YouTube recently announced that after 10 years, it's removing its Trending page and Trending Now list to shift to a charts-style system. Last week, Google announced that these changes will take effect in the coming weeks as a result of discovery habits changing significantly over the past decade.
In an update posted to the community page in the YouTube Help site, the company stated that it's 'making updates to better match how people discover trending content today by shifting away from one all-encompassing Trending list towards category-specific charts' - but there are bigger issues it needs to fix first.
Since the news was shared by Google, users have been anything but silent, sharing their disappointment on Reddit over YouTube's questionable prioritization of an in-app feature that a large majority of people don't use - myself included.
After scouring through the endless complaints, there seem to be three common areas that a large majority of people online are begging YouTube to sort out before venturing into unnecessary changes. And as someone who's a frequent YouTube user, I have to agree.
1. Control the amount of ads – seriously
It’s the most obvious one, but it’s a common request among non-YouTube Premium subscribers.
Ad-supported subscription tiers have emerged increasingly across the best streaming services over the past few years, but YouTube stands out by offering its basic services for free. However, while you can still watch YouTube videos without paying for its Premium tier, you have to sit through the ads, and the amount is substantial.
Having to sit through ads is frustrating enough, but before now, I’ve seen YouTube show me a clump of three different ads lasting well over a minute, and it will do the same thing five minutes later. I, as well as other free users, don’t mind sitting through the odd ad or two, but YouTube is plaguing the streaming experience with them, and it needs to stop.
2. Move the YouTube Shorts hub to the sidebar – or remove it altogether
I don’t know about you, but I can't name anyone in my close circle of friends who uses YouTube Shorts for short-form video consumption. For us, TikTok remains supreme.
When it comes to YouTube Shorts, it’s never matched TikTok for me, and to this day, its very existence feels designed to just compete with other platforms. There’s something about YouTube Shorts I find very unpolished and obtrusive.
At the moment, it takes up a large space in the YouTube app with an entire hub dedicated to its content, which could be freed up for other content suggestions. This brings me to my final point.
3. Put rising creators at the forefront
YouTube has previously experimented with boosting the presence of up-and-coming creators through its Hype function, which allows you to boost a video to increase its chances of appearing in YouTube’s video rankings.
However, it only applies to a limited number of YouTube Partner Program content creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers, and you can only ‘Hype’ videos uploaded within the last seven days. Therefore, YouTube could be doing a lot more for its lesser-known creators.
Just as the best music streaming services have designated in-app hubs for new music and artist discovery, YouTube should be applying the same approach to content creators who are trying to get their foot in the door and help them reach larger audiences.
Instead of force-feeding us the YouTube Shorts hub, I think this in-app space would be better used to highlight brand-new content from rising creators, with an added function for music, film/ TV, and gaming category filtering to match your specific interests.
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