The only way to escape this decline is to eliminate incentives to create short or long content, letting creators just create content appropriate for their audience. The only way that really works...
The only way to escape this decline is to eliminate incentives to create short or long content, letting creators just create content appropriate for their audience. The only way that really works is more of a patron-style subscription model, where each viewer pays their creator directly and is not tied per-view or per-video.
I know this is a bit tangential, but I feel it relates to the broader concept of bloat...namely that of information density.
Part of the reason I generally dislike videos for how-tos, compared to pictures and text, is that video has a lot less information density, and makes it harder to backtrack to find information. This is exponentially worse when videos do as the article describes, bloating them out further to monetize, the same way recipe blogs often have 4 pages of rambling to accompany a recipe.
There are definitely times where video is a helpful supplement to that text+image backing...but on its own its usually lackluster.
I think the only way that can happen is to divorce the content from the monolithic platforms that themselves have incentives to make money (YouTube and TikTok and so on). But that feels...
The only way to escape this decline is to eliminate incentives to create short or long content, letting creators just create content appropriate for their audience.
I think the only way that can happen is to divorce the content from the monolithic platforms that themselves have incentives to make money (YouTube and TikTok and so on). But that feels impossible--most consumers are unwilling to go looking for content that isn't on the big platforms, so as a creator the only way to get anyone to notice what you're doing is to go to those platforms, at which point you become a slave to things like algorithms and community guidelines that will shape what you're able to create if you actually want to do it for a living.
And once you're on the platform (whether you started off there or moved there because you wanted more eyeballs) I don't know that it's possible to ever break free. I can't think of a single case where (for example) a successful YouTuber stopped posting to YouTube and continued to make a living off creating videos independently. There are things like Patreon which provide supplemental revenue streams, but nobody's going directly to Patreon to find content--you still need to connect with users by going through the bigger platforms that people are actually using.
I like to do my part and support artists directly by purchasing from them directly, but even that is becoming harder and harder to do. Just recently I discovered some music that I enjoyed, and tried my best to hunt down some way to purchase a physical or digital copy of it in a way that supported the artists, but even from their official websites the only way they listed to listen was via streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music... A little further back my wife recommended a book series she was enjoying, and when I looked to see where I could get it I discovered it was a Kindle/Audible exclusive completely unavailable outside that ecosystem. It seems like newer creators and artists don't even see value in offering the option to consume their stuff outside of the big platforms, so if anything this problem is only getting worse. It can be kind of depressing some times.
The only single example I can think of is Lindsay Ellis. She moved from YouTube to exclusively posting to Nebula. She's also a writer, so it's not her only income stream, but she seems to still be...
The only single example I can think of is Lindsay Ellis. She moved from YouTube to exclusively posting to Nebula.
She's also a writer, so it's not her only income stream, but she seems to still be doing well.
Her content is high quality long form video essays though, so I don't know how transferable that is to a broader more "persona" based YouTuber.
Ah yeah, she is one example. If I'm remembering right though, her leaving YouTube was more a response to being the target of a harassment campaign, so I'm not so sure she would have left of her...
Ah yeah, she is one example. If I'm remembering right though, her leaving YouTube was more a response to being the target of a harassment campaign, so I'm not so sure she would have left of her own accord if that hadn't nudged her past the breaking point.
There is a reason I pay for Floatplane (to watch LTT and other chanels of theirs without ads and aponsor reads and on their own platform). There is also a reason I watch many electronics engineers...
There is a reason I pay for Floatplane (to watch LTT and other chanels of theirs without ads and aponsor reads and on their own platform).
There is also a reason I watch many electronics engineers on Odysee (EEVblog, Bigclivedotcom, ElectroBOOM, GreatScott and others). There are more people on Odysee - Scott Manley, Veritasium, Louis Rossmann, NASA has its own chanel there. The user experience is worse there, sometimes even bad... But no ads and possibility to download videos males up for it.
My friend moved there with his motorcycle videos, but he had already built some ground (mass of fans) on Youtube and later Vimeo, so he just keep linking them to Odysee right now.
I'm not saying Odysee is perfect, it's just something I know.
I'm in a stage where I don't watch Youtube due to bloated ads. They made it unusable.
Thank you for Odysee recommendation, first time I see it, possibility to use their RSS feeds and to avoid using evil corp's products made me very happy.
Thank you for Odysee recommendation, first time I see it, possibility to use their RSS feeds and to avoid using evil corp's products made me very happy.
I hope you like it. As I said, user experience is not the best, but at least you are much more free there than on Youtube. If you watch on phone, have a look at Grayjay.
I hope you like it. As I said, user experience is not the best, but at least you are much more free there than on Youtube.
Thanks, I'll stick to the rss and the website, no need to install and use apps. Even if it's not the best user experience, it's even better, cause otherwise it could be too addictive for me.
Thanks, I'll stick to the rss and the website, no need to install and use apps. Even if it's not the best user experience, it's even better, cause otherwise it could be too addictive for me.
Yeah, I'm not for apps that much myself. Tildes is good example of how website/service can run perfectly fine without one. The Grayjay I mebtioned is not for Odysee. It is kinda vudeo aggregator -...
Yeah, I'm not for apps that much myself. Tildes is good example of how website/service can run perfectly fine without one.
The Grayjay I mebtioned is not for Odysee. It is kinda vudeo aggregator - you can pick your favorite video creators from different sites (in my own example thia means Odysee and Youtube) and then you watch videos through this client. It cuts ads from Youtube videos, which is very nice.
But you ca definitely do without it. I just wanted to point it out as an alternative.
I'm lucky to have great music and movie shop in nearby town. I keep buying stuff so I just own it. I'm also fortunate that I hae my homemade NAS on a public IP, so I can actually stream themusic...
I'm lucky to have great music and movie shop in nearby town. I keep buying stuff so I just own it. I'm also fortunate that I hae my homemade NAS on a public IP, so I can actually stream themusic and the movies to anywhere. Basically made my own (library) Netflix/Spotify.
I've spoken to a couple of artists about album releases on vinyl only, they don't even bother creating CDs any more since they don't sell enough to cover the costs.
I've spoken to a couple of artists about album releases on vinyl only, they don't even bother creating CDs any more since they don't sell enough to cover the costs.
What’s interesting about how-to videos to me is how they’re padded. Rather than expanding on the process in ways some, particularly novices and laymen, might find useful (“how to make a peanut...
What’s interesting about how-to videos to me is how they’re padded. Rather than expanding on the process in ways some, particularly novices and laymen, might find useful (“how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” approach) they’ll spend seemingly as little time on the how-to part as possible and cap the video with ramble-y intros and outros, prompting one to skip through to find the half of a second some important bit of secondary information (e.g. how to hold a tool) is on screen.
I suppose this makes sense when considering that it’s easier to make fluffy endcaps than good content but irritating nonetheless.
It's easy to forget how nice videos can be when they aren't this overproduced. I recently looked up a video on how to inflate a car tire with an air compressor, mostly to compare the end nozzle...
It's easy to forget how nice videos can be when they aren't this overproduced.
I recently looked up a video on how to inflate a car tire with an air compressor, mostly to compare the end nozzle that was being used. I found a video of a nice old guy who (respectfully) started the video with "today I'm going to show my wife how to inflate tires with an air compressor." I assume she was the one holding the camera. Then he just shows how to do it in around 3 minutes total. It was really refreshing to see a video of a real person that wasn't trying to act like a professional entertainer.
Edit: I have nothing against entertainment value when that is the end goal of the video. I'm mostly referring to "how to" style videos.
Yeah, there’s a certain realness or authenticity to videos like that which is refreshing. It may be a worthwhile effort to build a site or browser extension which works to surface videos like this...
Yeah, there’s a certain realness or authenticity to videos like that which is refreshing.
It may be a worthwhile effort to build a site or browser extension which works to surface videos like this with some kind of logic, with users being able to vote for videos and tweak selection logic.
This is a really good point. It had never occurred to me before, but it's one of the main reasons that videos that are padded for time are so annoying. It would be tolerable if the padding was at...
This is a really good point. It had never occurred to me before, but it's one of the main reasons that videos that are padded for time are so annoying. It would be tolerable if the padding was at least relevant to the topic.
Not related to this type of content, but I love NakeyJakey and I never skip his sponsor segment. He has created a funny concept for this segment, and even though I am aware that I'm basically...
Not related to this type of content, but I love NakeyJakey and I never skip his sponsor segment. He has created a funny concept for this segment, and even though I am aware that I'm basically watching an ad, it's entertaining and doesn't feel like an add-on to the video.
What if, crazy plan here: what if governments properly tax media giants for edging out proper news and info dense content, and use that tax to fund publicly accessible media? It'd be like Patreon...
What if, crazy plan here: what if governments properly tax media giants for edging out proper news and info dense content, and use that tax to fund publicly accessible media?
It'd be like Patreon but instead of getting money only from individuals, they'd also be from government grants, for providing good nourishing content to citizens.
I mean, we already do have public funding of media: PBS and NPR. Not too far of a stretch. While I'm having pipe dreams, I'd rather just see the giants disassembled by the collapse (and ideally...
I mean, we already do have public funding of media: PBS and NPR. Not too far of a stretch.
While I'm having pipe dreams, I'd rather just see the giants disassembled by the collapse (and ideally banning) of advertising. Bring back the rise of small players doing things for fun, and not profit.
Right, and we need to properly fund those channels so that they're even more engaging, or at least competitive with content, than these "free but sell your brains" platforms. When I was growing...
Right, and we need to properly fund those channels so that they're even more engaging, or at least competitive with content, than these "free but sell your brains" platforms.
When I was growing up, the free channels had amazing content. It's just gotten worse every year and under constant attack from those who would sell our children to the highest bidder, like Canada's conservative leadership candidate
I'd argue with the "being ruined", that was decade, decade and half ago, we are way past that. A lot of it is the all important "engagement" metric stemming from the ad/data monetization model....
I'd argue with the "being ruined", that was decade, decade and half ago, we are way past that.
A lot of it is the all important "engagement" metric stemming from the ad/data monetization model. That means that the search is literally garbage - ignoring the intent of the query, not providing basic functionality, forcing fuzzy search no matter what. Making it harder to find, and as such monetize actually good content.
I have no idea what the recommendation algorithms(being all the more important in the lack of proper search) of the various platforms are actually based on but I think it can be safely assumed that providing content that is good for the user is not their effect.
I do not think any of this is actually solvable in the absence of alternative(scalable enough) monetization model, neutral and powerful discovery tool and people refusing to engage with the worst offenders.
I distinctly remember the old computers at the local library. They still had the green monochrome monitors and you had to type in the keyword you wanted and it came up with that, in alphabetical...
I distinctly remember the old computers at the local library. They still had the green monochrome monitors and you had to type in the keyword you wanted and it came up with that, in alphabetical order, title first if it matched and otherwise its short description or just the category.
The internet at its infancy was probably more thought of like that than what it turned out to be now. Data, metric and engagement-driven. And while it certainly had its own culture going for a very brief moment (early Youtube, rise of memes, 4chan etc.), sooner or later it just turned into this big money-grabbing scheme stuffed with ads, cookies, tracking and paywalls.
I wish we could just leave out the money, for many things in fact not just the Internet, but I guess that's just pipedreams at this point.
This particular cause is not yet lost. Technology has advanced enough that hosting content as an individual is relatively affordable hardware wise, mature free (in both meanings of the word)...
This particular cause is not yet lost. Technology has advanced enough that hosting content as an individual is relatively affordable hardware wise, mature free (in both meanings of the word) software exists to leverage that hardware, and the knowledge base is there to make it easier for those who want to try.
Tildes itself is an attempt at helping bringing back the ideal of an Internet that is truly run by its users rather than a handful of profit-driven corporations.
The solution is there, but it's up to us, as in humanity as a whole, to implement it.
The only way to escape this decline is to eliminate incentives to create short or long content, letting creators just create content appropriate for their audience. The only way that really works is more of a patron-style subscription model, where each viewer pays their creator directly and is not tied per-view or per-video.
I know this is a bit tangential, but I feel it relates to the broader concept of bloat...namely that of information density.
Part of the reason I generally dislike videos for how-tos, compared to pictures and text, is that video has a lot less information density, and makes it harder to backtrack to find information. This is exponentially worse when videos do as the article describes, bloating them out further to monetize, the same way recipe blogs often have 4 pages of rambling to accompany a recipe.
There are definitely times where video is a helpful supplement to that text+image backing...but on its own its usually lackluster.
I think the only way that can happen is to divorce the content from the monolithic platforms that themselves have incentives to make money (YouTube and TikTok and so on). But that feels impossible--most consumers are unwilling to go looking for content that isn't on the big platforms, so as a creator the only way to get anyone to notice what you're doing is to go to those platforms, at which point you become a slave to things like algorithms and community guidelines that will shape what you're able to create if you actually want to do it for a living.
And once you're on the platform (whether you started off there or moved there because you wanted more eyeballs) I don't know that it's possible to ever break free. I can't think of a single case where (for example) a successful YouTuber stopped posting to YouTube and continued to make a living off creating videos independently. There are things like Patreon which provide supplemental revenue streams, but nobody's going directly to Patreon to find content--you still need to connect with users by going through the bigger platforms that people are actually using.
I like to do my part and support artists directly by purchasing from them directly, but even that is becoming harder and harder to do. Just recently I discovered some music that I enjoyed, and tried my best to hunt down some way to purchase a physical or digital copy of it in a way that supported the artists, but even from their official websites the only way they listed to listen was via streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music... A little further back my wife recommended a book series she was enjoying, and when I looked to see where I could get it I discovered it was a Kindle/Audible exclusive completely unavailable outside that ecosystem. It seems like newer creators and artists don't even see value in offering the option to consume their stuff outside of the big platforms, so if anything this problem is only getting worse. It can be kind of depressing some times.
The only single example I can think of is Lindsay Ellis. She moved from YouTube to exclusively posting to Nebula.
She's also a writer, so it's not her only income stream, but she seems to still be doing well.
Her content is high quality long form video essays though, so I don't know how transferable that is to a broader more "persona" based YouTuber.
Ah yeah, she is one example. If I'm remembering right though, her leaving YouTube was more a response to being the target of a harassment campaign, so I'm not so sure she would have left of her own accord if that hadn't nudged her past the breaking point.
There is a reason I pay for Floatplane (to watch LTT and other chanels of theirs without ads and aponsor reads and on their own platform).
There is also a reason I watch many electronics engineers on Odysee (EEVblog, Bigclivedotcom, ElectroBOOM, GreatScott and others). There are more people on Odysee - Scott Manley, Veritasium, Louis Rossmann, NASA has its own chanel there. The user experience is worse there, sometimes even bad... But no ads and possibility to download videos males up for it.
My friend moved there with his motorcycle videos, but he had already built some ground (mass of fans) on Youtube and later Vimeo, so he just keep linking them to Odysee right now.
I'm not saying Odysee is perfect, it's just something I know.
I'm in a stage where I don't watch Youtube due to bloated ads. They made it unusable.
Thank you for Odysee recommendation, first time I see it, possibility to use their RSS feeds and to avoid using evil corp's products made me very happy.
I hope you like it. As I said, user experience is not the best, but at least you are much more free there than on Youtube.
If you watch on phone, have a look at Grayjay.
Thanks, I'll stick to the rss and the website, no need to install and use apps. Even if it's not the best user experience, it's even better, cause otherwise it could be too addictive for me.
Yeah, I'm not for apps that much myself. Tildes is good example of how website/service can run perfectly fine without one.
The Grayjay I mebtioned is not for Odysee. It is kinda vudeo aggregator - you can pick your favorite video creators from different sites (in my own example thia means Odysee and Youtube) and then you watch videos through this client. It cuts ads from Youtube videos, which is very nice.
But you ca definitely do without it. I just wanted to point it out as an alternative.
Smart Tube Next on TV (android TV) gets rid of all ads, including sponsorblock.
I use Youtube plugin in Kodi and it works perfectly fine too. I have Panasonic plsma TV from 2011, it was also considered smart when I bought it...
FYai, I've had some luck buying few CDs using email. May be worth trying.
I'm lucky to have great music and movie shop in nearby town. I keep buying stuff so I just own it. I'm also fortunate that I hae my homemade NAS on a public IP, so I can actually stream themusic and the movies to anywhere. Basically made my own (library) Netflix/Spotify.
I've spoken to a couple of artists about album releases on vinyl only, they don't even bother creating CDs any more since they don't sell enough to cover the costs.
It has become a loop, one contributing to other. I don't think it is ever going to break unless there is strong external influence.
What’s interesting about how-to videos to me is how they’re padded. Rather than expanding on the process in ways some, particularly novices and laymen, might find useful (“how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” approach) they’ll spend seemingly as little time on the how-to part as possible and cap the video with ramble-y intros and outros, prompting one to skip through to find the half of a second some important bit of secondary information (e.g. how to hold a tool) is on screen.
I suppose this makes sense when considering that it’s easier to make fluffy endcaps than good content but irritating nonetheless.
It's easy to forget how nice videos can be when they aren't this overproduced.
I recently looked up a video on how to inflate a car tire with an air compressor, mostly to compare the end nozzle that was being used. I found a video of a nice old guy who (respectfully) started the video with "today I'm going to show my wife how to inflate tires with an air compressor." I assume she was the one holding the camera. Then he just shows how to do it in around 3 minutes total. It was really refreshing to see a video of a real person that wasn't trying to act like a professional entertainer.
Edit: I have nothing against entertainment value when that is the end goal of the video. I'm mostly referring to "how to" style videos.
Yeah, there’s a certain realness or authenticity to videos like that which is refreshing.
It may be a worthwhile effort to build a site or browser extension which works to surface videos like this with some kind of logic, with users being able to vote for videos and tweak selection logic.
This is a really good point. It had never occurred to me before, but it's one of the main reasons that videos that are padded for time are so annoying. It would be tolerable if the padding was at least relevant to the topic.
Not related to this type of content, but I love NakeyJakey and I never skip his sponsor segment. He has created a funny concept for this segment, and even though I am aware that I'm basically watching an ad, it's entertaining and doesn't feel like an add-on to the video.
What if, crazy plan here: what if governments properly tax media giants for edging out proper news and info dense content, and use that tax to fund publicly accessible media?
It'd be like Patreon but instead of getting money only from individuals, they'd also be from government grants, for providing good nourishing content to citizens.
I mean, we already do have public funding of media: PBS and NPR. Not too far of a stretch.
While I'm having pipe dreams, I'd rather just see the giants disassembled by the collapse (and ideally banning) of advertising. Bring back the rise of small players doing things for fun, and not profit.
Right, and we need to properly fund those channels so that they're even more engaging, or at least competitive with content, than these "free but sell your brains" platforms.
When I was growing up, the free channels had amazing content. It's just gotten worse every year and under constant attack from those who would sell our children to the highest bidder, like Canada's conservative leadership candidate
Advertising will never collapse, I don't think.
I'd argue with the "being ruined", that was decade, decade and half ago, we are way past that.
A lot of it is the all important "engagement" metric stemming from the ad/data monetization model. That means that the search is literally garbage - ignoring the intent of the query, not providing basic functionality, forcing fuzzy search no matter what. Making it harder to find, and as such monetize actually good content.
I have no idea what the recommendation algorithms(being all the more important in the lack of proper search) of the various platforms are actually based on but I think it can be safely assumed that providing content that is good for the user is not their effect.
I do not think any of this is actually solvable in the absence of alternative(scalable enough) monetization model, neutral and powerful discovery tool and people refusing to engage with the worst offenders.
I distinctly remember the old computers at the local library. They still had the green monochrome monitors and you had to type in the keyword you wanted and it came up with that, in alphabetical order, title first if it matched and otherwise its short description or just the category.
The internet at its infancy was probably more thought of like that than what it turned out to be now. Data, metric and engagement-driven. And while it certainly had its own culture going for a very brief moment (early Youtube, rise of memes, 4chan etc.), sooner or later it just turned into this big money-grabbing scheme stuffed with ads, cookies, tracking and paywalls.
I wish we could just leave out the money, for many things in fact not just the Internet, but I guess that's just pipedreams at this point.
This particular cause is not yet lost. Technology has advanced enough that hosting content as an individual is relatively affordable hardware wise, mature free (in both meanings of the word) software exists to leverage that hardware, and the knowledge base is there to make it easier for those who want to try.
Tildes itself is an attempt at helping bringing back the ideal of an Internet that is truly run by its users rather than a handful of profit-driven corporations.
The solution is there, but it's up to us, as in humanity as a whole, to implement it.