• protist@mander.xyz
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    1 month ago

    YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

    This is only going to target garbage-level content. You can still expect the same clickbait-style titles and thumbnails from established creators

    • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 month ago

      YouTube will never “crack down” on these guys. They are their money-makes and can do whatever the fuck the want. Clickbait on huge channels is YouTube’s bread and butter, even if people just click to comment that the creator sucks, that’s still engagement and means there is more money in the ad bids.

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        YouTube is the one pushing them to clickbait. Their metrics are designed such that if you don’t bait clicks a huge percentage of the time you’re shown, you won’t even show up in the feeds of your actual subscribers.

      • Dran@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I think you’ve correctly identified their self-interest over altruism, but you’ve misidentified the internal value of discouraging clickbait. YouTube is a treasure trove for building training datasets, and its value increases when metadata like thumbnails, descriptions, titles, and tags can be trusted.

        It’s the AI gold rush; notice how this coincides with options to limit or disable third-party training but not first-party training? It coincides but is definitely not a coincidence.

    • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, this is not even really targeting clickbait, more like putting restrictions on openly malicious content.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’ll be even more cynical than that: I think this policy will be abused to suppress legitimate news/current events videos with a POV the oligarchs doesn’t approve of (e.g. pro-Palestinian, pro-Adjuster, etc.).

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      This will address extreme and obvious falsehoods but I still encounter clickbait of the more pedestrian kind everywhere I go. “You’re using your table saw WRONG” or “the 1 table saw trick 99% of people don’t know” etc.

      I consider this clickbait: it creates a false sense of urgency and doesn’t convey any information in itself. What is this one trick? Oh I already knew that one, but I had to watch the video to realize that.

      It wastes a lot of time and makes things harder to search for. And often these clickbait headlines are not in the video headline where YT can easily scan them, but in the thumbnail graphic in huge letters, where it’s probably harder to automate any moderation for.

      I pay for YT premium but this aspect of the experience still feels ad-like and cheap.

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’ve noticed these super annoying news flashes that say like Beyonce fleeing US and shit like that. Super long videos too and they’re all trash. Makes it hard to get real news on it

      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Makes it hard to get real news on it

        Well there’s your problem. Why the fuck are you trying to get news on Youtube?!

        • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Mainly just stick to law and crime network haha. I wanna watch it tho, aint nobody wanna read about Diddy ha

  • penquin@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    The fix was there, but they removed it. The dislike button. Fucking unbelievable how stupid these companies are.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The fix was there, but they removed it.

      Return YouTube Dislikes still exists. The likes and dislikes of RYD users are stored in an external database, so Google cannot take them away.

      • Null User Object@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Unless YouTube is using that data to not recommend crappy videos, then it’s completely pointless. If YouTube was going to use that data, then they would, oh, I don’t know, maybe still have a dislike button?

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Unless YouTube is using that data to not recommend crappy videos, then it’s completely pointless.

          YouTube never did that anyway. YouTube recommends videos on user engagement. Thumb buttons in any direction are engagement. They have slightly hidden “don’t recommend video/channel” options for that.

          What RYD does is to show what others think.

      • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        It’s completely inaccurate though. It can show massive amounts of faux dislikes that don’t actually exist. This has been confirmed with youtubers, who still see the dislike ratio on their backend.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It’s completely inaccurate though. It can show massive amounts of faux dislikes that don’t actually exist. This has been confirmed with youtubers, who still see the dislike ratio on their backend.

          I’d say the “actual” dislike numbers are completely inaccurate because what’s the point of disliking a video in an environment where the dislikes don’t count?

          RYD extrapolates the like/dislike ratio as stored on their own server to the like numbers as displayed by YouTube. That’s not secret information. They spell it out in their FAQ.

          If anything, if you like more representative numbers, get more people to install RYD.

          • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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            1 month ago

            So a video getting like 80% dislikes in the addon, but like 90% likes in the backend, is an okay and totally not misleading metric to you? And I uninstalled the addon because of this.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              When the only people hitting the dislike button are the people using the addon (because that’s the only circumstance in which it counts), WTF else did you expect than for the dislike ratio with the addon to be higher?

              • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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                1 month ago

                If that’s the only people using the addon, then they should adjust their extrapolation formula to account for the bias of their user base. Because like this it will only feed people’s confirmation bias through literal disinformation, making content look heavily disliked even when it isn’t.

      • penquin@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        This is not official and not many people (relatively speaking) know about it. My wife, for example, still uses the official YouTube app on her iPhone with all of its ads and garbage.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          This is not official

          Neither was the previous workaround which IIRC required some JavaScript trickery with the web player.

          • penquin@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            What are you talking about??? The previous WAS MADE BY GOOGLE. 😂
            Edit: it wasn’t a workaround, it was a feature built into the YouTube app that is made by Google. I can’t believe I have to explain this. Lol

            • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              it wasn’t a workaround, it was a feature built into the YouTube app that is made by Google. I can’t believe I have to explain this. Lol

              You wrote “there was a fix” which I assumed you meant one of those user scripts / browser extensions that let users access removed features for a while. Pretty sure this worked with downvotes for a while but not in an official capacity.

              • penquin@lemm.ee
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                1 month ago

                Ok. I see where the confusion lies. My bad. It was just me being sarcastic that those dumb asses created an unnecessary problem and now they’re trying fucking fix it. They could just bring back the dislike button. Sorry

  • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Yeah sure they will. They’ll target small creators, but keep shit heads like the scammer Paul, the fake philanthropist Beast, and others

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      1 month ago

      Top talent who made careers on clickbait will not be harmed

      Pedophiles on set, no problem

      Scamming people, no problem

      Advertising and selling spoiled food, no problem

      Say suicide, demonetized 🤡

      • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        Youtube will age restrict songs in my playlist with a word “fuck” in title but won’t do anything about unrestricted animated gore on a channel of a studio that does kid animations that I’ve reported long ago. 🙃

      • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        And actual scams with 300+ upvotes. Not just copied comments that get edited layer, but entire chains directing people to whatsapp numbers.

        • spacecadet@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          I’d still take scam comments over “who is still listening in 2024?!” For a super popular song that came out in 2023 or for a timeless classic like Michael Jackson’s thriller

      • SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        I am not referring to a like to dislike ration, I am referring to a dislike to view ratio. YouTube should bury those from recommendations.

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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    1 month ago

    So, they created an algorithm that will only reward clickbait and completely ignore honest titles and thumbnails, then complain about their platform being one giant clickbait? Huh…

  • 7rokhym@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    YouTube ruined Christmas. I can’t stand my relatives anymore, they watch every conspiracy clip and now they are a thousand miles down the rabbit hole and I can’t handle them for more than a few days a year. I hate evil Google or alphabet, or whatever they call themselves.

    • RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I heard Facebook is spent tons of money to combat election misinformation in 2016 and 2020 and I heard the same story again in 2024. The problem is solved right?

  • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Smells like PR copy parading as news, what click bait was actually removed vs what they said they would? What’s the criteria to qualify as click bait?

    • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

      sounds like anything that says it’s one thing but does a whole different thing

      Sadly it’s only in India atm, and doesn’t result in a strike(yet) so I doubt many are going to care.

  • Bogasse@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Like, we will be able to make negative feedback about a video again? Oh no nevermind it’s just bs again…

  • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    *Only directly misleading clickbait. So they’ll continue to promote other forms of clickbait like specific thumbnails or capitalized & ambiguous titles.

    • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Of course they will, The Holy Algorithm loves that stuff. It’s why even some respectable creators have to stoop to that frustrating nonsense.

      • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        They don’t have to, they choose to. There’s still people like Etho who don’t even ask for people to sub and post incredibly infrequently and still successfully maintain their views and audience simply through quality content. It’s more a matter of whether you do YT for yourself, or for the money. And nowadays the majority of people do it for the money. That’s why the content has become so piss poor over the years too. It’s all just commercialized garbage.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It’s more a matter of whether you do YT for yourself, or for the money.

          Frankly, the people doing the former should be leaving Youtube for Peertube. I feel like Fediverse advocates ought to be trying to figure out ways to court them.

        • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          One of the greatest channels on YouTube, in terms of quality content, is Mentour Pilot (and his other channel, Mentour Now). He releases videos weekly, I think. They’re remarkably high production value, well-researched, well-written, informative, and fascinating.

          His thumbnails and many of his titles are awful. Clickbait, capitalization, arrows pointing at stuff, etc.

          There are of course people who do the clickbait stuff and make terrible content.

          There are people who don’t do the clickbait stuff, some of whom make good content and some who make terrible content.

          Whether you try to get as much value from the platform as you can doesn’t indicate the quality of your work. Some people play the game, some don’t.

          • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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            1 month ago

            And I block everyone who does, since I have no way of judging the content other than the low quality titles & thumbnails. I’m dubious about allegedly well researched content though. Lot’s of people for example recommend Perun, or Kurzgesagt too, which are both awful.

            • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              That’s fair. If you have even the slightest appreciation for aviation, I really do recommend Mentour Pilot. His video recently about the LionAir 737-MAX8 crash was phenomenal, and a perfect example. Extremely clickbait-y title and thumbnail, but a rock-solid hour-long dive into the final report, including details of the preceding flights.

              • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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                1 month ago

                I don’t, not that much anyway. But I’m even more allergic to clickbait than I am to ads, and I run ad blockers since their invention. If I ever click on a clickbait video I feel dirty and soon after even more determined to block those channels. So I quite literally just can’t.