Enshittification

It seems like some websites think that the more the users know about the quality of the content, the worse it is for the website’s profit

I don't even mind view count, but why would they even remove upload date? That's the only way to know whether the video is new or not.

Taking away information so I can't choose how best to use my time... yeah fuck that enshittification.

The lack of upload date is the thing that already bugs me the most about YouTube Shorts. Well, maybe the second most after the entire concept.

I can’t stand YouTube’s feed. It’s so bad. This does not help. I know many others already said it, but this is not an improvement.

The date can matter a lot. Especially, when it comes to tech learning. That world moves too fast. If you’re learning programming on YouTube, you need to be sure you have current info.

I desperately with YouTube had real competition.

Isn't YT the poster child of enshittification?

Well, time to install two new add-ons: Return YouTube View Counts and Return YouTube Upload Dates.

Somebody please make those.

Sometimes I watch videos of The Daily Show and it drives me bonkers that they upload old episodes from a decade ago and it's impossible to tell if it's current Daily Show, or the classic one. If the whole service was like that... I'm completely gone.

I guess they really want to get rid of users huh.

I watch tech videos. If I can't see when a video is from, I'm not going to waste my time on watching it.

Conspiracy time: Google is purposely making their video platform worse because they're sacrificing it for a tax loss in 5 years when they shut it down. In those five years they're going to "ramp up" development and write off all that "work" to pay for other projects.

Their UX and design choices are amateur at best and clearly they have no interest in maintaining the product(much like all of their retired line).

Return YouTube dislikes will change to

Return YouTube dislikes + view count + upload date

Why the fuck would they even think of doing that? Genuinely what is the purpose? How does it benefit them?

What would removing the dates accomplish except making things more confusing and harder to find? What advantage to YouTube is there?

The optimist in me hopes this will be used to give smaller channels a push in views and attention, even years later, when they may have been skipped over or ignored previously.

The realist in me knows this will be used to push garbage that would otherwise be self-filtered by users due to the red flags of dates/views.

view counts, I'm okay with. I do want to see how old a video is and how long a video is.

I watch niche stuff on Youtube. I watched a guy copy an old ISA adapter card for the very first CD-ROM drive. That's not gonna do BeasTiePie numbers, and I don't care. It isn't information I use to select a video. I think it's useful information to have generally available, but I don't necessarily need it on the home screen. It should maybe be displayed on a channel's Videos page, where there's more screen real estate per video, and in the video's description header.

Date uploaded is pertinent information. Is this a recent entry in a series I enjoy? Is this breaking or old news? Has ANOTHER 10,000 people died in a hurricane or is this just a month old? Is this from before ThE iNcIdEnT, or after?

If the video is about an ongoing event, say the Titan submarine disaster, I'd rather watch videos posted last week them videos posted a year ago, because the new info makes the old content irrelevant.

If a search for videos about how to perform carbon fiber layups shows one with 1.2m views in the last year and another with 5k views from the past 6 years, I will probably watch the better performing video first.

But if I want to see a video about some esoteric subject like how the bathyscaphe triste worked, that isn't really changing much, I don't care about post date or view count.

Has YouTube experienced enshittification?

Ummm, only for the past decade?

Youtube is getting shittier by the minute. Come to think of it, many things are.

Hopefully they'll remove the length, the channel name, the thumbnail, the title and the entire video, too.

Date is how I go by whether or not someone I'm interested in has put up a new video or if YouTube is just showing me an old one I forgot about.

So I'm finally going to have to start fucking subscribing?

Ugh.

The removal of view counts could empower fringe content. Even the most gullible are far less likely to take a video of an extremist nut job seriously when they have 100 views. Part of how radicalisation works is by convincing people that the radical ideology is far more mainstream than it actually is. It's already easy to inflate view counts but removing them entirely makes it much much simpler for crazies to sell the idea that their ideas are popular.

For fucks sake. This will do wonders for video tutorials and won't backfire in any way due to the content being outdated /s

Wow, your algorithm shows the exact same videos that mine does. I've never seen that before. Every time I check out someone else's YouTube, their homepage is completely different from mine.

As someone that prefers to watch series in order… wtf?

I've been using https://freetubeapp.io/ client for a few months and am extremely happy with it. It allows me to subscribe to channels without requiring an account, it has a nice UI that doesn't shove videos I don't care about in my face, no ads, can download videos, and it's in general a way better experience. Haven't used web YT in ages.

Side note:

I like to do a semi-anual audit of the information sources I use, and last year I removed the infographics channel from my feed. It turns out it's a content farm that puts quantity over quality. Some of their videos may actually be good, but they don't have the fact checking safeguards that more reliable channels like kurzgesagt does.

You'll notice Kurzgesagt has several videos that delve into how they do their research, and how the funds they receive from individuals, governments, and corporations affect their videos. Check to see if any of your channels have a "how we make our content" page. If they don't, it's for a reason.

Also, be wary of channels that use the kurzgesagt visual style, or an aesthetic that is similar to a notably trusted source. I've noticed a lot of false info that has an easier time being passed off as good due to using animation that we might associate with quality educational content.

Joke's on them, I got used to my homepage being "fuck you for disabling search history" for years

It's because users are less likely to watch old videos. They do this on TikTok. You'll see videos that are years old on your feed because they have a lack of new content. You watch the new videos and then move on with your day. Now you're getting shown more videos and more likely to stay.

Well... One more reason to ditch YouTube. As always: Reminder PeerTube exists.

I know the network effect is powerful, but YouTube won't lose until people are fed up enough to not use it.