Normally, I use YouTube very little (watch a couple videos a month). However, I’ve been in bed with an injury for some time now, which has led me to watch quite a bit of YouTube. The thing is, I subscribe to a small handfull of channels that I enjoy content from, but after a relatively short time I had watched pretty much all the new content from those channels.
Now, I would expect that the YouTube algorithm, which is supposedly designed by competent people to get me to stick around, would be able to suggest some decent content to me based on my subscriptions. However, the past week, I’ve opened YouTube only to find the same old videos being suggested over and over. Even worse: Whenever there’s something interesting-looking from a channel I don’t recognise, it always turns out to be some shitty AI voice over some generic animations or footage.
I know for a fact that thousands of hours of content are created on YouTube daily, but it genuinely feels like there are maybe five creators out there that are making anything worth watching. It’s either that, or the YouTube algorithm is just complete crap at suggesting creators that are in any way similar to what I’m already subscribing to.
What’s going on here? Why does it seem like there’s no real content out there?
As a “funny” side note: What’s with the “aggressively American” AI narrator-voice? I’ve heard it before, but thought it was some dude until I realised it’s the same voice in a bunch of unrelated videos. It reminds me of the Discovery-channel “action-narrator”-voice from back in the day, but now it’s showing up in all kinds of crap videos.
I can feel you. YouTube is my “tv” and I’ve been watching it for years. But lately the quality of the suggestions has gone completely out of whack, imo. I scroll through the suggestions and find nothing worth watching. Sometimes i try to improve it by hitting ‘not interested’ or ‘don’t suggest this channel’, but it’s not helping.
Maybe Spez has bribed Google to show us rubbish, so we’d return to Reddit?
It’s actually kind of nice to hear this. You’re the kind of person I was thinking of when I thought to myself that “there must be heaps of decent content out there, because a bunch of people use youtube as their tv”, so if it’s gone to crap for you as well, at least that indicates I’m not just going crazy from lying still for way too long.
I’ve noticed a lot of AI slop being recommended all of a sudden too, not just AI voice stuff but lazy AI generated thumbnails and titles too. I’ve been clicking don’t suggest channel every time it turns up but YouTube is still trying to push it.