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Yep, I was able to watch it on dialup by letting it load for an hour. When they went to the chunk style, watching it on slow internet became impossible.
Seriously, why and how did they manage to mess it up so bad? I just dont get it whwat do they gain from making the user experience on lower quality internet so horrible
That's not the reason, video downloading remains really easy and there's pretty much always been working command line tools to do it. The simpler reason is it saves TREMENDOUSLY on bandwidth. As internet became faster than videos stream, more and more people would download the entirety of a video, watch 3 seconds of it, and move to the next video. It was sucking up bandwidth like 20 times more than the users even wanted.
That doesn't explain why they don't keep the parts of the video you've already watched in the cache. Try to jump around and find a specific thing you already watched and it has to redownload a big chunk every time.
That's called garbage collection. The browser limits how much memory a website can store, because video files can easily reach several gigabytes and use up all your RAM if all of it's stored. And it can't just save it as a temporary file, that'll nuke everyone's SSDs with constant writing and it makes it harder to encrypt data on DRM streaming like with Netflix and such. Lastly, the resolution youtube uses is typically dynamic so if you seek back to an earlier point it might be redownloading a higher quality cache of what you've already watched.
But youtube DOES keep the buffer it's already loaded a lot of the time in memory, it depends on the video size and your system configuration. Youtube's player tech is just about the only actually good part about that system, their engineers work hard lol
Wow I actually learned quite a bit from this little comment thread. Pretty interesting how they solved those problems that came about when internet speeds increased.
Yep, it's interesting stuff! Youtube also uses its own special video codecs to further save on bandwidth, VP9 since 2013 and AV1 for the last few years. They generally get disabled if you don't have native hardware support though, but it means that you'll get slightly better video quality on a newer phone if you didn't know.
Ugh this ones the worst one, because at the same time they did that they absolutely rammed as many ads as possible in their mobile app, I had to sideload a custom youtube IPA because it was just unbearable
My phone is my music player when I'm in the car. Usually through YouTube. I was fine with adds... something I never tolerated on desktop... then they made it worse.
Listening to 2-3 adds after every song was way too much. Forcing YouTube links through Google to open the YouTube App to make it harder to add block is also a decision.
Now Brave is just my "music player" and they get 0 add money.
for what ever reason, on mobile, whenever i search for something on youtube (browser, not the shit ass fucking 'app' bullshit), the very next action i do, it thinks im pulling down to refresh the page. no matter what i do, refresh 100% of the time.
The last time I had slow internet for an extended period of time (in 2020, sitting in covid quarantine with ~400 other people on a base in Qatar, all on our way to different parts of the middle east for deployments), I discovered that I needed to use youtube-dl with some scripts to have it download some videos overnight and then have it check the downloads and re-start any that failed, in order to consume any Youtube videos during the day. There was truly little else to do, and there were 400 people on a wifi network that seemed to struggle even at night... a 10-minute youtube video would take about 30 minutes to pull down during the day, but could stream just fine with some occasional short pauses for buffering during the night when only us night owls were on it. So I set up a cron job on my linux laptop to run every night at ~3am and attempt to download videos from a Youtube playlist I made - I'd just add videos to that playlist if they looked interesting during the day, and the next day, they'd be sitting in my ~/Videos folder waiting for me. I'd clear videos from the Youtube playlist when I'd watched them. It worked well enough that I actually felt like it made my Youtube-watching experience feel more intentional. Like, I am planning on my computer doing 30 minutes of work tonight to potentially get this video, so how much do I actually want this random thing that Youtube is recommending me? And sometimes, the answer go to be "not that much, actually", where in normal circumstances, I'd have just clicked on it and watched a couple of minutes of it before getting bored and clicking something else, ya know?
I thank the gods every day that I will never deploy again, and that I have ~2Gbps down at home and ~500Mb down on 5g mobile these days. You don't know how good you have it until you're facing dial-up speeds again and are stuck with that for weeks...
How are people in r/pcmasterrace seeing ads. I would think if you are part of this sub, you would have ublock origin and Youtube Revance/Morphe on mobile.
Also would think they have Youtube dislike extension as well, making this post moot.
maybe smart TV? WebOS is the only reason why I took premium. Else I have Firefox Android with uBo, background Video play, yt dislikes, sponsorblock, unhook, Enhancer for yt, Tampermonkey etc for all that shizz
Smarttube on my TV is the most freeing feeling. No ads and sponsorblock, I can let my kid marathon Between the Lions without YouTube showing her some weird shit or horror movie trailer in the ads. All fwee
Router level ad blocking I already do for other sites, but youtube serves ads on the same website domains as normal videos which makes router level adblocking not work for yt.
I used to bring a laptop in the car for a roadtrip when my parents were driving and preload like 10 tabs of videos before I had a smart phone/enough data on my plan. now you get like 30 seconds.
Oh boy how I miss this. And video was .flv in Temporary internet files. And rewinding was instant.
And today they are justifying DASH as bandwidth optimisation (for them ofcourse) and every streaming service uses that segmented download. Otherwise you could let Netflix to cache your movie beforehand even on 4 Mbit xDSL links.
Because they discovered why should we service the whole
20min video if people sometimes only watch first 5-10mins. So it was "wasted" data pushed to you. Especially as the platform grew and grew and grew.
I used to stay up until midnight watching videos that I had preloaded. My parents shut off the internet at 10pm so this was my workaround. Those were the days.
You can't blame them for this one tho, at least compared to ads and such. A huge portion of people watch a couple minutes of a video and drop. It was costing them insane amounts to just let it buffer for people who ultimately didn't watch much
The other day I randomly remember that as well. Then I thought how an hellscape the comment section would be when everyone is trying to promote themselves.
Oh jeez, that was an absolute mess, once parasite tit tubers figured out they can "respond" to every viral video and have their "assets" dangling in the side bar of every popular video.
I remember how someone (a Vox-style channel, maybe even Vox proper) shot an interview with like three of the biggest ones and they had the fucking audacity to be indignant about YouTube removing the feature and "taking their livelihood away." Bitch, you killed it!
5 stars is fine if you can weight the impact to the score based on how a person normally rates things. So someone that rates most things a 3 will have a bigger impact when they rate something 5 or 1 than someone that only rates things 5 or 1.
But today, it'll all be spambots anyway, so there's little point having a rating system.
The little bar that showed the like/dislike ratio was so perfect. It's such a simple piece of information, but what you're saying about comparing it to your expectation of how people would normally rate that sort of video meant you could reliably feel out whether the video was worth loading.
I'm not explaining that good. And maybe I just internetted too much, but I swear I had a low key sense of synesthesia tied to that little bar. The bar told me everything.
The moment they took that bar away from the recommended videos tab so you couldn't evaluate those videos' worth was the biggest red flag for enshittification. Back when that tab was also worthwhile and based purely on what people watched after the video you just watched.
Like, remember when you could watch "suchandsuch part 1" and then "suchandsuch part 2" would reliably be the next video instead of a list of personalized algorithmic bullshit where it's just whatever video they either want to promote next, or it's some random nonsense based on your previous activity?
That last part is so true. They want you to get lost. It's like how stores will often make navigation a little more disorienting so you spend more time in the store.
Sameish! You and I and others were of the group that was “invite only” to get a gmail address. I can’t remember how I was invited but mine is only 6 characters long and is ideal for my name. Oh and my Reddit account is older than some users here as well.
My oldest Gmail account is 4 characters long, was invite only and now shares the same characters as a successful company listed on the NYSE. I've received emails from people who are interested in buying my email address (although I'm sure 98% of those emails are scams).
Neat! Early adopters and squatting, back when that was a thing. Ish. Unrelated I met the guy who registered MS.com (for a company called Mustard Seed) waaaaayyy back when, and yes, he eventually sold off to MS but only after they had diversified their landing addresses.
They could have simply hidden the number of dislikes from the content creator, changing the mechanic of the dislike from being viewed to the creator to being used mainly and only by the algorithm to determine that the people who clicks the dislike, dont want more of this.
Which is relatively very simple to do rather than removing the whole thing.
It had to do with News channels and Hollywood films getting massive dislikes. Since these groups impact advertisers the most (either being the adverts or informing advertisers), YouTube removed the 1 way to criticize bad content.
I know but its not as simple as a one click dislike as it used to be, and while me and you know how to do so, i bet many other YT users dont even know that option exist
It also does not work for me, and it's the same on reddit, not being able to personalizzed your feed and being subject to ads/rage-baiting/foreign propaganda is excruciatingly painful.
I had that issue til I used sidestore+ distopia to get Apollo working again on iOS. Now it's like old Reddit again where I can block and filter out subs and never see them again. No more AITA, no more Gendermeals. You can also see some of the comments that got deleted by mods and... The bot problem is MUCH larger than it seems lmfao.
Truuuu i did this for a channel only to see its content for me again in my home page the next day (it wasnt even shorts, its normal vods) and then again said to not recommend the channel AND not interested... only to see the exact, same channel AND exact same video getting recommended again. YT algorithm is cooked with how they have been using ai i guess, maybe now instead of a normal algorithm they placed an ai to do that instead.
I looove pants, and i very very hate shorts... they are so short!! Why would one wear them?! Pants are superior, they are longer and can have way more pockets... dude its so cool having FOUR or SIX pockets!! Which will all still be empty because i am poor but thats beside the point of how cool they are :)
Going into your history and deleting videos is a good way to curate your algorithm. To a point it will show you more of what you have watched assuming that's what you like.
I just never watch YouTUbe logged in and clear my cookies on the site every time. You get a 100% blank screen when you land on the homepage until you search for something, and then the recommendations are all directly related to that thing. Set your own mood every time you hit the site.
Stop subscribing, go back to bookmarks. You'll have to manually choose to see your favorite stuff that way and spend way less time on there.
Or even just if the video was genuine but poor quality.
Or if the video itself was something controversial, and it had a certain threshold of dislikes that would normally suggest a stinker of a video but you're so keyed into the bar that you know it's still worth clicking on because of the exact bar length.
God that bar was perfect. You could trust that bar so reliably if you understood the weights.
That made sense on why they removed it. If you look at any rating system with stars, 90% of people put things they like at 5 stars and things they don’t like at 1 star, less than 10% put things at 2-4 stars. Which at that point just make it a Like/Dislike system. That’s why Netflix for example transition from a star system to a Like/Dislike system.
That's always been a huge pet peeve of mine. I've always liked and gone with the same star labelling system goodreads uses.
1 star: "I didn't like it"
2 stars: "It was ok"
3 stars: "I liked it"
4 stars: "I really liked it"
5 stars: "I loved it"
IMO there is no point in saying how much you didn't like something, because if you didn't like it you wouldn't be recommending it anyway. Saying by how much you did enjoy something gives more information.
The system really needs to be,
1 Bad enough for me to say something.
2 it was fine, whatever, just leave me alone.
3 I loved it enough to go on record and say it's good.
Except here is the thing stars allow for better calculation of what you will like. They just don't care really as the goal with the algo is to have you keep watching not how much you might like is vs something else.
Except here is the thing stars allow for better calculation of what you will like
If people put 5 for a like and 1 for a dislike 99% of the time (they do, I was there at the time), how does it allow for any calculation? That's the exact same thing as a like to dislike ratio, there's no difference in calculation
Do you guys remember when ads were just banners that popped up at the bottom of your video every now and then? With the 'X' in the corner to get rid of them as soon as they showed up?
Compared to now where an ad plays with no time bar so you don’t know how long it is, you can’t skip it, and then displays a banner afterwards that covers up a good chunk of the lower left portion of the video you are trying to watch until you click the dots to be able to select dismiss. Google’s ads have gone insane.
plus a pop up ad when you pause the video. The entire ad system now is to make you accidentally click it instead of actually seeing the advertised product
I swear to god adverts are driving me insane. YouTube specifically is the worst. Can’t watch a 5 minute video without them slapping a 20 minute documentary/advert in the middle that requires manual skipping WTF man. Living in black mirror. Having to actually pay to remove adverts by buying everyone’s “premium” version of the app is just so fucking obnoxious
And if your day continued YouTube would’ve been gone like 10+ years ago. When Google bought them 20 years ago, it was losing like a billion dollars a year within the first couple years of takeover due to the massive infrastructure development being put into it.
I feel like I'm losing my mind when i see stuff like this. Why was AI needed here? It looks worse than the original image. Like, did the OP, /u/theoptimix , did you intentionally run this through a filter or did you just find it somewhere? Are you a bot? It's so confusing
Could be an xBR upscale which doesn't use AI and can look kind of weird, I've definitely mistaken the two before. Not saying it isn't an AI upscale but it's not a sure thing.
wow that brings back memories- they used to try to get the most attractive looking girls with low cut shirts or weirdest looking thumbnail for their random reply video to get as many views as possible.
Back in my day it was just one pre video ad which wasn't AI slop and was actually safe to view in public.
Seriously YouTube's greed and lack of any sort of filter on what kind of ads are accepted is the main thing pushing people to ad blockers. I couldn't care less if people like Linus (the YouTuber) have an issue with it.
I'm kinda divided on this. I love the "hobby" aspect of YT but I also appreciate that good content creators (and yes, more than a few not good ones) are able to make a living off of it. Though I've also heard that's getting harder to do.
Even when they first implemented ads, they weren't that bad.
I remember the exact day they flipped the switch and became obnoxious. I had been using an Oculus Quest with the YouTube app for a couple weeks and it worked great.
Then one day there were constant - and I mean CONSTANT - ad interruptions. I thought something was wrong and restarted it. Nope. Tried it again the next day. Nope.
And that was the last time I used the YouTube app.
uBlock Origin is a godsend for PC. Wish I could do something similar for streaming YT on my Roku to tv. Yes there are options, none (that I know of) as simple or free as uBlock Origin.
It’s also not real, it's some algorithmically created number that is approximately the sum of your up and downvotes, but it's not a real number and everyone gets shown a different one
Back in my day... no ads, dislike button, 5 star rating, ability to clearly see "good" and "bad" videos. Now you search for "How to fix my broken life" and you have no idea if it's good or bad (unless using addons).
Back in my day, we used to have quality youtube skits, documentaries, vines etc. No shorts that damage your attention span and memory, no AI slop, no 2 ads for every 10 min. We didn't know what enshittification even means
Everyone is talking this down, but I have personally found it really using for weeding out AI and otherwise terrible quality videos.
Trying to find a fix for something, troubleshooting or otherwise where the quality of video can vary massively from total slop to very good, you can tell instantly when you click on the slop and see mountains of dislikes.
Yeah, it's not perfect but it absolutely fulfils the need I have for it!
While it can be useful, none of the addon give the real value for dislike on a video, either taking an guess, or basing it only on other people having this addon to pull fake numbers.
It's heavily gamed now especially for polarising content like politics. Bad actors intentionally install that extension and then dislike said videos such that their dislikes get bias amplified and appearing as fraudalent dislike counts for others. Plenty of pol tubers have shown their actual dislike counts on patreon and elsewhere without breaking their terms of service, and shows the extension sometimes shows several times more dislikes.
So sick of people implying there is no dislike button - its still there. YouTube only removed the public count. It still wants your negative feedback, just not the accountability that comes with everyone seeing it.
Users keep supplying the signal. YouTube keeps the data. The public loses the warning.
•
u/PCMRBot Bot Jul 26 '26
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
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