In the case of YouTube, only after a few results they become completely unrelated to my search.
Both have been prioritising “engagement” over “results” because it allows them to advertise to you more.
In case you didn’t realise, if the product is free, you’re the product and both have been doing an amazing job out of extracting value from your eyeballs.
Unsurprisingly, they’re both owned by the same company.
The “results” portion they got rid of is credibility of the results based on cross linking i.e. people linking to useful resources. It was the thing that made Google the best search engine.
Noe they prioritise what sell the most ads as the top priority.
It’s so bad. I keep searching topics on YouTube and getting 3-4 results before YouTube starts recommending videos based on past searches or past watched videos. Like, excuse me YouTube, what the fuck? You search what I tell you to search.
All the categories seems wildly divorced from what’s actually in them and half the time the category only suggests two videos… to me it feels like YouTube decides what you watch, today your suggestions are 90% old music videos, tomorrow a bunch of random machining videos, next day fail videos, rinse and repeat - obviously it’s based on your interests not mine but I’m sure everyone is having the same shitty experience
Yep. And to think we lost Songza to Google Music. To YouTube music. To YouTube.
It also feels like some pages in top results didn’t even exist before I made the search. They are filled with generic babble about the subject without ever going to details or conclusions. Dribble that no human would ever write
Dunno about Google but Youtube seems to be making some things harder on purpose, like seeing the date of a video or showing search results in chronological order.
Extensions are your friend. I’ve had to install several just to make YouTube useable!
If I need to go find something to make a service useable that’s my sign to not use the service.
I’d be interested to know if there’s a way to fix this issue with extensions. Do you mean browser extensions? I use a browser sometimes and newpipe sometimes.
Using a browser and ublock origin, I find viewing youtube to work ok except for the occasional age gated video that I can’t view without a google account. What’s stopped working is search ordering and seeing timestamps. Like old comments might get labelled “2 years ago” with mouse-over no longer showing the actual date/time. It’s not shown in the unrendered HTML in any obvious way either.
Not commnenting on the efficacy of the following for everyone, but they help me:
Disable Autoplay for YouTube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/disable-autoplay-for-yout/dinkeiniijmpjehejhedbciaedblhnnk?pli=1
Return YouTube Dislike https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/return-youtube-dislike/gebbhagfogifgggkldgodflihgfeippi
U-Block Origin, obviously (still works fully on Brave Browser) https://ublockorigin.com/
Untrap for YouTube (Block YouTube Shorts & Remove Recommendations) https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/untrap-for-youtube-—-bloc/enboaomnljigfhfjfoalacienlhjlfil
YouTube Channel Blocker https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-channel-blocker/ghpibapiigafgbaolopljimengkfjofk
YouTube Upload Time https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-upload-time/nenoecmaibjcahoahnmeinahlapheblg
YTBlock - Block any content from YouTube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ytblock-block-any-content/nedcanggplmbbgmlpcjiafgjcpdimpea
Some of these probably cross over in what they do, but I can’t be arsed delving into the nooks and crannies of them, so long as they do the job for me.
Nice list, appreciate it! Unlock Origin seems to still work on Firefox too.
Thanks, I don’t see any of those fixing the functionality that youtube broke, but the effort is appreciated. The one that shows the upload time only says you can use it while watching the video, but that time is shown in the text blurb if you click “more…”. And it makes a network request, of course. I’m using firefox so ublock origin still works for blocking ads.
Yes. I have regularly been using DDG, but would wind up using google sometimes anyway. Now I’m actively forced to use other engines because google is now a monetized results server and will return zero or no relevant results in favor or sponsored or monetized results.
Yet another on the endless list of reasons why capitalism is bad for humanity.
Doesn’t mean capitalism is bad. Google has a search monoply, there are plenty of other search engines but how can they compete.
If a guy starts a wildfire to get hired as a fireman because he needs to feed his family then capitalism is bad. There are a lot of examples. Maybe you’re saying it’s not capitalism, but human nature?
DDG is worse though—so much of the time all I get are pages that were created by an LLM to be search engine optimized. Hollow language and a table of contents just so they can tell me how long to cook rice
I’m annoyed that YT got rid of the search by newest first option. At least Rumble has it still
Rumble, which hosts ‘truth’ social’s cloud services…
That feeling when you’re trying to browse through a creator you like’s page for videos you haven’t seen yet, but you have to scroll past the dozens and dozens of things you’ve already watched, which each take time to load their thumbnails, making the task drag on for ages.
It’s on purpose. The longer you scroll, the longer you’re on the platform. That’s higher engagement numbers and is used to expose you to/negotiate higher prices from advertisements.
They want you to give up on search and ask their AI
Probably because it’s prioritising what it thinks you’re more likely to click on more than the actual search term. AI recommendations basically.
Which sucks when you’re the kind of person that craves novelty. Just because I watched a nature documentary about sharks doesn’t mean all I want to watch are shark videos. YouTube doesn’t seem to understand that.
Thankfully, a lot of people gave really good suggestions when I made this Ask Lemmy post a few months ago. I’m still working my way down the list. Whenever YouTube search fails to give me something new or interesting, I check back on that page and pick a channel somebody suggested. Otherwise, the algorithm gets real stale, real quick.
I just love how YouTube has a “show unwatched” button in its search that usually shows me videos I have watched multiple times.
It’s been bad for a few years already but it is getting worse. A good chunk of the internet isn’t indexing anymore (places which require logins to get the content), and those that are largely exist to earn from the advertising, not to be helpful.
There’s actually an opportunity for a disruptive force here. If you can be better at search than Google, you could steal users. But duckduckgo and related are mostly trying to be old Google rather than better Google.
Yes. It’s becoming shittier everyday.
Use something else like Kagi or duckduckgo
month on month, everything gets worse and more noise to filter out. Can’t be the only one with this sentiment.
What you’re seeing is called ‘enshittification’. In this particular example, in 2019, Prabhakar Raghavan – the ex-McKinsey, ex-Yahoo MBA who ran ad revenue for Google – came up with an ingenious solution: just make search worse. If you have to run multiple searches to find what you’re looking for, that creates multiple chances to show you an ad. No really. This is real. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Why do people put up with this? You can find out more about enshittification here:
Short explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE
Longer explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaoWpQ-3Zs
Yes! It’s very hard to find alternatives to social media sites through google. Get choked in dozens of whiny blogs of ‘social media isn’t what it used to be’ articles instead. Had to find duck duck go on yahoo then find alternative social media sites on duck duck go.
