Has YouTube experienced enshittification?
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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I got on a YouTube kick a while back and subscribed to anybody whose videos entertained me. They haven't all been winners, and I've unsubscribed from some of them, but for the most part it gives me a good way to see the sort of content I want. It's actually halfway decent.
Until you start using the apps, that is. They are the most cancerous, dark pattern bullshit hellscapes and I can't believe how far they've come. Every movement and click on those things is intended to get you to engage and watch just one more video, it's terrible.
I don't know if I can explain it well, but I'm just opposed to the concept of having to subscribe when there is a front page that shows me all the new videos of people I watch regularly. It's an unnecessary step. I realize it helps creators (I was one once), but I still don't like having to constantly subscribe and unsubscribe based on who I've gained and lost interest in when it just tells me that person has a new video and if I stop watching them for a while, it stops telling me about them. I can also instantly tell it to not recommend the channel anymore.
It's just so much easier.
This is a really strange concept to me. I’m constantly fighting against the algorithm! I subscribe to anyone I’m remotely interested in and occasionally do mass-unsubscribes to clear out the ones I’m not interested in.
I also find myself regularly checking the pages of people I subscribe to because YouTube will frequently stop putting their videos on the front page. I’ve also tried turning on notifications for certain people but that just gives me notification fatigue.
I think my biggest annoyance is that YouTube seems to take my decision not to watch a particular video right now as a signal that I’m not interested in the creator anymore, when actually I’m just prioritizing what I watch based on how long the video is and how much time I have. I’m not going to watch an hour long video when I only have 15 minutes! So YouTube is just constantly overfitting on my preferences! Really stupid and frustrating to deal with.
Perhaps I’m atypical though. Seems like a lot of people just go to YouTube and let it force feed them whatever is going viral at the time.
That's pretty much how I use it, too. I'll subscribe if I realize I've watched a bunch of a channels videos, just so I remember who they are. But I rarely go to my subs to look for anything.
Now that I think of it, that's how I use Lemmy, too.