The Normification of YouTube
I first started making YouTube videos in the spring of 2013. Somehow I found this little corner of the internet where people were having interesting philosophical and political discussions and debates, and I wanted to be part of it. In those days YouTube was a lot of fun because it was very anarchic and creative. Any DIY platform or movement unleashes a lot of pent-up creativity, before it becomes smothered by band-waggoners. In 2013 YouTube was where real issues were being discussed in an open forum, with no filters. As with any open forum, there was a lot of trolling and general stupidity, but even that had its charm. People were having fun. Of course, it couldn't last. Whenever nerds are having fun normies will crash the party and ruin it.
Most people don't think of YouTube as a social network. They think of it as a content delivery service. It is a content delivery service, and many people never use it as anything else. The dividing line is when you start commenting, especially on smaller videos. That pulls you into discussions and debates. The comments section is where the action is. Many videos serve primarily as a mini-forum for discussions on a specific topic. YouTube had a great format for discussing ideas. A video usually has a clear topic. It is a good starting point for discussions and debates, much better than a one-line opening to a thread. The video creator has an incentive to make the content good, if he wants to attract and keep an audience. A forum that is organized around people is much better than one organized around topics, because it allows people to build reputations and audiences. Each channel is a little discourse space centered on the individual who owns it. Those little discourse spaces are then linked to create larger discourse spaces --- communities --- in which people have more or less status based on their ability to deliver content that others find meaningful. People on YouTube organized themselves into communities based on shared interests and beliefs.
The main difficulty for a content creator (of any kind) is finding an audience. For a platform to be effective in creating discourse spaces for fringe beliefs and interests, there must be a way for fringe content to propagate. The most effective way for it to propagate is socially: between people with similar interests or beliefs.
In 2013 YouTube had very high connectivity as a social network. Channels could make their activity visible to their subscribers. Users could easily review their subscriptions for new activity, and then click on a subscription to see what that activity was. Now you have to navigate through an annoying drop-down menu to the channel page. Back then, you could toggle your subscriptions and easily see the videos they had uploaded, which videos they had liked, and even the comments they had made (if they made them public). This enabled users to discover new channels and videos easily, even if they were small ones that didn't show up in the recommendations. It also enabled users to discover opposing viewpoints, by following up on a negative comment. This had some drawbacks. It often led to mobbing of videos by people who disagreed with the message. On the other hand, it created a vibrant environment of debate and discussion. It allowed people to connect.
I don't think the YouTube executives and managers really understood that YouTube was a social network, and a very powerful one. Even if they did, they didn't want that kind of network: an anarchy where anonymous people came together and debated without the constraints of public discourse.
The first big change to YouTube after I started using it was the integration with Google+, Google's terrible attempt at creating a social network. Like many changes to YouTube, it blindsided a lot of people. I remember watching the video they put out to announce the changes, and being shocked with how out-of-touch they were with their user base. The video was a cute girl making cupcakes. It was cutesy to the point of inducing vomit. Of course, some people use YouTube to make cutesy cupcake videos, and some people want to watch cutesy cupcake videos, and there is nothing wrong with that. But using that video to announce their comment changes indicated their vision of YouTube: a sanitized, video version of Facebook in which politically correct content makers produced squeaky clean content that could have been broadcast on TV, and soccer moms posted cutesy retarded comments to one other. The new comment format wasn't that bad, but it was confusing and the integration with Google+ caused a lot of people to stop using YouTube.
There have been some other changes over the last three years that reduced the social connectivity of YouTube:
These might seem like small changes, but they had a big impact on YouTube. They took away the social networking features, so that information no longer propagates in that way. This dramatically changes the way YouTube works. It makes it almost impossible for a niche content creator to find an audience, and for people to find niche content. Creative people will not invest time in a platform that almost guarantees they will not find an audience. YouTube communities are dying because people can no longer see what is going on in their communities. Eventually YouTube will become simply a video broadcasting platform for normie content.
I think this is by design. Google wants control over what you watch. They don't want the network of little online communities that emerged on YouTube. They want a passive audience. Whether Google will make more money with this strategy is doubtful, but that is what they are doing.
So, I think YouTube's time as a discussion space is coming to an end. Unfortunately, there aren't any good alternatives. Twitter doesn't work as a social network, mainly because it is a stream of information, rather than a space.
The ideal discussion/blogging space would have the following features:
Any suggestions?
Most people don't think of YouTube as a social network. They think of it as a content delivery service. It is a content delivery service, and many people never use it as anything else. The dividing line is when you start commenting, especially on smaller videos. That pulls you into discussions and debates. The comments section is where the action is. Many videos serve primarily as a mini-forum for discussions on a specific topic. YouTube had a great format for discussing ideas. A video usually has a clear topic. It is a good starting point for discussions and debates, much better than a one-line opening to a thread. The video creator has an incentive to make the content good, if he wants to attract and keep an audience. A forum that is organized around people is much better than one organized around topics, because it allows people to build reputations and audiences. Each channel is a little discourse space centered on the individual who owns it. Those little discourse spaces are then linked to create larger discourse spaces --- communities --- in which people have more or less status based on their ability to deliver content that others find meaningful. People on YouTube organized themselves into communities based on shared interests and beliefs.
The main difficulty for a content creator (of any kind) is finding an audience. For a platform to be effective in creating discourse spaces for fringe beliefs and interests, there must be a way for fringe content to propagate. The most effective way for it to propagate is socially: between people with similar interests or beliefs.
In 2013 YouTube had very high connectivity as a social network. Channels could make their activity visible to their subscribers. Users could easily review their subscriptions for new activity, and then click on a subscription to see what that activity was. Now you have to navigate through an annoying drop-down menu to the channel page. Back then, you could toggle your subscriptions and easily see the videos they had uploaded, which videos they had liked, and even the comments they had made (if they made them public). This enabled users to discover new channels and videos easily, even if they were small ones that didn't show up in the recommendations. It also enabled users to discover opposing viewpoints, by following up on a negative comment. This had some drawbacks. It often led to mobbing of videos by people who disagreed with the message. On the other hand, it created a vibrant environment of debate and discussion. It allowed people to connect.
I don't think the YouTube executives and managers really understood that YouTube was a social network, and a very powerful one. Even if they did, they didn't want that kind of network: an anarchy where anonymous people came together and debated without the constraints of public discourse.
The first big change to YouTube after I started using it was the integration with Google+, Google's terrible attempt at creating a social network. Like many changes to YouTube, it blindsided a lot of people. I remember watching the video they put out to announce the changes, and being shocked with how out-of-touch they were with their user base. The video was a cute girl making cupcakes. It was cutesy to the point of inducing vomit. Of course, some people use YouTube to make cutesy cupcake videos, and some people want to watch cutesy cupcake videos, and there is nothing wrong with that. But using that video to announce their comment changes indicated their vision of YouTube: a sanitized, video version of Facebook in which politically correct content makers produced squeaky clean content that could have been broadcast on TV, and soccer moms posted cutesy retarded comments to one other. The new comment format wasn't that bad, but it was confusing and the integration with Google+ caused a lot of people to stop using YouTube.
There have been some other changes over the last three years that reduced the social connectivity of YouTube:
- Elimination of reply videos.
- Imposing and then eliminating Google+ comments.
- Replacing the subscription page with the subscription drop-down, making it much harder to browse your subscriptions.
- Removing the activity feed tab from the subscription tab. Now there is no easy way to see what people are doing.
- Notification changes making it more difficult to engage in comment discussions.
These might seem like small changes, but they had a big impact on YouTube. They took away the social networking features, so that information no longer propagates in that way. This dramatically changes the way YouTube works. It makes it almost impossible for a niche content creator to find an audience, and for people to find niche content. Creative people will not invest time in a platform that almost guarantees they will not find an audience. YouTube communities are dying because people can no longer see what is going on in their communities. Eventually YouTube will become simply a video broadcasting platform for normie content.
I think this is by design. Google wants control over what you watch. They don't want the network of little online communities that emerged on YouTube. They want a passive audience. Whether Google will make more money with this strategy is doubtful, but that is what they are doing.
So, I think YouTube's time as a discussion space is coming to an end. Unfortunately, there aren't any good alternatives. Twitter doesn't work as a social network, mainly because it is a stream of information, rather than a space.
The ideal discussion/blogging space would have the following features:
- Users have their own channels/blogs. (Not topic-based forum.)
- Allow different formats: text, video, audio, image, short text.
- Nominal and substantive freedom of speech, including anonymity.
- Persistence of content. (No deletions by users, only deletions by mods.)
- Disqus style comments. No user-blocking or filtering of comments.
- Open record of likes, subs, comments to encourage propagation.
- Ease of use, stable format.
Any suggestions?
I think you're swimming against the tide, here - no-one is very interested in offering what you want as it's complex, runs right into the current carrier/content-provider storm and isn't obviously monetizable. The nest discussions I've seen lately are all on individuals' blogs but that format is really limited to commenting on what the blog owner thinks. It's depressing that I've never found a better discussion forum platform than the Usenet groups I was using 30 years ago.
ReplyDelete> A forum that is organized around people is much better than one organized around topics, because it allows people to build reputations and audiences.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to see this particular quality of a forum to be self-evidently a good one. What is the reasoning behind this?
Topic based forums degenerate because there is no built in quality control. In those environments, intelligence is simply drowned out. The social network model allows communities to form with different norms, views, average IQs, etc. Also, following people around is a great way to discover content that is aimed at someone with the same interests and intelligence level. To have productive conversations, people need to segregate to some extent, but not completely isolate themselves or hide from criticism. A social network makes that possible.
Delete