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Analysis of all YouTube trending videos in US for 2019 (ammar-alyousfi.com)
ve55 1358 days ago [-]
I find it kind of sad looking at what popular Youtube channels looked like 5-10+ years ago, and comparing it to their videos today.

As you scroll down the list of videos from oldest to newest, the lengths get longer. No longer are there any petty three minutes or five minute videos, let alone a one minute video. Now videos are all 10-25 minutes, the perfect length for maximum ad revenue.

Similar things happen to the thumbnails, which start containing more and more exaggerated, sometimes creepily-so, faces, reacting to absurd images that last for a fraction of a second in the video. The titles change too, becoming more and more outrageous, begging for you to click on them and spend hours watching anticipatory and 'exciting' content.

A lot of things have gotten better too, of course, and the amount of content that is available is amazing. But I do really miss when it felt like a place where people went to share videos and socialize, rather than where all the popular channels are ran like companies that follow the same clickbait format news organizations now also follow.

graedus 1358 days ago [-]
> Similar things happen to the thumbnails, which start containing more and more exaggerated, sometimes creepily-so, faces, reacting to absurd images that last for a fraction of a second in the video.

There was a nice little examination of this phenomenon, dubbed YouTube Face, a couple of years ago.

Article: https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/04/your-pretty-face-is-goi...

HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16803937

wirthjason 1358 days ago [-]
In Japan so much of mainstream prime time TV programming is reactions videos. Often people reacting to food from another prefecture with a minimum of two picture-in-picture heads reach the to the video.

My wife is addicted to YouTube videos / YouTubers and I think there’s a high degree of similarity.

This content feels low quality and cheap to produce.

I think that article captures this phenomenon well.

C1sc0cat 1358 days ago [-]
That type thumbnails just scream desperate me to - the "one simple trick" of YouTube maybe.

Not as bad as the hey watch me neck a bottle of spirits in one go idiots.

zucker42 1358 days ago [-]
I remember back before the ad algorithm was changed to be more favorable to ~10 minute videos, there was some complaining about how YouTube was all short, stupid videos and long form more substantial content was not viable.

Personally I prefer a YouTube where the meaningful 10 minute content is viable, even if it means there's some lame content which extended to meet a minimum time.

rootsudo 1358 days ago [-]
This, 100%.

I really wish it was easy to filter and ban videos, artists and types cause I really hate alot of the content on YouTube now.

I've disabled comments via ublock, and the experience is more pleasant, but you do lose those gems from random people sharing knowledge or a similar song or artist.

Not worth it to read through though, to much low hanging fruit and memes.

This and people thinking Facebook is internet. :(

QuesnayJr 1358 days ago [-]
The comment are somehow not as terrible as they used to be. I used to use a browser extension to block comments, so that I would never be tempted to look at them. Now they seem not so bad. (Though this could be a function of the kinds of videos I put on, which are music videos and jokey movie videos like Honest Trailers.)
nl 1358 days ago [-]
I love the longer videos, and don't really enjoy the short-form content.

I watch a lot of maker content, and a 15-20 minute clip is great. I'm very glad they are able to make enough money from it to do it full time.

ABoldGambit 1358 days ago [-]
Proper deep-dives into things with long-form content are great. I'll happily watch a 50 minute documentary by History Time, or a 2 hour deconstruction of tropes in 90s crpgs by Chris Davis. For me (and I know I speak entirely subjectively), anything less than half an hour on a subject tends to be just skimming the surface. I'm happy with the way youtube is moving towards longer form essay style content in gaming, music criticism, history, literature theories, science, geopolitics, programming and the like. Often, I wish channels like for example Caspian Report did _longer_ videos on the subjects they handle, because although people have short attention span, I think 10 minutes isn't enough time to properly talk about the politics of the countries they cover.

5 minute videos of disposable entertainment just don't really do it for me.

ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
Can't agree more except for the long-videos thing.

The way YouTube works now encourages clickbait crying-for-a-click titles and silly-shocked-faces thumbnails because click-through-rate plays a huge role in video success now.

In his video [0], that youtuber explains that and why he was going to shift toward using clickbait titles in his channel. Because otherwise, you would not thrive on YT.

For long videos, I think sometimes even 10 minutes are not enough to convey a substantial message in a video. But I think you mean those youtubers that prolong their videos longer—without added value—just for more ads.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8

ramblerman 1358 days ago [-]
It's incredibly sad, but it's due to our own collective demand imo.

Andrew Schultz a comedian, saw a huge uptick in his success when he started doing short form videos. Ironically he also saw that people would stay on his channel longer. (described in his ted talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl2MQq4qO4Y)

Giving the user a random reward and choice more frequently between each video seems to add to the dopamine hit. And thus the addictiveness. I've certainly gone down the rabbit hole of YT myself watching 1min seinfeld clips from different episodes.

lalos 1358 days ago [-]
My theory is that not everyone has their empathy highly developed, so if you exaggerate an expression you throw a wider net of people picking up the social cue and find it relatable vs micro expressions that only a minority that is observant/empathic would pick up on. This would apply to anything, even day to day interactions.
ponker 1358 days ago [-]
Well it's also that you adjust your "magnitude" of a reading based on the extremeness of the expression. So if you see someone smiling at a toy you think it's a fun toy but if you see someone MANIACALLY CACKLING at a toy you think MAN THAT TOY IS AMAZING I WANNA SEE IT.
smallnamespace 1358 days ago [-]
Also, a lot of YouTube's audience are teenagers, who are on average worse than adults at picking up facial emotional cues:

> We tested older children, adolescents and adults on a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination task using morphed faces that varied in emotional content ... adults displayed more sensitivity to subtle changes in emotional expression than children and adolescents ... The results provide evidence for late developmental changes in emotional expression recognition with some specificity in the time course for distinct emotions.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.469...

xnx 1358 days ago [-]
If you miss the "old YouTube" you really owe it to yourself to check out tiktok. The diversity of content there is great and nothing is even close to 10 minutes. Most YouTube videos are 30-60 seconds of good content diluted to 10:01 so they can be monetized.
swebs 1358 days ago [-]
TikTok might be banned soon, so it's probably not the best time to invest your time into it.
Kiro 1358 days ago [-]
Banned where? This is an international forum.
swebs 1358 days ago [-]
On Google Play and the iPhone app store. You can physically live in some other country, but it's all for nothing so long as you continue to give all control to two American megacorps.
_ZeD_ 1358 days ago [-]
basically everywhere
TeeMassive 1358 days ago [-]
50 cents have been deposited into your account comrade.
rangibaby 1358 days ago [-]
TV-style YouTube like Guga or Sonny Side have equaled or surpassed classic “real” TV (eg Discovery channel in the 90s) in both production values and content. That’s definitely something that has happened in the last couple of years
Retric 1358 days ago [-]
YouTube videos still generate vastly lower revenue per minute than popular 90’s TV shows. Cheaper tools can make up some of the difference, but the economics are very different.
cellular 1357 days ago [-]
Soon, it will be back to 8 minutes. YouTube is changing the required length for mid-video ads.
javajosh 1358 days ago [-]
Doesn't the one activity wholly subsidize the other?
ve55 1358 days ago [-]
They might to an extent, but I don't think it's required or necessary. Ads can go on any type of videos, and if Youtube had less traffic as a result of less clickbait, then presumably the costs to host it would be a lot less too.

Apart from this, keep in mind that Youtube TV likely pulls in a ton more money, and even if it didn't, Google/Alphabet has many other larger sources of revenue that could pay for Youtube too.

symplee 1358 days ago [-]
Another excellent analysis of what Trends on YouTube [0]

"Is the trending tab rigged against creators? Is late night dominating the charts? Why does it feel your favorite controversial creator never trends. All of that and more, in the first ever data-driven look at the trending tab."

What 40,000 Videos Tell Us About The Trending Tab:

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8

ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
I like that. Excellent storytelling, inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
pvankessel 1358 days ago [-]
This is really great - and kudos for providing methodological details and code! I love seeing this kind of large-scale descriptive research, it's a real bummer that YouTube is starting to close up access to their API. We did a similar kind of analysis looking at videos posted by popular channels last year, including some analysis of keywords that boosted views - figure you might find it interesting (and I'd love to see if our findings hold up with your dataset!) https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/07/25/a-week-in-th...
ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
Thank you.. The analysis you've done seems really interesting and gave me some more ideas to implement in future analyses.

For keywords that boost views, I'll run a similar analysis on my data and report the results to you here in another comment. Probably this weekend.

And I just heard from you that YouTube is starting to close up access to their API. I visit YT API website from time to time but haven't noticed such a thing. It's really a bummer. They should be more open not the opposite. Do you have some source if I want to know more about that?

pvankessel 1358 days ago [-]
Would love to see what you come up with, will stay tuned!

As for the API restrictions, they aren't advertising it but about a year ago they started warning users about forthcoming extensive audits to maintain access, and about six months ago they started reducing access for API keys if you stopped maxing them out for a day or more. Our last API key got shut down for good a couple of weeks ago. We're going to try to fill out the form and get our access reinstated, but I'm not sure how willing they'll be to allow access for research. The form seems intended for client-facing apps. But who knows - Facebook/CrowdTangle/Twitter have been very supportive of legitimate research initiatives, I'm hoping YouTube follows that trend!

ammar_x 1349 days ago [-]
Hey, I was not able to do the analysis we talked about. The analysis received much interaction after I published it here and was contacted by many people. As a result, I've been too busy. I hope I can do it soon. When I do it, I'll notify you in a comment here. Or provide me with your email.
pvankessel 1358 days ago [-]
To clarify - the current API has a limit of 10,000 "query points" per day for new API keys (most endpoints cost 1-5 points per query). It used to be 1 million; they've since throttled everyone down and started forcing audits. 10k is still something, but it certainly doesn't allow large scale research.
macromaniac 1358 days ago [-]
It used to be 50 million, it used to be 500000% more. I would have expected it to increase as bandwidth got cheaper yet it for whatever reason has decreased.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15568405/youtube-api-lim...

ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
Wow. That makes me sad and suspicious. Why would they close themselves to this degree? From 50 million to 10,000!
pvankessel 1358 days ago [-]
Wow, I had no idea. 1m was enough to work with, but... wow. Thanks for the reference.
ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
It is really sad to see one of the biggest Internet platforms and the biggest video platform apply more restrictions. If they opened their data more and made less restrictions, we would be in front of a gold mine of data.

With current restrictions, maybe multiple accounts + VPN are essential for large-scale research.

angel_j 1358 days ago [-]
This is a lot of work for a lot of practically meaningless results. These are only examples: The urls and social links in the descriptions. The "the" in the titles. The other findings offer very little insight. Be popular, post videos.
jcahill 1358 days ago [-]
My web archival group (nonprofit) has international trending data for the same period. I've been meaning to get around to analysis for a while. This article is a good point of reference.
ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
Glad it helped. If possible, could you share your analysis results with us after you finish?
leereeves 1358 days ago [-]
> The minimum number of views a video had when it first became trending was 53,796 views.

How does that happen?

ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
There is a video that had only 53,796 views on the day it became trending. That video is "Phora - Don't Change [Official Music Video]". If you look at the data, you find that it became trending on the same day it was published. So before accumulating a large number of views, it became trending. Maybe it acquired thousands of views very quickly which sent it to the trending list? Maybe other factor.
markdown 1358 days ago [-]
Probably easily done if the publisher has a large fanbase and uses other social media channels to send them all to Youtube the moment the video is published.
_ZeD_ 1358 days ago [-]
I do wonder what would be the results for other countries - like in the EU zone (it would be interesting, moreover, to see if / what are the differences between denmark, germany, italian etc.. youtube trending videos)
ammar_x 1358 days ago [-]
I have the same data for Canada, Denmark, UK, Malaysia, and other 13 countries. I plan to analyze this data soon. So stay tuned.
wolco 1358 days ago [-]
From my understanding any channels you subscribe to with new content/video have a good chance to appear there. This is for the generic viewer.
rienbdj 1358 days ago [-]
Cool analysis but I don’t think any interesting conclusions came from it.
e737ueuryryy 1358 days ago [-]
None of this is really that surprising though. Progressive cancel culture is an American phenomenon and was a massive point of criticism when YouTube announced whatever their volunteer moderator program is currently called. Google is a political platform for its employees and the only time we see that not be true is when the activism tries to jump into a domain that requires trustworthy employees like government contract work.

Traditional media can overcome this because they have these things called budgets which independent creators lack until they make it big. Traditional media can simply throw money around until they make it on the board. What we're seeing isn't an accident of some algorithm, it's what happens when a company is so saturated with children that it simply can't operate as a creatives-first platform.

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