I got on a YouTube kick a while back and subscribed to anybody whose videos entertained me. They haven’t all been winners, and I’ve unsubscribed from some of them, but for the most part it gives me a good way to see the sort of content I want. It’s actually halfway decent.
Until you start using the apps, that is. They are the most cancerous, dark pattern bullshit hellscapes and I can’t believe how far they’ve come. Every movement and click on those things is intended to get you to engage and watch just one more video, it’s terrible.
I don’t know if I can explain it well, but I’m just opposed to the concept of having to subscribe when there is a front page that shows me all the new videos of people I watch regularly. It’s an unnecessary step. I realize it helps creators (I was one once), but I still don’t like having to constantly subscribe and unsubscribe based on who I’ve gained and lost interest in when it just tells me that person has a new video and if I stop watching them for a while, it stops telling me about them. I can also instantly tell it to not recommend the channel anymore.
This is a really strange concept to me. I’m constantly fighting against the algorithm! I subscribe to anyone I’m remotely interested in and occasionally do mass-unsubscribes to clear out the ones I’m not interested in.
I also find myself regularly checking the pages of people I subscribe to because YouTube will frequently stop putting their videos on the front page. I’ve also tried turning on notifications for certain people but that just gives me notification fatigue.
I think my biggest annoyance is that YouTube seems to take my decision not to watch a particular video right now as a signal that I’m not interested in the creator anymore, when actually I’m just prioritizing what I watch based on how long the video is and how much time I have. I’m not going to watch an hour long video when I only have 15 minutes! So YouTube is just constantly overfitting on my preferences! Really stupid and frustrating to deal with.
Perhaps I’m atypical though. Seems like a lot of people just go to YouTube and let it force feed them whatever is going viral at the time.
I got on a YouTube kick a while back and subscribed to anybody whose videos entertained me. They haven’t all been winners, and I’ve unsubscribed from some of them, but for the most part it gives me a good way to see the sort of content I want. It’s actually halfway decent.
Until you start using the apps, that is. They are the most cancerous, dark pattern bullshit hellscapes and I can’t believe how far they’ve come. Every movement and click on those things is intended to get you to engage and watch just one more video, it’s terrible.
I don’t know if I can explain it well, but I’m just opposed to the concept of having to subscribe when there is a front page that shows me all the new videos of people I watch regularly. It’s an unnecessary step. I realize it helps creators (I was one once), but I still don’t like having to constantly subscribe and unsubscribe based on who I’ve gained and lost interest in when it just tells me that person has a new video and if I stop watching them for a while, it stops telling me about them. I can also instantly tell it to not recommend the channel anymore.
It’s just so much easier.
This is a really strange concept to me. I’m constantly fighting against the algorithm! I subscribe to anyone I’m remotely interested in and occasionally do mass-unsubscribes to clear out the ones I’m not interested in.
I also find myself regularly checking the pages of people I subscribe to because YouTube will frequently stop putting their videos on the front page. I’ve also tried turning on notifications for certain people but that just gives me notification fatigue.
I think my biggest annoyance is that YouTube seems to take my decision not to watch a particular video right now as a signal that I’m not interested in the creator anymore, when actually I’m just prioritizing what I watch based on how long the video is and how much time I have. I’m not going to watch an hour long video when I only have 15 minutes! So YouTube is just constantly overfitting on my preferences! Really stupid and frustrating to deal with.
Perhaps I’m atypical though. Seems like a lot of people just go to YouTube and let it force feed them whatever is going viral at the time.