this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 249 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 week ago

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 8 points 1 week 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.

[–] Alphane_Moon 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, this is not even really targeting clickbait, more like putting restrictions on openly malicious content.

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[–] grue 17 points 1 week 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 11 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

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

[–] cheese_greater 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I've noticed these super annoying news flashes that say like Beyonce fleeing US and shit like that. Super long videos too and they're all trash. Makes it hard to get real news on it

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Makes it hard to get real news on it

Well there's your problem. Why the fuck are you trying to get news on Youtube?!

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[–] [email protected] 154 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] woelkchen 38 points 1 week ago (7 children)

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 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The fact they never used that data in video recommendations is surprising, and if they started to factor it in would have probably helped make this less of an issue

[–] woelkchen 9 points 1 week ago

The fact they never used that data in video recommendations is surprising

So you never clicked dislike, just to get recommendations for the same channel / type of video over and over again? I thought everyone figured that out by now. These are the menu items that actually do the trick:

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] _sideffect 140 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah sure they will. They'll target small creators, but keep shit heads like the scammer Paul, the fake philanthropist Beast, and others

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Top talent who made careers on clickbait will not be harmed

Pedophiles on set, no problem

Scamming people, no problem

Advertising and selling spoiled food, no problem

Say suicide, demonetized 🤡

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

Youtube will age restrict songs in my playlist with a word "fuck" in title but won't do anything about unrestricted animated gore on a channel of a studio that does kid animations that I've reported long ago. 🙃

[–] [email protected] 131 points 1 week 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...

[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

And maybe stop making comments help the video get more popular

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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

[–] TheTechnician27 46 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] Lanusensei87 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

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[–] Passerby6497 64 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Youtube literally tell their wagies they need to make click but like this ugly ass thumbnails with up-close mug shots.

I am not sure what data they have to support it but I don't click these thumbnails but mrbeastade a career off them lol

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Veritasium made a video about it, his example video only performed better after switching the thumb and title to something more clickbaity.

[–] lepinkainen 10 points 1 week ago

LTT did the same experiment. The stupid O-faces just work

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[–] qevlarr 59 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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.

[–] MITM0 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You guys buying this baloney ?

[–] RoidingOldMan 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I heard Facebook is spent tons of money to combat election misinformation in 2016 and 2020 and I heard the same story again in 2024. The problem is solved right?

[–] whotookkarl 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

From what I've gathered from various big time 'tubers I've watched for years now, as they slowly trickle tidbits of info about what it's like working as a YouTuber, and what tools and tips Google gives them to assist: Google/YouTube is the one that recommended using the types of thumbnails commonly employed by uploaders, along with a ton of other things that are ubequitous to the platform (such as the phrase "like, subscribe and ring that bell!").

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

YouTube also decided that every video should be ten minutes long and made the algorithm recommend videos of that length so everyone had to start making their videos ten minutes long even if it made no sense to do so.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (7 children)

*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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[–] iopq 6 points 1 week ago

Sure, as soon as X cracks down on misinformation

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 6 points 1 week ago

What? Most likely in favor of more profitable clickbait.

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