zlacker

Thank you for writing this post! I opened youtube a few days ago to this as well. On a 24" 1440p monitor its ridiculous. It's incomprehensible there's a UI/UX team that gets paid millions of dollars per year and the result is changes like this. Thank you again for writing this post. After searching it seems like they've been "testing" this in segments for a while now.

As a result I installed the "Control Panel for Youtube" chrome plugin and Im able to fix it back to 6 videos per row. I also found I could make shorts play in the traditional youtube player by default - which is an added relief.

>>InMice+(OP)
"It's incomprehensible there's a UI/UX team that gets paid millions of dollars per year and the result is changes like this."

Unfortunately UX teams aren't actually paid to make great UX, especially at large corps and any place ad-driven. They're paid to move the metrics and move the revenue line.

>>InMice+(OP)
Most likely what happened is some MBA ran a short A/B test of smaller vs. bigger video thumbnails, and the A/B results showed more "engagement" with the larger size thumbs, and so, of course, to meet his/her performance goals, the MBA had the page altered to the version that showed "more engagement".

>>InMice+(OP)
>It's incomprehensible there's a UI/UX team that gets paid millions of dollars per year and the result is changes like this.

this is the story of the big company web sites

- huge budget

- best programmers

- terrible design

- terrible usability

- doesnt make sense

- gets worse over time

it's unreal. seen on many major sites.

>>InMice+(OP)
You assume the UX team has any say in any of this.

Some of the revelations from the various lawsuits against Google by the US and other governments over the years have been about this.

The company replaced leaders who cared about users with leaders who cared about revenue optimization and those leaders changed the direction of the company to what we all see in all of their products these days.

>>InMice+(OP)
It's infuriating that a plugin/extension is needed to bring back what should be the a setting, if not the default, in the UI for this.

>>pwg+Qm
I think it also helps them figure out which videos keep people on YouTube longer. If I scroll to a section of the page that has 6 videos, and I stare at them for 10 seconds, then scroll down, they'll know that one or two of those videos must have been somewhat interesting. But if I stare at 6 videos, then scroll away 2 seconds later, it knows that nothing in that batch was worthwhile.

The fewer videos they have in focus at a time, the more accurate their algorithms can be.

>>gorbac+8H
I think this change came from the UX team.

Relevant articles:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/simplicity-vs-choice/

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/short-term-memory-and-web-u...

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/working-memory-external-mem...

>>Root_D+VI
This is inevitable when a company has a revenue model where they claim to serve both users and advertisers. The wants of each will always be diametrically opposed. The customer with the deepest pockets always wins, which are the advertisers.

I'm also starting to think that no large company will ever act in the best interest of their customers unless required to do so by regulation. As long as those customers are individuals.

Maybe the regulation we need is that companies like Google can't have "ad supported" products that are simultaneously sold as products to users. Either you're selling a product to users, or really running an advertising platform. It can't be both.

>>InMice+(OP)
It's not enough to have hindustantimes.com articles for local American news on google-- even YouTube must be sacrificed. The rivers of enshittification must flow.

>>drewbe+Pl
the question then becomes why do these bad UX/UI design makes higher revenue (and what makes them game the metrics too)?

>>gorbac+8H
Their design/UX team 100% had a hand in it. Just look at Google's design blog, it's complete dogshit.

>>htx80n+aC
Yes, but they have the largest amount of video content, so they have us by the balls.

>>ameliu+9r2
And yet they make searching that library as painful as it can be so they can funnel you into an engagement pit

>>htx80n+aC
Yes, this my experience all the time. it's insane.