Separate from the recommendation problems, which seem to vary by person, the site has gotten substantially worse for mobile players, to the point I've almost entirely stopped using it:
- The mobile page does not allow quality selection, and always selects quality options far below what would be supported by your connection (It sometimes drops to 240p, and I have not seen it select anything above 480p, yet can easily stream 1080p on the desktop site or other players).
- The mobile page does not respect the "Request Desktop Site" option, even in Chrome - and neither does their own "Desktop Site" link; Both still use the abysmal mobile player, and only by enabling both can you use a high-quality video player.
- Anything 60fps has issues on my mobile device, while other web players are fine - even 720p60 lags, while I can stream 1080p60 elsewhere.
I uninstalled the app years ago when it requested additional permissions with an update, and implemented a 30-second delay (with countdown!) before launching until I updated. YouTube is no longer the pinnacle of web video, and have not been for years.
That's a good point - I pretty much always use cellular, so I wonder if the quality cap for the mobile player is there as a misguided attempt to reduce data usage. Would make it more understandable, if no less irritating.
I agree that if you leave it playing it will go off on a tangent, but I find the list of recommended videos along the right side to be _very_ good. It really does list things I would want to watch based off past viewing and what's currently playing. I find it to be the most useful (only useful?) recommendation engine in any product.
It's good at finding things you'd watch, but not necessarily things you should be watching. Ex-youtube employees said that the algorithm is trained to keep you engaged and watching videos, so the recommended videos keep getting more and more extreme. This isn't really an issue with music because it just ends up at more niche artists, but if you watch a political video and keep following its recommendations, eventually you end up wathcing extremist left/right wing propaganda. Sure, it's something you don't mind watching once you get there, but it's not necessarily something you would have wanted to watch before the youtube algorithm led you there. Again, this is how the algorithm was described by an ex-youtube employee, not just a casual user.
In addition to those technical options, they have been substantially reducing revenue to producers and their algorithms have been shifting popular videos out of visible areas. Often popular producers will see sudden losses in their incomes.
Videos are not enough to sustain, they're like apps; a part of a larger revenue model. This disincentivizes smaller, interesting producers and pushes the platform to be more like network television was, with handfuls of large, conventionally attractive people.
I don't find it terrible at all now, but i hope it doesn't keep going in this direction. It's currently a wonderful resource for people who want to do all kinds of things from home and garden improvements, to cooking, improve mental and physical health, etc. Far closer to the utopian dreams of early internet enthusiasts than most other sites.
