A thread about Youtube business practices.

[Barzon]

Can you move them to their own thread, because I find this discussion extremely interesting?

[Vanamonde]

6 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Can you move them to their own thread, because I find this discussion extremely interesting?

Here you go. 

[Barzon]

Thank you.  

Are the previous posts only visible to mods? Because I can only see the comment from 18 minutes ago, and onwards?

[Vanamonde]

59 minutes ago, Barzon Kerman said:

Thank you.  

Are the previous posts only visible to mods? Because I can only see the comment from 18 minutes ago, and onwards?

Going through several days of back posts to find the ones about Youtube and move them here is a bit of a job. Why not just start afresh? I never knew what issue was being discussed anyway. Care to start the discussion by explaining? 

[DDE]

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

Going through several days of back posts to find the ones about Youtube and move them here is a bit of a job.

Yeah, and looks like one of mine got lost. 

Ultimately, I don’t expect this thread to end well, as the discussion of the topic is incomplete without the mention of power politics within the media, and ultimately politics at large.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Ultimately, I don’t expect this thread to end well, as the discussion of the topic is incomplete without the mention of power politics within the media, and ultimately politics at large.

Then let's do our best to not push the edges too far then, eh?

[YNM]

Well, here's my suite...

Spoiler

Kinda fitting as well.

tl;dr it's just like life. It's always about the odds and a bit of russian roulette.

Edited March 4, 2019 by YNM

[DDE]

9 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Then let's do our best to not push the edges too far then, eh?

Well, we can try.

One of Youtube’s fundamental issues is trying to become advertiser-friendly. Naturally, larger channels (with higher post frequencies) are more advertiser-friendly because they tend to carry out self-curation, whereas advertiser-unfriendliness is measured in the probability to cause a moral panic. Now, some moral panics are justified (Elsagate), while others are little more that political hit-jobs; what’s unchanged is that they’re being propogated by traditional media that also run large channels. It’s a bit of a class war, and one could argue it’s an attempt to suppress alternative voices from all sides of the political spectrum (and from beyond the edge of the flat Earth) and turn Youtube into TV 2.0 instead of a social media free-for-all.

[YNM]

43 minutes ago, DDE said:

One of Youtube’s fundamental issues is trying to become advertiser-friendly. Naturally, larger channels (with higher post frequencies) are more advertiser-friendly because they tend to carry out self-curation, whereas advertiser-unfriendliness is measured in the probability to cause a moral panic.

Not necessarily.

Also, RealLife™ still exist.

And if you've looked into the YouTube algorithm video in my previous post, it's also fairly clear that being "popular" has a lot of different aspects, and it's fine. I don't watch any of the most popular channels, I watch stuff that matters to me...

... oh.

[Superfluous J]

So many YouTube videos on how bad YouTube is.

I'm not speaking as to the content of any of the videos posted here. In spite of the fact that I too watch a lot of stuff (that actually interests me) from there, I tend to ignore them when browsing a forum. If you can't type your answer, I'm spending the time it would take to watch the videos you decided were close enough to your point to post instead.

I'm also not going to comment on the actual topic of the thread, as I've yet to see a post that details what the actual problem is. Other than Ads are bad and big media and stuff. I don't watch that stuff (either of them) so can't really comment from firsthand experience. The channels I do watch though seem to be chugging on well enough.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

In spite of the fact that I too watch a lot of stuff (that actually interests me) from there, I tend to ignore them when browsing a forum.

Basically :

(1)

YouTube is the internet.

Internet is just... well, internet.

Some people do well on it. More don't.

It doesn't matter the quality of the stuff you're spewing, what's popular is just what's popular. And by the time you follow suit and remake that 'popular' thing you'd probably be disappointed because everyone has moved on from it, - because people get bored, as always. Hence sometimes you'll find something that you have spent a lot of effort on being rather useless, but that one simple gag you did went on 'viral'.

On the other hand, if you did one thing and that immediately becomes popular, then you have a schtick, and people will compare everything you do to that one thing. That sort of stuff won't support your life until you die - it can even kill your own reputation that might have been nurtured since long through your other, unrelated works.

 

(2)

More specific to YouTube, YouTube is just a site for people to upload videos, but which is funded largely through advertising. YouTube has such a diverse content - from your general age stuff, to kids, adults, intimate, politics, gaming, science, whatever - that it will have a hard time trying to tailor everything the same.

Spoiler : They don't.

The goal that YouTube algorithm has always sticks to is "increased watch time", meaning people spend more time on it, and hopefully they'll see more ads on it. And this goal usually lures people right into what interest them anyway - hence there's a risk of dissociation between various side as stuff that's not soothing to your taste you're likely not going to watch, and you're likely not going to click on them, and as such the algorithm has flagged them as "no, they won't like it, find something else".

 

(3)

Now on the creators side :

Does the average Youtuber makes money ?

Answer : No. Clearly not.

The problem of course goes into the same thing as has been highlighted in the first section. Videos that has high quality tends to be more costly to make, but due to the fact that "what's popular is popular", it might flop badly. And when they do ? Well, people get mad.

Enlightement to all of you, YouTube creators : This site makes you no money.

This is problematic because many people then felt like YouTube is being unfair. It's never unfair - what you're seeing is just how we live : people who are lucky thrive compared to those who aren't. So trying to do YouTube and make money from it is just a monumentaly stupid idea - 'many' of those who do make money from it are still a very small amount compared to the total amount of creators. Looking at P-D-P as being an example of unfairness is like looking at a shelled, damaged airplanes that comes back, then trying to patch the holes it. They're just survivors, and they have a heavy survivor's paradox attached to them. Even then, one day they will flop too, they don't live forever.

So, if you intend to make money on YouTube, the answer is : don't. You'll never do it. If you do, you can still flop, regardless of how big you are.

This is even worse if you're trying to remedy the situation by either adverts or personal donation : those are a millstone around your neck. It might not seem to be, but ad products might have trouble and you would be dragged with it, and personal donations, while seems harmless, means you now have an obligation to make the stuff they want to see, even if everyone else finds it boring : you can't change course, you can't throw another roll of the dice to see will the new thing gets popular. This is why the channel I keep referring to uses none of that, instead opting for doing additional, non-YouTube works to make ends meet (or create a buffer) when their YouTube 'bussiness' is slumping. The other runs a legitimate bussiness which brings much more money than his YouTube channel - if there's anything returning to him from YouTube it's not from ad revenues, it's from new orders being made to his bussiness due to their publication.

 

And if you find these texts too much for you, maybe the soothing human voice of someone who's actually good at it would be a good alternative - look at the videos I posted before.

Edited March 4, 2019 by YNM

[Superfluous J]

12 minutes ago, YNM said:

And if you find these texts too much for you, maybe the soothing human voice of someone who's actually good at it would be a good alternative - look at the videos I posted before.

Nope that was exactly what I was expecting when I came to this thread. Thanks for "Snarking it up" for me

Sad that it seems all the hubbub surrounds the fact that no, you can't really expect to become super rich and famous playing video games or blabbing on and on about your opinion on the internet. If that was true I'd be a bazillionaire.

[YNM]

8 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Sad that it seems all the hubbub surrounds the fact that no, you can't really expect to become super rich and famous playing video games or blabbing on and on about your opinion on the internet. If that was true I'd be a bazillionaire.

You can be - if you're on the right place, the right time, and the right surrounding.

But that's just like roulette, except this time the one bullet would make you live, and there're millions of slots.

It's like how the Tree That Owns Itself in Georgia is popular, while the Tree That Owns Itself in Alabama is just an obscure curiosity. (well, at least before someone made a video on both...)

[XB-70A]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

But that's just like roulette, except this time the one bullet would make you live, and there're millions of slots.

I would add that for 99.9% of YouTube users, the roulette has to be played with semi-automatic pistols. 

[LordFerret]

Yes, we all grew up being told "You can be President!"

 

The problem with these YouTube sensations is that, just like pro-sport-anythings, you've not much to fall back on when the limelight dims.  So I hope they're saving their money and going to night school between game playing and video editing, because to me it doesn't look like they'll excel at doing much else.

[Guest]

To be honest I don't even think the problem lies in making a lot of money from YouTube or not, censorship and DMCA abuse is the bigger deal in my opinion.

 

Review and gameplay channels, for instance, are easily the most abused by copyright takedowns that basically throw the middle finger to the fair use policy. Even worse, if the claimer rejects your appeals, you might actually have to go to court over a video to get it back online. This hurts primarily smaller channels, which don't have a big following and can't make much noise about it.

 

Another thing is the straight up censorship and the (I'm sorry) blatant political correctness at work there. There's channels getting literally all their videos demonetized at the blink of an eye. One interesting example is Count Dankula on YouTube: he got a message from a BuzzFeed writer asking how's his monetization (straight up, out of the blue), he went to check it everything was suddenly demonetized. He does political comedy, and I'm guessing his views not matching YouTube's certainly was a factor here. Not to mention the guy from BuzzFeed seemingly knowing he lost his monetization before him, which is certainly interesting.

 

The political correctness at play is also blatantly obvious. YouTube Rewind 2018 is all I'm saying.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

My biggest problem with YouTube is that its suggestions and algorithm are predatory because they attempt to make you keep watching with no regard for your time or happiness. It also encourages clickbait and quickly, poorly, made videos.

I don't think popularity on YouTube is caused by quality, but I am glad smaller channels are often able to support their creators somewhat, if only as a hobby. But it seems like they are more often supported by Patreon and sponsored videos, rather than ads. I suspect that ads are really only meant to make money for google.

[adsii1970]

There's a lot of emotions on this topic about how YouTube monetizes videos. But at the heart of it, YouTube is owned by Google. Google exists to make money - nothing political about it. Google recently shut down the Google+ platform (it's social media competitor of Facebook) because it was not making sufficient revenue to justify its continued existence or development. Sure, I've had to deal with the commercial clip about ever 20 minutes into a video, but that is how YouTube pays its bills - and if I really get tired of it, there's two options:

• Subscribe to the paid edition of YouTube
• Quit using YouTube

9 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

My biggest problem with YouTube is that its suggestions and algorithm are predatory because they attempt to make you keep watching with no regard for your time or happiness. It also encourages clickbait and quickly, poorly, made videos.

I do agree wholeheartedly with this. What I hate are the suggestions which are a complete 180 degrees from what I am doing. Case in point, last night, I was watching some of the videos about the speculation surrounding Star Wars IX and out of nowhere one of the recommended videos (and a video in the YouTube generated auto play list) was for some show on FoodNetwork - I think it was Rachel Ray... Yeah, way to go, YouTube, although I do enjoy cooking, I was more interested in the Star Wars IX plot theories last night!

[XB-70A]

14 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I don't think popularity on YouTube is caused by quality, but I am glad smaller channels are often able to support their creators somewhat, if only as a hobby. But it seems like they are more often supported by Patreon and sponsored videos, rather than ads. I suspect that ads are really only meant to make money for google.

And you are right. I would also find it interesting to note that a large number of contributors do not even seek to get any penny from their achievements. Some do it for the unique pleasure of creating, others use YouTube as a backup base while leaving the possibility to visitors to access it.

 

16 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I've had to deal with the commercial clip about ever 20 minutes into a video

Coupled with:

 

I just looked at my results under Chrome, 508 848 ads blocked in almost two years, which means 697 at an average daily rate, or one every 2 minutes.

I understand that it may bother, but the lack of relationship between what interests me and the categories of advertising make me use this plugin. Some websites use more complex and powerful analyzers, and are then able to offer potentially interesting ads, clearly related to what I enjoy. I then disable ABP for these sites. However, in the case of YouTube, it's not nearly happening.

[StrandedonEarth]

What bugs me is those “Top Ten...”. type of videos. Yeah, I made the mistake of clicking one or two because I found the topic interesting. But I  found that they dragged on for way too long IMO. 10-15 minutes for a top 10 clip that could be covered in 2-3 minutes tops? I don’t have time for that boring filler they stuff in between things I want to see. But now since I clicked on a couple my auto play and recommended lust is polluted with that bloated crap. 

[Superfluous J]

For any who would be interested.

At any given time I follow between a half dozen and a dozen people on YouTube. They all play video games that I am interested in, or have done so at some point but I like the people (or the games) enough to have kept watching them after they moved on. If they move on and I don't watch anything for a month or so, I drop them.

I do not use the YouTube subscription service at all. I am subscribed to a few channels but that was from years ago and I don't refer to it at all. When I follow someone, I drag a link to their video page up into a bookmark folder in Firefox. Every day, once or twice, I middle-click that folder to open everybody up in their own tab, and then for every new video that I want to see, open THOSE up in their own tabs.

Then while they play in the background (so the person gets a view) and I thumbs up the video (so they get a like AND I can instantly see if I've seen the video), I use one of 2 plug-ins to download the video to my computer as a file. Video DownloadHelper or Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express. These are Firefox plugins. I don't know if they are in Chrome too but suspect they are not. I actually decided to make Firefox my main browser because Chrome and YouTube are owned by the same company and when I was setting this up, Chrome options were limited and fleeting.

Anyway, all the videos get put into a folder by an automated process, and I watch them with a little batch file I wrote for myself that makes it easy to use mplayer (yaay for Windows ports of my favorite *nix programs) to watch them. I have literally done this for years. Almost half a decade now.

No ads. No throttling. No internet needed, even, at the time of watching. It's a dream to be on a 3-hour flight, watching someone interesting play a game I'm either also playing or curious about.

[YNM]

10 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

I've had to deal with the commercial clip about ever 20 minutes into a video

If you keep skipping them or reload the video once the ad appears, the bots would be well-informed that "yeah this viewer is shut with ads".

11 hours ago, Aperture Science said:

censorship... political correctness

Sadly this has more to do with people as a whole. It went even worse with the whole "community policing" thing. It's done because they want as little involvement from the employees, because otherwise they're a publisher.

Then you have RealLife™, with all the countries and companies...

6 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

What bugs me is those “Top Ten...”. type of videos.

You can tell YouTube that you're "not interested" in such videos. I've done them so often now they only show me the stuff I subscribe to on the home page, plus one or two other stuff on the recommendation when watching a video.

[DDE]

12 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Google exists to make money - nothing political about it.

All I can say without derailing this thread utterly is

Ha

Ha

Ha!

13 hours ago, Aperture Science said:

Another thing is the straight up censorship and the (I'm sorry) blatant political correctness at work there. There's channels getting literally all their videos demonetized at the blink of an eye. One interesting example is Count Dankula on YouTube: he got a message from a BuzzFeed writer asking how's his monetization (straight up, out of the blue), he went to check it everything was suddenly demonetized. He does political comedy, and I'm guessing his views not matching YouTube's certainly was a factor here. Not to mention the guy from BuzzFeed seemingly knowing he lost his monetization before him, which is certainly interesting.

It’s odd they weren’t auto-demonetized outright in the first place and somehow got by Youtube’s content filters.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

It’s odd they weren’t auto-demonetized outright in the first place and somehow got by Youtube’s content filters.

That'd discourage political content entirely off the site. It'd be like censoring politics to the public - what difference you'd have to Nineteen Eighty-Four's Oceania ? Worse still, that'd only leave those with large external funds operating in the site... which isn't a good sight to behold, oftentimes.

But yeah. It is difficult to try and control a group of people, esp. one that is highly diverse in nature - which the whole world is. I'd argue that YouTube has done a fair job on this, trying to minimize the clash between two opposing sides, but allowing other, unflamed interactions (well, at least not yet inflamed). Even if it leeches over to the other side of complete isolation as well sometimes.

So tbh I don't see any problem with the way YouTube runs it's revenue operation - it just matches one thing to another. There are some bad emergent patterns, but one can always tweak it further. In this respect, YouTube is actually still better than other social media sites that utilizes advertising...

Edited March 5, 2019 by YNM

[DDE]

13 minutes ago, YNM said:

That'd discourage political content entirely off the site.

Correction: that would discourage minor creators of political content - often a certain brand of political content - off the site. More established content creators with external revenue streams (especially from taxpayer-filled coffers) are immune to demonetizations, and more radical measures have to be applied, such as intentional derankings (Question More!) and the dreaded shadowban of Restricted Mode.

While social media giants avoid the legal liability of publishers, they’re in a position for, ultimately, arbitrary censorship (as are the owners of, say, this forum) - and there is strong pressure for them to apply said unlimited censorship powers to deplatform the Undesireable of the Day, including internal pressure.