A slightly unusual video from the fantastic Technology Connections channel. It articulates a lot of my own thoughts on social media, “algorithms” and AI.

What surprised me the most was the statistic that only 3% of author’s views come from the subscriptions feed. This is wild to me because subscriptions are pretty much the only way I have ever used YouTube.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
    18·
    8 months ago

    The subscriptions thing is something I have been saying about YouTube for years. People are always complaining that the predictions are terrible but they never have subscriptions.

    They are literally not using the app the way it’s supposed to be used and then complaining that it doesn’t work. Well yeah.

    • sibachian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      10·
      8 months ago

      just like how people keep complaining about facebook groups.

      they uprooted every community and hobby discussion board ever and move them to a platform that doesn’t support distribution of information then moan that it’s just spam and repeated engagement content.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        3·
        8 months ago

        YouTube prefers you use the home feed

        I’m not all that sure; don’t they get the same amount of money from ads no matter how you find them? And they get a hefty chunk on “Join” and “Thanks” payments (a 30% cut, IIRC), which people are less likely to spend on non-subscribed channels.

        • Stepos Venzny@beehaw.orgEnglish
          6·
          8 months ago

          If you look at your Subscribed page and don’t see any updates, there’s a good chance you’ll leave YouTube without watching anything.

          The Home page has a higher likelihood of tempting you to watch something you hadn’t planned on.

        • zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev
          2·
          8 months ago

          I think that youtube wants to maximize watch time, if you just watch subscriptions you might get “done” at some point but with the home feed you can just keep watching forever