[greggman3]

For me, youtube is better now than at any other time I've used it. My feed is almost entirely very well made talks, and lessons, and tutorials. That they have a 2-3 minute "this video brought to you by ABC" doesn't bother me at all as the content is amazing. Anything I want to know there are 25+ plus different people willing to explain it to me.

[biztos]

I also really like today's YouTube and I even pay for it. For me the trick is that I now use it almost exclusively to watch original content made for YouTube. And there's a ton of that stuff, from DIY garage geekouts to language instruction to cooking shows. And eating shows! One of the biggest YouTubers I follow basically just goes around eating stuff.[0]

I think YouTube is slowly becoming a major platform for original content, which of course was the original promise before it rose to fame as a copyright violator's safe haven. I love seeing people like Mark Rober[1] combine great ideas with a sense of fun and decent production quality to make this new and insanely democratic form of TV. It's also fascinating to see the production quality increase as people go from hobbyist to professional.

Of the five streaming services I pay for, YouTube feels like the best deal. And I could also just not pay for it, and deal with ads.

Oh yeah and I really like TikTok too but I only watch it about once a week because time sink.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/user/migrationology

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/onemeeeliondollars

[Touche]

How do you find this stuff? YouTube is so full of absolute garbage that's it's a struggle to find something worth watching. I watch painting videos on YouTube but spend way too much time digging.

[magicalhippo]

The algorithm mostly suggests stuff I enjoy watching. I suspect the key is to avoid like the plague to click on anything that's clearly "engagement bait", and to subscribe to stuff I enjoy.

Some random examples that I really enjoy that I've stumbled over to thanks to the algorithm:

https://www.youtube.com/user/todsstuff1/

https://www.youtube.com/user/Abom79/

https://www.youtube.com/c/ThomasFlight/

https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience/

https://www.youtube.com/user/reppesis/

https://www.youtube.com/c/corridorcrew/

https://www.youtube.com/c/Driver61/

https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamNeely/

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheHouseofKushTV/

[Touche]

The suggestions I get look good too but I'm rarely just looking for anything interesting to watch, I want to watch something specific.

[biztos]

Some things I find by searching for very specific things, like say YouTubers in Thailand or (lately) modular synthesis which led me to Andrew Huang[0]. Other stuff I get pointed to by friends, eg Mark Rober for his anti theft videos which are hilarious. And some things are YouTube suggestions, the algorithm seems pretty conservative but it has turned up a few good things.

There is great stuff out there, I find the amount of garbage I actually see and have to skip over is pretty small these days.

[0]: https://youtube.com/c/andrewhuang

[atatatat]

Cooperate with the suggestions tools.

[Touche]

I searched for lawn care videos 2 years ago and still get suggestions in my feed. The videos might be great, but it's not a subject I want to watch. This is pretty common from what I see.

[greggman3]

I curate? my feed? If it suggests something I detest I mark as "not interested".

If I'm confident the channel a video comes from is likely to have nothing I'm interested in I pick "never recommend anything from this channel" or whatever the option is.

If it's a video of something like say "washing machine repair" which I know won't need recommendations of later then I right click and "open in incognito window"

If after watching a video I don't think it will generate good recommendations I remove it from my history.

Recommendations are not perfect. 3 things that would help that I wish they'd do

1) let me choose to have music separate from none music. 20%+ of my recommendations being for music is a complete waste. I'd much rather to go some special site (music.youtube.com) or (youtube.com/music) then have them mixed in with video.

2) when I pick "not interested" -> "why" -> "already watched this video" then show it as watched (put the red line under it) just like "mark as read" in email

3) don't recommend videos I already watched (this goes along with both 1 and 2. I almost never rewatch videos unless they are music videos and I don't want music mixed in with videos so the fact the 10-15% of the recommendations are for videos I already watched is a complete waste of space and time

2b) fix the UX related to not-interested. A better UX would be letting just clicking the "..." and picking "already watched" instead of the 3 step process it is now. An even better UX would be a small icon

[Touche]

I think it comes down to viewing habits. If you like to browse and watch anything interesting then recommendations are probably good enough and you'll like YouTube. But if you're looking for something specific (which I tend to do) then recommendations don't help. As great as a video might be, that's not the subject I want to watch right now.

[Gibbon1]

Reminds me of two things. Searched for pressure cookers. For the next two years got ads for full figured bras everywhere. Made the mistake of looking for synthetic sapphires. Got ads directed at young engaged women for a year.

[wccrawford]

I've started to get annoyed by the ads for Raid Shadow Legends and Squarespace, and the product placement is getting nuts.

I had someone the other day say they didn't think the tool was "sponsored" because the company lent it to them to try, in order to see if they'd use it enough to justify keeping it. Uh, yeah, that's totally sponsored, even if it's only lent.

Some of my usual Youtube channels now have 1 or 2 big stop-the-show ads that are unrelated to their content, and then multiple product placement moments that are incredibly obvious.

It's really taking away from the content of the shows.

I know they have to eat, and producing a lot of content is expensive, but I already pay for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads. And now the ads are infesting the shows anyhow.

Edit: I also support my favorite content producers on Patreon as well.

[freebuju]

Sucks that you cannot do away with ads even on premium. Might want to check if this sponsored-ads skip tool this can be of help in your circumstance https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock

[wccrawford]

Ooh, very interesting.

Unfortunately, I think my channels are one step ahead... They usually mix in interesting video in the background while they give their advertisement verbally. So I often can't really skip them without also skipping actual content.

But thanks for that!

[pmoriarty]

"Some of my usual Youtube channels now have 1 or 2 big stop-the-show ads that are unrelated to their content"

Using youtube-dl you can get the videos without ads.

[wccrawford]

I already pay for Youtube Premium, so the ads inserted by Youtube are already gone. These are ads that the content creator themselves are putting in the video.

A sibling comment has recommended a browser addon to skip them (thanks for crowdsourcing), but it has issues, too.

Thanks, though!