I always see it as more of a social media company rather than a media co.

If you watch Shorts, maybe. If you watch normal videos, the comments are pretty much an afterthought.

But even shorts, assuming they're like reels/stories, the "social" aspect is very minimal compared with, say, Facebook posts back in the day, where your friends would see and comment and reply to each other.

The Algorithm doesn't really want that anymore; it wants to feed you content from arbitrary people to keep you passively engaged, not to foster conversation/active engagement.

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raincole 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just anecdotes, but I feel YouTube comments are the bottom of social media. Even Twitter and Reddit are better.

But if the 99% garbage is the price of the emerging of channels like 3B1B, I think it's still a pretty good deal.

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keiferski 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t agree at all. This was true a decade ago, but today YouTube comments are almost all positive, and you’ll often get some really insightful ones too.

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raincole 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> but today YouTube comments are almost all positive

Yeah, exactly. I believe this is the main reason the quality is so bad. Comments with any negative language get pushed down, creating an empty (sometimes toxic), artificial positive atmosphere.

	▲	asdfman123 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To be fair, Youtube isn't about the comments and the discussion. The comments are sort of there just to give feedback to the creators and serve as a signal to the YouTube algorithm.

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redwall_hp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Channels can moderate their comments too. So channels run by thoughtful, community-oriented people will zap trash comments. The music production sphere is especially good.

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thundergolfer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Their algorithm has a toxic positivity problem where they weight positivity so much the most moronic, saccharine crap sits at the top and you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the comments from LLM slop.

	▲	fancyfredbot 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Epic refresh pull" is my personal pet hate right now. Although "like if you are watching this in <year>" on older videos is close behind.

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busymom0 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I often comment on videos but never do I check replies to my comments there.

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kami23 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I went to see if I had any replies to a comment I left on a video for the first time today and it's really hidden to get back to them if you don't remember the exact video. I wonder if it's purposeful friction or just not a priority.

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squigz 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Click History on the homepage left sidebar > Comments on right side of History page

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

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croes 4 hours ago | parent [-]

And now try to find the comment someone replied to

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loevborg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree. I wonder how people are motivated to comment if they can't even track replies or check likes. It certainly completely kills motivation for me

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squigz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you and GP not get notifications for replies and (at least some) likes?

	▲	kami23 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In my case I have almost all notifications disabled so maybe there's an option somewhere. Generally find those notification badges too powerful for me to not check and then get waylaid doom scrolling/watching, so I've made it a habit to always disable them everywhere. Somewhat tempted to re-enable it as I only really comment on videos that are for very very niche communities and I'm usually answering or asking questions.

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squigz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh, fair enough. That is indeed not shown anywhere it seems.

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RobRivera 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And so many comments may aswell be bots.

>anyone here in CURRENTYEAR

>This is scene is so [adjective]

Not exactly a forum, more like a concert crowd