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- Hacker News
- What a strange choice from YouTube. They won't even let you create a draft of a video ( private not published anywhere ) and then replace the video before publishing. This seems much more confusing, it's like two videos yet they don't have different urls. Maybe they will control for a level of similarity?by skyberrys
- I'm not a fan of the new approach, which is, basically "We don't need to be creative, up front. We'll just shove some crap out quickly, and work on the friction points."
But it's not that simple. We definitely need to "pave the bare spots" (desire paths); It's just that we need to start off, at what we sincerely believe to be an optimal place, knowing that it isn't, in fact, optimal.
- OT: YouTube has some big problems.
I don't think I am the audience for YouTube any more.
YouTube is converging towards where all the social media sites are:
* shorts
* photo/text posts
* longer videos too - typically 12 minutes approx
* AI videos - some of which are fine but I want to be able to filter them out
* their algorithm/feed is very bad at letting me explore my interests, when I choose to - instead it feeds me stuff that leaves me unsatisified
But I came here years ago to watch TV made by people NOT bound to 12 minutes. I watch pretty much nothing else at night on the couch except YouTube but I am coming to realise it's no longer what I want.
That "original YouTube" seems to be gone. Nothing has replaced it.
by wewewedxfgdf - As Seth Godin said:
> Enough A/B testing will turn any website into a porn site
by jordwest - From [0]:
> The funny thing about scoring systems is they are kind of little dictators. They tell you what you’re supposed to want and value. And that’s the weird thing. Scoring systems are little definitions of success and failure. I think one of the biggest differences is that, in games, those definitions are temporary and playful and under your control. And if you don’t like it, you can throw it away and you never have to play again. And in institutions, they’re authoritarian. […] After a period of time, [metrics] seem to drain what’s genuinely valuable from the system because they point people at something that’s very easily and mechanically checkable and measurable.
[0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/673-the-score/transcr...
by csnover - I strongly believe A/B testing users without their knowledge and enthusiastic consent is unethical. If you don't have enough confidence in your changes to make them carte blanche, then don't make them at all. Users don't want their shit changing all the time.
- "There’s this sort of unspoken rule of community on YouTube, that like we’re all having this same experience together — we’re all watching the same video. That is what makes it a cultural phenomenon is that we all saw the same thing […] so letting people put up two or three different videos of the same thing at the same time kind of fundamentally breaks that, which doesn't feel right."
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It's going to be awkward if you share a youtube link with somebody and what they see is significantly different from what you saw, perhaps even to the point of them replying, "Why on Earth did you send this to me? Are you on crack?"
More importantly, this will almost inevitably lead to content creators being given the ability to not just randomly A/B test versions of a video, but produce different versions of the same video that are shown to users based on their data.
e.g. Shania Twain used to produce different versions of her albums with different instrumentation based on which section of the music store they'd be sold in. There was a Country version for the Country section and a Rock version for the Rock section. She's still bootin' around today, so she could produce different versions of music videos targeting users based on whether Google thinks they like Rock or Country more. This would be relatively harmless, although one might be surprised by the version that appears on a friend's phone.
Musical taste isn't what really divides people these days. What might content creators do if they could show different videos to people based on their political views? This might be good for their business, but it undermines objective reality. People would be shown different "facts" based on their beliefs. This is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen to reduce political polarization and bring people closer together. A common reality is necessary for society to function.
by beloch