It’s easy to say “You get awful recommendations because of the content you watch on Youtube”. I could say that very easily, but I don’t accept that premise because I took a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and I learned to think about deeper topics. I thought about media ownership, control and the theme of power without responsibility. It’s a book about the Press and Broadcasting in Britain but the concepts apply globally.
For the last week, or less, I have been choosing what to watch, not based on what’s new, or recommended, but on what is leaving Netflix soon. With netflix it is very easy to think “I don’t know what to watch” and “I don’t want to watch anything that is being recommended.
By noticing the films that are “Leaving Soon” the challenge of choosing what to watch is simplified. If you have to choose what’s vanishing within a few weeks then the choice is smaller.
Over the years I have subscribed to hundreds of podcasts, YouTube channels, people on Instagram TikTok and more. I then stopped subscribing, and sometimes like, but never when I’m asked to by the content creators. The short reason for not liking and subscribing now is that if I subscribe I usually grow tired with the content and stop watching, so my subscription is an illusion. The reason I don’t “like” plenty of videos is simply that the videos are not worth a like.
Over a few days I have watched a few minutes at a time of a video on youtube. They used Unreal Engine 5 to model the entire ship. It’s a walking tour where you start on the grand staircase and explore the ship one deck at a time. It shows how the furniture might have looked, and gives you a sense of scale.
Such a video is interesting because it brings the ship to life.
In scuba diving and aviation safety is a discussion that takes place before and after every dive or flight. It is discussed every time divers meet up. With climbing safety is important too but the focus is different. “This is how you should belay, this is how you should climb, this is how you should set up the top rope, and more.
With climbing I know what the safety rules are but I don’t necessarily know what the numbers mean.
Yesterday I watched a video about setting up a Mini Nextcloud Server on a Pi 5 so I experimented with using the Pi-Hosted script to install docker and then portainer. Pi Hoster uses two scripts. One installs Docker and the second one installs Portainer. Portainer is a web interface to install docker containers instead of doing the same thing via the command line. It allows you to install Pi-Hole, Ad Guard, PhotoPrism, Nextcloud and many other solutions on a single server with relative ease.
Twitter and YouTube want to make it impossible to block report, or ignore ads. The reason I dumped Facebook and Instagram is that I saw more ads than content by friends. In fact I saw posts by five to ten friends, out of four hundred, but unlimited amounts of ads. This reminded me of how small my Instagram reality was, but also that others were wasting my time to make money for themselves.
According to a recent article YouTube will use AI to direct the content that people make, how it looks how it sounds and more. In so doing YouTube will be even less interesting.
AI tools will also begin informing what kind of content creators make. A new AI feature in YouTube Studio will generate topic ideas and outlines for potential videos. The AI suggestions will be personalized to individual creators, YouTube says, and based on what’s already trending with audiences.
Usually when we hear of people hiking with cats we think of them walking with the cat, or cats, on a leash. In a Pass Moi Les Jumelles (PAJU for short), we follow two guys who go for a walk with four cats. The report is funny because the cats, or some might even say kittens, are allowed to roam and explore with the human companions. They can leap across streams over and over.
I love the medium of video and I have love having a choice of thousands, or even millions of videos to choose from. In effect my love of the medium of video should mean that I love YouTube. I don’t, because of sensationalism and clickbait. I have paid for YouTube prime twice now, to cut out all the adverts, and I love that. In theory plugins do the same thing, for free, and I did use plugins for years before finally deciding to spend money on YouTube Prime.