I'm surprised there was no mention of shorts which take attention away from long form content. It's all they a pushing these days. In my feed I regularly see 6 shorts, then a video, then 6 more shorts. TikTok is not the ideal model for everyone.
Media distributors have always exercised control over the content they deliver—editing for length, compliance, or audience standards is nothing new. The confusion often comes from viewing YouTube as a neutral hosting service, like Dropbox, rather than as a full-fledged media distributor. Once you recognize that YouTube operates more like a broadcast network than a storage platform, its behavior - curating, monetizing, and enforcing content policies - looks far less unusual.
What feels different today is the scale and automation: traditional networks relied on human editors and clear standards, while YouTube uses opaque algorithms that can affect visibility and revenue in ways creators don’t always understand. That shift makes the control feel more intrusive, but the underlying principle - 'the distributor sets the rules' - has been part of media distribution for decades.
> What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role.
The correct answer here, rather disappointingly, is that they were never neutral. Google Videos (the one that Google actually launched) arguably is a neutral service, but YouTube was always designed to be a social media (even if that term is not as well-known at the time as it is now). It even had five star ratings, which as the style for its time. It is always closer to Instagram rather than Dropbox (although that's an anachronistic comparison since that YouTube was the first of the three).
Says the user who didn't even read the article. The whole first half had nothing to do with the author's values. It was about the poor implementation of AI algorithms as it relates to creator functionality. Shitty AI creator workflow, automatic ad injection, blocking of viewers to combat ad blockers...
Values and creator-side issues aside, YouTube is just awful to use in its natural state just from a user experience perspective.
Way too many ads per minute of content watched, the ads are all extremely low quality and a lot of them are just outright scams these days.
You can solve this to some degree (on some devices) using adblockers, but YouTube has been going out of its way over the past year making this as difficult as possible.
And there are non-ad issues as well, eg. the algorithm absolutely sucks at discovering new content.
Those values being the proliferation of AI, YouTube's settlement to Trump, unbanning of conspiracy theory and hate-speech creators popular amongst Trump's base, and a moral complaint about AI age-checking, and censorship (particularly around the most recent Israel-Gaza conflict.)
Guy i dont know, pops up on a feed i dont control to tell me he isnt doing something anymore.
I'm surprised there was no mention of shorts which take attention away from long form content. It's all they a pushing these days. In my feed I regularly see 6 shorts, then a video, then 6 more shorts. TikTok is not the ideal model for everyone.
Affected channels: https://www.youtube.com/@TripleIris https://www.youtube.com/@JoshJunkDrawer
Media distributors have always exercised control over the content they deliver—editing for length, compliance, or audience standards is nothing new. The confusion often comes from viewing YouTube as a neutral hosting service, like Dropbox, rather than as a full-fledged media distributor. Once you recognize that YouTube operates more like a broadcast network than a storage platform, its behavior - curating, monetizing, and enforcing content policies - looks far less unusual.
What feels different today is the scale and automation: traditional networks relied on human editors and clear standards, while YouTube uses opaque algorithms that can affect visibility and revenue in ways creators don’t always understand. That shift makes the control feel more intrusive, but the underlying principle - 'the distributor sets the rules' - has been part of media distribution for decades.
What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role.
The part that's new in the distributor setting the rules dynamic is that there is no specific "they" to blame for the rules.
The strangest content has found me on YT
> What's interesting is how YT has gradually shifted from being that neutral hosting service and into the media distributor role.
The correct answer here, rather disappointingly, is that they were never neutral. Google Videos (the one that Google actually launched) arguably is a neutral service, but YouTube was always designed to be a social media (even if that term is not as well-known at the time as it is now). It even had five star ratings, which as the style for its time. It is always closer to Instagram rather than Dropbox (although that's an anachronistic comparison since that YouTube was the first of the three).
Walled gardens are meant for the owners. Everyone else are decorations.
[flagged]
Says the user who didn't even read the article. The whole first half had nothing to do with the author's values. It was about the poor implementation of AI algorithms as it relates to creator functionality. Shitty AI creator workflow, automatic ad injection, blocking of viewers to combat ad blockers...
Useless reply.
So, someone writing about making choices aligned with their values, got it.
Values and creator-side issues aside, YouTube is just awful to use in its natural state just from a user experience perspective.
Way too many ads per minute of content watched, the ads are all extremely low quality and a lot of them are just outright scams these days.
You can solve this to some degree (on some devices) using adblockers, but YouTube has been going out of its way over the past year making this as difficult as possible.
And there are non-ad issues as well, eg. the algorithm absolutely sucks at discovering new content.
Those values being the proliferation of AI, YouTube's settlement to Trump, unbanning of conspiracy theory and hate-speech creators popular amongst Trump's base, and a moral complaint about AI age-checking, and censorship (particularly around the most recent Israel-Gaza conflict.)