
In Search of Lost Time on YouTube - 80mph
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-search-of-lost-time-on-youtube
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pkorzeniewski
From time to time I have these "nostalgia attacks", usually late at night when
it's only me and whisky. I go down the rabbit hole chasing old commercials,
fragments of news shows, live concerts, music videos and so on from the 80s.
It's a magical feeling, for a brief moment my mind goes back in time, a true
time machine. I just hope that the old obscure stuff won't disappear from
YouTube, sometimes I get the itch to start downloading and preserving it, but
part of the charm is discovering "new" stuff, watching over and over the same
videos wouldn't be as much fun.

~~~
t34543
YouTube is a precious archive of another time in all our lives. Let’s hope
it’s not eaten up by the chase of profit and/or politics.

~~~
stemuk
> by the chase of profit

I am honestly surprised how Google was able to keep up YouTube for so long
despite a severe lack of profits. Even though Youtube made a net loss in the
hundreds of millions for years Google kept it up and running and drastically
expanded its feature set into areas like live streaming etc.

As far as I know YouTube has now reached break even, but I believe Google
deserves credit for having the vision and tolerance for failure to keep
YouTube up for such a long time without a dollar of profit, not to speak of
the enormous political and financial risk YouTube poses because of copyrighted
or harmful material.

~~~
ALittleLight
I don't think Google deserves credit for keeping a money losing YouTube alive
for so long. It's anti-competitive. Innovation that might have existed and
been better was likely strangled because it couldn't compete with the money
losing behemoth that is (or was) YouTube.

~~~
t34543
I do think they get credit for not killing it off, as they often do to other
projects. Are the YouTube losses equivalent to loose change to Google?
Probably, but that won’t stop me from being thankful someone had the vision to
keep it alive.

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goldminer88
"YouTube reflects and shapes our modernity" \- this quote spoke volumes to me.
Anyone can access videos now from years back and with things such as YouTube
rewind it is possible to look back at significant events from different years
in a easy to understand short video.

~~~
Insanity
The YouTube rewinds have been getting worse though.

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trevyn
For reference and context, _The New Atlantis_ was founded by an organization
called the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is “dedicated to applying
the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.”
([https://eppc.org/about/](https://eppc.org/about/))

~~~
UweSchmidt
How does that influence the article? Can you point out how a different moral
tradition would look at the topic?

~~~
trevyn
The publication has a specific bias, but often tries to appear unbiased. I
wanted to make the bias clear.

~~~
earthboundkid
> The publication has a specific bias, but often tries to appear unbiased.

You just described all mainstream publications.

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lanevorockz
YouTube does not have a big influence on society. Culture reflects society and
not the other way around. Although YouTube can act as a censor and slowly cast
away people from society.

~~~
j7ake
An intriguing hypothesis, is there any data to support this theory ?

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6nf
YouTube's algorithm shows people more of the stuff they like to watch. The
most popular content on Youtube is primarily driven by demand, not by execs at
Youtube.

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pasquinelli
Is that what it does? I find it likes to recommend stuff i absolutely hate
because i've, what's the word, _engaged_ too much in the past with videos i
hate, and people like me tend to engage too much with videos they hate too.

~~~
lanevorockz
Google is being pressured by politicians to replicate the results they want.
Slowly YouTube is becoming a huge real life social experiment, where Google is
trying to control public opinion through censorship and the recommendation
engine.

~~~
kuu
Google is trying to earn money, as much as they can. No need to imagine a
conspiracy about censorship and control public opinion...

