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[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

What? Most likely in favor of more profitable clickbait.

[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 14 points 14 hours ago

Smells like PR copy parading as news, what click bait was actually removed vs what they said they would? What's the criteria to qualify as click bait?

[-] Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

sounds like anything that says it's one thing but does a whole different thing

Sadly it's only in India atm, and doesn't result in a strike(yet) so I doubt many are going to care.

[-] graff@lemm.ee 2 points 14 hours ago

Writing (not clickbait) in the title obviously

[-] qevlarr@lemmy.world 53 points 20 hours ago
[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

They either look like they need to shit or are eating an invisible popsicle

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

theverge

Haha nice try

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 114 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Or, you can bring back the dislike button and stop promoting videos with high dislike ratios.

[-] RandomVideos@programming.dev 12 points 17 hours ago

And maybe stop making comments help the video get more popular

Do comments first. There's so much spam that almost looks legit because of how many upvotes they have.

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 6 points 15 hours ago

I am not referring to a like to dislike ration, I am referring to a dislike to view ratio. YouTube should bury those from recommendations.

[-] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 8 points 20 hours ago

And actual scams with 300+ upvotes. Not just copied comments that get edited layer, but entire chains directing people to whatsapp numbers.

[-] dan@upvote.au 58 points 1 day ago

Shout out to DeArrow, from the same developer as SponsorBlock. It replaces video titles and thumbnails with community-provided non-clickbait versions. Available as a browser extension, and is also built-in to several third-party YouTube apps, such as SmartTube.

[-] dax@feddit.org 10 points 16 hours ago

I feel a bit conflicted about that, do I want that extension to hide the terrible clickbaity titles and thumbnails? For me that's a good reason to not watch these videos in the first place

[-] Syntha@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

YouTube basically completely stopped recommending me those videos years ago because it learned I never click on them.

[-] Oka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 21 hours ago

Thanks, gonna add tomorrow

[-] 7rokhym@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

YouTube ruined Christmas. I can't stand my relatives anymore, they watch every conspiracy clip and now they are a thousand miles down the rabbit hole and I can't handle them for more than a few days a year. I hate evil Google or alphabet, or whatever they call themselves.

[-] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 119 points 1 day ago

So, they created an algorithm that will only reward clickbait and completely ignore honest titles and thumbnails, then complain about their platform being one giant clickbait? Huh...

[-] protist@mander.xyz 239 points 1 day ago

YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

This is only going to target garbage-level content. You can still expect the same clickbait-style titles and thumbnails from established creators

[-] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 102 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

YouTube will never "crack down" on these guys. They are their money-makes and can do whatever the fuck the want. Clickbait on huge channels is YouTube's bread and butter, even if people just click to comment that the creator sucks, that's still engagement and means there is more money in the ad bids.

YouTube is the one pushing them to clickbait. Their metrics are designed such that if you don't bait clicks a huge percentage of the time you're shown, you won't even show up in the feeds of your actual subscribers.

[-] Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I think you've correctly identified their self-interest over altruism, but you've misidentified the internal value of discouraging clickbait. YouTube is a treasure trove for building training datasets, and its value increases when metadata like thumbnails, descriptions, titles, and tags can be trusted.

It's the AI gold rush; notice how this coincides with options to limit or disable third-party training but not first-party training? It coincides but is definitely not a coincidence.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

I'll be even more cynical than that: I think this policy will be abused to suppress legitimate news/current events videos with a POV the oligarchs doesn't approve of (e.g. pro-Palestinian, pro-Adjuster, etc.).

[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

This will address extreme and obvious falsehoods but I still encounter clickbait of the more pedestrian kind everywhere I go. “You’re using your table saw WRONG” or “the 1 table saw trick 99% of people don’t know” etc.

I consider this clickbait: it creates a false sense of urgency and doesn’t convey any information in itself. What is this one trick? Oh I already knew that one, but I had to watch the video to realize that.

It wastes a lot of time and makes things harder to search for. And often these clickbait headlines are not in the video headline where YT can easily scan them, but in the thumbnail graphic in huge letters, where it’s probably harder to automate any moderation for.

I pay for YT premium but this aspect of the experience still feels ad-like and cheap.

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 10 points 1 day ago

Yes, which YT actively encourages people to do. So ultimately nothing really changes.

[-] penquin@lemm.ee 149 points 1 day ago

The fix was there, but they removed it. The dislike button. Fucking unbelievable how stupid these companies are.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago

The fix was there, but they removed it.

Return YouTube Dislikes still exists. The likes and dislikes of RYD users are stored in an external database, so Google cannot take them away.

[-] nulluser@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago

Unless YouTube is using that data to not recommend crappy videos, then it's completely pointless. If YouTube was going to use that data, then they would, oh, I don't know, maybe still have a dislike button?

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Unless YouTube is using that data to not recommend crappy videos, then it’s completely pointless.

YouTube never did that anyway. YouTube recommends videos on user engagement. Thumb buttons in any direction are engagement. They have slightly hidden "don't recommend video/channel" options for that.

What RYD does is to show what others think.

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[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 9 points 1 day ago

It's completely inaccurate though. It can show massive amounts of faux dislikes that don't actually exist. This has been confirmed with youtubers, who still see the dislike ratio on their backend.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

It’s completely inaccurate though. It can show massive amounts of faux dislikes that don’t actually exist. This has been confirmed with youtubers, who still see the dislike ratio on their backend.

I'd say the "actual" dislike numbers are completely inaccurate because what's the point of disliking a video in an environment where the dislikes don't count?

RYD extrapolates the like/dislike ratio as stored on their own server to the like numbers as displayed by YouTube. That's not secret information. They spell it out in their FAQ.

If anything, if you like more representative numbers, get more people to install RYD.

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago

So a video getting like 80% dislikes in the addon, but like 90% likes in the backend, is an okay and totally not misleading metric to you? And I uninstalled the addon because of this.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

When the only people hitting the dislike button are the people using the addon (because that's the only circumstance in which it counts), WTF else did you expect than for the dislike ratio with the addon to be higher?

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

If that's the only people using the addon, then they should adjust their extrapolation formula to account for the bias of their user base. Because like this it will only feed people's confirmation bias through literal disinformation, making content look heavily disliked even when it isn't.

[-] penquin@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

This is not official and not many people (relatively speaking) know about it. My wife, for example, still uses the official YouTube app on her iPhone with all of its ads and garbage.

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[-] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 60 points 1 day ago
[-] konomikitten 60 points 1 day ago

YouTube is clickbait. This is like them saying they're going to crack down on their own advertising model.

[-] Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca 60 points 1 day ago

Better title: “YouTube is cracking down on click bait - here’s how”

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 42 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

"5 ways YouTube is cracking down on clickbait – #3 will make you shid and fard and cum your pants"

[-] Lanusensei87@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

YouTube tried to crack down on clickbait, what happened next will shock you!

[-] rigatti@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Thumbnail:

They're doing WHAT!?! --->

(⓿_⓿)

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[-] Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 11 points 1 day ago

What the hell is wrong with the people here? Actual positive news for a while and what does Lemmy have to say? Complaining and cynicism. No wonder you're so miserable all the time.

[-] LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 day ago

For years, every update YouTube has had has made the platform worse. I think its valid to doubt this will improve anything. That being said, I agree with you. Lemmy as a whole needs to calm down a bit and stop being so damn negative about everything.

[-] essteeyou@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I haven't seen any of the usual self-righteous "I only use self-hosted video services" comments in here yet though.

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[-] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago

Like, we will be able to make negative feedback about a video again? Oh no nevermind it's just bs again...

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Sure, as soon as X cracks down on misinformation

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago

*Only directly misleading clickbait. So they'll continue to promote other forms of clickbait like specific thumbnails or capitalized & ambiguous titles.

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[-] nulluser@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I won't be happy until they ban shocked Pikachu "show us your O face" thumbnails.

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this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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