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YouTube Is Messing With the Order of Videos In Some User Feeds (gizmodo.com)
YouTube is testing non-chronological subscription feeds to try and serve you content that it thinks you'll want to see at the top. The problem with this is that the subscription feed exists because users subscribed to content that they want to see. If they don't, they will unsubscribe, thereby removing unwanted content from the feed. Gizmodo reports: YouTube confirmed the test on Twitter after some users noticed the change and inquired as to why the heck their subscription feed was no longer in chronological order. YouTube must have missed the memo about how users react when platforms mess with the order of the sacred feed.
Here's YouTube's how-to and troubleshooting Twitter account explained the test: "Just to clarify. We are currently experimenting with how to show content in the subs feed. We find that some viewers are able to more easily find the videos they want to watch when we order the subs feed in a personalized order vs always showing most recent video first." Weird, considering YouTube already offers recommended videos based on your viewing habits and subscribed channels in its sidebar.
Here's YouTube's how-to and troubleshooting Twitter account explained the test: "Just to clarify. We are currently experimenting with how to show content in the subs feed. We find that some viewers are able to more easily find the videos they want to watch when we order the subs feed in a personalized order vs always showing most recent video first." Weird, considering YouTube already offers recommended videos based on your viewing habits and subscribed channels in its sidebar.
I really REALLY wish youtube would just make subscribe a real subscribe and not fart with it. If I subscribe to a channel there is a reason I subscribed to it, and I want to see all it's content show in my subscription feed.. Also show them all in chronological order. If a channel isn't of my interest I will unsubscribe! This whole "we will decide what you actually want to see BS is just more work on your part that I DO NOT WANT YOU TO DO!!"
Huh? I noticed glitches in the temporal order in Youtube's subscription feed over a year ago.
So, are they saying that it was supposed to be glitchy all along or that it is going to be even worse?
If the second, isn't the lack of randomness in the recommendations bad enough? Please don't add yet another glitchy algorithm where it isn't needed! Fix it the damn thing!
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
YouTube pushes what they want to push. Secureteam10's channel with over 1.5M subs, is no longer being recommended to those who watch it, and those subbed with alerts on are not getting notified of new posts. They are however recommending thirdphaseofmoon's channel to those who do not watch it (thirdphaseofmoon is christian right-wing disinfo).
Neistat, BuzzFeed and Top ten lists of any kind, that is what youtube's political controllers want you to watch. They are so stupid and transparent.
Memo:
From: Alphabet HQ
To: YouTube
Hey you guys at YouTube... everything's still working just fine, isn't it time you fixed that (again)??
Remember, we struck out "Don't be evil" so make those users squeal!
Listen up, and listen good, Google. These sorts of changes accumulate to make using your products a very stressful experience at times. At least make this kind of stuff optional.
Iâ(TM)d know when I got to the first video Iâ(TM)d already seen, Iâ(TM)ve seen all the new ones. How the fuck am I supposed to know now?
.
Don't your programmers have anything better to work on?
People are really bad at consistently filing videos into the right feeds, even worse when it's business employees doing it.
I use the Uploads feed on particular accounts to make sure I don't miss the most recent videos, stop messing with it.
Netflix keeps doing the same thing to my watch list and it's fucking annoying.
#DeleteFacebook
They're almost certainly doing this to promote channels and content that they deem to be acceptable. Facebook does the same thing: posts that they believe will drive more engagement will appear more frequently. Posts that they don't think will drive cash or are simply things that they disagree with will appear less frequently, if at all.
A lot of content creators lately, like Mark Dice, have been announcing that their subscribers aren't seeing their new videos at all in their subscription feeds. This is probably an early implementation of this "feature"
The annoyance from YouTube is that after I play the video I want, it picks some absolute crap to play next, some garbage that I would never ever have watched.
Yesterday, it's "pick" for me was in Russian. Why, YouTube, Why?
YouTube already serves up RSS feeds for every channel (e.g. Postmodern Jukebox's feed). You can find the link in the page source for any channel. They also have feeds for playlists and likely some other pages as well, though I haven't seen them in a casual glance through the source. Thankfully, I can drop a link to any random channel or playlist on my RSS client of choice and it'll parse the link to that channel or playlist from the page, allowing me to manage my subscriptions on a more granular level than what YouTube itself offers. For instance, BuzzFeed puts out a ton of videos that I have zero interest in (nearly all of their videos and content, in fact!), but their weekly Worth It series of videos are something that my wife and I find entertaining to watch together, and that feed lets me subscribe to just those videos, without having to mess with any sort of filtering or other stuff.
In the end, I find that managing my subscriptions via RSS is easier (one place to manage all subscriptions), more configurable (Feedbin has some powerful filtering actions that can be applied if there isn't a playlist/channel with the specific content I want), and it's also better at protecting my privacy to boot, thanks to the fact that my subscriptions to that feed is now aggregated with everyone else using the RSS service, meaning that YouTube/Google has way less visibility into my interests and preferences.
profiling and datamining. #getfukt
.. Even created a video of it. Tried sorting by date, but they kept plugging all their high paid sluts^Wstreamers. Linus Tech TIps, Eli the pain in the ass guy, etc. What I find disgusting though is I _know_ there are channels with exactly what I was looking for yet they don't show up at all. Hak5 for example will never show up nor Level1techs. But they'll give me pages of everything else. I've literalyl searched for '-Linus -LinusTech -LinusMediaGroup -Eli' etc. and still get results from them. It's not that I hate Linus but when you search for LINUX, that Linus is no where near Linus Torvalds. The LMG Linus really, really doesn't like Linux.
Closer we get to Elections in Canada the more results are getting filtered too.
-Meeting customer expectations and slightly exceeding them when the costs are minimal is the key to our business success. Every good marketer knows that.
-A happy user is a silent user. A silent user is useless for the Feedback Loop. Making happy people unhappy is paramount to the development of a well working digital service.
-Oh, how the world has changed! I'm retiring.
People this is all about adverting.Someone is not happy with the viewing order because an advertiser is complaining about it. I mean what real reason would google need to move MY subscriptions from the order I made them??
""Disclaimer""PS i never sign into YouTube and don't have a list lol"
Its all about the ad dollars and the advertisers i mean shit, now everyone going to demand for a setting to leave their setting choices alone.....
Choise 1 googles prime advertisers on top.
Choice 2. you don't get one hahahahaha
Jack of all trades,master of none
This morning, on my YouTube account, in the YouTube comment box, cut and copy were working, but paste (keyboard and mouse) were not. However, drag and drop paste was working normally, so I just had to use a two-step workaround (paste somewhere else, then drag and drop).
My configuration is pretty weird, so I don't draw conclusions right away. Most of these anomalies go away within a few days.
That said, it was standard-issue social media helplessness nevertheless. Nothing about my user interaction is fully documented or defined, and YouTube reserves the right to fuck over any damn thing they want at any damn time.
I don't approve of this business model and I govern myself accordingly. If I care at all about my words, I keep my own copies of everything I contribute to a social media platform. I never click "subscribe" on any feed whatsoever. And I'm always prepared to M*A*S*H my way to the next social media Hamburger Hill user interface at the code drop of a random A/B whim.
———
The one time I really lost it was when Google changed the format of my search results to some god-awful multiplicity of carousels, rather than just the simple links. I spent two hours crafting some user CSS to dis-abominate the worst of it, and it was still bad.
But fortunately either I dropped out of Satanic side of this particular A/B test pool, or Google's telemetry convinced them it was the worst idea since hydrogenated palm oil, and about a week later my Google search results were back to a bearable normality.
Personal policy: never click on a carousel link ever. Hate the damn things, may they all die in a fire.
And if the carousel moves on its own accord, exit stage left within 1500 ms (20% chance your back button is screwed over, so my mouse is always heading for the history drop-down, just in case).
You'll find me further down, clicking on the REST of the page.
If I really have to stick around and interact with a moving carousel, I usually font-change or resize and window drag my window until the carousel is entirely off screen.
Finding myself feeling compelled to linger on a carousel page usually triggers the five whys: why I am accessing this page? why am I accessing this site? why I am engaging this topic? why am I using this search tool? why I have taken on this project?
———
Why am I such a die-hard crank about carousel evasion?
Because it works. The gradient of life is complex, with not many robust signals. There are few signals I've encountered with a better cognitive ROI than fleeing the carousel, gleefully heedless of any small, short-term pain.
So you can imagine my humid outward eardrum pucker the day that Google randomly larded up my Google results with cards and carousels, and carousels and cards.
———
Google probably sees this as just another of 10,000 A/B interface trials. My amygdala and my insula saw it differently. And those little suckers forget never.
Antitrust investigation of Google? Well, the rational part of my brain thinks this is a bad thing, because Google is far from the worst offender. Meanwhile, a deep emotional center in my brain will dance a Black Swan gig.
———
The arrogance of these social media empires: even when I'm at rage factor 11, there's still no button offered for me to punch out of an A/B trial gone hopelessly sideways, waaay down the Nung River, deep into permanent lizard-brain antipathy.
Hey, Big Brother, hurry up with that 24/7 face-camera sentiment analysis, because you don't know what you don't measure. At least, I guess that's your best excuse.
"to try and serve you content that it thinks you'll want to see". Stop trying to guess what you think we want and let us figure it out for ourselves. Seriously, you are fucking jerks and I hope you all die in a fire.
You aren't making the world better, you are creating a generation of useless fucking robots that can't think for themselves that will ultimately cause great harm.
I do a lot of cycling and use Strava, but last year they decided to do a similar thing and instead of a chronological feed of rides that other users that I have chosen to follow in my feed, I get a jumbled mess of others users rides in a random order. I used to use it to see who had ridden today, maybe call them up for a ride, now I can't know if I've seen everybody's rides as scrolling until I see an activity I've already seen, or one from yesterday, no longer means anything.
Their support is taking the stance that they aren't going back to chronological order, though after 6 months they have put out a satisfaction and feedback survey.
I hated it when Facebook did it, and their endless scrolling. I'm pissed that Strava did and have stopped being a paying premium member and let them know exactly why. I don't want an algorithm predicting what I want to see, I would rather have filters for depending on the task I'm doing at the time, whether looking at various riding buddies from different groups, or specific riding buddies from the group I ride with most. That might change day to day, hell, even minute to minute as I switch tasks. They can't possibly know exactly what I would like to see.
The only, somewhat valid, argument I have ever heard for it are people who may have gone on an epic ride but couldn't upload it for a couple days, so when they do nobody sees it. But for that the solution may be to float new uploads to the top, until I've seen them, or x amount of time has gone by, then return them to chronological order, not fuck with the feed so it is useless 99% of the time.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
Just stop it, Youtube, stop fucking with our shit in the hopes of squeezing another nickel out of the users somehow.
Youtube has gone to shit with their rules about what you can play and when. It's 2018- we can send a man to the Moon and put metal in a microwave, but I can't play a fucking video with my tablet cover closed?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
They suspended my (now deleted) youtube account after my pro-life posts drew attention in Ireland. Interference!
A lot of users myself included look at the subscriptions feed and if there's nothing new then on to more useful tasks, easy peasy. The change they're attempting is not weird - it's to "trick" you into watching older subscribed stuff when there's nothing new. No thanks.
Now it takes me 3 additional clicks (and seeing 3-5 ads) to search and find the next chronological video on my phone.
In other words, changing the order was done for a rea$on.
1) Start play a video on youtube.com on my phone, it plays perfectly, and a popup appears..... "Video cannot be played, enable Google Play Services".... erm except the video is playing behind the popup, and "Google Play Services" is their major source of spyware that I do not want. So no, I won't.
2) I search on DuckDuckGo on my Samsung 8, selected a video for playing in DDG.... Youtube says it cannot be played. Go to youtube.com, plays perfectly, try again on DDG, still not working. Claims the browser doesn't support streaming on a browser that does support streaming.
I simply stopped using youtube.
Google Maps I replaced with maps.here.com, and its better than Google.
Google search I replaced with DDG, and its more private
But what to replace YouTube with? At the moment I simply skip it altogether.
You used to be able to message friends, video answer, depend on getting notifications just by subbing. Fuck youtube experiments. just deliver updates in chronological fucking order because I can look through a back catalog to see more if I want, you don't need to worry your pretty head bout nuthin.
So, YouTube is trying to be the video version of Facebook. We've seen what 'thinking' does to Facebook pages.
They screwed up subs for some reason, then added that bell notification.... and now apparently (I've never bothered with it) that bell has the option of "tell me always" and "tell me sometimes." But even then apparently "tell me always" doesn't always work??? I don't think YouTube knows what "subscribe" means anymore. Or my other favorite is their algorithm for related videos. A guy who tries to cover news stuff was discussing gun control debates, and all the related videos were apparently children's nursery cartoons???
While we're on the topic of subscription stupidity, could somebody clarify why we need the bell feature in addition to the subscription feature? I'm already notified about new videos in my subscription feed, I don't need the bell to send me messages when new videos are posted.
Oh, I get it. If subscriptions aren't chronological anymore, the bell is effectively a replacement for chronological notifications. I knew they innovated for good reason, and not just to give content creators another way to beg for subs/likes/bells hoping to game the algorithm again.
Evidently, it was to break the UI.
Well done!
The amount of ads I want to see is zero, and the kind is none. This is why I use an adblocker.
As long as you don't care what I really want to see and only pretend you do while trying to abuse me, I don't care what your ad revenue is and only pretend to watch your ads while trying to get to my videos. Deal? Deal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Granted they've always been a bit weird with how they show content in search results and the like but lately it's become much more extreme, to the point that result sets being given to me through their search rarely matches up with what I want. They use previous search data to coach the next result despite being in another subject area altogether and it drives me bonkers.
I've almost completely moved over to DuckDuckGo now, it's not the greatest but at least searches seem to come back with what I want and not what Google seems to think I want... which is a problem for Google. The main reason I started using Google way back when because:
a) it returned very good results
b) ads were unobtrusive
c) no-frills UI
Since they are abandoning these core elements it's time to move on.
For video services, YouTube is the 600 lb gorilla but as much as they are fawning over cable-like content and pushy strategies (like re-ordering your feeds) a lot of people who make AND watch videos are feeling that ol wind of change blowing. All a new platform has to do is emulate YouTube from around 2010 long enough to tip the scales for content creators. If creators come over in dribs and drabs all it will take are a few viral videos to start snagging users. If they can work out how to make lucrative partnership programs for creators and provide a genuinely pleasant experience for users... well first we unplugged from cable, next we unplug from YouTube.
I had hopes that Twitch might morph into a more YouTube like platform but I doubt that will happen, I feel like PornHub could do something with their vast experience however they also do weird things with search results that attempts to guess what you want to see vs giving you actual results which is a problem.
As it stands we need some kinda video hero to put the fear of not sucking back into Google (which hopefully leads to change and not heavy handed "it's good to be the king" style political maneuvering)
TL;DR
Google has lost touch with reality, please somebody make a replacement
crazy dynamite monkey
Seriously, just fuck off. Just fucking die already. None of this bullshit you are pulling was asked by anyone.
Why do you dick around with your users? Because you get an erection? Are your dicks that small that you need to jerk others around?
It's time for FTC to step in and break up Google. Sorry you fucked people over for too long. You got big and sloppy and provide NO VALUE to the user.
You've turned into Microsoft. People use you NOT because they prefer you, but because they're too lazy to use anything else.
I await the day of your demise.
Again, fuck off.
I've seen far too much changes made to many software all on the premise to make it easier for the end user. My own view is that many of these features are nothing more than programming exercises. Far too many designers and programmers have too much of a need to change things because they want to see how far they can takes things without a thought to the end user.
Next step is reordering the feed in a way that never shows you those that they deem "controversial".
I would really like to have videos I saved to watch later to show up in the order I saved them in...not based on some strange AI formula that *thinks* it knows what I want to watch, because, it doesn't have a clue. Maybe if they expanded to homes they'd get it?...Top YT and Google management that is... You drive back to *home*, but it's not there anymore...while you were out, AI has determined that, from it's sampling, that you'd really prefer to go *here*...but..there is no *here*...you'll have to search places you've visited in the past years until you find a home that your key works in.