cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51669542

I viewed this.

This is about 93 min long. Couldn't finish. I read an ai summary.

Then @peterkuchynskyi (Peter) replied. I watched.

Then I viewed 11:16 ➡️ 37:24 of this.

But no need to view the 4 vids. Just wanna share my opinion.

I've liked @dave2d, @gsmarenaofficial and @themrmobile for so long sans 🤔 re the conflicts of interest from early access and affiliate links. Peter opened my 👀. I 🤔 a review shouldn't have early access from the firm, affiliate links and promo codes. Links and promo codes for items unrelated to the reviewed item are OK. The Youtuber shouldn't get free accessories to or peripherals for the judged item. The native or integrated ad should be unrelated to the judged item. A very high bar, maybe. But we can't read the Youtuber's 🧠. We don't know if he's honest and not softening the item's cons. We need the review to stress the pros and the cons. Not inflating the pros; not deflating the cons. So he needs to have near 0 conflict of interest. 0 is impossible. Example, more Pixel 📱 sales mean richer Alphabet. The Youtubers are on Youtube – under Alphabet.

I must stress that a lying Youtuber with near 0 conflict of interest is possible. We need honest and independent reviewers.

Per Peter (in his 2nd vid), he was OK with an ad of a seemingly 👎 item if the ad was unrelated to the judged item. No. A reviewer should tout 👍 items and services that he himself tried or uses. A sign of high integrity.

Peter disliked ads re online betting. Yes! It has ruined so many lives.

I 🤔 the top reason Peter cited @mkbhd was views.

Sonic Forces - Lost Valley (8-bit)

1D - One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks) (8-bit instrumental)

Sonic Forces - Arsenal Pyramid (8-bit)

70s music gone 8-bit

80s music gone 8-bit

Drew Seeley - I Do (8-bit instrumental)

90s music gone 8-bit

2000s MUSIC (8-BIT)

2010s music meets 8-bit

2020s music gone 8-bit

I posted this on reddit but those fuckers removed it immediately

Never have I ever used a platform whose algorithm is so "sticky" that I've exhausted my entire roundup of channels and shows, and it keeps getting harder and harder to find new stuff. Big part of this is how YouTube doesn't have categories, especially on mobile.

And before anyone says it, yes they do have a category sidebar. Shopping, Music, Movies & TV, Hype, Live, Gaming, News, Sports, Courses, Fashion & Beauty, Podcasts, Playables. That's it. That's the whole list. You want to find new cooking channels? Good luck, there's no cooking category. History? Nope. Science? Nothing. Your only option is to go into "Gaming" and get served the same giants with 10 million subscribers you've already seen a hundred times.

Like, I just want to find a channel that makes videos about woodworking or obscure history or literally anything I haven't seen before, but YouTube keeps shoving the same 8 creators in my face because I watched one of their videos two years ago. The recommended page is just stuff I've already seen and stuff I actively don't want to see.

And the search is somehow even worse. You search for a topic trying to find something new and instead of relevant results it just shows you the same channels you always watch. Search "game reviews" and the top results aren't new review channels you've never heard of, it's the exact same guys already clogging your recommendations, plus videos you've already saved to watch later. You're not finding anything new, you're just being shown your own watch history back at you.

Other platforms figured this out. Spotify has genre pages, radio stations, discovery playlists. Even TikTok, for all its problems, will occasionally show you something you've never seen before. YouTube just assumes that if you liked something once you want to see it forever, and if you've never seen something before that's because you don't want to. There's no way out of it unless you already know exactly what you're looking for, which kind of defeats the whole point.

And yes I know you can delete your watch history. That's not a solution. That's a band-aid.

**I just want to find new topics** who else has this problem?

Months after saying I was going to, I finally quit YouTube Premium. In doing so, I realized I had become addicted to YouTube without realizing it. This has been an eye-opening blog to write. Wasn't expecting such an existential crisis from my website, but here I am!

I've submitted a complaint about this to youtube's support forums, but thought it might be just as useful to post here and see if other people are just as annoyed. Support issue is at:

https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/426040098/can-t-get-rid-of-most-relevant-section-on-subscriptions-page

Text of the support issue copied below:

For the last few months my subscriptions feed has been clogged up with irrelevant suggestions at the top so I have to scroll down before I can see a list of videos my subscribed channels have uploaded in reverse chronological order, which is the one and only thing I want to see when I go to the subscriptions page, not whatever algorithmic slop youtube wants to feed me. I've tried looking for a setting to change the subscriptions feed back to what I want, but I can't find it. How can I contact staff to tell them I hate how this website is being enshittified into the ground?