YouTube Oddities

[015a]

My favorite YouTube oddity: If you hunt over the CSS the site downloads on, IIRC, every page; you'll eventually come across this selector:

    ytd-watch-metadata[video-id=QrGrOK8oZG8] h1.ytd-watch-metadata {
      color:#e6d140;
      font-family:Georgia,serif;
      font-size:250%;
      font-variant:small-caps;
      font-weight:normal;
      transform:skew(-5deg,0deg);
      text-shadow:1px 1px #000,1px 1px .1px #000
    }

A selector that appears to be referencing a very specific video ID; as far as I can tell, the only video in the billions of videos on YouTube to receive this treatment (at least, in terms of a "css selector with video-id in it").

The video: Adult Swim's "Too Many Cooks" skit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8)

[twisteriffic]

Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are basically gore/grossout videos.

It's still better than when it was constantly recommending the daily wire.

[crazygringo]

I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your viewing history:

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen YouTube recommend one of those in my life.

[throwanem]

Do you use the "not interested"/"don't recommend channel" options on these, or report them?

If not, it may be worth a try. They seem to do a lot to steer Youtube's recommender away from the more gamy regions of its latent space; for example, something like a year ago I saw recommended such a video, immediately reported it for "violent or repulsive content", and thus far haven't seen another. The same has been true for the occasional weirdo along the stripe of modern Russell Brand.

To be clear, I don't think the report was acted upon by Youtube, but I do think the signal inherent in the action must be accounted for in its recommendation model.

Also to be clear, this is no defense of Youtube. It's pretty trash these days, and even the most innocuous recommendations I get have very little to do with anything I'm actually interested in, but this does seem to keep it from getting the idea I might want to see incels and gore.

[qup]

I've never seen one recommended, just a counter-point. I watch YouTube daily.

[yen223]

I searched "Fluke 87v power on options" on YouTube in an incognito page, and all I got were results around the multimeter.

Like literally, my screen only had pictures of multimeters.

For good measure I repeated the search in my main Youtube account. Same thing.

[enobrev]

Maybe because I watch a good deal of youtube almost every day, but I do not see these sort of results.

[humblepie]

You're not alone. I've seen it on my account, and all I watch is old jazz stuff and nothing else. My wife's account who just watches mostly bakery has been getting these cartoon or AI generated "child slavery" depictions.

[Tommy430]

Honestly, the search has been broken for a while. Half of the search results aren't even related and another thing I hate is YouTube Shorts.

Anyways, for me, I just loathe how the whole site is designed in general. Opening YouTube today on a modern browser is slower than opening it on IE6 back then and the whole site relies on a JavaScript framework even though frontends like Invidious, Piped, and YT2009 (and possibly even more) show that you don't need JavaScript or have to make the entire site rely on it just to view content.

[numpad0]

I don't speak web front end so I can't explain, but it seems a lot of those are fed from ad system and joined on-browser, "we already have a perfect system for this, why not just..." style.

For me, enabling more adblock volunteer maintained filters, custom element filters, and parameter removals took it away, at costs of YouTube showing me ever niche-er and increasingly monotonic selections.

[samlinnfer]

Do you use adblock?

[mathieuh]

It keeps recommending me far-right political videos for some reason. I think it's because I like watching Forgotten Weapons and InRangeTV, even though Forgotten Weapons has essentially zero politics in it and InRangeTV is run by a left-libertarian.

Even after doing the "never recommend me this channel" thing it keeps recommending me this Jordan Peterson-type shit about "leftist woke idiots getting owned".

Plus, no matter how many times I tap "Not interested" on the Shorts section every week it's back.

[nonethewiser]

Well not for me

[vdaea]

This happens to me even though 1) I never log in and 2) I clear my cookies daily.

The other day I was looking for recipes and I had to see disgusting video thumbnails of faces full of zits interspersed with thumbnails of the food I wanted to cook.

There's a ublock origin filter here that hides suggested videos and other crap from the search results page https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube...

[PetitPrince]

> Roel Van de Paar, at this current time has 2,035,484 videos uploaded. > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-oYb2-xN5FbCXy0167Gg

What the hell. It doesn't seems to be autogenerated video.

[throwaway4roel]

I worked with him and he was as weird as you'd expect. He got let go after getting in someone's face for saying "oh my god", because it's "taking god's name in vain". (:

He used to do that back then too, AFAIK they were absolutely autogenerated.

(throwaway because I don't want him to harass me, he does do that too)

[h4ch1]

The videos seem to be done through a turk farm imo.

The start has a random intro to seem more human-like and the Question/Answer is basically copypasted and the font/style of delivery is very mediocre (and very distinctly cheap SEA format). The comments are the biggest giveaway though with multiple "Love from Bangladesh"s.

[rwmj]

It looks like the kind of video spam that now shows up in searches for technical questions.

[huvarda]

I've come across that channel while looking for answers to programming problems and it's so annoying. He just rips stackoverflow questions/answers and puts a little intro at the beginning

[Fr0styMatt88]

Okay just in case someone who knows reads this. Why doesn’t Youtube Premium background play work with members-only videos?

Became a member of a channel with spoken content and can’t even lock my phone when playing a member’s only video.

Posts and complaints on this go back years, with zero explanation from Youtube as to why this is, if it’s intentional or a bug, etc.

[p1necone]

Youtube background play being a paid feature is so brazen. Google are disabling a basic UX feature in their OS and then letting you pay for it in one app that they control.

[sosodev]

YouTube premium is ridiculously janky for the price. I’ve gotten ads in weird, new parts of the app multiple times as they’re experimenting with new strategies. Like while scrolling shorts for example.

[rezonant]

Yes this is perplexing. I have asked YouTube reps point blank about this but have never received any useful answer. As far as I can tell, it seems to be because the members only stuff uses the same system as YouTube's paid video rentals/purchasing system. If you rent a video on YouTube (or if you own one) you'll note that the behavior is the exact same: it acts as if you don't pay for YouTube Premium.

My guess is that the original "YouTube Sponsors" feature (which is now "YouTube Memberships") was built on top of the video rental/purchase system and now it is too hairy / not worth it to fix it in the eyes of the YouTube product managers.

I really wish they'd fix it.

[pomian]

If you can, install an old version of Firefox, and that allows you continue playing the YouTube video, with screen off, etc. (For example 68 esr)

[zb3]

Let me recommend this song: https://www.youtube.com/wach

[verticalscaler]

https://www.youtube.com/wath

^ And that one pops a "confirm channel subscription" pop up - is this an inside joke or bug?

[user_7832]

That's a weird thing... but a solid song, thanks!

[smashah]

Did you all notice that when the video says "like and subscribe", the subscribe button is highlighted with a rainbow border? must be new.

Example: https://youtu.be/z815XfakQCE?t=26

[albert_e]

Yes i noticed this a few weeks ago

And I confirmed it by rewinding a few times and getting the behaviour to repeat (most if the times)

[micael_dias]

Since October so relatively new, the like button also gets animations: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-67137492.amp

[no-dr-onboard]

This appears to me to be just a compilation of rejected bug bounty reports that were marked as "informational / NA" and are now being disclosed by the author.

[INTPenis]

Interesting but I was hoping this was about bugs. Because youtube has some bugs.

I use it a lot, it's my primary source of entertainment. Here is a list of issues;

    1. Casting disconnects after smartphone has been charging for 1+ hour.
    2. Small player window covers playlists.
    3. In profile tab of Youtube Android app Watch Later and Liked Videos will randomly switch places.
    4. Shorts are the worst thing ever for people who cast a lot.
    5. On desktop the "Add to watch later" and "Add to queue" buttons will switch locations depending on where you are in the feed.

[tech234a]

> "Interacting with any video from the old channel in the YouTube interface will redirect you back to the new one. The old channel name and reference will never display except in the API."

On Windows, if you use your the volume keys or the play/pause button on your keyboard during one of these videos, you will receive a media status pop-up in the corner of your screen containing the old channel name along with the video title and thumbnail. I've noticed this with a lot of music videos.

[Suppafly]

>On Windows, if you use your the volume keys or the play/pause button on your keyboard during one of these videos, you will receive a media status pop-up in the corner of your screen containing the old channel name along with the video title and thumbnail.

Always wondered why sometimes the pop-up description name was different, didn't think about the channel name having changed.

[gwern]

I wonder how many of these are https://www.hyrumslaw.com/ in action? Like the long-channel name seems like something you'd lock down as soon as you notice you made the classic error of trusting client-side validation of limits, but then you might decide to not truncate the offender's name.

[remus]

Most of them I imagine. To be honest the list is shorter than I expected for something as big and old as youtube!

[troupo]

> However, it is possible for 249 countries to appear in the allowed list. It's not clear why this happens as it is the same has having no restriction at all. It seems to occur most frequently with music videos, potentially they had actual blocks at one point and the only way it can be undone is to move everything to allowed?

Most likely this is the list sent by the rights holder.

[bombcar]

Or they're carefully prepared for new countries to appear. No need to allow break-away rebellious countries the ability to watch the latest music video.

[dylan604]

I've had to deal with rights, and it is annoying that they list them out individually. They also have a restricted list. They totally do not seem to understand the concepts of how white listings and black listings work. Rather than white listing all of them, just black list none. I've fought this for well over a decade. It's just a shit show to deal with.

[GaggiX]

I remember the 666 video by removing c or h from "watch" from the URL of whatever video you were watching. Actually kinda eerie.

[rasz]

>Video without a title

nice, this one breaks one of my userscripts

>Knowledge Base, at this current time has 1,054,762 videos uploaded.

Randomly GPT generated clickbait titles to 3-5 minute clips form some livestreams. If I was in control of YT such channels would be dropped for violating policy.

[sergiotapia]

Youtube Movies is such a wonderful product, it's crazy how I can't pay them $10/month and watch whatever I want in their ubiquitous apps. Even the comments come into play when watching a movie, it's fun to read jokes or some detail I missed. Like look, I can quickly watch The 6th Day a perfect Saturday 10AM movie while the kids are about to wake up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdnX-qQIulw

But because of greed all the content is spread across many many services, each with their own warty app. What a shame!

[password4321]

The ubiquity of YouTube is why if I'm going to "buy" (license) a movie I do so there whenever possible.

[pests]

Can someone tell me how @Seed has so many subs but no videos and odd content / comments?

Buying / deleting videos / etc?

He has people in his comments accusing him of commenting on their private videos / videos in private playlists.

[whitakerlol]

I haven't heard about this channel specifically but channels like that usually either sub bot or buy channels from seedy hacker forums.

- 10k subscribers - idiotic comments - "Who is..."/ "Why is... everywhere?" video

[atesti]

Are there not more videos that got corrupted? With this amount of data, youtube must have lost several videos statistically.

[Hunpeter]

A friend told me that the third video in the recommended list (the one that you see on the side when playing a video) often seems to be a (sometimes) barely related one from a small channel you've never watched. I can confirm the same happens to me.

[zeptonix]

LOL 3 month long videos ...