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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!!"
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!
.
Don't your programmers have anything better to work on?
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"
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.
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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]
Evidently, it was to break the UI.
Well done!