- 6 days
Well that’s a great incentive for clickbait content - cause now it won’t matter if you can keep people watching after you’ve reeled them in.
You’d think this would be against YouTube’s own best interest, considering they want to keep you watching, and people don’t often like watching that kind of clickbait-farm slop…
Or maybe I and the people I know are in the minority, and a lot of people just watch it whether they like it or not, which would be disappointing to hear.
- reksas@sopuli.xyzEnglish6 days
this is definitely against their interests, unless they just plan on having people watch ads everytime they open a video, watch that video for like 1 second and go to next and watch more ads. There is no depth of depravity i wont put past corporation executives, so that feels very plausible how they think and how detached they are from humans.
It could even be prelude to some other even more horrible, like they start gatekeeping actually decent stuff with premium aggressively.
We should really start archiving the good content of youtube more, just in case… I would too, but i dont have that much extra harddrive space and i dont have energy enough to start learning to build a personal storage system that is secure and fault resistant.
- 5 days
I mostly watch videos from channels I’m already subscribed to, but recently a few shows I watch have dropped new seasons and I was looking for recaps on YouTube. It was nothing but AI slop channel after AI slop channel. I would click off as fast as possible to not give them the view, but I guess they will all count going forward. It really sucks because we can’t opt out of these channels and many of them don’t even admit to being AI anyway.
I have no idea how this change is good for them. I totally agree that it seems like it’ll encourage low quality content. After a few of those videos I can’t imagine most people sticking around for another, but what do I know. I’m sure they have more accurate stats than I do.
- lost_faith@lemmy.caEnglish5 days
Didn’t see it in the article, but I wonder if on desktop at least will it count if you hover and “preview” the video before clicking on it? Hopefully not, then we can see if it is slop or not, though that will be 1 more annoying thing to do
- 5 days
I’m not super well versed, but my understanding was that watching the preview for more than X seconds already counted as a view. At least it was like that a while back after they were introduced.
Also be careful because these ai channels are sneaky and will use generic pictures or stills but the script and voice are all AI.
- lost_faith@lemmy.caEnglish5 days
Dammit!!! At least they don’t get the ad revenue from me. Yeah, that asian guy with glasses hasn’t been in the thumb for a while now, but soon as I click on the vid, BOOM!, there he is
- ThomasWilliams@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
What the other guy said.
The counter for advertisements are based on the number of views, hence counting a video as soon as its playing as a view, they’ll be able to jam in more advertising.
- 5 days
I think it just means that the raw view count was never very important to YouTube. That’s why they will have “engaged views” and “qualified watch hours” etc.
5 daysFor those of us born before YouTube, we can just leave it.
For those born in the last couple decades, legacy tv and movies are difficult to watch and are only consumed occasionally. It will never, ever occur to YouTube’s primary audience to stop watching.
- Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish5 days
When a view counts as a view and as an ad impression were always separate things at youtube. Videos under 10 minutes can’t be monetised, I’m guessing they’re keeping that bit.
Videos under 10 minutes can’t be monetised, I’m guessing they’re keeping that bit.
Videos under 8 minutes can’t have mid-roll adverts, but a 2-3 minute video can be monetized and serve front and end roll adverts. Even a 30 second idiot video (IE Shorts) can be monetized but if it’s in the slack-jaw brainslop category (IE Shorts) you need a crap ton of views on it to make money.
About 2 months ago I did an experiment on my youtube page where I made a stupid 40 second video and then formatted it for regular format and idiot format. Regular format got 1400 views and made $5.86. The shorts video got 2293 views and made .54 cents.
Most of the shorts views were in the first 4 days and then the algorithm dumped the video. That’s one is done. It won’t been seen again. The long form format got most of it’s views in the first 10 days but it continues to get views every week.
- floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish5 days
Right after they announced they’re doubling the required watch time to turn on monetisation, it’s clear what they want - more volume, less quality. Slop, slop, slop.
- FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
100%
These changes will cause smaller creators to take more shortcuts, which will mean more use of AI, even if they’re not using it to generate the video itself.
As a creator myself, I don’t know what purpose this metric really serves in the end. I guess a one-second view tells me if a thumbnail image was effective, but apart from that, it’s just useless.
- PattyMcB@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
I’m hoping this actually leads to less AI slop.
I’ve clicked off of so many videos after a second or two once I realized they were just AI narrated garbage.
- foodandart@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
I now use the right click “open in new tab” on any video so if it is AI, I can close the tab then hit the list where the video was and then go to the action dots to the right of it and “do not recommend” the channel. Have managed to give most of the godawful HFY videos the slip (…though recently new AI channels have popped up in my feed… Urgh…)
- FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
Fun fact, that’s one of my suggestions in my AI Slop avoidance video; That said, the new meta seems to be Right Click > Not Interested > Tell Us Why > I Don’t Like The Video.
- FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
Same, but I don’t think it will. Luckily YT is demonetizing AI slop channels, so people running those at least have to do more legwork now in order to make it worth it. Overall, it’s good that all indicators suggest YT is recognizing AI slop as a problem for their platform.
I made a video about training your personal version of the algo to suggest less of it, in fact, but since you can’t outright turn it off, there’s no magic bullet.
- Etterra@discuss.onlineEnglish5 days
Views not high enough? Change the definition of your metrics so it looks like you’re getting better results! It’s not technically lying to investors.
Here is my take - They are adding a new metric called “Engaged Views”, this is the same metric that a “View” was previously, something like - the person stayed after 30 seconds so they are “engaged”. Then they are going to sell ads based on the now inflated view number and use the “Engaged view” metric against creators so they can cut the amount they are paying for monetization.
- tiramichu@sh.itjust.worksEnglish5 days
Ding ding! Nailed it.
Inflate apparent views across the board while simultaneously making it harder for creators to get paid.
- EvergreenGuru@lemmy.worldEnglish6 days
Now we have view inflation on top of losing the dislike button and the UI consistently getting worse.
- 87Six@lemmy.zipEnglish4 days
Fyi the return youtube dislike works wonders. They store the dislikes instead of youtube and adjust them to match the view count.
- rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish5 days
This is because they just fucked everyone by doubling the minimum views to get paid.
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish4 days
And turned YouTube into even more incentive to generate clickbait.
- SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish4 days
Revenue is already largely based on watch time, so if people click away after a couple seconds, you didn’t really get anything anyway. Plus you tell the algorithm that your videos will cause a room of people to leave quickly
So after butchering the like/dislike ratio, the view-count will also become utterly useless… What’s next, automatically subscribing users to inflate subscriber-count too? All these universally liked videos (no dislikes), views/exposure (zero engagement), advertiser-friendly content (threatened (shadow)banning or demonetization)! Now the only red flag to any malinformed advertiser might be a low subscriber-count; so just do it already. Well, alongside the lackluster performance of the ads themselves of course (which can only be measured after the transaction: poorly at that). And the best part: non of the ad-revenue will be shared with the propped up channels: as the recently heightened threshold, requires additional engaged viewers; as opposed to the TikTok-level, worthless kind.
- pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
Calling it now…
“YouTube will now count views only when an ad has been played in full”.
Will come sooner than you think.
- 5 days
They already do that, sort of. The last I heard, people watching with an ad-blocker also blocked the mechanism that incremented the watch counter. This may or may not have been deliberate. The interesting thing is that the video appears in people’s Watch History ad-blocker or not, so there was always an easy fix sitting in plain sight.
They told creators about the watch count problem along with at least one other secret thing that they said they weren’t allowed to talk about. Charlie / Cr1TiKaL / penguinz0 said as much as he could about it a few months back.
I think the secret thing was probably “we’re working on a way to get those view counts back, but don’t tell anyone because we want to discourage people from using ad-blockers and if you tell them they’re costing people views, it might convince them to turn it off.”
Assuming true, that’s all now out of the window because they’ve “fixed” the problem.
I expect another fierce attack on ad-blockers in Q4.
When I was a kid I would refresh my video to increase the view count. I thought this was implemented to prevent that.
That’s it, I’m in my grandpa era, books (published pre-2022) and retro games only
If I could browse the internet at large with the same filter (that is to say only content pre-2022) I might consider still using it but as of right now it ain’t worth it. Might just build a zeronet with my friends at this point.
I know everybody’s pissed at YouTube for this news and the inordinate amount of Artificial Incompetence they host and serve, but FYI add “before:2022” (or whatever year) to filter out recent years. There may be ways to do this with other sites, please let me know if you know.
- CalypsoGirl@lemmy.todayEnglish5 days
I assumed they were already doing that. They’ve never been forthcoming in regards to what actually counts as a view.
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Especially weird if I view videos from my own channel, on my end it seems to tally each time I watch my own videos, which isn’t supposed to happen.
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And videos I never chose or clicked on automatically start playing as soon as I open the app or switch from “Me” to “Home.”
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Or if one person watches a video multiple times, does youtube count each of those views? Because for YouTubers whose livelihood depends on likes & views & subscribers, YouTube needs to make sure a creator isn’t manipulating the system with bot farms or friends/family/paid losers to repeatedly watch the videos.
Now my brain hurts & I’m grumpy. Bye.
- Funkt4st1c@lemmy.worldEnglish5 days
Also accidental hovering seems to count in my history like 50% of the time
- CalypsoGirl@lemmy.todayEnglish4 days
Yes that’s exactly what I mean. It’s disingenuous for YouTube to be doing that, I mean in the grand scheme of things it’s a trifling matter, but it’s a bit of fuckery because algorithms & livelihoods are affected by this nonsense.
- CalypsoGirl@lemmy.todayEnglish4 days
Yes my autoplay is always turned off. I mean when you’re on the home screen it automatically plays, on mute, and not full-screen, whichever suggested video is oriented in the middle of the screen. This isn’t something that can be opted out of.
- AstralPath@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
You sure? What you describe is the autoplay that I was referring to. Nothing automatically plays anywhere for me, even in the main feed view
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So every time your mouse activates the thumbnail preview: that’s a view.
Don’t bother trying to turn that feature off. They just turn it back on. Flipping those fake settings buttons is just more engagement “money” for them to harvest.
On PC you need to turn off view history and use Ublock Origin to block EVERYTHING on YT but the player and some basic UI buttons and maybe comments.
