[lchengify]

Was shocked to hear this news. I worked for Google years ago but I was in the NYC office, so we didn't run into the YouTube folks much.

Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined. It's a weird mix of a huge creator monetization network, a music channel, an education platform, a forever-store of niche content, and a utility.

It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels. It's easy to forget how novel creator monetization was when YouTube adopted it. They do a lot of active work to manage their creators, and now have grown into a music and podcast platform that is challenging Apple. To top it off, YouTube TV, despite costing just as much as cable, is objectively a good product.

Few products have the brand, the reach, monetization, and the endurance that YouTube has had within Google. And I know for a fact that this is in no small part due to the way it was managed.

I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point. Some of it sublime, some of it absurd, some of it critical for my work or my degree. I couldn't imagine a world without it.

RIP.

[dotnet00]

YouTube has very much been resting on its laurels, they were innovative 20 years ago when they started. For the past decade or so they have mostly just rested on their laurels allowing the auto-moderation to rampage and destroy people's livelihoods.

They've been way behind on adding standard features that their competitors see lots of benefit from. For example, YouTube was years late to the 'channel memberships' game despite the popularity of Twitch and Patreon. YouTube still lacks many of the popular streaming features from Twitch, and only relatively recently got around to adding stuff like polls. I can't think of any feature in the past decade that was a YouTube innovation rather than an innovation from competitors that was copied over years later.

[tim333]

It's still for me much more useable than the competitors. There have been quite a lot of features added in the 20 years - being able to choosse the viewing quality, variable playback speed, rapid transcription for subtitles, live video where if you join late you can start from the begining at 2x till it catches up. I still interenally curse if I'm made to watch video on a non youtube player as there's usually something that doesn't work. Youtube is often the only one to work ok on slow connections.

[johnnyanmac]

Even if the tech was better, the network effect has long taken place. Content creators get paid, and a few get paid enough to do it full time. They can't just jump to another platform and expect to maintain that, and without that the fans won't migrate either.

Mixer is one of the best examples of this. MSFT paid hundreds of millions for exclusivity for some of the most popular streamers and people complimented how it felt much smoother than Twitch. But that wasn't enough to get off the ground for MS. Youtube is an even bigger behemoth to tackle.

[dylan604]

I've often wondered why YT hasn't released a subscription fee or donate type button where they could easily take a small nominal processing fee while removing the friction of forcing use of 3rd party services. Is liability from that kind of money movement too much for them to care with all of the much less risky money they are making?

[trogdor]

They have both. Subscription fee is channel memberships, and donation is the “Thanks” button.

[johnnyanmac]

As others said they have both now. Main issue is the same with any other kind of charity: most people won't do it so it's a neglible factor without incentive (which makes it cease to be a donation in my eyes).

But youtube's main services are free, so that's harder to pull off compared to stuff like Patreon. Offering exclusive videos probably doesn't outpace the ad revenue from "free" videos either (and if we're being frank, you're still bound to YT's rules. So you can't offer truly "extra" content free from censorship or copyright or whatnot.)

[dylan604]

You're allowed to have content with unpublished links or not discoverable by search. I guess you could publish that content via email to sponsors that could obviously be forwarded, but that would be such a small number. I'm not familiar with peculiarities of subscription to channels as I never browse logged in, but do they not allow for videos to be visible only to subscribed users? Seems like that would be simple enough to do.

[johnnyanmac]

>but do they not allow for videos to be visible only to subscribed users?

They do. But as explained, the revenue gained by maybe 100 users paying $5/month won't necessarily exceed an average video release of 10,000 "free" views. It's a " free service", so most subscribers (let alone unsubscribed viewers) won't join the membership for a few extra videos. It's a similar issue Reddit is trying to do right now with paid subreddits.

The idea can work, Nebula as a "competitor" works off this model. But I don't think it can be tacked on 20 years later onto a "free" service.

[sulam]

They have Memberships now and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have a donate button hidden away somewhere.

[hnburnsy]

Isn't you watching commercials and promotions your 'donation'?

[maxglute]

YT could learn a lot from bilibili. They've slowly crawled their way to reasonable feature set over the years.

[mrkramer]

>Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years.

I was always critical of YouTube from the sort of technical perspective than just pure UX. The core product and the core UX are great and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium because I use YouTube so much. All in all, YouTube was and still is internet phenomena and they definitely dominate internet video, imo one of the best internet product ever created.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

YouTube has worked well.

However, I did try their YT Premium, for a while, and was incredibly disappointed in their UI.

I assume that the Premium UI was designed for people that use their free tier, but is very strange, to folks like me, who come from other paid services.

But I am likely not their target audience. I suppose that YT Premium does well.

[paxys]

There is no "Premium UI". Premium is simply regular YouTube without ads.

[darby_nine]

I think maybe the above poster is referencing the music product, but that's just a guess.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

No, it was the movie channel. I tried it out, because YT Premium had a particular show I wanted to see.

The biggest issue that I had, was that I couldn't find shows that I wanted to see. YT kept shoving a bunch of stuff into the UI that I wasn't interested in. All my searches were littered with results that were not relevant to me. I suspect they were paid.

The Apple App Store has the same problem. It's infuriating.

Listen, I apologize for diverting from the real issue, that a tech luminary died young. I did not know her, but it sounds like she was popular, and did well.

[lokar]

Do you mean YouTube tv?

[nnf]

I’m not sure what you mean about the UI, but I pay for YouTube Premium exclusively so I don’t have to see ads, and for that purpose alone, to me it’s worth it.

[tahoeskibum]

Also useful to be able to download videos for offline viewing, e.g., on a plane or when internet is spotty.

[yyyfb]

Also for background playback on mobile

[angoragoats]

Background playback works fine on desktop for any video site (simply put the window in the background) and the fact that YouTube gates this feature behind a paywall is a prime example of enshittification. It makes me want to never give them a dime.

[Physkal]

Why not just use an ad blocker?

[kbolino]

I'd rather move towards a web (largely) without ads than continue to be the product sold to advertisers rather than the consumer served by the platform. The constant escalation of the ad blocker-ad server war has also contributed greatly to ballooning complexity in all sorts of technologies.

I hope YT Premium is a step in that direction, but only time will tell.

[SoftTalker]

Well you are both the customer and the product with YT Premium. Yeah you don't see ads, but they are still tracking everything you watch and using that to deliver targeted ads to you on other platforms.

[Jensson]

Why not pay for a product you use instead of being a leech? It is perfectly fine if you wanna leech, but understand not everyone wanna do that.

[cnasc]

Not looking at an advertisement is not “being a leech.”

I glance away from billboards, I refill my drink during commercial breaks, I show up when the movie starts instead of when the preview starts. These are normal behaviors, not leech behaviors. The ads are not very sophisticated, so I don’t need sophisticated measures to avoid them. On the web, the ads have ratcheted up the intensity (tracking, targeting) with technology and in response I have augmented my ability to ignore with technology. That’s fair.

You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers. It is perfectly fine if you want to guzzle Kiwi Black, but understand not everyone wants to do that.

[throwaway32654]

You already pay for YouTube with your data.

[johnnyanmac]

2 factors:

1. less annoying for non-desktop devices. Especially when casting content onto my TV

2. moral niceties: Premium viewers apparently help give more revenue to content creators, and I tend to watch smaller channels. It's nice knowing I can disproportionately help those kinds of creators out.

Also, apparently Google is in the middle of its latest clash with adblocking so even that can get unreliable.

[Novosell]

Well, YouTube premium will work on every device you can sign in to YouTube on. Adblock is available for the most part, but isn't easily available everywhere.

[pokerface_86]

don’t know any for YT ioS, i used to live with ads on mobile but after getting premium, even though i use an ad blocker + firefox on desktop, i never canceled it for a reason

[pokerface_86]

also YT on a tv is difficult to set up an ad blocker for

[browningstreet]

I, for one, will pay for good things.. but also, it’s worth it if you watch a lot of YouTube on things like AppleTV or Fire Cube. Ad blockers won’t work there.

[talldayo]

> and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium

Why?

Serious question, too. You can sideload clients that give you every single feature of YouTube Premium for free. Unless you're expressly lazy, like being taken advantage of or enjoy watching advertisements, there's really no excuse. YouTube Premium is the "I'm trapped in this place and you people have finally gotten me" fee - you can circument it all together by just, not using YouTube's software. Newpipe is must-have on Android, I'm certain something similar exists for iOS. I run SmartTube on my dirt-cheap Amazon FireTV and don't get a single ad when browsing. Subtotal is $0.00 for the installation and usage of Open Source software.

I use YouTube a lot, but between uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock (which I set-and-forget like 4 years ago) I don't have a single gripe with the experience. I hear people contemplate paying YouTube for a worse experience and it gives me hives. The content is on a server; you are making yourself miserable by acquiescing to a harmful client. Paying for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for submission to the Walled Garden.

[shufflerofrocks]

I use revanced, smarttube, and yt-dlp. but I also have premium, because it is an exceptional service.

It's about 2 things

1. the principle. You get something, you pay for it.

2. the practicality. Youtube cannot run on fumes. It needs to generate funds from somewhere

If everyone decides to not take premium, it only incentivises youtube to harvest your data for a profit (yes, they're already doing it but that's not the point). Premium immediately pays for the product, and provides Youtube with the cash to run it's servers and pay it's content creators.

Not to mention, premium is pretty darned good, provides almost all the features and functionality that are available through other clients.

[hnburnsy]

I didn't mind the ads on YT but this year the unskippable ads on TV platforms is abusivel, eg., a 20-30 seconds ad(s) for a 1.5 minute video. Ive seen unskippable breaks of up to 200 seconds with 5-8 advertisers in some long form YT vidoes. YT claims the breaks are less frequent but I dont beliveve it.

That was it and I side loaded STN. I feel bad for content creators, but I let my favorite ones know about it.

[Sammi]

I pay for Youtube Premium. I never see this, and I don't understand how suffer like this. You don't have to. I also use Revanced on mobile.

[shufflerofrocks]

I agree. That is quite painful and is obviously motivated to force people towards premium, which I highly disagree with. I think such actions should be regulated though I don't know if that can legally happen.

>I feel bad for content creators, but I let my favorite ones know about it.

Same. Sometimes I try to support my fav ones with a nominal patreon subscription whenever I discontinue my premium.

[hnburnsy]

I dont think they want us to transition to Premium, they like that on smarttv platforms they can sell unskippable ads that are similar to cable/broadcast TV

[sulam]

Why do I pick up trash off the floor that I didn’t put there? Why do I tip for good service? Why do I bother responding to posts like this?

The answer is the same to all these questions: because I’d rather not live in a world where everyone is a taker.

[talldayo]

You're not picking up trash. You're paying for trash and encouraging the ad-littering business by even acknowledging it exists. If you consider advertising bad enough to pay money to get rid of it, why would you pay that money to the business putting up ads? Because you refuse to leave their client? Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?

I see a lot of people say this, where they despise YouTube and it's advertisement scheme but somehow mentally justify it to themselves that Google deserves their $10/month. Before any of you ask "What's wrong with the world these days!?" again, reflect on what you're paying for and how these companies sucker you into buying it. The free market can pound sand, Google has you right where they want you.

[least]

> Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?

You could choose something better by consuming media from sources that don't engage in the malpractices you're complaining about. There's plenty of media available for purchase without advertisements or subscriptions attached. There's also plenty of media on offer for free from the people who created it.

I'm not even anti-piracy, but your rationalization is just ridiculous. No, you're not sticking it to the man; you're being subsidized by people that are willing to pay for content they consume.

I've pirated a ton of content/software in my lifetime and I use adblockers. Countless mp3s, video games, applications, movies, tv shows, and articles online consumed by me without paying for it. Sometimes it was impossible for me to pay for it because of regional licensing, but a whole lot more of it was simply because I didn't want to pay for it or I couldn't afford it.

Now I pay for music and other media streaming services, including Youtube Premium. I pay for the games I play and I pay for a lot of software that I use. Does that balance things out? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm definitely not someone that is pretending I'm on some moral crusade against advertisements by circumventing them.

[talldayo]

I'm not pirating media people put on YouTube. When you upload content to YouTube, you are generally taking unlicensed (or provisionally legal derivative content) and sublicensing it to YouTube for distribution and monetization. You can argue that I'm pirating Google's copy of the content, but I'm not short-changing the original uploader by refusing Google's ads. I'm exclusively ensuring that Google's business model is less profitable.

> you're being subsidized by people that are willing to pay for content they consume.

Good! Those people hate YouTube too, otherwise would be perfectly satisfied with the default service. If Google kills YouTube and forces people to finally create a better system of content ownership then humanity will be all the better for it. Google doesn't deserve this content, they are poor stewards of the service and deserve to be deposed for their lazy management of a shared resource. If we were talking about ad-free Facebook subscriptions HN would be wearing the shoe on the other foot, ripping people to shreds for supporting a demonstrably destructive business. But YouTube is different, because we all have some incentive to prop poor Google up.

I feel zero empathy contributing to "the problem" of ruining the service. This isn't the tragedy of the commons, it's the progression of corporate greed. Keep paying for YouTube Premium, tell me with any honesty your contributions are making the world better or providing a more complete user experience. You can't.

[presentation]

OK we get it you’re so cool for being cynical

I will proceed to live my life paying companies and creators that provide me value and you can continue feeling like a victim where every action you have the option to take is exploitation

[sulam]

First of all we are talking about YouTube here, not Google as a whole. Secondly, my argument is simple and basic physics. If everyone behaved like you, YouTube and services like it would not exist. Your straw man arguments aren’t needed for me to justify my decisions.

[johnnyanmac]

> You're paying for trash and encouraging the ad-littering business by even acknowledging it exists.

This feels like a "you participate in society" argument. Yes, it'd be better if all intrusive ads were banned or heavily regulated. But that's not reality and I can't simply withdraw from the internet in protest.

>If you consider advertising bad enough to pay money to get rid of it, why would you pay that money to the business putting up ads?

it's a calculus of "energy spent" from fighting vs value gained from "giving in". There's fortuntaely more value than "remove ads" so that's how I justify it.

>Because you refuse to leave their client?

because I can't leave the client. I've been de-googling for the past year or so and I realize the main two things I can't leave are

1. Youtube, because it basically has a monopoly on video content.

2. gmail, mostly because there'd be a huge burden ediing almost 20 years of accounts all through the web to leave. From random sites I visit once in a blue moon to my banks and bills. I'd have gmail haunting me for years even if I dropped it today.

If there's one thing that has a reckoning coming, it's Youtube.

>Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?

I do it all the time. There is always friction so I think it's a bit dishonest to phrase it as "choosing something better". Firefox still has quirks with translation and the occasional weird interaction with factors like video calls, even after days of researching tweaking settings and installing extensions. Picking up PC gaming still has tons of configuration issues and hardware considerations compared to popping in a disc into a console. There's simply a lot of intersting information I miss out on from not browsing reddit, things that the other 3 forum social media (including HN) just don't catch. It's never objectively better.

>reflect on what you're paying for and how these companies sucker you into buying it.

I suppose you can criticism any bill with that logic. Water is a natural resource, why am I paying for plumbing? video games are just code, all code should be free, why pay for video games? Why am I paying $100 for this art commission when someone in Venezuela would do it for a dime (disclaimer: this is probably a very wrong conversion)?

Some of these are societal (we're never going to escape taxes, some of these should hopefully be so you can support other workers instead of exploiting them. It's your call either way, but I won't fault someone (especially someone decently off) for choosing convinience of entertainment over some grand stand against "the free market".

[tshaddox]

> Unless you're expressly lazy

Yes, that’s me. I sometimes even pay other people to prepare meals and manufacture clothing for me!

[kubectl_h]

> I run SmartTube on my dirt-cheap Amazon FireTV and don't get a single ad when browsing. Subtotal is $0.00 for the installation and usage of Open Source software.

I have YT Premium and it works perfectly on every device I have and I have never had to configure anything nor research anything to not see an ad. I only vaguely understand some of the phrases or words you are using (have no clue what a newpipe is, but kind of understand what sideloading) is. I do not care to ever fiddle with my devices, there are more important or at least gratifying things in this world then futzing around with and tweaking devices.

> Paying for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for submission to the Walled Garden.

If this is the great battle you have chosen to wage with your precious, fleeting time on earth, by all means, go with God -- but a lot of people really don't give a damn about Walled Gardens.

[askafriend]

My reasons are: it's a great product, it's very convenient, it's the service I watch the most content on, part of the money goes to creators and I'm not broke so I can afford it.

[talldayo]

Then don't come whining to me when YouTube gets worse on your dime.

[askafriend]

It's been probably the single most valuable content resource in my life.

I owe so much to YouTube. The price I pay is small for what I get in return and I only see the service getting better over the years.

I'm not asking you to agree with me. But I hope you find this perspective useful in seeing how other people view it.

[ghaff]

To a fairly casual observer like myself, YouTube early on looked like mostly a platform for massive video copyright infringement--especially before home video became so relatively cheap and easy. I don't use it nearly as much as some here but it definitely transformed into something much different for the most part and managed to make it work as a business (at least as part of Google).

[ethbr1]

Younger folks forget that YouTube launched (2005) a few years before both the iPhone launched and Netflix pivoted to streaming (2007).

In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c) there was no "on demand" anything, as most media flowed over centrally-programmed cable or broadcast subscriptions, and (d) people capturing video on mobile devices was rare (first gen iPhone couldn't) but obviously a future growth area.

So early YouTube was literally unlike anything that came before -- watch a thing you want, whenever you want.

[lawgimenez]

Wow I just realized how old YouTube is. My video on YouTube was uploaded on 2006 and it is still there.

I remember uploading it from my Sony handcam, then editing it in Sony Vegas and exporting it to make sure it hits the required YT file upload limit.

[qingcharles]

And it was a video dating site when it started!

[kylec]

That was also an era where bandwidth to serve content was extremely expensive, I still don't know how 2005 YouTube was able to find a way to make serving user-uploaded videos for free financially viable, but that was a HUGE component of their success.

[hedora]

Also, the DMCA had just passed, which basically eliminated liability for hosting copyrighted video content as long as the infringement was laundered through a service provider.

I honestly don’t think YouTube would exist without that particular piece of regulatory capture.

Contrast the video and podcast ecosystems.

Podcasts are arguably much healthier (the publishers maintain creative control), and are certainly decentralized.

[takinola]

I think the secret was being acquired by Google. Without the deep financial pockets and strategic patience of Google, I doubt they would have been able to become what they are today.

[Kye]

How YouTube would pay for itself was one of those top topics back in that thin slice of time between when YouTube took off and Google bought it.

The Techmeme page from the day of the announcement (October 9, 2006) if you want to dig into it: https://www.techmeme.com/061009/h2355

[ghaff]

Self-hosting video at scale is still pretty expensive although using CDN can reduce it.

[ethbr1]

At YouTube scale, it feels like that quip: 'When you need to serve a few videos, it's your problem. When you need to serve video everyone watches, it's the ISPs' problem.'

I'd be fascinated to look at their peering terms.

[treyd]

The slogan "Broadcast Yourself" was really inspiring at the time, because it actually was kinda hard to do that at scale in video.

[Kye]

On-demand was a thing before, but it was mediated through slow, glitchy cable and satellite boxes. There was also a thriving scene of RSS-delivered web TV shows.

[ghaff]

And Cisco didn't acquire Flip until 2009.

Really most of the content that YouTube had available was material recorded off of broadcast/cable which was mostly not available otherwise unless you had recorded it or gotten it off a torrent.

[hnburnsy]

Flip has a special place in my heart, right next to my memories of my Diamond Rio MP3 player.

[-mlv]

Even cheap digital cameras back then could record video + audio.

[ethbr1]

True, but scale drastically changed once there was serviceable video recording in every mobile phone.

Lots of people carried digital cameras, but even more have mobile phones.

[coffeebeqn]

Yeah I remember watching Seinfeld and full seasons of cartoons on early YouTube. People basically just uploaded their whole pirated video collections there

[marcuskane2]

To a less casual observer like myself, early YouTube looked like a bastion of protection for fair use of copyrighted material.

Sadly, the copyright cartel swiftly attacked and all the regular people lost their rights. It seems like the lesson learned is that the copyright-owning corporations can't be trusted to play fairly or meet in the middle on fair use. We really need to just abolish copyright laws entirely.

[georgel]

Agreed, I have gotten insane amount of value from YouTube.

[johnnyanmac]

I'll preface this with the most important part that cancer sucks and I wish it not even on my worst enemies. I hope Susan's family can find some peace.

>but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined.

it's very weird because "successful" doesn't mean "makes the most profit" here. It's undoubedtly a huge and challenging infrastructure to manage, but it apparently took Google over a decade to start being profitable. I don't know if that's some hollywood accounting or commodification to ads, but in many ways I feel like YT outspent the rest of the competition and in some ways stifled more efficient ways to deliver video content.

I feel a bit bad because it's clear YT has been turning the script for some time, and while Susan took a lot of that blame these wheels were turning long before she became CEO (and turn long after she stepped down). But that just shows why monopolies are bad. I do hope something better for creators takes over eventually.

[yas_hmaheshwari]

Well said! Having used almost all video learning platforms (Oreilly, skillshare, pluralsight, Coursera etc.), I now believe that YouTube is the superset of all platforms.

> Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere

[yzydserd]

> I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point.

More than 20,000 hours over at most 18 years is at least 3 hours per day on average. That’s a lot of watching.

[loloquwowndueo]

The average person spends 5 hours/day on their phone and it’s likely most of it is passive watching (YouTube, TikTok, etc). So 3 hours/day doesn’t sound like too much.

[gloryjulio]

YouTube is how I got the education I needed to get into the tech industry.

[swalsh]

I think googles peering agreements are possibly the only reason YouTube is viable as a free service. Hard to compete against a company who basically doesn't have to pay for bandwidth.

[newshackr]

Google also invests many billions of dollars to build their internet network and parts of the public Internet so it is hardly free

[bushbaba]

Eh close to free. This is the Google edge nodes in ISPs. But Google isn’t the only one with such an arrangement. Akamai, Netflix and a few others have same cost structure for in isp nodes.

[bobdvb]

There's a big stand-off between ISPs and CDNs over payments. Some ISPs insist they want payments to peer and others agree that it's mutually beneficial, but even where the ISPs stamp their feet, they rarely win the argument. Netflix started publishing rankings which showed which ISPs were good and which weren't, which drives them to improve. If content providers start saying to customers that they should change their ISP, then the ISP is going to hurt, so they might as well peer on a neutral basis.

Some ISPs have been lobbying governments and the EU to ask them to tax the "significant traffic generators" based on the traffic volumes and then use that to pay for the telco infrastructure. But that's an argument I am not convinced by, I think the ISPs will take the money, just reduce their own investments and make more profit.

I think the CDNs (including Google) need credit for the infrastructure they build.

[sytelus]

YouTube is absolutely the business that is resting on laurels, just like Google Maps and Gmail. Sometime I wonder if these products have any real active development teams at all besides ads. YouTube massively screwed with users by forcing poorly executed botched migration to YouTube Music. Even outsiders can see that this was entirely internal Google politics which powerful people like Wojcicki should have been able to avoid but she didn't. It just makes me wonder if these billionaire leaders of Google products really care anymore about anything. There is visibly an utter lack of hunger at the top and these people clearly should have been spending more time with family leaving these products with more hungry minds. YouTube recommendations are crap and it's still amazing that in 2024 just clicking one video will fill up most of recommendations with same thing. It never got around to incentivize creators to produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins. TikTok took full advantage of this but YouTube CEO just kept napping at the wheel. Ultimately, the original product mostly just kept going but the measure of success is not about retaining audience but what it could have been if there was an ambitious visionary leader at the helm.

[tsimionescu]

> It never got around to incentivize creators to produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins.

Why on Earth would you want shorter videos? The best thing about YouTube is that it's one of the only places you can find quality medium-to-long-form content.

[Blot2882]

Maybe not what the commenter was saying, but there is a difference between great multi-hour essays and pointless rants stretching out their length to meet a minimum ad requirement. I like watching a lot of multi hour videos, but you can tell the difference between one with substance and one repeating the same thing over and over so they can "clock out."

That's all due to changes by YouTube to reward length and frequency, which of course makes sense for maximizing their ad revenue. But the result is creators are incentivized to pump out 20-minute fluff videos, not well edited/written videos.

People on here complain about SEO sites being filled with meaningless garbage. That's what YouTube is starting to be. The difference is their search bar still works whereas Google's will only give you the garbage. Though I still get "such and such breaks down their career" even though I've never clicked on that.

[tsimionescu]

I agree that there are a lot of inflated videos to hit some ad target. But the solution is not to encourage people to create short videos, or at the very least, not the way TikTok did, making it almost impossible to popularize anything longer than 3 minutes.

And despite all the dredge, there is a lot of good content on YouTube, at least in certain niches. Video essays on media and politics, lots of video-game analysis and other fan communities, history content, lots of e-sports to name just a handful that I personally enjoy.

[theshackleford]

> The difference is their search bar still works

Search is literally one of the things YouTube is poorer at than ever and it blows my mind. I get a handful of results that might be relevant and then it’s just pages and pages of completely unrelated content that has nothing to do remotely with my search.

[sytelus]

Why on earth you want 10X longer video with same information content as the shorter video?

[tsimionescu]

I find it a small price to pay if a few videos are too long (you can usually tell within three minutes anyway), to have a platform that generally encourages 30 minute videos and even 3 hour videos that do have content.

There's almost no meaningful 3 minute content possible, so a platform like TikTok that only works for short videos is basically condemned to be meaning-less, to be pure entertainment.

[polotics]

Clearly the add-supported side, that likes to pad and pad and show more adds, is working against the premium/fee-supported side, that wants to maximise value and engagement. Premium subscribers should be able to give feedback on a video's density IMHO...

[HPsquared]

Length is shown in the thumbnail. Too long, no click, less views. I also wouldn't be surprised if the recommendation algo uses premium status as an input

[rajup]

Why on earth would you watch a 1.5 hour movie when you can watch a 2 min TikTok that explains the entire story?

In a world full of distractions I for one love the more slow-paced videos than “shorts” churned out by content mills designed to feed the modern day digital ADHD…

[johnisgood]

10 minutes of a shitty movie is too long, but one great movie might be not enough and I want a TV series out of it!

[nextlevelwizard]

Few years ago “long burn” story telling was hot and we are still feeling the effects. Take any show on Netflix and it will be 8 45min episodes from which first 3 are absolutely garbage filler.

Youtube learned the wrong lesson and started to optimize the algorithm for retention and length. It is annoying to click for a review of some product that looks like a lengthy one with probably tests and what not only to see painfully slow unboxing and a wikipedia read of the history of the product and company and then sponsor read and then they turn on the device for a minute and give arbitrary score.

Exact same info could have been communicated in 30seconds, but then they wouldn’t get sponsor money and mid video ad roll

[rajup]

I beg to disagree. I don’t watch movies to “get information”. I watch movies (and long form YouTube videos) to be entertained. Why travel places? You can look up photos and videos online and get the same “information”.

[SoftTalker]

YouTube videos were originally limited to 5 or 10 minutes I think. And probably 480p or so. You have to remember when it started, video on mobile didn't exist and there was absolutely no bandwidth for it. So people watching YouTube were watching it on their PC, probably with a 1024x768 CRT screen, and that's assuming they had something faster than dial-up internet.

[tsimionescu]

Oh, I do remember, I was around in the early days. I think (but maybe that came later?) longer form videos did exist, but only paying accounts could post them.

[xnx]

The way YouTube was caught offguard by TikTok is even more significant than than the way Google was caught offguard by ChatGPT.

[latexr]

> objectively

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What makes a business successful and what makes a good product are both highly subjective.

[lasc4r]

My dad uses it to get fascist/right-wing propaganda for about 4 hours every night. All nicely monetized for any grifter willing to debase themselves for a potential fortune. Truly novel, but not well thought through or done with any care at all besides profits which is par for the course in silicon valley.

[tourmalinetaco]

Your idea of fascism must be rather tame, considering YouTube’s active censorship of anything even slightly right-of-center.

[lasc4r]

It hardly needs to be violently racist or whatever conception you have in your mind to be fascist propaganda. Rather the opposite if you take a minute to consider what makes for effective propaganda.

[cityofdelusion]

The word fascism needs to stop being tossed around so carelessly. Words ought to be precise and meaningful.

[itsoktocry]

You sound radicalized.

What do you watch? Sounds like we need to ban it.

[vsuperpower2021]

Tech companies should spend more time banning people from talking about things I would personally prefer they didn't.

[AmericanChopper]

> It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels.

I would say it’s more a business that rests on its monopolization of the market. As a product there’s plenty I like about YouTube, but it dominated the market through the use of many highly anti-competitive strategies, and has what many would consider (and what may well be proven to be) an illegal monopoly.

You can’t deny its impact, but to give such high praise to the management seems rather misguided to me.

[edanm]

In what way is YouTube an illegal monopoly?

[AmericanChopper]

Alphabet has engaged in many anti-competitive business practices to promote YouTube's monopoly.

To name a few, Alphabet is currently being sued by the DoJ for illegally monopolising digital advertising technology. That technology, which directly integrates with youtube (and which you or I could not integrate with our own competing youtube-like product), is one of the key reasons that youtube has become as successful as it is.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...

They have also recently lost a lawsuit regarding the legality of their search monopoly, which likely also contributed to the success of youtube.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us...

The way they leverage the OHA to ensure YouTube is shipped with every Android phone is also highly anti-competitive, and isn't too different from the IE case against Microsoft.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

The same concern exists in the smart TV market.

While it's not illegal (as far as I know), the practice of burning through billions of dollars until your competitors are gone and you have an unassailable market dominance is also certainly anti-competitive, and that really has been one of the other key ingredients in youtube's success.

None of these are management practices that I would consider worthy of congratulating.

[tourmalinetaco]

The irony is that despite all of this monopolization and lying to advertisers about the reach of their ads YouTube is still not profitable.

[AmericanChopper]

Alphabet don’t publish YouTube’s profit margins, so I don’t think you know that to be a fact. I’d personally be rather surprised if it wasn’t profitable though.

[johnnyanmac]

I know this is horrible logic here but: Alphabet not wanting to publish the margins of what is otherwise their top3 best known product says a lot in and of itself. Either that it wouldn't be a pretty image (even if it is in fact commodifying other profitable sectors), or it'd reveal some skeletons (which are being revealed in real time, but it slows down the reveal).

[supertrope]

Leveraging YouTube's market share to hobble Windows Phone. https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-orders-microsoft-to-remove...

Carriage dispute with Roku. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/roku-reaches-agreement-with-...

[zht]

I hope that when I die no one spends so much focus on the business aspects of what I built or the valuations

[sramam]

Doesn't that depend on what context a person knew you at - personal or professional?

The personal side typically will center on emotional aspects of being human. However what you do with your intellect is also a major part of being human. And that part is most often expressed only in our professional lives.

Celebrating a job well done and an outsized impact is a good thing - and if I may, the most "human" of things to do?

RIP.

[katzinsky]

HN is essentially a business development forum so it makes sense that's what people here would focus on.

[Blot2882]

It's also a science forum and a tech forum.

[layer8]

Luckily, you will never know, so I wouldn’t place much weight on it.

[TMWNN]

>Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN

Who? Who has a negative opinion about YouTube? The occasional "My kids watch too much of it" != "mixed opinions" about the site in general.

[pavlov]

YouTube’s algorithm feeds increasingly radicalizing content to young people. It makes celebrities of people like Andrew Tate and is a primary enabler of fringe belief bubbles.

Any time someone posts a YouTube link to a political discussion, it’s guaranteed to be the worst nonsense that pries on people who “do their own research.” (No matter if they’re left or right on the political spectrum, there’s endless junk on YouTube for both.)

There’s surely good stuff on YouTube, but as a parent I honestly wouldn’t miss it if it disappeared overnight.

[kbolino]

As targeted towards young people, YouTube's algorithm serves up a lot more Mr. Beast than Andrew Tate.

[throwaway32654]

Considering the recent controversies, YouTube's algorithm recommending Mr. Beast to young people is no less of a problem.

[lotsofpulp]

That is not an “algorithm” unique to YouTube. See 24/7 news channels for a much earlier example. It is simply the nature of loosening standards on broadly available media, and throughout history, even strict standards have not always prevented the “bad” stuff from getting through.

[pavlov]

News channels don’t show random 30-minute programs created by viewers themselves. YouTube does.

Fox News and CNN may have low journalistic standards, but at least they have some. They also have liability. (Fox paid $787 million to a voting equipment manufacturer as settlement for lies they published in relation to the 2020 election.)

YouTube has neither. Their algorithm will happily promote any nonsense that has traction. The lies that cost Fox $787 million continue to circulate on YouTube unabated — and an untold number of other lies too. Alphabet has no reason to prevent this.

[ethbr1]

The greatest sin of YouTube's current recommendation algorithm is its optimization for eyeball time (aka more ad capacity).

Any tweaks around the edges will never be able to compete with that.

And unfortunately that central tenet incentivizes creators to make clickbait content that plays on emotions, because that's the most reliable way to deliver what YouTube wants.

(YouTube could decide it was optimizing for something else, but that would put a big dent in ad revenue)

[CamperBob2]

How do you fix this without doing something even worse?

[gspetr]

> It makes celebrities of people like Andrew Tate

Legacy Media made celebrities out of people far worse than Tate decades before Youtube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mesrine

Media's propensity to do so has been lampooned before as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Born_Killers

Tagline: "Media made them superstars"

> and is a primary enabler of fringe belief bubbles.

Oh? It's not like anyone's ever seen conspiracy theory programs on TV before Youtube. Heck, if someone re-rendered some of those with AI to use Alex Jones' voice, even his viewers might not be able to tell the difference.

[jart]

> It makes celebrities of people like Andrew Tate

By banning Indian school children and sucking the oxygen out of competing influences like Pewdiepie.

[smcin]

Who's banning Indian school children?

[xanderlewis]

A lot of YouTubers have been very critical of YouTube’s approach to things and treatment of creators in the past.

Also, just as an example, YouTube demonetises (and therefore effectively punishes) you for using words like ‘suicide’ so now we have to say silly things like ‘unalive’ — at least until Google/the advertisers catch on. These days YouTube is more censored than traditional TV.

[Aunche]

YouTube doesn't print money out of thin air. They make money by making advertisers happy, and advertisers will only buy ads if their customers are happy. This isn't anything new either. Creatives have always been beholden to censorship boards in traditional media too, which are typically much stricter. The fact that you so many YouTubers make money from criticizing YouTube is evidence of how much YouTubers don't understand their own privilege.

[xanderlewis]

Which customers are offended by the word ‘suicide’ and would prefer something like ‘unalive’?

As with all of this crap, it’s about taking offence on behalf of those who aren’t offended or don’t even exist.

> censorship boards in traditional media too, which are typically much stricter.

Which ones? In which country would the word ‘suicide’ be censored? There are countless other examples of topics that YouTube has decided are beyond discussion — even the left-leaning BBC aren’t as censorious.

Yes, they can do what they like on their platform. But by the same token, we can complain about it.

[Aunche]

I'm pretty sure that unalive came from TikTok because they wanted to keep their app upbeat.

My point is that average YouTube is going to be less censoring overall. The perception may be that there is more censorship because there is simply more content on it that can be censored and they have more stakeholders that they have to appease. BBC released The Modi Question, which got censored on YouTube. However, YouTube has significantly more Modi criticism than anything on TV in India. Likewise, YouTube censors covid related conspiracy theories, but you're still going to find more of them on YouTube than the BBC.

[xanderlewis]

Your point seemed to be that if advertisers are unhappy, then YouTube can’t make money. And advertisers are unhappy if their customers are unhappy.

This is true; the problem is that the customers aren’t unhappy. No sensible person cares about this kind of posturing, virtue-signalling, euphemism treadmill-riding for-lack-of-a-better-word ‘wokery’. It’s pushed by an incredibly small vocal minority of people who stand to benefit — mainly because it’s now possible not only to gain social cache but to have a whole career and make lots of money pushing this stuff.

Yes, YouTube may find that advertisers choose to virtue signal, ‘make a stand’ and leave their platform when their chosen magic words are not used, but ultimately they’ll come grovelling back. YouTube shouldn’t be so soft. Ultimately it’s just the endless cycle of unsolicited offence-taking.

And, by the way: this is all totally separate from Musk’s management of X, which purports to be rules-based and morally sound but is in reality entirely ad hoc. What Elon says goes… until he changes his mind tomorrow. At least YouTube has policies, even if they’re bonkers.

[specialist]

Are their advertisers happy?

[Jensson]

They continue to pay for ads, so yeah for now. That is the kind of "happiness" companies care about.

[mewpmewp2]

Demonetisation is not the same as censoring though.

[sunaookami]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

[xanderlewis]

No — it’s not quite the same. But if you systematically demonetise any content you don’t like, in the long term it does amount to a form of censorship.

It’s as if a government said ‘we’ll tax you 1000% if you criticise us on social media’. You’d still get some bozos online saying ‘it’s not censorship; people are free to speak’ because you’re not directly prevented from speaking. But you can imagine the effect it would have.

[mewpmewp2]

Yeah, but there is always going to be different incentives for different content. Some content will always pay more. It is up to the author which kind of content they want to create.

E.g. clickbait content might bring you more, but it doesn't mean the other type of content is censored.

[xanderlewis]

Clickbait content brings more via an organic process (because people actually want to click on it). The type of de facto censorship I’m talking about is anything but organic — it’s an unnatural distortion imposed on creators and consumers who don’t want it.

[throw0101d]

> These days YouTube is more censored than traditional TV.

This is evident in (e.g.) WW2 documentaries where an old 4:3 television broadcast is simply put online, and the original footage had perhaps footage of corpses but on Youtube it is blurred.

[TMWNN]

I think the "unalive" nonsense is idiotic too, especially when it increasingly bleeds into elsewhere online (and probably offline, too). But that's not the same thing as "mixed opinions" in general on HN. That would be more accurate of, say, Twitter (where we are nearing two years and counting of the imminent collapse of the site any day now post-Musk acquisition, as opposed to seemingly every news event proving that it is more important than ever).

[xanderlewis]

I think perhaps what there are ‘mixed opinions’ on is the actual management and day-to-day practice of YouTube as a company, rather than the site itself. We’re all very, very grateful to have such an amazing place to learn and be entertained. And, in my opinion, the website and apps are very nicely designed and work better than anything else.

I do wish the TikTokification would stop, though. But that’s never going to happen, given how effective it is at holding our eyeballs hostage.

[ChrisNorstrom]

Which is interesting because the news and media and movies and music videos can be as "advertiser unfriendly" as they want and still get ads to support the corporation that produces it. But indie content creators and the general public are punished for talking about the same topics.

Corporations get freedom of speech, freedom of reach, no consequences. The people do not.

To the HN crowd, sorry but I'm not going to hold back. Death does not turn you into a saint. Susan is the one who turned YouTube into the censored mess it is today, pushed for unliked mainstream channels over popular organic content creators (changed the algorith to push late night talk shows), ruined the algorith to always push "authoritarian" channels (CNN, CBS, MSN, NBC, PBS, etc), gave creators the option to disable the dislike button, permanently banned thousands of channels that even mentioned "pedophilia" like Mouthy Buddha's channel during the Q-anon nonsense. Creators at the time made 30 minute long videos analyzing data and proving that the recommended mainstream channels being pushed were inorganic.

She helped ruin YouTube. I will not apologize. Bye Susan. Come back in your next life and help fix it. Downvote away. I do not care.

[kortilla]

How are you still digging in here? There are very clearly mixed opinions in these threads about youtube.

[mihular]

My complaint is that there isn't a family subscription option in my country. Also without Music. It's either personal with Music or damn annoying commercials. Another complaint would be non transparent and sometimes wrong censorship.

[cheeseomlit]

I like a lot of content hosted on YouTube but that doesn't mean I like YouTube, especially under Google.

[CPLX]

The fact that it’s a linchpin component of an illegal monopoly is one good reason.

[briandear]

Government-coordinated censorship during Covid. That’s my negative opinion.

Covid vax concerns were allowed during the last months of the Trump administration, but it suddenly became censored after Biden was elected.

[pavlov]

The timeline of the election coincides with the development of the vaccines.

Moderna reported positive phase 3 trial results in November 2020. FDA’s review was completed in December and an emergency authorization was granted. The full trial results were published in medical journals a few months later, around the same time as Biden entered office.

So maybe it had nothing to do with Trump/Biden and simply was a reaction by YouTube to the proven efficacy of the new vaccines.

[philwelch]

That’s not a coincidence—they deliberately delayed reporting the trial results until after the election because they were worried that good news would help Trump.

[pavlov]

Haven’t heard this conspiracy theory before.

So which is it: 1) The mRNA vaccine was rushed out without sufficient clinical trials; 2) The results from the clinical trials were delayed to hurt Trump.

You can’t have both you know. So far the far-right argument has been entirely based on scenario 1, but it’s certainly interesting to know that scenario 2 also exists for some people.

[philwelch]

Here’s reporting from MIT Technology Review, a bastion of far-right conspiracy theories: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/19/1010646/campaign...

Operation Warp Speed was a signature effort of the Trump administration. As a result, the claim that the vaccine was being “rushed out without sufficient clinical trials” was made by just about all of Trump’s critics.