Now what's going on with YouTube?

[Colbynfriends]

I wonder why Youtube now let's you change speed in videos? It's kind of useless.

For one it could be useful for longer how-to and tutorials where people are able to follow along quicker. Personal experince, I have done this.

 

[AquaGGR]

On the YT phone app I keep getting a problem where halfway through the video will cut off and restart, but the timeline won't reset back to 0:00. So I have to watch the whole thing over again and can't skip around. Anyone else experience that?

 

[D'Snowth]

No (mainly because I never use my phone for anything other than for . . . a phone), but lately my Watch History has been completely frozen, and that's not from me pausing it, because I haven't paused it, it's somehow paused itself.

 

[D'Snowth]

I think Opera somehow messes with color, because I'm noticing certain colors on videos look different than they did previously in IE: lime green, for example, now looks more like crayola green; magenta now looks fushia; different shades of purple look a tad more bluish.

My suspicion was correct. I did a side-by-side comparison, and Opera does distort the video color, for whatever reason.

EDIT: Actually, it turns out this issue isn't exclusive to just YouTube, it's all video content online.

EDIT AGAIN: I took this test on both IE and Opera, and found that I passed both on IE, but apparently Opera does not support v4 ICC color profiles, whatever those are.

 

[D'Snowth]

So not only does YouTube have Watch History frozen for whatever reason, but it would appear that they've also somehow frozen subscription updates as well, because for as long as Watch History's been frozen, I've noticed that everytime I log in, I just get the exact same subscription updates for the same channel and the same videos (some of which date back a few years).

 

[D'Snowth]

So recommended is acting weird again: somehow, watching videos of windmills and bunnies seems to indicate to YouTube that I should be watching videos of women showing off camel toes in yoga pants, women pulling pranks with used condoms, and instructional videos on different sex positions. Reminds of how for a while, watching SST videos got me recommendations for videos of that preteen girl who had millions of subscribers. Who's in charge of recommendations anyway?

 

[D'Snowth]

YouTube's finally unfrozen Watch History, though the subscription feed seems to keep going back and forth.

On an unrelated note, I like how Danny Stern's been vlogging about random things as of late.

 

[D'Snowth]

Ah, not just me anymore. So, once again, I got a completely random and off-topic video in my recommendation: a 14-year-old girl who got herself pregnant, but it "made her smile," and when she told mom (who she's really close to) it "made her smile as well because she'll have her first grandchild," la-dee-dah . . . and practically every single comment on the video is the same: "WHY IS THIS IN MY RECOMMENDED?!"

But in browsing through the comments, I think I may have picked on something that would explain all of this: someone offered up the theory that YouTube actually has a option or feature to partner channels that allows you to pay them to place your videos in people's recommended, whether they're relevant to what they've been watching or not. If that's the case, that could very well explain why I occasionally get recommended videos of that other pre-teen girl who has millions of subscribers and her videos have millions of views; or how last month, I somehow got sexually suggestive videos in my recommended after watching only videos of bunnies and windmills.

 

[D'Snowth]

It would appear YouTube is decreasing view counts again.

 

[Drtooth]

But in browsing through the comments, I think I may have picked on something that would explain all of this: someone offered up the theory that YouTube actually has a option or feature to partner channels that allows you to pay them to place your videos in people's recommended, whether they're relevant to what they've been watching or not. If that's the case, that could very well explain why I occasionally get recommended videos of that other pre-teen girl who has millions of subscribers and her videos have millions of views; or how last month, I somehow got sexually suggestive videos in my recommended after watching only videos of bunnies and windmills.

I wouldn't doubt that for a minute. Though I'd admit watching anything even remotely preschool related (obviously Sesame Street clips in my case) gets you blanketed with dumb preschool suggestions. Especially those awful illegally used licensed character finger counting games.