YouTube's A/B Testing of Videos Breaks the Shared Experience, Warns Marques Brownlee
Dear Software Makers
Marques Brownlee's video essay "Dear YouTube" criticizes the platform's upcoming feature that lets creators publish A/B variants of videos. He argues it shatters the communal experience of everyone watching the same video, and that YouTube's insecurity-driven imitation of competitors leads to such features. Jim Nielsen applies these lessons to software: focus on finishing and conviction, not optimizing variants.
There's this sort of unspoken rule of community on YouTube, that like we're all having this same experience together — we're all watching the same video. That is what makes it a cultural phenomenon is that we all saw the same thing […] so letting people put up two or three different videos of the same thing at the same time kind of fundamentally breaks that, which doesn't feel right.
- beloch
"There’s this sort of unspoken rule of community on YouTube, that like we’re all having this same experience together — we’re all watching the same video. That is what makes it a cultural phenomenon is that we all saw the same thing […] so letting people put up two or three different videos of the same thing at the same time kind of fundamentally breaks that, which doesn't feel right."
----------------
It's going to be awkward if you share a youtube link with somebody and what they see is significantly different from what you saw, perhaps even to the point of them replying, "Why on Earth did you send this to me? Are you on crack?"
More importantly, this will almost inevitably lead to content creators being given the ability to not just randomly A/B test versions of a video, but produce different versions of the same video that are shown to users based on their data.
e.g. Shania Twain used to produce different versions of her albums with different instrumentation based on which section of the music store they'd be sold in. There was a Country version for the Country section and a Rock version for the Rock section. She's still bootin' around today, so she could produce different versions of music videos targeting users based on whether Google thinks they like Rock or Country more. This would be relatively harmless, although one might be surprised by the version that appears on a friend's phone.
Musical taste isn't what really divides people these days. What might content c […]
- OkayPhysicist
I strongly believe A/B testing users without their knowledge and enthusiastic consent is unethical. If you don't have enough confidence in your changes to make them carte blanche, then don't make them at all. Users don't want their shit changing all the time.
- csnover
From [0]:
> The funny thing about scoring systems is they are kind of little dictators. They tell you what you’re supposed to want and value. And that’s the weird thing. Scoring systems are little definitions of success and failure. I think one of the biggest differences is that, in games, those definitions are temporary and playful and under your control. And if you don’t like it, you can throw it away and you never have to play again. And in institutions, they’re authoritarian. […] After a period of time, [metrics] seem to drain what’s genuinely valuable from the system because they point people at something that’s very easily and mechanically checkable and measurable.
[0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/673-the-score/transcr...
- jordwest
As Seth Godin said:
> Enough A/B testing will turn any website into a porn site
- wewewedxfgdf
OT: YouTube has some big problems.
I don't think I am the audience for YouTube any more.
YouTube is converging towards where all the social media sites are:
* shorts
* photo/text posts
* longer videos too - typically 12 minutes approx
* AI videos - some of which are fine but I want to be able to filter them out
* their algorithm/feed is very bad at letting me explore my interests, when I choose to - instead it feeds me stuff that leaves me unsatisified
But I came here years ago to watch TV made by people NOT bound to 12 minutes. I watch pretty much nothing else at night on the couch except YouTube but I am coming to realise it's no longer what I want.
That "original YouTube" seems to be gone. Nothing has replaced it.