• bthest@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    So every time your mouse activates the thumbnail preview: that’s a view.

    Don’t bother trying to turn that feature off. They just turn it back on. Flipping those fake settings buttons is just more engagement “money” for them to harvest.

    On PC you need to turn off view history and use Ublock Origin to block EVERYTHING on YT but the player and some basic UI buttons and maybe comments.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I tried watching a how-to video on YT today.

    It say “playback not supported on this device”.

    Probably thanks to my ad-blocking efforts.

    Fuck youtube. Can’t get views if the video never plays.

  • CalypsoGirl@lemmy.today
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    4 days ago

    I assumed they were already doing that. They’ve never been forthcoming in regards to what actually counts as a view.

    1. Especially weird if I view videos from my own channel, on my end it seems to tally each time I watch my own videos, which isn’t supposed to happen.

    2. And videos I never chose or clicked on automatically start playing as soon as I open the app or switch from “Me” to “Home.”

    3. Or if one person watches a video multiple times, does youtube count each of those views? Because for YouTubers whose livelihood depends on likes & views & subscribers, YouTube needs to make sure a creator isn’t manipulating the system with bot farms or friends/family/paid losers to repeatedly watch the videos.

    Now my brain hurts & I’m grumpy. Bye.

      • CalypsoGirl@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        Yes my autoplay is always turned off. I mean when you’re on the home screen it automatically plays, on mute, and not full-screen, whichever suggested video is oriented in the middle of the screen. This isn’t something that can be opted out of.

      • CalypsoGirl@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        Yes that’s exactly what I mean. It’s disingenuous for YouTube to be doing that, I mean in the grand scheme of things it’s a trifling matter, but it’s a bit of fuckery because algorithms & livelihoods are affected by this nonsense.

  • Etterra@discuss.online
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    4 days ago

    Views not high enough? Change the definition of your metrics so it looks like you’re getting better results! It’s not technically lying to investors.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    This is because they just fucked everyone by doubling the minimum views to get paid.

  • PierceTheBubble@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    So after butchering the like/dislike ratio, the view-count will also become utterly useless… What’s next, automatically subscribing users to inflate subscriber-count too? All these universally liked videos (no dislikes), views/exposure (zero engagement), advertiser-friendly content (threatened (shadow)banning or demonetization)! Now the only red flag to any malinformed advertiser might be a low subscriber-count; so just do it already. Well, alongside the lackluster performance of the ads themselves of course (which can only be measured after the transaction: poorly at that). And the best part: non of the ad-revenue will be shared with the propped up channels: as the recently heightened threshold, requires additional engaged viewers; as opposed to the TikTok-level, worthless kind.

  • stopforgettingit@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Here is my take - They are adding a new metric called “Engaged Views”, this is the same metric that a “View” was previously, something like - the person stayed after 30 seconds so they are “engaged”. Then they are going to sell ads based on the now inflated view number and use the “Engaged view” metric against creators so they can cut the amount they are paying for monetization.

  • EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    Sounds like a desperate attempt to convince investors that there is growing user engagement by decreasing the amount of time needed for a video to be considered engaging. Must be that people are moving through shorts at breakneck speeds. I haven’t touched YouTube in many years as the platform turned into one giant ad service (even if you pay for to remove ads). I guess that is what Google is primarily anyway, a company aiming to serve personalized (maybe also behavioral) ad to people.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Man I miss the early days of the Internet with the bullshit hit counters that were completely inconsequential when wrong and anyone could game.

      Now somehow cuz it’s big business, those same bullshit hit counters can be used to move big mountains of money.

  • NathanRanch@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    These changes, awful as they seem, are effecting me less and less as I use the platform less and less. It’s like, “oh you’re getting worse? Carry on then”, then I go back to my Plex server.