
YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos - bipr0
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/29/youtube-links-end-cards-new-requirements/
======
bognition
Its about time. The Youtube UI has become a disaster over the last few years.
It all started with the ability to let uploaders "annotate" their videos. I've
disabled the setting to show annotations probably a dozen times and they keep
coming back. I can't figure out if the setting is poorly implemented or if
youtube is deliberately switching the setting back.

~~~
wickawic
Agreed, but this move seems like a grab at Patreon and self promotion in
general. Users can still put obnoxious annotations up.

~~~
timothya
> _Users can still put obnoxious annotations up._

No, annotations are deprecated, you can't add them to videos anymore. [0]

[0]: [https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/03/keep-fans-
en...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/03/keep-fans-engaged-with-
cards-end.html)

~~~
colmvp
Seriously, good riddance. It added so much clutter to videos that I explicitly
hid them any chance I got. I'd rather content creators just use the video
description to communicate or edit their videos so that annotations would not
be necessary.

~~~
Mithaldu
So you read the entire description of a video before watching it and remember
every word of it, including timestamps with comments to note corrections, even
when there's 10 of them for a half hour video?

~~~
taneq
Annotations (in the sense of small snippets of text that display briefly to
add info) are fine. What YouTube had in many cases was a poorly implemented
MySpace page overlaid on the video. And as one of the parent posters said, the
setting just kept turning itself back on no matter how many times you turned
it off (on the video, or in your settings page).

~~~
Mithaldu
"Many cases" is subjective and anecdotal. Maybe my set of youtubers i followed
was particularly high quality, but almost all uses of annotations i have seen
were to provide corrections to information found wrong in the video, or
additional information learned after the video.

In some cases such things were applied quite heavily too.

And thus the point of my previous post is that for people doing serious work
with their youtube videos providing corrections and such via the description
is entirely untenable.

I'm sorry you've only seen spam, but cutting off another's tool because some
people can't use it correctly is a severe case of FYGM.

~~~
anyfoo
I don't know why you got downvoted so much, I share the same experience.

~~~
Mithaldu
I expect it's a side effect from casual youtube users who've mostly
experienced abuse of the feature and think i'm lying.

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throwaway2048
An important note here, if you cannot enable monetize videos, YouTube will not
allow you to link to patreon or other sites.

[https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/byCxnAj.jpg)

Its not enough for Google to ban you from ads, they have decided to cut off
any other funding source aswell...

~~~
glogla
Yep. This move is about removing "advertiser unfriendly" content from YT,
nothing else.

~~~
delroth
My understanding is that demonetization for "advertiser unfriendliness" is
per-video. It doesn't influence the capability of linking to external
websites, since this is an account wide capability.

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tehwebguy
YouTube still hasn't stopped the hordes of fake accounts that spam every top
creator's new videos.

Ex. PewDiePie video has a dozen comments from fake PewDiePie accounts (name,
avatar) posting about "contest" link.

~~~
arca_vorago
It drives me crazy how much this clutters search results. For years I would
almost always sort by >20mins/upload date for whatever I was looking for
(usually lectures/talks, hence the >20mins) but over the past few years where
I used to get the most recent talk from $person, now I get a full page of
reuploaded content from 1994, half of which is from the same spam user. Now my
search of choice tends to be viewcount/<1month.

I now prefer mps-youtube for the majority of my youtube interaction. It's a
gplv3 cli client, and then I just have VLC open up the video. No ads, no
popups, no links.

[https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube](https://github.com/mps-
youtube/mps-youtube)

You know, a long time ago when google bought youtube I remember thinking to
myself that it meant it was never going to be the same. After things like the
google+ name fiasco, etc (Jawed Karim's first comment on youtube was: "why the
fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?"), and many other
scandals, and not seeing hardly a dent in their userbase, I wonder what it
would take to get the users to another platform?

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andyjsong
From the article it sounds like it's more cracking down on people who rip off
other people's content and then use the link cards to get referral traffic to
their own properties.

I don't think legitimate creators need to be concerned. From the article, the
minimum requirement to be a partner is 10K public views. That's a relatively
low bar, and you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of
a view count anyway.

~~~
falcolas
> you shouldn't be trying to be monetize when you have that low of a view
> count anyway.

Urm, why? Not everyone is in it for the advertisement money. Want to direct
someone to a charity instead of supporting you? Not unless you're 10k+
Patreon? 10k+ Blueprints for the table you just built on screen? 10k+

Not to mention one of the requirements to be a partner is that your content is
advertiser friendly. If you make videos about videogames, like Destiny 2, that
rules you out.

~~~
andyjsong
Because 10K total public views is a vanity metric and people can just pump out
total crap to get there. This to prevent a spam account from stealing content
and monetizing immediately with external links vs. the grind of maximizing
your view count. Last I heard 1 million views is about $2,000 in ad dollars
from Google. Google has made it unfavorable to compensate based off of view
count because there is so much inventory. So the only real way for creators to
sustain are platforms like Patreon, selling merch, sponsored posts, or
referral links base off of CPA. From what the article states, this prevents
illegitimate accounts from siphoning from OPs.

If YT really wanted to keep the bar high in terms of quality creators they
would base it off of number of subscribers and the level of engagement that
those subscribers watch another video vs. a one hit wonder that goes viral.

~~~
CodeWriter23
Ironic how your answer to nullifying the “evil” spam is to force everyone else
to create “good” spam. I mean “total crap”.

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slrz
Considering the crap ratio in these obnoxious end-of-video links and the fact
that external links in the video description (e.g. to point to additional
information) are still allowed, I don't think this is a bad thing.

I'd probably prefer it if the same rules applied to anyone though.

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ungzd
Google is cracking down on links in their search results too, using AMP.

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rasz
Was youtube always tracking links in Video description? I dont remember ever
noticing it, spotted it yesterday, every non google link is redirected with
[https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencod...](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=blabla+urlencoded)
link+video title

~~~
everythingswan
Think this happened within last 6-12 months. Not long ago it wasn't possible
to see referral data from YouTube in something like Google Analytics without
manually adding utm's. I noticed the data coming in automatically sometime in
that period.

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LeoNatan25
You know what I want YouTube to "crack" on? Assholes that say "But, what do
you guys think? Let me know in the comments section bellow." Any video of
those should be immediately demonetized.

This is a half serious rant, but seriously, video quality has gone so low over
the last few years. There is practically a format that all those
"professional" assholes follow. Does it really help them get more cash?

~~~
james-skemp
I believe number of minutes viewed, number of comments, and number of likes
and dislikes all have a part in the algorithm for how well a video does in
YouTube's eyes. So yes.

Of course source: professional YouTubers who have talked about the changes to
the algorithm over the years.

~~~
LeoNatan25
I am not talking about the algorithm. I am asking whether saying "leave a
comment" actually makes people leave a comment? For me, that acts as a
detergent and an automatic down-vote. Are people that gullible that they
subscribe when told to, comment when asked, etc?

~~~
james-skemp
I wouldn't consider myself a normal user, so I don't know.

"Like, comment, and subscribe" also was once a popular thing to say at the end
of videos too. I'm sure for some individuals this would be beneficial to
reinforce. For some it had no impact. For others (myself included) it would be
mocked.

I guess the question is, does less than five seconds of text at the end of a
video (which some people may not even see) hurt more than it could potentially
help? My search terms don't seem to find such research, if it was done.

My assumption, however, is that there are plenty of people out there that will
do it, and might look at the comments to see what others have discussed. And
some just have to comment on everything.

