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by bmitc 1423 days ago
It's pretty clear to me that YouTube wants to steer you towards content they want you to watch and not content that you want to watch. Watching intellectual long-form content does not equal ad revenue, user "engagement", and whatever else bullshit addictive metrics they only care about.

None of these systems are for the people. It's either about YouTube's bottom dollar or some influencer's ego. It is really amazing to me when I come across old YouTube videos that are just people filming or discussing something interesting without fanfare. You can find newer people doing this these days as well, but it's hard. These types of videos are so refreshing because it's what YouTube should be about: people being creative in honest ways, people talking about or showing something they're interested in, etc.

2 comments

>It is really amazing to me when I come across old YouTube videos that are just people filming or discussing something interesting without fanfare.

This so much. I feel the same way, I remember when people would just make creative videos or goofy animations.

> It's pretty clear to me that YouTube wants to steer you towards content _they_ want you to watch and not content that you want to watch.

This is it. Exactly.