Which is why my general rule of thumb is to avoid the top channels. Some things I especially try to avoid:
lots of jump cuts
stupid thumbnails
clickbait headlines
Those are things that drive “engagement,” and going after engagement for engagement’s sake is a clear sign to me that the channel isn’t worth my time. If the channel largely avoids that crap and still manages to have a respectable subscriber count, it’s a lot more likely to be a decent channel. Some channels I really like:
Gamer’s Nexus
Digital Foundry
Tech Ingredients
Each of those have high quality content, tend to avoid most of the above (still have BS thumbnails, but not nearly as bad as the big channels), and have a sizeable following. Good content absolutely exists, you just have to scrape away the crap on top to find decent channels.
That said, I no longer use my YT account, I just subbed to everything I care about on Grayjay and Newpipe (in case one fails, and NewPipe has failed more often than not for me), and I’ll watch specific channels whenever I actually use YT’s website.
Absolutely. Sticking to the things they know and avoiding the recs is how a lot of people use Youtube. But all of the things you avoid are thrown in your face in the recs. Clickbait titles, bait and switch content, dogwhistling videos that start people down the path of ever more bigoted content (for example, the video the OP posted).
I generally don’t engage much with video content though, so I’ll just continue to ignore it
Which is why my general rule of thumb is to avoid the top channels. Some things I especially try to avoid:
Those are things that drive “engagement,” and going after engagement for engagement’s sake is a clear sign to me that the channel isn’t worth my time. If the channel largely avoids that crap and still manages to have a respectable subscriber count, it’s a lot more likely to be a decent channel. Some channels I really like:
Each of those have high quality content, tend to avoid most of the above (still have BS thumbnails, but not nearly as bad as the big channels), and have a sizeable following. Good content absolutely exists, you just have to scrape away the crap on top to find decent channels.
That said, I no longer use my YT account, I just subbed to everything I care about on Grayjay and Newpipe (in case one fails, and NewPipe has failed more often than not for me), and I’ll watch specific channels whenever I actually use YT’s website.
Absolutely. Sticking to the things they know and avoiding the recs is how a lot of people use Youtube. But all of the things you avoid are thrown in your face in the recs. Clickbait titles, bait and switch content, dogwhistling videos that start people down the path of ever more bigoted content (for example, the video the OP posted).
I generally don’t engage much with video content though, so I’ll just continue to ignore it
Hence why I tend to avoid the YT website. I have disabled recommendations on NewPipe and Grayjay, and that’s where 95% of my YT viewing comes from.