330 points

So, instead of getting the ability to search for videos properly, with negative search terms, user defined video length spans, exact dates, sort by reverse date order etc… we get ambient mode and color search? Can someone please, for the sake of humanity and my sanity, erase this company and its parent from the planet.

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171 points

Seriously, there was a time when Google was lauded for all kinds of awesome innovation, and joked about that you needed a PhD to even be a janitor there.

Look at them now. They can’t even do basic search functionality anymore, and are so misguided that they put out color filters for video.

I 100% agree they need to just stop existing at this point.

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24 points

Arent there like Ralph from the Simpsons originating jokes about how like, this crayon tastes like yellow?

Congrats YouTube, thank you so much.

I can now enjoy green flavored content, fuck having a working suggestion algorithm that actually recommends interesting content, I guess I can use YouTube for what it seems to be intended for these days, as an ambient noise and color generator for my monitor and room while i actually do something else.

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10 points

Ralph from the Simpsons is the best analogy for how I see Google now. Brilliant.

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68 points

The fact that Google started as a search company and yet search in their own apps sucks is boggling.

In YouTube Music, when you’re building a tuner to create a station, you can’t search at all. Instead, you get an endless scroll off bands and have to find the one you want that way. The order is random.

Like … Pandora let you do the same thing with search back in the 00’s

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59 points

The fact that Google started as a search company and yet search in their own apps sucks is boggling.

It’s not boggling; it’s very simple: they discovered that having shitty search apparently makes them more money than having good search.

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18 points

Bingo!

Don’t Be Evil.

It was obvious they would enshittify, they literally told us they would.

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9 points

I feel like maybe the term “search” when applied to digital services should be regulated. What Google et al do isn’t search, it’s recommendations. Recommendations can be useful, but they sure as hell don’t replace search. Someone call the EU.

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15 points

Stop being so chartreuse! Would it kill you to be a little more periwinkle?

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9 points

You made me search the internet to rid me of my confusion! I’m all vermilion now!

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I absolutely hate the ambient mode. I mean, I get it, it’s kind of my problem if I am trying to use ancient desktop, but it’s also pretty unnecessary.

Trying to view YouTube videos on many school computers became a pain in the ass. Some are so laggy that I can’t even get to disable the ambient mode without which it would still be somewhat usable. (But hey, piped.video works.)
Hell, even my HP 255 G7 (a fairly average office laptop with Ryzen 3 3200U) struggles with it. It gets laggy and turns into hairdryer.

Secondly, it’s distracting.

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8 points

Yes it’s super weird that porn sites had that functionality for over a decade and one of the world’s largest tech companies still can’t implement those.

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3 points

The search was already so abysmal that this doesn’t change much.

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2 points

This sounds like they made a cheap feature from data they already had, but didn’t stop to think why anyone would ever want it.

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2 points

💰

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126 points

With all the absurd turns YouTube and Google have taken, I’ve been looking at this for five minutes trying to figure out if this is a shitpost

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88 points

It is not, there are actual colour categories at the top of the page which allow you to filter by thumbnails. This is what the Red page looks like for me:

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64 points

I don’t have the official app, so I choose to pretend this is a shitpost.

Haha A++ shitpost

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25 points

In my defence I use Revanced and not Newpipe only because I like to have my subscriptions and watchlist synced up between devices

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12 points

I’m really disappointed, was expecting all red videos to be those cringey red arrows pointing at irrelevant things.

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Does that come with app update? I still have normal categories up there:

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6 points

Google AB tests every tiny detail so you might not see it.

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3 points

I have 19.03.35 Revanced; may be a regional trial?

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2 points

I saw it yesterday and thought I had brain damage for a minute.

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1 point

You interacted with it, which means some ux designer somewhere is going to see the metrics and get encouraged

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10 points

Nope, I’ve seen it myself. Cannot imagine a more useless feature.

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2 points

Cannot imagine a more useless feature.

Especially useless for us colorblind people…

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5 points

Unfortunately it is not…

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89 points

Sounds like a new and inventive way for them to push sponsored content on you but make it seem like you had some choice in the matter

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54 points
*

You’ve searched for Red! Here are some funny, relaxing and interesting videos from Coca-Cola, Adobe and Target!

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9 points

Please drink verification can.

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15 points

I’m sure they’ll also share their information with “content creators” so they can all start using the most popular colors and the site can become even more generic and samey

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5 points

@LinkOpensChest_wav That is actually why. I’ve heard creators talk about how YouTube is rolling this new feature now, it gives you the options to add different thumbnails with different colors to target different audience, and see which one performs the best.

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6 points

Gods help us all.

I wish there were an add-on to hide all monetized channels from my feed.

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73 points

There are millions of youtube videos uploaded every single day. Why do I always get the exact same stuff in my recommendations? And why does YouTube shorts keep playing the same clips over and over again? Even the ones I disliked.

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50 points

uBlock - copy the template in the link below, add it to “My Filters” to completely remove Shorts from YouTube:

https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts

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13 points

OMG thank you. I fucking hate shorts.

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11 points

Oh man I needed this! Not the stupid extensions that play it in a normal YouTube window or something. I just wanna remove that crappy short form video stuff altogether.

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5 points
*

The UI for shorts is terrible. You can’t double click to fast forward, as that likes the video. Why are they inconsistent with their own player?

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3 points

That site is amazing! Thank you!

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12 points

You should never dislike on YouTube. They just view it as engagement and will give it you more. To actually get rid of content that you don’t like, you need to use “not interested” in the context menu.

This drove me crazy for a long time.

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3 points

Good to know. I need to see of there’s a way to do it on youtube shorts.

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3 points

Check out @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world comment above

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2 points

Because those videos give Google the best ad revenue. Who cares what the users watch all long as Google gets rich along the way.

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2 points

What is the mechanism for that? What do you envision makes them more valuable?

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1 point

Google gets more money if the video has more ads. Google also pays more in bandwidth and storage if the video is really long or high res. Also, advertisers don’t like drugs, violence or guns, whereas makeup and mobile phones are totally fine, so those videos are a suitable background for ads.

All of these variables go into the calculation that determines the sweet spot for Google, and the search results are ranked accordingly. You may be looking for an hour long video essay on the torture methods seen in the Hellraiser movies, but Google really wants you to spend more time on 5-minute crafts instead. Actually, 30 s shorts would be even better, as long as they keep you preoccupied.

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69 points

I honestly cannot envision a scenario in which I would want something like this from YouTube.

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18 points

this is for people who arrange their bookshelves by spine color.

you know, idiots.

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10 points

Let me introduce you to some classics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3pF2jkQ4vc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpLtgcSG08s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJLwidSohO8

Before you ask, no, I don’t watch these. I discovered these types of videos only a few months ago and was shocked at the viewer counts.

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Sometimes the internet is weird

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4 points

I agree. I don’t understand why these videos are watched either.

There are other weird styles too. Eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rkUcw9INLI

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3 points

I agree, I have seen at least a dozen weird things on the internet

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0 points

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=J3pF2jkQ4vc

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=zpLtgcSG08s

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=IJLwidSohO8

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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8 points

Why not? Not you, I mean but why not have it as an option?

Frankly I wouldn’t use it either, but I can absolutely see the appeal. Sometimes you want some warm tones, sometimes you want cool tones. Maybe you’re having a Green party for 4/20 and you’re playing Green Day and watching green videos idk.

Lol dumbness aside, my immediate thought was “this seems like it could be nice for those who sleep to videos” - I know that I don’t always want a white-blue heavy video but something darker and red

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14 points

Okay, but what if your darker and redder video is super loud and obnoxious and your blue-white video is quiet and calm? Or the dark red one is strobing and the blue-white one is calm and soft? That’s the problem with just sorting them by color. Color doesn’t really tell you anything about the content of the video. I mean I supposed this very out-there idea of a ‘green party’ could be a weird usage case, but I think that’s a very unusual event and doesn’t really justify the feature.

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4 points

The only people I could see this feature helpful for is those with synesthesia.

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1 point

The ASMR and meditation community sometimes embrace a specific colour aesthetic for videos. They’re also all pretty similar in terms of audio level etc so I can see this working well in that niche.

E.g. https://youtu.be/lziFPKhsJ2A

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2 points

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/lziFPKhsJ2A

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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