YouTube’s system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.
YouTube’s system for suppressing low-quality AI content mistakenly targeted Kurzgesagt, leaving the channel with its worst-performing upload since 2013.
I unsubbed from Kurzgesagt about a year ago. Their content started to get a little to preachy for my liking.
What do you mean?
The tone of their videos shifted noticeably for me, from neutral science information with funny birds, to a more agenda driven tone with funny birds. Like most of the current videos arent trying to explain some cool phenomenon or wacky “what ifs”, but instead trying to scare you into watching the videos with click bait thumbnails and titles like “GERMANY IS OVER!” and “You need to quite WEED” with the thumbnail saying “Youre too old”. There are dozens of others like that but those were just more recent. I don’t need to be made to feel bad about myself to be enticed to watch a video…Its just really off putting.
Sure , I can definitely see some of those frustrations. I focus more on bigger picture though I think and empathize with the creator’s need to still be successful educating people in these fraught times. They have been doing intensive, high quality work for so long now, before the predatory slop era. But they have to exist in it, and know that they are a very plaugerized format through AI theft.
Their magic has always been making complex concepts approachable to the masses, and that is such a vital public service we all benefit from. Those lowest common denominator folks are increasingly lost to chaos though and there just isn’t a “right way” of how you adjust. So I look beyond the “wrapping” you mention and I feel that generally the content itself is still intact, powerful and very well made.
So basically, the click bait headlines/thumbs just aren’t for us, and they are indirectly asking us to understand that without them broadly giving away the strategy. Those tactics just get the kids with broken brains in the room and then maybe they can start to heal or be saved from the edge. Hope you can consider that.