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by Forgeties79 1072 days ago
YouTube’s algorithm routinely drives people to more and more extreme content and is designed to be as addictive as possible so that users don’t leave. A lot of this is the result of Google’s acquiring them. I’m curious how you think it’s better.

Let me also be clear that it’s not like it was squeaky clean and friendly prior. But to say it has improved since the acquisition…I’m having a hard time seeing that.
1 comments
HWR_14 1072 days ago
The acquisition by Google happened 18 months into YouTubes existence. It's been 18 years since then. I don't know if you really recall what a site was like 18 years ago.

Besides that, what Google provided was hosting infrastructure and legal protection. Otherwise they would have been sued into nothing and couldn't have afforded to serve video.

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ghaff 1072 days ago
Early on YouTube was basically a repository of commercial copyrighted material. Widespread home video was not really a big thing at the time.
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Forgeties79 1072 days ago
Honestly I did not realize that acquisition happened so early in YT’s existence. That’s on me I suppose.
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HWR_14 1072 days ago
It's understandable. It was originally allowed to be its own thing. There were several iterations of it being brought into the Google fold, and it would be easy to mistake any of those for the acquisition event.
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