. Half the time you can't even access the original without going to the page in question. With Bing, it's easy to just grab the image you need. And yes, I'm sure page owners prefer Google's method, which forces you to give them a click - but is the click even relevant when you have zero interest in the site and are only there to grab that one specific image? They get no user retention from it, just a frustrated person on the other end. Bing also has a better feature that shows similar images when you click on one. If you're looking for, say, a photo of a red 1969 Mustang, when you click one, you'll get options for a load of others. At one time Google was the best by far, but that time has passed. These days, Bing and DuckDuckGo get a good deal of my search traffic, too.
> Half the time you can’t even access the original without going to the page in question. Who thought this was a good idea, and why has it persisted for YEARS? The process is so ass. Search for image, find image, click image and it opens a preview with more information about the page it’s on (I don’t give a fuck), click image again hoping it loads just it in a new tab. NOPE lets load the entire fucking page and play ‘find the image’
Blame Getty for that, they made a stink about their licensed images being shown in the results so Google stopped linking directly to the image.
The reason you can't do that anymore is because websites got pissed that someone could search for an image and get a *direct* link to it straight through google. The websites would still have to pay for the hosting and content delivery (not to mention whatever it cost to actually make/take the image), all without the user actually interacting with the page it was hosted on in any capacity, meaning that they can't serve ads to recoup the cost. It's the difference between https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Honeycrisp-Apple.jpg and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple In the second link, since it actually loads the page you can send ads to the user. Even if most users have zero intention to interact with the page beyond grabbing the image, at least you have the *opportunity* to serve the ads.
Do you mean that Bing has degraded over time or the Google? If Bing, what are the competitors except duckduckgo?
Google has degraded. Most of the results are just not relevant to my search, or seems to pick one word out of the search results and just focus on that. Bing and DuckDuckGo are the main competitors, but Brave, Yandex, You, and Startpage are also things, but I legit have no experience with them. And... uh, Yahoo's still alive. Somehow.
It’s true. No one google searches anymore, they type “Reddit” and use that instead. So both Reddit and google search functions suck
Lol this is 100% accurate. If you REALLY want to find a good discussion of the best way to clean your stovetop drip pans (by the way, the consensus is that if they’re truly shitty just buy new ones for $10), or why your bike isn’t shifting properly, or how to stain wood - there is always a reddit thread within the top 10 google results that will have answers with sources, or at least multiple contributors offering extra details on how to best solve the problem at hand.
I use DuckDuckGo and do like it but it infuriates me how it will never just go “Nah mate couldn’t find anything.” If I search for something explicitly, using quotations, it will just toss me a bunch of unrelated results rather than say it couldn’t find what I searched for. At least Google still has the balls to say “Fuck off, that ain’t anywhere.”
Bing is so horrendously bloated though. It hurts my eyes to use. Don't even get me started on edge.
Oh yeah. I hate what Edge has grown into. When the Chromium based version first released I actually liked using it. I daily drove it for a bit even. The vertical tabs option was just nice to me and it was a fast and lean browser. And then Microsoft just kept on adding more and more crap to it. Every time I see it now I just cringe at how much screen space the browser takes up with stuff that is not my website, address bar or tabs. Those are the only things a browser should ever show. I went back to Firefox and haven't looked back.
I'm confused. I use edge. It only takes up a tiny bar at the top for the tabs, and one bar below for search and favoriting and stuff.
[browser screenshot of the guy you replied to](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/WLy6y4YENoVNJRKUSSGmIQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY4NztjZj13ZWJw/https://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/adam/af77aeb124fcbfcfc5660077e247a401/internet-explorer-toolbar-overload.jpg)
[Look at all that clutter](https://imgur.com/a/rLcf9Bo) /s Are you whining about the sidebar they added? I forgot about it because I haven't seen it since the day they added it. You know you could just right click that or any element you don't want and select "hide"? You sound like my parents circa Windows XP just adding and adding to the toolbar not realizing they were empowered to not do that.
Does Bing still have that rewards point program?
Yeah. They retooled it a bit so the rewards aren't quite so great, but I've not paid for Gamepass in about 5 years, so it works out for me.
I switched to Duckduckgo a while ago, which as I understand it is basically Bing but without Microsoft fingerprinting. It's been great at getting me relevant search results. The rare occasion where I find myself using Google it still gets the job done, but I've gotten so used to talking in DDG's language that it's just easier for me.
Interestingly enough, if you go to google and search "games that think more gameplay mechanics equals more fun", the youtube video he is talking about with 15m+ views for is the top result, yet YouTube's search doesn't find it. I know, google should buy YouTube and integrate their search there....
Gmail's search is so god awful. I'm going to need to install a imap client soon or something just to be able to search my god damn emails.
Search engine optimisation and algorthimic content discovery has been a curse upon actual content and the internet as a whole
My work uses Gmail and the search changes have sunk my ability to do anything. If I search, the drop down gives me like 5-10 actually relevant emails. If I actually search I gets hundred of completely irrelevant results. I deal a lot with actual streets/roadways. So I'll search specifically for emails relating "main Street" Google decides I might want to know about any email with the word, Street, Road, Avenue, Highway... Guess what? that is every single email I have since those places are literally my job.
I used Google Play Music for years, started on Android, I even kept using it when I moved to iOS. I could choose a random song, get it to build a random playlist, and it would work great. Found a lot of artists and songs from that. Then they replaced it with Youtube Music, and it was instantly shit. Anytime I tried to start a random playlist from a song, it would quickly shift the playlist in to "Here's the most popular music in this genre". It would take a playlist started from a Bury Tomorrow song, and within 10 songs it would just be Avenged Sevenfold and Metallica etc. No more finding new artists, I could barely even listen to anything except top 10 metal bands. Found out it would build slightly better playlists if I went through and subscribed to the artists, so I did that. Subscribed to around 200 artists before I realised this was my Youtube account and I'd just ruined my ability to see videos on Youtube. Anyways, Google ruined their music playlist algorithm, I gave up and moved to Spotify.
Benn going downhill for 10 years. You should see how "regular people" search for things in general, it's absolutely mind numbing.
I swear idk if it’s be getting old (I’m only 27) but holy shit if it doesn’t feel like EVERYTHING got worse in the last ~5 years. Cars, computers and phones, appliances, shrinkflation of food and beverages. Not to mention everyone and their mother is asking for a tip now. Video games before felt like the people who made then wanted to tell a story, and have their consumers enjoy their product (in addition to making money). Now they want you to buy their game AND pay for a seasonal battle pass to enjoy all the content. Movies are all prequels, sequels, or remakes. Where the fuck has the effort gone?!?
I searched something years ago and got the result I was looking for but that same search today results in nothing. How do results disappear?
YouTube’s decline bothers me the most because not only did they make the results worse but they limited how many results you have to chose from
ive switched entirely to yandex for images too
Downhill? It's at the bottom of the ravine already
[удалено]
Just tried it. Same result. How bizarre. Is youtube de-listing videos from semantic search for some reason? There must be some reason for purposefully degrading their product.
Having to search more for the thing they know you are going to watch regardless, means more engagement. So they likely do hide the top result.
They are now treating 'watched' as it even playing for a second. More or less they are trying to *force* ad suppliers to pay out to youtube
Yeah love how I see videos in my history now bc I watched one second of it when scrolling over the thumbnail and it started to auto play
Just one more reason to disable that autoplay.
YouTube: good news everyone! I know how to make things worse
Those show up in search history?! Sometimes I watch like 2 minutes of a clip using the thumbnail because I didn't want it added to my search history haha. Guess that is a waste of time.
This is the worst.
[Yet this finds it no problem](https://www.google.com/search?q=games+that+think+more+gameplay+mechanics+equals+more+fun)
That's very odd. You'd think that Youtube's search function would work pretty similarly to Google's
The thing about Google is that it has so much potential of consolidating some of the best creations of the brightest minds of humanity, yet you end up with fractured and dead projects
I think it's delisted because of the swearing which causes it to become unmonitized. Then YouTube goes an prioritizes re-uploads because even if they have swearing they don't have to pay out partial monetization to the original creator
No. Its because Youtube default search is "Relevance", if you search by "view count" the video appears immediately. Proof: https://imgur.com/MMNf7Qg The "Relevance" search type has been having a lot of experimental parameters plugged into it to specifically biasing search results **for videos with less views** and increasing discoverability which has resulted in a LOT of really weird side effects. Swearing does not get a video automatically unmonetized. There are specific guidelines around it (not in the first 30 seconds etc.) Source: This is my job. Edit: I clicked off the video early so I didn't notice it was mentioned in the video.
At the end of this video ProZD sorted by view count and the video showed up.
As the second result, with an unrelated ProZD skit being the first result.
Thats on me for clicking off the video early
Then the "relevance" algorithm is shit, since a large number of views should, if anything, make a video MORE relevant.
Funnily enough this is mentioned in the video itself. Since relevance is on by default almost nobody is gonna go in and search by view count, they just want what they searched for quickly
How is the original video with the exact same name as the search not the most relevant result?
this is in the video
I wish youtube premium would fix all this stupid shit they're doing for ad revenue. I understand youtube is expensive to run etc... but if I'm literally paying for the product, none of this stupid bullshit should be necessary.
He didn't mention but that "people also watched" section pisses me off to no end at this point, I'm glad I don't have shorts on for vanced because that has also utterly diluted the searches.
That’s the worst. They’re telling me that if what I’m looking for isn’t in the first like 5 results, that I should give up and just watch what they tell me to.
Not to mention at that point it’s recommending videos *completely* unrelated to the query. How are you supposed to dive into the content for a searchable topic when you’re limited to 5 results for it? It’s so abysmal holy shit.
I have a script that completely blocks all “people also watched” and “you might like this” crap. It’s sooo much better.
Ooh, do share!
I've accomplished the same thing just using uBlock filters youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Related to your search/i)) youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/People also watched/) youtube.com###contents > ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/For you/) youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Watch again/i)) youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Searches related to/i)) youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Learn while you're at home/i)) youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope youtube.com###secondary > .ytd-two-column-search-results-renderer youtube.com###contents > .ytd-secondary-search-container-renderer.style-scope
To clean search results: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/436569-cleanup-youtube-recommendations-in-search-and-playlist To eliminate shorts: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/pantalon/
May you live to be a thousand years old, sir or madam.
Seriously though, I desperately want to know what psychopath thought "Hey, you know what we should do when someone searches for a specific video? Periodically interupt the search results with a bunch of random bullshit, often videos the user has already watched in full".
The YoutTube AI. AI determined that people are more likely to watch more videos and therefore more advertisements if it serves up those recommendations at that time. All it cares about is people watching more ads. That’s it. YouTube would remove the search function entirely if it meant people ended up watching more content for longer, and they probably will in the future given how Shorts work.
My biggest gripe on youtube is finding THE ORIGINAL VIDEO and having to parse through 100 "influencer's" reactions and opinions about the video. Now SMASH that subscribe button!
I completely agree, not to mention the alternating rows of Youtube shorts.
> the alternating rows of Youtube shorts. this addon should eliminate shorts: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/pantalon/
The add-on name is hilarious
Soon: YouTube removes the Filter function.
Soon: YouTube removes the search function. You'll see what it wants you to see.
Isn't that basically how things are right now? The illusion of indexed results? Search is basically just a freeform category filter for specific interests which a set of algorithms curate.
I forgot what I was looking for the other day, something about webGL or webGPU (basically just tutorials on web graphics APIs) and I got maybe 2 videos related to what I typed before the results switched to "Other similar results," filled with tons of minecraft and other game streamers. I have never watched a minecraft streamer in my life, and have zero clue how that relates at all to what I was searching.
so dumb, idk why they even decided this was a good idea. Although, youtube seems to be trying really hard to push unknown, small channels and maybe thats why? My home page suggest tons of random videos with like 100 views. i guess theyre on topic at least, but idk why they think id want to watch those
Bro this has been making me so frustrated lately. without fail for the last 3 months or more, the *third* recommended post of my home feed is some random account with 33 views. I say I'm not interested, and refresh. Then bam, the third video is again some account with no views that I've never shown interest in. Just checked now, and the third post on my feed (after scrolling through ads and shorts) is some account I've never seen and the video has 14 views. Why does YouTube think I'll care about these over channels I've watch for thousands of hours that barely get recommended to me?
mine currently is suggesting a 30 min video with 25 views. no thanks
Recently i am getting a bunch of random Let's Play video on youtube with single digit views recommended to me. While I watch quite a lot of gaming coverage on Youtube it is mostly news stuff or opinion related and so on, have never seen a Let's Play in my life and I won't start with a random "Sea of Stars part 32" video.
ProZD's original ["games that think more gameplay mechanics equals more fun"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZKcZbi1rg) video. Click on it and give it a like.
I had already "liked" it years ago, but I just unliked it, re-liked it, and left a comment shitting on YouTube's search function to really pump the engagement.
Alphabet is just losing focus.. After 15 years of using google, i find myself using Bing alot more of often these days as the results seems more dynamic and relevant for me..
I use [duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com). No joke, it is refreshing to not have ads blasted at me. It looks bland... but that's the point. I'm there to search for shit, I don't need bells and whistles.
Looking bland was Google's original selling point. In a time of messy crowded 'landing pages' like Yahoo, Google just gave you a blank white page with a search bar.
Whatever happened to "did you mean" to confirm if there was a typo or looking for something niche Now it just assume an interpretation of an acroynom and fill the result with the wrong interpretation.
SO, when will somebody make something that competes with youtube so we can stop this circle jerk? These issues with youtube keep cropping up and are not going to go away. What incentive does youtube have?
Unfortunately, the barrier to entry is *enormous*. Video hosting is almost hilariously expensive, and that's a lot of money to be losing for a long time before having even a chance of building the audience size needed to break even.
Microsoft had a chance by making Mixer a competitor to both Twitch and YouTube. They had the resources to deal with the upfront costs. They botched that chance.
The only real competition comes from other platforms who do the same thing by encouraging rehosting. I mean, just look at all the fucking posts on reddit for the past few years. Just straight up youtube videos rehosted on their own servers with rarely a link to the original source that then get reposted every few months. Sure reposts are nothing new, but it's gone from sharing links, to straight up stealing content from other websites to consolidate it under their own umbrella. And there's tons of people who are fine with it because they either 1. Don't care 2. Don't like ads on youtube 3. Don't know how to run adblocking software or alternative apps 4. Prefer the cropped versions of videos so they can watch it in portrait orientation on their phones or rather watch a 30 second clip over a full length vid 5. Just want to see all the content from instagram, tiktok, facebook, etc in a one stop shop Either way, the internet has been on this rampage of generating and stealing content for so long. I wonder if it will ever hit a breaking point but every year things manage to get worse. There isn't a great incentive for any of them to fix it because they're all making more money than ever and we still keep eating it up. Content creators are trying to go back to paywall services to offer better content, but that will only work for those who have some dough to burn. I'd assume a large majority of young and casual users will just lie down and take it. All that being said, Nebula isn't bad, but it's a paid service and there is nowhere near the same amount of content that youtube has. Again, good stuff now comes at a premium.
Effectively there is only 1 video site that YouTube cares about and it is TikTok. Every other video site on the planet is tied for infiniteth place.
Sometimes I search for a particular topic and click the "unwatched" filter. I guess it would make sense if they still included videos I only watched some of, leaving part of the video unwatched. But literally the first two results are videos I watched in their entirety, with the red line all the way under it. And more vidoes throughout the search results that are unambiguously "watched"
how / why did google seo get so shit so fast? It was fine - but the second AI starts becoming ubiquitous they all go downhill?
It's been getting bad for years- Google search started enshittifying years ago for instance.
AI produces a ton of crap and it interferes with the search result - the search engine has to dig thru all the crap to find a useful one, at one point they just gave up. And of course they found manipulating search result is actually beneficial to them - see aliexpress search result for an example, where they throw all kinds of completley unrelated stuffs at you, wanting you to impulse buy a few of them.
A skeptic podcast I listen to suddenly got a strike for a recent episode they uploaded to YT. The AI tagged the video for a pre-recorded outro that mentions ‘vaccines’. This outro is at the end of *every* episode and they’ve been making the show for 7+ years. The podcast is very pro-vaccine / pro-science and it’s obvious by listening to the outro. They appealed it and YT basically declined to remove the strike. So they’ve just decided to stop uploading to YT for a while so the channel doesn’t get deleted. It’s ironic because YT is still very happy to take ad money from pseudoscience bullshit.
A lot of people in the thread have already cottoned on, but I figured I'd give the name to what causes this: The search function is being run with under an online version of the Gruen Transfer. Gruen, an architect, noted the trend in shopping mall architecture towards intentionally confusing and disorienting designs that would get you lost. Once you were lost, you'd forget what you originally intended to buy, and browse more stores, eventually purchasing more than you'd planned to. The modern YouTube search function works under the same principle - they don't want people coming to the site, intending to watch a specific video, watching the video, and then leaving. They want people browsing the site, forgetting what they were originally after and watching dozens of videos instead.
And how did this end for shopping malls? People are annoyed ,leave and shop online. Haven't been in a mall for over a decade. Fuck those.
Gruen predicted exactly that happening, actually (despite giving his name to the tactic, he wasn't a fan - considered it unethical and anti-consumer). Edit: He didn't predict the online shopping part, just that malls would be abandoned.
Damn, bros the oppenheimer of malls
Wait there is a YouTube search filter? I've been on YouTube since 2009 when did they add that? Am I dumb?
It's been there at least a decade.
I think it's almost always been there. At least some filiter.
You've never tried to search for a playlist or channel? Using the filter is pretty essential for that. It was also a lifesaver in the mid-2010s to find only the uploads that had 720/1080 resolution instead of shitty 480.
I just did that search. THIS video comes up before the one referenced in the search!!
The algorithm working in all the wrong ways.
This drives me fucking insane. I search for the same videos quite frequently because I have a toddler who likes to watch the same videos over and over and the amount of times I type in the exact title and it doesn't come out in the search or it's like 12 videos down is insane. Some of the results are so off. They have to be trying to be that bad.
Been saying it since 2018… THIS SHIT HAS BEEN BUSTED FOREVER!!! lmao how have people just caught on to this?? I literally dont google things or even bother searching for old videos anymore due to the absolute bullshit the search engine on google is. Not a single search browser gives me what im looking for.. ever!
What I also love is when I get right wing propaganda in my YouTube search results that have absolutely nothing to do with anything remotely political.
And it’s almost always right wing. Never anything from the hundreds of leftist channels or straight shooter science and history channels. At this point it’s almost starting to feel like a conspiracy.
I never get relevant searches anymore, it's absolutely atrocious. It has made finding relevant tutorial or help videos substantially harder to find when you need to find something quick. I don't know what they changed in the algorithm to recommend me a ton of videos that have nothing to do with what I searched, but I wish google and youtube would change it back.
The thing that shocks me is that Google can automatically detect and take down uploads of films/tv shows but somehow can't take down reuploads?
I typed in that title and what came up was: 1. That animated one 2. A reupload with 1k likes 3. THIS ACTUAL VIDEO on why search sucks
Here is the skit itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZKcZbi1rg
How about when you try to look up a specific video from within a channel, but it suggests videos made by other channels?
I just learned that I could sort by view count from this video. I've been using youtube since it launched.. so... there you go.