I think that just like all the other redesigns people have whined about through the years, it looks fine. It seems clear that it's an attention-grabbing attempt to keep people from jumping over to...
I think that just like all the other redesigns people have whined about through the years, it looks fine. It seems clear that it's an attention-grabbing attempt to keep people from jumping over to TikTok, but I mean...I've always hated having to scroll down to read descriptions, check comments (on videos with worthwhile comments), etc.
I guess, I don't like how the comments are on the side as that has ruined my flow of watching videos for a good decade, but it's not like we're loosing a feature (Not to mention, youtube comments...
I guess, I don't like how the comments are on the side as that has ruined my flow of watching videos for a good decade, but it's not like we're loosing a feature (Not to mention, youtube comments are terrible).
One thing I wish we always had were fully archived comments, you can't really ever go back and see the first comment of a video. Maybe this is for technical reasons
My only problem with it is that expanding the video description is clunky and for some reason all the comments disappear when I do so. I have to un-expand it to make them appear again lol The...
My only problem with it is that expanding the video description is clunky and for some reason all the comments disappear when I do so. I have to un-expand it to make them appear again lol
The comments are also really narrow now, making it a little more annoying to read - nothing you can't get used to but yeah, like Spotify's endless redesigns, there's nothing good about it for the end user, like it worsens the usage experience in my opinion
My question is, why would YouTube want to prioritize comments over video recommendations? Comments on YouTube are notoriously shit, so much so that I have a CSS rule in place to completely hide them.
My question is, why would YouTube want to prioritize comments over video recommendations? Comments on YouTube are notoriously shit, so much so that I have a CSS rule in place to completely hide them.
Maybe it's more of a reflection of the channels I tend to watch, but YT's comments have been WAY better in the last year or more than they used to be. I don't see anywhere near the kind of spam...
Maybe it's more of a reflection of the channels I tend to watch, but YT's comments have been WAY better in the last year or more than they used to be. I don't see anywhere near the kind of spam that I used to and there's often good discussion in the comments. Honestly on a lot of channels the comment section is better than what you'd see on a default reddit sub.
Edit: I realize that bar is so low that it's pretty much on the floor...
Maybe it’s because I’m usually listening to music nowadays, most of the top comments I see are on 10+ year old videos saying “Who is still jamming/crying/listening to this in...
Maybe it’s because I’m usually listening to music nowadays, most of the top comments I see are on 10+ year old videos saying “Who is still jamming/crying/listening to this in 2018/19/20/21/22/23/24?” Or “Who is here because of [recent show or movie featuring the song]?”
I don’t find those comments useful, I find that general pattern of “call and response” engagement online to be a tacky artifact of design for engagement. I sort of wish everything online wasn’t training people to constantly vie for attention in the most empty and vacuous ways possible. But it is what it is.
It's been the opposite for me. The weird porn/spam bots are out in such force that the creators I watch have started putting out statements and even apologies about them. This is on stuff ranging...
It's been the opposite for me. The weird porn/spam bots are out in such force that the creators I watch have started putting out statements and even apologies about them. This is on stuff ranging from gaming and tech-focused channels to carnivorous plant growers. I can count on the first comment of just about every video to be someone with a butt profile pic making a generic complimentary comment that may or may not match the content. The actual comments from (hopefully) actual people do seem to be trending better, but that might be because of the extra filtering and cleanup required to combat the booty bots
I have a similar experience, YouTube comments are a lot better than they used to be, at least on the channels I watch (and I use a lot of stuff recommended by the algo but also plenty of smaller...
I have a similar experience, YouTube comments are a lot better than they used to be, at least on the channels I watch (and I use a lot of stuff recommended by the algo but also plenty of smaller channels pop up among those). I suspect YouTube's comment moderation or spam filtering tools may have gotten better? There are definitely still super shitty comments and spam comments, but I don't see them often at all bc they tend not to occur at all on smaller channels and tend to get buried beneath better comments on bigger ones. Maybe it's different if you watch huge channels like Mr Beast or smth, but I actually often go out of my way to read comments these days despite mostly watching on my TV, which means they're not as readily available as on web.
As someone who used to hide the YouTube comments, top comments definitely have become more tame and tend to have a positive sentiment for me. My only rules now are to avoid reading the replies,...
As someone who used to hide the YouTube comments, top comments definitely have become more tame and tend to have a positive sentiment for me. My only rules now are to avoid reading the replies, since the algorithm can't really do much there, and they do often devolve into heated "discussions" or trolling, staying away from the comments section for videos about politics and divisive topics, as well as no scrolling for more comments as that seems to resurface the bad comments again.
Yeah, ime it's usually pretty easy to tell when comment replies are gonna be a clusterfuck from the topic of the original comment -- though you do occasionally get a surprise.
Yeah, ime it's usually pretty easy to tell when comment replies are gonna be a clusterfuck from the topic of the original comment -- though you do occasionally get a surprise.
It's entirely possible my view of them is outdated. The aforementioned CSS rule has been in place since before the pandemic, so I simply wouldn't know what they are like. Ultimately, it's a moot...
It's entirely possible my view of them is outdated. The aforementioned CSS rule has been in place since before the pandemic, so I simply wouldn't know what they are like.
Ultimately, it's a moot point for me. I actually watch most of my YouTube on my TV, where there is no mechanism for seeing comments.
I'm (un)happy to report to you that nope, you're not wrong in your assessment. Youtube comments remain horrible and you're not missing anything by hiding them. I too avoid most of the comments...
I'm (un)happy to report to you that nope, you're not wrong in your assessment. Youtube comments remain horrible and you're not missing anything by hiding them.
I too avoid most of the comments when I'm on desktop or tv, but on mobile I sometimes watch the shorts and then make the mistake of swiping to see the comments and I almost always regret it on any channel that I'm not subscribed to. Just so much hate and vitriolic opinions on the most mundane of videos.
I'm pretty sure that YouTube uses some kind of sentiment analysis and ranks "positive" comments highly. This change seems to have occurred several years ago.
I'm pretty sure that YouTube uses some kind of sentiment analysis and ranks "positive" comments highly. This change seems to have occurred several years ago.
The screenshot in the article shows the video un-expanded. I only watch in "theater" mode so the video is as wide as the browser window. So now the description, instead of being beneath the video...
The screenshot in the article shows the video un-expanded. I only watch in "theater" mode so the video is as wide as the browser window. So now the description, instead of being beneath the video and readable without scrolling, is entirely hidden and most of the time the title of the video is cut off as well.
Was going to take a screenshot to show how it looks, but YT have reverted the redesign I was experiencing last week back to the old/current design for me at the moment.
Yeah honestly when I heard about this I was expecting a trash fire that hid the comments even deeper. Seeing them right away is probably what I want. Now if only they wouldn't hide the video...
Yeah honestly when I heard about this I was expecting a trash fire that hid the comments even deeper.
Seeing them right away is probably what I want. Now if only they wouldn't hide the video description like it's some shame on the business.
Yeah let them waste all the time and money they want on redesigning YouTube as long as it takes their attention away from trying to fight ad blockers. I watch everything on YouTube in full screen...
Yeah let them waste all the time and money they want on redesigning YouTube as long as it takes their attention away from trying to fight ad blockers. I watch everything on YouTube in full screen so it took me about 5 seconds to get used to it and I moved on.
Design is something you can and will eventually get used to. Ads on the other hand... that drives ME crazy. So much I haven't seen the new redesign yet, actually (as I haven't visited Youtube in...
Design is something you can and will eventually get used to. Ads on the other hand... that drives ME crazy. So much I haven't seen the new redesign yet, actually (as I haven't visited Youtube in quite some while).
I am here once again to recommend that people use frontends to access YouTube, such as FreeTube and NewPipe. There's no reason to expose yourself to whatever design Google psychologists are trying...
I am here once again to recommend that people use frontends to access YouTube, such as FreeTube and NewPipe. There's no reason to expose yourself to whatever design Google psychologists are trying to implement to increase engagement.
I’ve posted plenty on Tildes about my own FreeTube use, it’s pretty great. But I’m a bit concerned that radical design changes on the YT side are going to break the scraping logic FreeTube uses....
I’ve posted plenty on Tildes about my own FreeTube use, it’s pretty great. But I’m a bit concerned that radical design changes on the YT side are going to break the scraping logic FreeTube uses. It’s not exactly a huge project with a ton of developer support behind it.
I tried it and I love it! (The not porn one lol) You've made a convert :) I'll use this until it blows up and maybe just wean off YouTube altogether if it does. Shame yt became such utter garbage
I tried it and I love it! (The not porn one lol)
You've made a convert :) I'll use this until it blows up and maybe just wean off YouTube altogether if it does. Shame yt became such utter garbage
FreeTube is great and a must-have for me. Having the option to have different profiles with different subscriptions is such a no-brainer feature I don't understand why actual Youtube didn't...
FreeTube is great and a must-have for me. Having the option to have different profiles with different subscriptions is such a no-brainer feature I don't understand why actual Youtube didn't implement it yet.
So, the comments to a video will be on the right side vertical column and the suggested video will be in horizontally scrollable strip underneath the video. I think that sabotages people looking...
So, the comments to a video will be on the right side vertical column and the suggested video will be in horizontally scrollable strip underneath the video.
I think that sabotages people looking at more recommended videos. I hate horizontal scrolling, and I am making the assumption that other people do too ( cue the contrarians to tell me they love it, quoting studies about it being more efficient and loved. ha ha ).
I don't look at YouTube comments and making them more visible will not change that. :-)
This seems like one of those sidegrade changes where it's just a change for the sake of change. I don't understand why Google would waste resources doing this. Especially when YouTube Music needs...
This seems like one of those sidegrade changes where it's just a change for the sake of change. I don't understand why Google would waste resources doing this. Especially when YouTube Music needs so much work to catch up to its competitors.
Google in 2024 is a company that I just don't understand.
I don't understand why people are up-in-arms over this? Having comments visible to the right seems like that's how it always should have been. YouTube comments can be especially useful with...
I don't understand why people are up-in-arms over this? Having comments visible to the right seems like that's how it always should have been. YouTube comments can be especially useful with timestamps and summaries. They've certainly come a long way and aren't completely worthless as they once were a decade or so ago. While I don't love the competing scrollbars on the right of the page, I feel like they it's a step in the right direction.
I like how I could quickly exhaust relevant information in a few seconds in the old interface. Check the sidebar, scroll a bit to see more and see the comments if the video works correctly. Now I...
I like how I could quickly exhaust relevant information in a few seconds in the old interface. Check the sidebar, scroll a bit to see more and see the comments if the video works correctly.
Now I have to scroll down, then click the comments, then scroll back up, glance at the comments and then click comments away.
The predominating gen-z mindset seems to be just throw away all the nuances and finer points out the window, just show me the two liner minutes of meeting. This mindset was reflected when...
The predominating gen-z mindset seems to be just throw away all the nuances and finer points out the window, just show me the two liner minutes of meeting. This mindset was reflected when smartphone apps arrived, it was reflected when Wikipedia changed to new theme with lot's of extra space and now this Youtube redesign. The more simpler the screen becomes, so will our brains and intellect eventually.
I’m amused that you’ve categorised this as “the gen-z mindset” when this was thrust upon everyone, and it’s just gen-z who have simply adapted to this style sooner than everyone else. If anything,...
The predominating gen-z mindset seems to be
I’m amused that you’ve categorised this as “the gen-z mindset” when this was thrust upon everyone, and it’s just gen-z who have simply adapted to this style sooner than everyone else.
If anything, the new YouTube layout emphasises comments (i.e. reading text) and de-emphasises “click the next thing! Watch another video! Don’t think, don’t read, just jump to the next bit of content!” that the current version holds on to…
Everything you are describing here was created primarily by Millennials for Millennials. Generation Z were all just little kids when Apple's App Store was launched, and Millennials always were and...
Everything you are describing here was created primarily by Millennials for Millennials. Generation Z were all just little kids when Apple's App Store was launched, and Millennials always were and still continue to be YouTube's biggest audience. I don't have any recent demographic data for Wikipedia, but in 2011, the average reader was 36 years old and I would be very surprised if it has skewed dramatically younger since then.
I think that just like all the other redesigns people have whined about through the years, it looks fine. It seems clear that it's an attention-grabbing attempt to keep people from jumping over to TikTok, but I mean...I've always hated having to scroll down to read descriptions, check comments (on videos with worthwhile comments), etc.
I guess what I'm saying is who cares?
I guess, I don't like how the comments are on the side as that has ruined my flow of watching videos for a good decade, but it's not like we're loosing a feature (Not to mention, youtube comments are terrible).
One thing I wish we always had were fully archived comments, you can't really ever go back and see the first comment of a video. Maybe this is for technical reasons
My only problem with it is that expanding the video description is clunky and for some reason all the comments disappear when I do so. I have to un-expand it to make them appear again lol
The comments are also really narrow now, making it a little more annoying to read - nothing you can't get used to but yeah, like Spotify's endless redesigns, there's nothing good about it for the end user, like it worsens the usage experience in my opinion
My question is, why would YouTube want to prioritize comments over video recommendations? Comments on YouTube are notoriously shit, so much so that I have a CSS rule in place to completely hide them.
Maybe it's more of a reflection of the channels I tend to watch, but YT's comments have been WAY better in the last year or more than they used to be. I don't see anywhere near the kind of spam that I used to and there's often good discussion in the comments. Honestly on a lot of channels the comment section is better than what you'd see on a default reddit sub.
Edit: I realize that bar is so low that it's pretty much on the floor...
Maybe it’s because I’m usually listening to music nowadays, most of the top comments I see are on 10+ year old videos saying “Who is still jamming/crying/listening to this in 2018/19/20/21/22/23/24?” Or “Who is here because of [recent show or movie featuring the song]?”
I don’t find those comments useful, I find that general pattern of “call and response” engagement online to be a tacky artifact of design for engagement. I sort of wish everything online wasn’t training people to constantly vie for attention in the most empty and vacuous ways possible. But it is what it is.
It's been the opposite for me. The weird porn/spam bots are out in such force that the creators I watch have started putting out statements and even apologies about them. This is on stuff ranging from gaming and tech-focused channels to carnivorous plant growers. I can count on the first comment of just about every video to be someone with a butt profile pic making a generic complimentary comment that may or may not match the content. The actual comments from (hopefully) actual people do seem to be trending better, but that might be because of the extra filtering and cleanup required to combat the booty bots
I have a similar experience, YouTube comments are a lot better than they used to be, at least on the channels I watch (and I use a lot of stuff recommended by the algo but also plenty of smaller channels pop up among those). I suspect YouTube's comment moderation or spam filtering tools may have gotten better? There are definitely still super shitty comments and spam comments, but I don't see them often at all bc they tend not to occur at all on smaller channels and tend to get buried beneath better comments on bigger ones. Maybe it's different if you watch huge channels like Mr Beast or smth, but I actually often go out of my way to read comments these days despite mostly watching on my TV, which means they're not as readily available as on web.
As someone who used to hide the YouTube comments, top comments definitely have become more tame and tend to have a positive sentiment for me. My only rules now are to avoid reading the replies, since the algorithm can't really do much there, and they do often devolve into heated "discussions" or trolling, staying away from the comments section for videos about politics and divisive topics, as well as no scrolling for more comments as that seems to resurface the bad comments again.
Yeah, ime it's usually pretty easy to tell when comment replies are gonna be a clusterfuck from the topic of the original comment -- though you do occasionally get a surprise.
I remember using an extension back in the day to replace YouTube comments with Reddit comments. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
I had a extension that replaced them with random-length strings of "herp" and "derp". These days, I use shutup.css
It's entirely possible my view of them is outdated. The aforementioned CSS rule has been in place since before the pandemic, so I simply wouldn't know what they are like.
Ultimately, it's a moot point for me. I actually watch most of my YouTube on my TV, where there is no mechanism for seeing comments.
I'm (un)happy to report to you that nope, you're not wrong in your assessment. Youtube comments remain horrible and you're not missing anything by hiding them.
I too avoid most of the comments when I'm on desktop or tv, but on mobile I sometimes watch the shorts and then make the mistake of swiping to see the comments and I almost always regret it on any channel that I'm not subscribed to. Just so much hate and vitriolic opinions on the most mundane of videos.
I'm pretty sure that YouTube uses some kind of sentiment analysis and ranks "positive" comments highly. This change seems to have occurred several years ago.
The screenshot in the article shows the video un-expanded. I only watch in "theater" mode so the video is as wide as the browser window. So now the description, instead of being beneath the video and readable without scrolling, is entirely hidden and most of the time the title of the video is cut off as well.
Was going to take a screenshot to show how it looks, but YT have reverted the redesign I was experiencing last week back to the old/current design for me at the moment.
Yeah honestly when I heard about this I was expecting a trash fire that hid the comments even deeper.
Seeing them right away is probably what I want. Now if only they wouldn't hide the video description like it's some shame on the business.
Yeah let them waste all the time and money they want on redesigning YouTube as long as it takes their attention away from trying to fight ad blockers. I watch everything on YouTube in full screen so it took me about 5 seconds to get used to it and I moved on.
Design is something you can and will eventually get used to. Ads on the other hand... that drives ME crazy. So much I haven't seen the new redesign yet, actually (as I haven't visited Youtube in quite some while).
I am here once again to recommend that people use frontends to access YouTube, such as FreeTube and NewPipe. There's no reason to expose yourself to whatever design Google psychologists are trying to implement to increase engagement.
I’ve posted plenty on Tildes about my own FreeTube use, it’s pretty great. But I’m a bit concerned that radical design changes on the YT side are going to break the scraping logic FreeTube uses. It’s not exactly a huge project with a ton of developer support behind it.
I've not heard of freetube before, and I was an idiot and typed in -.com, which is a pornography site oops.
the link is https://freetubeapp.io/ right?
lmfao
Yup, that's the one. I use FreeTube on my PC and NewPipe on my phone.
I tried it and I love it! (The not porn one lol)
You've made a convert :) I'll use this until it blows up and maybe just wean off YouTube altogether if it does. Shame yt became such utter garbage
FreeTube is great and a must-have for me. Having the option to have different profiles with different subscriptions is such a no-brainer feature I don't understand why actual Youtube didn't implement it yet.
So, the comments to a video will be on the right side vertical column and the suggested video will be in horizontally scrollable strip underneath the video.
I think that sabotages people looking at more recommended videos. I hate horizontal scrolling, and I am making the assumption that other people do too ( cue the contrarians to tell me they love it, quoting studies about it being more efficient and loved. ha ha ).
I don't look at YouTube comments and making them more visible will not change that. :-)
I’m sorry to do this to you, but it’s “cue” in that context, not “queue”.
This seems like one of those sidegrade changes where it's just a change for the sake of change. I don't understand why Google would waste resources doing this. Especially when YouTube Music needs so much work to catch up to its competitors.
Google in 2024 is a company that I just don't understand.
I liked when there was a bunch of recommended videos and a second spot with videos by the same person.
I don't understand why people are up-in-arms over this? Having comments visible to the right seems like that's how it always should have been. YouTube comments can be especially useful with timestamps and summaries. They've certainly come a long way and aren't completely worthless as they once were a decade or so ago. While I don't love the competing scrollbars on the right of the page, I feel like they it's a step in the right direction.
It looks like they just copied twitch.
I like how I could quickly exhaust relevant information in a few seconds in the old interface. Check the sidebar, scroll a bit to see more and see the comments if the video works correctly.
Now I have to scroll down, then click the comments, then scroll back up, glance at the comments and then click comments away.
The predominating gen-z mindset seems to be just throw away all the nuances and finer points out the window, just show me the two liner minutes of meeting. This mindset was reflected when smartphone apps arrived, it was reflected when Wikipedia changed to new theme with lot's of extra space and now this Youtube redesign. The more simpler the screen becomes, so will our brains and intellect eventually.
Huh? It's not Gen Z that made those phone apps, nor the Wikipedia or YouTube redesigns.
I’m amused that you’ve categorised this as “the gen-z mindset” when this was thrust upon everyone, and it’s just gen-z who have simply adapted to this style sooner than everyone else.
If anything, the new YouTube layout emphasises comments (i.e. reading text) and de-emphasises “click the next thing! Watch another video! Don’t think, don’t read, just jump to the next bit of content!” that the current version holds on to…
Everything you are describing here was created primarily by Millennials for Millennials. Generation Z were all just little kids when Apple's App Store was launched, and Millennials always were and still continue to be YouTube's biggest audience. I don't have any recent demographic data for Wikipedia, but in 2011, the average reader was 36 years old and I would be very surprised if it has skewed dramatically younger since then.