this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Enshittification

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What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

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Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

removes dates

and that's all the news channels gone.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 19 hours ago

Joke's on them, I got used to my homepage being "fuck you for disabling search history" for years

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago

Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

Ummm???

[–] [email protected] 14 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I've been using https://freetubeapp.io/ client for a few months and am extremely happy with it. It allows me to subscribe to channels without requiring an account, it has a nice UI that doesn't shove videos I don't care about in my face, no ads, can download videos, and it's in general a way better experience. Haven't used web YT in ages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

The website doesn't allow interaction at all with my current ublock origin configuration. Not sure that's a good sign?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

Holy crap, thanks for this.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 22 hours ago

Well... One more reason to ditch YouTube. As always: Reminder PeerTube exists.

I know the network effect is powerful, but YouTube won't lose until people are fed up enough to not use it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago

This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen

[–] [email protected] 4 points 18 hours ago

Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

Crapperidge's law says yes

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I bet that when they do this that older videos with newer thumbnails will get more clickthroughs and watch time same that of the newest uploads, but it won't be as effective with documentary / science videos (vsause, veritasium ect) because their videos are highly memorable. This will have a bad effect on the end user filtering out low effort video farms that show up in the search results, because those videos tend to have 100 views - 10k views.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I guess they really want to get rid of users huh.

I watch tech videos. If I can't see when a video is from, I'm not going to waste my time on watching it.

Conspiracy time: Google is purposely making their video platform worse because they're sacrificing it for a tax loss in 5 years when they shut it down. In those five years they're going to "ramp up" development and write off all that "work" to pay for other projects.

Their UX and design choices are amateur at best and clearly they have no interest in maintaining the product(much like all of their retired line).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

No way. YouTube is such a flaghship product and a lynchpin in other businesses (like music, streaming, AI development).

I invoke Hanlon's razor.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

sacrificing it for a tax loss in 5 years when they shut it down.

Given that Tax = %rate * max(revenue-cost,0)

How can deliberately sabotaging a business make money?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

They could be taking a tax write off of the development cost/efforts for increasing revenue from ad revenue.

I'm sure insurance claims are also included in that because of the efforts of ad blockers.

Overall, I doubt that they're making a profit, but I bet they're at least staying in the black.

When you take a look at the changes that they are making now, removing post dates and view counts, it could be concluded that it's an effort to stop wrappers like new pipe from displaying recent content. This could be internally tracked as improvements made to increase ad revenue, which would be tax deductible.

It's clear to me that they're willing to sabotage the entire product in order to increase ad sales, fuck their consumers in the ass, and completely obliterate any trust users will have in their platform in the future.

This is the same standard private investment strategy that's been running for the last 20 years unchecked.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

About 15 years ago Microsoft had this great idea.

What if we forced everyone to use our software on the web so they can’t buy it.

Macros will no longer work, but not many people use macros so fuck those guys, they are nerds anyway.

This became the heyday of the Libre Software movement. And the reason I still occasionally use it.

Companies run on the simple automation the nerds create with Macros and companies aren’t going to hire a bunch more clerks so they can pay more for shittier software.

TL;DR, Microsoft backed down when people voted with their feet and not before.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago (3 children)

What would removing the dates accomplish except making things more confusing and harder to find? What advantage to YouTube is there?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

YouTube's goal, as was Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and TikTok and everyone else, is to get you to consume what they want you to consume, rather than what you choose to consume.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

They one one goal: keep you engaged in the app.

Nothing else matters.

In their eyes, further reoving the "choice" of what to watch and shifting more of it to the algorithm optimizes that. And visible view counts/dates is a factor, as you may skip a video the algorithm thinks would keep you engaged.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

For sure this has to be it. Less distractions, less info, less choice, more control for them

It is enshittification. IDK why other comments are mad about calling that out but look up the term if unfamiliar. Corey Doctorow laid out a thesis a few years ago and , the trend has continued. It seems unabated 😡😰

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I just question if steering users toward old and outdated videos really keeps them engaged.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

It probably does in the short term (aka next quarter or two), which is all they care about. It takes awhile to hemorrhage users when one is so entrenched.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (4 children)

My guess is that it makes it easier to suggest you older content that wouldn't be interesting when you can see at a glance how outdated it is.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well, time to install two new add-ons: Return YouTube View Counts and Return YouTube Upload Dates.

Somebody please make those.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I can’t stand YouTube’s feed. It’s so bad. This does not help. I know many others already said it, but this is not an improvement.

The date can matter a lot. Especially, when it comes to tech learning. That world moves too fast. If you’re learning programming on YouTube, you need to be sure you have current info.

I desperately with YouTube had real competition.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

So I just installed Linux on a new computer and during the short install I went to YouTube for something but it didn't even give me a list of videos to watch instead it told me I had to search so it can build a list of videos to recommend.

I'm not sure if this is a new change or what but along with this and taking away information I'm ready to just drop YouTube altogether probably better for my health... There is one service that was created by the people who do jetlag I might give them a try at this point.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I've had watch history off since like 2015 and sometime in 2021(?) they blanked the home page on me and said I had to turn history back on. It got fixed for a bit in 2022 (based on my discord chat logs) but then got cleared again later. Now it's just a blank page; they don't even tell me to turn history back on, but that could be my revert layout extension cause the giant thumbnails suck ass. Still salty they removed day markers on the subscription page since that's how I kept track of what I still hadn't watched.

Anyway, when they cleared it again for me in 2022/2023 is probably when they stopped giving signed-out new sessions a feed.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

The date can matter a lot.

The original algorithm rewarded engagement absent dates, but this resulted in old classic hits mopping up revenue while newer stuff struggled to grab anyone's attention. You'll never make a music video more popular than Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, so why bother trying?

Then the algorithm shifted to fresh-first bias, which incentivized streamers to constantly churn out new content. But it still contended with users who stubbornly wanted to see the old content. So you got a bunch of content that tried to imitate historical hits or play on trends. This ended up producing 10,000 videos named some variation of "Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, Explained" with a digitally edited picture of the singer with big eyes and a soy face.

Now we've got this deluge of AI generated crap that nobody wants to look at or search for, piling up in YouTube's back catalog. The only way to justify hosting it is to jam it into someone's feed. So every user is being A/B Tested once again, with a new procedurally generated wall of garbage that will eventually narrow down what any given individual is most likely to click on and watch. Then we can solve both of the problems above. Always have new content, but its technically "fresh" rather than a rehash of some prior release.

We are doing Monkeys On Typewriters because someone at YouTube HQ decided it was better than letting anyone watch the Rick Astley video one more time.

I desperately with YouTube had real competition.

There are other places to host video, but they tend to be very boutique or with an abundance of very low quality content. That, plus YouTube leveraging economies of scale and the networking effect means there's nowhere else you'd ever want to try and host a video, unless you were looking to reach a very boutique audience or you were putting out material you didn't really expect anyone to watch.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wow, your algorithm shows the exact same videos that mine does. I've never seen that before. Every time I check out someone else's YouTube, their homepage is completely different from mine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

Ummm, only for the past decade?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago

Hopefully they'll remove the length, the channel name, the thumbnail, the title and the entire video, too.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Sometimes I watch videos of The Daily Show and it drives me bonkers that they upload old episodes from a decade ago and it's impossible to tell if it's current Daily Show, or the classic one. If the whole service was like that... I'm completely gone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Last Week Tonight does this too! I unsubbed. Not worth watching like this.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Return YouTube dislikes will change to

Return YouTube dislikes + view count + upload date

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Isn't YT the poster child of enshittification?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Facebook set the bar high, but Google is rising to the challenge.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

Trollbait much, dipshit? :P

[–] [email protected] 141 points 2 days ago (11 children)

I don't even mind view count, but why would they even remove upload date? That's the only way to know whether the video is new or not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Right? Like that’s why I click on a video most of the time when I see “X hours old”.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

Always happy to see "11 years old" video randomly pops up too, and i'll know immediately it's a fine wine.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 2 days ago

Youtube wants to own what you watch. Thats why they pivot so hard from showing you the subscriber list first and want to bank on their own algorithm to choose what you see.

Once they do, they have a captured audience of millions they get to choose what you think, buy, see ads for and become addicted too.

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[–] [email protected] 177 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It seems like some websites think that the more the users know about the quality of the content, the worse it is for the website’s profit

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's because users are less likely to watch old videos. They do this on TikTok. You'll see videos that are years old on your feed because they have a lack of new content. You watch the new videos and then move on with your day. Now you're getting shown more videos and more likely to stay.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The lack of upload date is the thing that already bugs me the most about YouTube Shorts. Well, maybe the second most after the entire concept.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The optimist in me hopes this will be used to give smaller channels a push in views and attention, even years later, when they may have been skipped over or ignored previously.

The realist in me knows this will be used to push garbage that would otherwise be self-filtered by users due to the red flags of dates/views.

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 2 days ago

Taking away information so I can't choose how best to use my time... yeah fuck that enshittification.

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