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YouTube rolls out Hype, which lets users boost creators with under 500K subscribers via a hype button that gives videos points, in the US and 38 other countries
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A quick recap of how it works: Viewers have the opportunity to hype up to three videos per week for a creator with under 500,000 subscribers. When a video is hyped, it receives points, giving it a chance to end up on a new ranked leaderboard that you can find in the Explore menu. To level the playing field, hype gives smaller creators a bigger boost. The fewer the subscribers, the bigger the bonus, giving the most authentic emerging creators a better opportunity to get noticed.
Source: YouTube Official Blog.
As with pretty much every Google feature, there's always a motive beyond what's on paper.
Sure, it may help small creators. But what's the ultimate goal? "Hype" fast-tracks data collection by giving Google very focused insights into a user's preference.
After all, it's hard to market based on someone's behaviour if you've got a massive list of viewed videos, hundreds of videos with thumb's up, hundreds more in playlists and subscriptions, etc.
But if you only give users three videos per week, that can get really specific.
Anyway, that's my anti-google take on it. LOL
As a video hosting site, I want better curated recommendations targeted to my own interests. If their algorithm is capable of feeding me entertaining, not-braindead content, I don’t care if they collect the data on that. That’s the one situation where I’m okay with it.
The conversation is very different the moment we start talking about targeted advertising though.
That's the problem, though.
In an ethical tech world, the data used would be used to benefit the user. However, in our current state of tech, we all know that our data will be abused and weaponized against us.
Feeding our viewing addiction, selling us highly targeted products (that we don't need), and manipulating our feed to influence our behaviour is what data collection and behaviour tracking is all about.
???
Dude, you have channels with hundreds of millions of subscribers!
Anything under 1 million is a "small creator". But this particular program boosts the smallest creators more than those closer to 500,000, giving the impression of fairness.