YouTube is cracking down on clickbait
YouTube is cracking down on clickbait
From what I've gathered from various big time 'tubers I've watched for years now, as they slowly trickle tidbits of info about what it's like working as a YouTuber, and what tools and tips Google gives them to assist: Google/YouTube is the one that recommended using the types of thumbnails commonly employed by uploaders, along with a ton of other things that are ubequitous to the platform (such as the phrase "like, subscribe and ring that bell!").
YouTube also decided that every video should be ten minutes long and made the algorithm recommend videos of that length so everyone had to start making their videos ten minutes long even if it made no sense to do so.
They either look like they need to shit or are eating an invisible popsicle
You guys buying this baloney ?
I heard Facebook is spent tons of money to combat election misinformation in 2016 and 2020 and I heard the same story again in 2024. The problem is solved right?
Or, you can bring back the dislike button and stop promoting videos with high dislike ratios.
And maybe stop making comments help the video get more popular
Do comments first. There's so much spam that almost looks legit because of how many upvotes they have.
What? Most likely in favor of more profitable clickbait.
Smells like PR copy parading as news, what click bait was actually removed vs what they said they would? What's the criteria to qualify as click bait?
YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.
sounds like anything that says it's one thing but does a whole different thing
Sadly it's only in India atm, and doesn't result in a strike(yet) so I doubt many are going to care.
Writing (not clickbait) in the title obviously
YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.
This is only going to target garbage-level content. You can still expect the same clickbait-style titles and thumbnails from established creators
YouTube will never "crack down" on these guys. They are their money-makes and can do whatever the fuck the want. Clickbait on huge channel is YouTube's bread and butter, even if people just click to comment that the creator sucks, that's still engagement and means there is more money in the ad bids.
YouTube is the one pushing them to clickbait. Their metrics are designed such that if you don't bait clicks a huge percentage of the time you're shown, you won't even show up in the feeds of your actual subscribers.
I think you've correctly identified their self-interest over altruism, but you've misidentified the internal value of discouraging clickbait. YouTube is a treasure trove for building training datasets, and its value increases when metadata like thumbnails, descriptions, titles, and tags can be trusted.
It's the AI gold rush; notice how this coincides with options to limit or disable third-party training but not first-party training? It coincides but is definitely not a coincidence.
Yeah, this is not even really targeting clickbait, more like putting restrictions on openly malicious content.
unless they pay for it to be shown as an advertisement of course
I'll be even more cynical than that: I think this policy will be abused to suppress legitimate news/current events videos with a POV the oligarchs doesn't approve of (e.g. pro-Palestinian, pro-Adjuster, etc.).
This will address extreme and obvious falsehoods but I still encounter clickbait of the more pedestrian kind everywhere I go. “You’re using your table saw WRONG” or “the 1 table saw trick 99% of people don’t know” etc.
I consider this clickbait: it creates a false sense of urgency and doesn’t convey any information in itself. What is this one trick? Oh I already knew that one, but I had to watch the video to realize that.
It wastes a lot of time and makes things harder to search for. And often these clickbait headlines are not in the video headline where YT can easily scan them, but in the thumbnail graphic in huge letters, where it’s probably harder to automate any moderation for.
I pay for YT premium but this aspect of the experience still feels ad-like and cheap.
Yes, which YT actively encourages people to do. So ultimately nothing really changes.
Shout out to DeArrow, from the same developer as SponsorBlock. It replaces video titles and thumbnails with community-provided non-clickbait versions. Available as a browser extension, and is also built-in to several third-party YouTube apps, such as SmartTube.
I feel a bit conflicted about that, do I want that extension to hide the terrible clickbaity titles and thumbnails? For me that's a good reason to not watch these videos in the first place
YouTube basically completely stopped recommending me those videos years ago because it learned I never click on them.
I just saw a video posted here about how Tyler Oliveria is a liar and his content is bogus, but when youtube kept pushing that garbage at me the over the top AI thumbnails were enough to tip off it was going to be shit, and I had blocked him months ago lol
Thanks, gonna add tomorrow
So, they created an algorithm that will only reward clickbait and completely ignore honest titles and thumbnails, then complain about their platform being one giant clickbait? Huh...
Yeah sure they will. They'll target small creators, but keep shit heads like the scammer Paul, the fake philanthropist Beast, and others
Top talent who made careers on clickbait will not be harmed
Pedophiles on set, no problem
Scamming people, no problem
Advertising and selling spoiled food, no problem
Say suicide, demonetized 🤡
Youtube will age restrict songs in my playlist with a word "fuck" in title but won't do anything about unrestricted animated gore on a channel of a studio that does kid animations that I've reported long ago. 🙃
YouTube ruined Christmas. I can't stand my relatives anymore, they watch every conspiracy clip and now they are a thousand miles down the rabbit hole and I can't handle them for more than a few days a year. I hate evil Google or alphabet, or whatever they call themselves.
The fix was there, but they removed it. The dislike button. Fucking unbelievable how stupid these companies are.
The fix was there, but they removed it.
Return YouTube Dislikes still exists. The likes and dislikes of RYD users are stored in an external database, so Google cannot take them away.
[X] Doubt
YouTube is clickbait. This is like them saying they're going to crack down on their own advertising model.
Youtube literally tell their wagies they need to make click but like this ugly ass thumbnails with up-close mug shots.
I am not sure what data they have to support it but I don't click these thumbnails but mrbeastade a career off them lol
Veritasium made a video about it, his example video only performed better after switching the thumb and title to something more clickbaity.
Web architecture was flawed.
They went the simple fast way in times when changing a few completely incompatible realizations while looking for the working one was fine. People still used not just Apple and IBM PCs, but also Amiga and various kinds of Unix. Web reading via e-mail was a popular service. Many different technologies to get some connectivity to the big world. FIDO and so on.
So it probably seemed intuitive that when it becomes problematic, people will think of something better and stop using the flawed thing.
Except that assumption relied on fragmentation and incompatibility and variability, things that useful idiots for corporations were vilifying in late 90s and 00s, and managed to kill around late 00s.
So. Engagement-driven model is pretty similar to casinos. It's profitable and anti-customer. What allows it in the Web - lack of separation between connectivity, storage and identities.
One can say it differently - the Web application layer should be higher than it is. IP and DNS can identify a site, that is, a computer or a cluster or something united. But they shouldn't identify a website. Quite obviously. A website shouldn't go down for the sole reason of some computer somewhere being shut down.
It also simply makes sense for the Web to work as some kind of a version control system - it just came into existence before those became the norm for things, well, requiring version control.
I don't want to write yet another time what everyone will find by themselves in that direction of thought. In short, WWW was an experiment at networked hypertext systems, similar to Gopher, but nicer. It was intended for nice cool library things. It wasn't intended as the "information superhighway". Another system actually was - Usenet. Usenet lacks that flaw of the Web.
Except Usenet is morally obsolete. Some new kind of it, with cryptographic identities of users and of groups, some sort of "websites" represented by sequence of update messages in the same group (here's version control), and probably something like realtime group chats, would be cool.
Better title: “YouTube is cracking down on click bait - here’s how”
"5 ways YouTube is cracking down on clickbait – #3 will make you shid and fard and cum your pants"
YouTube tried to crack down on clickbait, what happened next will shock you!
Thumbnail:
They're doing WHAT!?! --->
(⓿_⓿)
Two hours later with a changed title and thumbnail:
Fix YouTube clickbait with this one simple trick….
Like, we will be able to make negative feedback about a video again? Oh no nevermind it's just bs again...
*Only directly misleading clickbait. So they'll continue to promote other forms of clickbait like specific thumbnails or capitalized & ambiguous titles.
Of course they will, The Holy Algorithm loves that stuff. It’s why even some respectable creators have to stoop to that frustrating nonsense.
They don't have to, they choose to. There's still people like Etho who don't even ask for people to sub and post incredibly infrequently and still successfully maintain their views and audience simply through quality content. It's more a matter of whether you do YT for yourself, or for the money. And nowadays the majority of people do it for the money. That's why the content has become so piss poor over the years too. It's all just commercialized garbage.
Sure, as soon as X cracks down on misinformation
theverge
Haha nice try
I won't be happy until they ban shocked Pikachu "show us your O face" thumbnails.
You Tube Is Elminating Competition
What the hell is wrong with the people here? Actual positive news for a while and what does Lemmy have to say? Complaining and cynicism. No wonder you're so miserable all the time.
For years, every update YouTube has had has made the platform worse. I think its valid to doubt this will improve anything. That being said, I agree with you. Lemmy as a whole needs to calm down a bit and stop being so damn negative about everything.
Hating corporate is a warranted approach
They are not people, they are hostile threat actors.
Why are you shocked they get treated as such?
I haven't seen any of the usual self-righteous "I only use self-hosted video services" comments in here yet though.
Bait homosapien do not engage
I logged off and then started looking for titties....the tape project, dancers wearing next to nothing, African tribe dancing naked, body paint, see thru lingerie hauls, cleaning naked hauls, breast feeding tities....my YouTube is now embarrassing pornographical without me loving in.
YouTube is not for kids.
How else are people at religious colleges with internet filters supposed to masturbate?