It sounds like we've combined the intermittent reinforcement dopamine machine with financial insecurity and created a monster.
> PewDiePie, who was the first individual creator to hit 100 million subscribers, said in a video that he was taking a break
On the one hand, it's amazing that one person can produce a show which reaches what previously you'd have needed a multinational TV organisation for. On the other hand, doing it alone makes it a lonely business with a higher risk of drifting off in a bad direction with nobody to correct you.
> YouTubers say they are afraid to take time off, out of fear it will hurt how their videos are highlighted on the site, which uses an algorithm to determine which ones to recommend. While the algorithm is a mystery
This is why so much of the "is youtube good or bad" question is misled by looking inside the videos. The really important action of youtube, the thing which prevents people leaving it, is (a) the recommendation and (b) the funding .. both of which are completely opaque to those whose careers depend on them. They're left with chaining themselves to a video camera to appease their machine god.
What I quite frankly struggle to understand is why this deal seems to be a good proposition for people. Your odds of becoming the next PewDiePie are Powerball odds, essentially. The work offers no security, no benefits, and very lumpy income. You say one wrong thing, and you get cancel cultured (some cases, it's justified. But is it always?). My point: Why would you pick this up as a primary source of income? It's a terrible deal, yet so many people choose it. Maybe I'm really privileged in being able to walk away from bad deals. I wouldn't take a new job for less pay.
If I were YouTube I wouldn't be transparent about these details. You're basically giving people a playbook for how to game your system. It would make recommendations useless because they'd be less organic and it would make monetization schemes harder to fight against. In my opinion keeping these details unknown is a good first line of defense.
PewDiePie made a video the other day where he called these articles out as grossly misrepresenting what he said (he was going to take a break because he has uploaded a video every day since he can remember, including having a shorter honeymoon to accommodate it).
I was an indie filmmaker. (It’s a hobby, we knew there was no money in it.) It was pretty clear to us that the YouTube algorithm was all about high volume, low quality. The kind of ambitious projects that were all about writing and acting we could spend a year creating would never find a home our audience there.
This has two consequences:
1. It sucks to be a producer for the platform.
2. The audience is pushed towards endless junk content instead of quality because that’s what the algorithm favors and incentivized producers to put into the world.
It did not have to be this way. It still doesn’t. The algorithm is an intentional decision to favor one style of content and production over others.
> The kind of ambitious projects that were all about writing and acting we could spend a year creating would never find a home our audience there.
Honestly, Youtube has become my video platform of choice precisely because I have no interest in that kind of content. While I am sure you do great work, the algorithm would be broken if you were recommended to me. I find the algorithm has done a great job of highlighting high quality channels that are up my ally. It sounds you would really be better off on a service more like Netflix, where the audience is looking for that kind of filmmaking.
In my experience the algorithm simply recommends similar content to what you watch based on your viewing history. If you watch enough football videos then soon your entire frontpage will be football.
There's a vast amount of high quality content on YouTube. What is not present are high production values. But that's fine really. In the end, production values are not important, it's the story you have to tell that matters.
I think it's important to think of an ambiguous metric like quality and think of it across multiple dimensions. Quality to youtube means frequency, recency, personal, etc - attributes that create relationships between the creator and the audience.
You're wanting YouTube to be something that it isn't. That's like complaining that McDonald's doesn't serve much health food. Find another distribution channel.
> the YouTube algorithm was all about high volume, low quality
This is just a reflection of what humans want. It's how people want their entertainment, their food, their news, their clothes, etc. I respect people who try to legitimately deliver a quality product, but it's an uphill battle.
Generally speaking, "the algorithm being a mystery" seems to be causing a lot of societal ills. What news we see on Facebook, what sources we see on Google, what pressure content creators feel. All of it causes a lot of anxiety and really only profits a small handful of companies by allowing them to dodge moderation duties. Moving companies that rely on UGC closer to a publisher probably is a good thing for the world (and content creators).
Serious question, are we at the point where some algorithms are so important in our society that they should be a public good?
Should the government require that Google search, Facebook and YouTube recommendation algorithms be published? And should changes to those algorithms need to meet certain criteria at by regulators, in order to prevent ill effects on society?
I'm thinking there must come a time when our machine algorithms are so impactful in society that we can't afford to leave them in the stewardship of a single private company with only profit motives. I think we probably reached this point a while ago.
and if you spin the argument further, that also describes why AI is overvalued (at least in terms of how hyped it is in reporting): If you have no chance of knowing how the result (e.g. of an algorithm) came to be, how can you trust it? In the long run, you can't.
I worked building content sites pre-youtube stars that the same audience gravitates towards. Primarily, I was one of the main designers on giantbomb and gamespot over the years.
The publishing industry is kind of terrible, and the line between real journalism and critique died somewhere around 2008. If I were to pick a point, I'd look to when Jeff was fired by CNET after he gave Kane and Lynch an unfavorable review. But you can see it in the degradation of every major gaming news outlet that used to have full-time employees with a platform stable enough to not bow down to PR teams.
That type of blowback would never happen today because any journalistic wall between the PR folks pushing these products and the content creators no longer exists. YouTube has successfully weaponized content. We like to talk a lot today about how great it is that we don't see ads. That's kind of lie. They are certainly there and we see them everyday, it's just now embedded in the content itself. The journos can't compete, because the PR firms block access to coverage unless the story is preconceived. As an example, back in the day we used to boycott Call of Duty "review" events where they'd fly you in a helicopter at a hotel so you could play the game for 6 hours with someone over your shoulder.
Fandom and "fun" content creation was always a loose proposition ("will i still be doing this at 40" was the bar night saying), but now it's just a quick hit slog. I sympathize with these folks to a degree. They're all independent, they all have no idea if this will be a job even next year, so of course they will take on any sort of shilling to keep their dream going. They need to hustle. It's like running a one-person startup.
I'm more worried about the 10s of thousands of other sad bedrooms where this is pushed as a real industry and a way of life. When startups fail, we engineers and designers fall back to jobs with the skills we learned. It's not as easy for people whose skill was trying to be funny on camera. There's a lot of people chasing the dream at the moment, and of course that's no different than trying to be a movie star, but part of me winces when I open up twitch and see that all this awkwardness is so public and often permanent.
If anyone is curious about where some of this could go, I'd recommend reading Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, a sort of near-future fiction that got a lot of this stuff right before it happened. I consider it the Network (as in the 70s movie) of our age. I fear for the day when the influencers and streamers make their way out of their bedrooms and into our public spaces, and we'll all be part of the show.
Something my kid said to me about YouTube last year (when he was 10) has always stuck with me, even if it was just a kid's throwaway comment:
"There are basically four generations: the grandparents, the parents, the YouTubers, and the kids."
The YouTubers seem to occupy that niche of ephemeral stardom previously occupied primarily by pop musicians, movie actors, and professional athletes.
The athletes, actors, and musicians are still there (and some of them are of course YouTubers too), but I'm sure my son and his friends know far more 'native' YouTubers than other celebrities.
Not sure what this all means, although it did make me start paying much more attention to YouTube and led to some discussions with my son about what "infotainment" is and the dangers implicit in it.
I'm repeating myself a lot. Life, and especially adult life, is far from easy. The old world was slow, but it made people grow to their natural spot in a somehow stabler way.
I'll tell you a secret: The world is pretty much the same as it's always been, including the people. There are just more of them.
People don't deal with change well, but choosing to believe that the present is an exception to how the human world has operated for millennia only has a short term benefit - validation for those of us in the present. The negative effects of this belief include cutting one's self off from all the experiences of all the humans who came before us.
To learn how to deal with "Internet 2.1" in your life, consider reading some Aristotle, Plato, Alvin Toffler or Eric Higgs.
I wish there were alternatives to the Youtube recommendation algorithm. The algorithm in my opinion gives too much weight to frequent uploads of shallow 10+ minute videos (2 minutes of content stretched out to 10 minutes) filled with filler and clickbait-y titles with obnoxious thumbnails. Perhaps there'd be less burnout and increased viewer satisfaction if there were was a way to watch Youtube with alternative recommendation algorithms.
I've been watching way too much YouTubes lately and their algorithms seem to do a fairly good job tracking my changing interests while also keeping me current on the channels I like watching all the episodes -- all without ever hitting the subscription button and only ever liking one video. Got on a guitar videos kick lately and through the recommended videos discovered some artists I really like listening to so win/win in my book...
Not a huge surprise though, if you consider how much people (myself included) spend just bindging YT videos, the pressure to produce more is crazy high. And they take so much more time to create than watch.
But, nobody is forcing them.. So I mean.. Its self inflicted.. So its a bit hard to garner sympathy.
From what I’ve heard, YouTube ad revenue drops significantly in January after the holiday season, which is also sometimes a (contributing) factor in YouTubers taking the month off
Yes, but you lose recency in whatever you're talking about, especially if you consistently upload a daily video that talks about yesterday's events. Even in a gaming video some of the quips and tangents might be temporally relevant. In other words, a two week old video talking about yesterday's impeachment is no longer interesting to viewers because everyone's kneejerk opinions are already settled.
Pretty much any social media job like this, be it YouTuber or Instagram influencer or whatever, seems to be all life-consuming. I would never advise any friend to enter this business. Burnout is practically guaranteed with the level of content the services demand.
In a very real sense this is true of every part of the advertising industry I have ever had the displeasure to witness or interact with. This is a point I have been making for years and real people have never failed to point out that I am a paranoid crackpot for it. At this point it almost seems more worth it to just sit back and sip water while the world slowly burns around me, but of course that is far too cynical.
Have you found a way to get the point across that doesn't land as being abrasive and difficult in a way that nobody seems to understand?
let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. not everyone with a lot of views on youtube is an "influencer", although I do share your lack of concern for this particular group. there's plenty of popular channels doing honest reviews, comedy, etc.
Prob getting burnt out on having to push clickbait via their partner network. If people are upset at Facebook due to the 2016 elections, they should be looking into these networks on YouTube.
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
> PewDiePie, who was the first individual creator to hit 100 million subscribers, said in a video that he was taking a break
On the one hand, it's amazing that one person can produce a show which reaches what previously you'd have needed a multinational TV organisation for. On the other hand, doing it alone makes it a lonely business with a higher risk of drifting off in a bad direction with nobody to correct you.
> YouTubers say they are afraid to take time off, out of fear it will hurt how their videos are highlighted on the site, which uses an algorithm to determine which ones to recommend. While the algorithm is a mystery
This is why so much of the "is youtube good or bad" question is misled by looking inside the videos. The really important action of youtube, the thing which prevents people leaving it, is (a) the recommendation and (b) the funding .. both of which are completely opaque to those whose careers depend on them. They're left with chaining themselves to a video camera to appease their machine god.
[+] [-] JMTQp8lwXL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hanniabu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hos234|6 years ago|reply
Just like the brain doesn't need every neuron broadcasting its state to every other neuron.
That's the fundamental flaw of Social Media and Media in general - Many to Many Broadcast - is not as useful to society as thought.
And we are learning it at high cost.
[+] [-] asjw|6 years ago|reply
YouTube is larger than many previous TV organizations, with none of the benefits of working for them
[+] [-] kiba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadowgovt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|6 years ago|reply
PewDiePie has tens of millions of dollars for vlogging and here you are making him sound like a peasant locked in serfdom.
[+] [-] exdsq|6 years ago|reply
This isn't burning out, it's having a holiday.
[+] [-] dgellow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coffeefirst|6 years ago|reply
This has two consequences:
1. It sucks to be a producer for the platform.
2. The audience is pushed towards endless junk content instead of quality because that’s what the algorithm favors and incentivized producers to put into the world.
It did not have to be this way. It still doesn’t. The algorithm is an intentional decision to favor one style of content and production over others.
[+] [-] umvi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randomdata|6 years ago|reply
Honestly, Youtube has become my video platform of choice precisely because I have no interest in that kind of content. While I am sure you do great work, the algorithm would be broken if you were recommended to me. I find the algorithm has done a great job of highlighting high quality channels that are up my ally. It sounds you would really be better off on a service more like Netflix, where the audience is looking for that kind of filmmaking.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mantap|6 years ago|reply
There's a vast amount of high quality content on YouTube. What is not present are high production values. But that's fine really. In the end, production values are not important, it's the story you have to tell that matters.
[+] [-] crisdux|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|6 years ago|reply
This is just a reflection of what humans want. It's how people want their entertainment, their food, their news, their clothes, etc. I respect people who try to legitimately deliver a quality product, but it's an uphill battle.
[+] [-] jsonne|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eloff|6 years ago|reply
Should the government require that Google search, Facebook and YouTube recommendation algorithms be published? And should changes to those algorithms need to meet certain criteria at by regulators, in order to prevent ill effects on society?
I'm thinking there must come a time when our machine algorithms are so impactful in society that we can't afford to leave them in the stewardship of a single private company with only profit motives. I think we probably reached this point a while ago.
[+] [-] xamuel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tarsul|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snide|6 years ago|reply
The publishing industry is kind of terrible, and the line between real journalism and critique died somewhere around 2008. If I were to pick a point, I'd look to when Jeff was fired by CNET after he gave Kane and Lynch an unfavorable review. But you can see it in the degradation of every major gaming news outlet that used to have full-time employees with a platform stable enough to not bow down to PR teams.
That type of blowback would never happen today because any journalistic wall between the PR folks pushing these products and the content creators no longer exists. YouTube has successfully weaponized content. We like to talk a lot today about how great it is that we don't see ads. That's kind of lie. They are certainly there and we see them everyday, it's just now embedded in the content itself. The journos can't compete, because the PR firms block access to coverage unless the story is preconceived. As an example, back in the day we used to boycott Call of Duty "review" events where they'd fly you in a helicopter at a hotel so you could play the game for 6 hours with someone over your shoulder.
Fandom and "fun" content creation was always a loose proposition ("will i still be doing this at 40" was the bar night saying), but now it's just a quick hit slog. I sympathize with these folks to a degree. They're all independent, they all have no idea if this will be a job even next year, so of course they will take on any sort of shilling to keep their dream going. They need to hustle. It's like running a one-person startup.
I'm more worried about the 10s of thousands of other sad bedrooms where this is pushed as a real industry and a way of life. When startups fail, we engineers and designers fall back to jobs with the skills we learned. It's not as easy for people whose skill was trying to be funny on camera. There's a lot of people chasing the dream at the moment, and of course that's no different than trying to be a movie star, but part of me winces when I open up twitch and see that all this awkwardness is so public and often permanent.
If anyone is curious about where some of this could go, I'd recommend reading Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, a sort of near-future fiction that got a lot of this stuff right before it happened. I consider it the Network (as in the 70s movie) of our age. I fear for the day when the influencers and streamers make their way out of their bedrooms and into our public spaces, and we'll all be part of the show.
[+] [-] josephorjoe|6 years ago|reply
"There are basically four generations: the grandparents, the parents, the YouTubers, and the kids."
The YouTubers seem to occupy that niche of ephemeral stardom previously occupied primarily by pop musicians, movie actors, and professional athletes.
The athletes, actors, and musicians are still there (and some of them are of course YouTubers too), but I'm sure my son and his friends know far more 'native' YouTubers than other celebrities.
Not sure what this all means, although it did make me start paying much more attention to YouTube and led to some discussions with my son about what "infotainment" is and the dangers implicit in it.
[+] [-] agumonkey|6 years ago|reply
internet 2.1 feels like lightning.
[+] [-] Accujack|6 years ago|reply
People don't deal with change well, but choosing to believe that the present is an exception to how the human world has operated for millennia only has a short term benefit - validation for those of us in the present. The negative effects of this belief include cutting one's self off from all the experiences of all the humans who came before us.
To learn how to deal with "Internet 2.1" in your life, consider reading some Aristotle, Plato, Alvin Toffler or Eric Higgs.
[+] [-] JDiculous|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleEntity|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bilekas|6 years ago|reply
But, nobody is forcing them.. So I mean.. Its self inflicted.. So its a bit hard to garner sympathy.
[+] [-] aiddun|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] williamDafoe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobyhinloopen|6 years ago|reply
...right?
[+] [-] kawfey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FussyZeus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|6 years ago|reply
Isn't this older than social media? Mass media stars, e.g. post-War movie stars, were similarly all-consumed.
Maybe one has to go back to e.g. Charlie Chaplin to find an era when this kind of celebrity wasn't the norm?
[+] [-] dehrmann|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YinglingLight|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cryptica|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] krageon|6 years ago|reply
In a very real sense this is true of every part of the advertising industry I have ever had the displeasure to witness or interact with. This is a point I have been making for years and real people have never failed to point out that I am a paranoid crackpot for it. At this point it almost seems more worth it to just sit back and sip water while the world slowly burns around me, but of course that is far too cynical.
Have you found a way to get the point across that doesn't land as being abrasive and difficult in a way that nobody seems to understand?
[+] [-] leetcrew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squish78|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ihuman|6 years ago|reply
What kind of people?
[+] [-] blanche_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techntoke|6 years ago|reply