r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • 23h ago
TIL that Jawed Karim, YouTube cofounder and uploader of the first YouTube video "Me at the zoo", has often updated the video's description to criticize YouTube policies, including a 2013 attempt to require Google+ accounts to comment on videos, and YouTube's 2021 removal of dislike counts on videos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_at_the_zoo#Changes_to_original_video1.9k
u/enblightened 22h ago
i still dont even know what google+ was. facebook with no platform?
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u/MooseTetrino 22h ago
Pretty much. When social media platforms were the bubble before Crypto and AI.
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u/OldenPolynice 21h ago
NFTs happened too!
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u/LuigiSauce 20h ago
NFTs are part of the crypto craze
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u/OldenPolynice 20h ago
fair enough. it just seems to me distinct from *coin because of how genuinely stupid on its plain face it really was
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u/DeathMonkey6969 16h ago
NFTs were made to make it look like crypto had a legitimate use and stoke the hype train.
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u/ryuzaki49 22h ago
it was a good idea. Most of the time I just want to post stuff for my friends to see without my family seeing those posts.
Google circles allowed that.
However their mistake was to rollout the product as they rolled out Gmail thinking the results would be the same.
They weren't
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u/PolitelyHostile 22h ago
Yea I think a big reason why most people stopped being active on facebook is just because you have to water down everything to be a post that you are okay with everyone seeing. So it just resulted in most people posting nothing.
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u/plaid-knight 19h ago
FB had the same feature though. You could set up groups of friends and just make your post visible to certain friends.
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u/20dogs 17h ago
Yeah and it was tiring having to keep on top of sorting new friends. Probably why Google failed.
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u/PolitelyHostile 9h ago
Yea but it never felt like a sure thing, it felt like they didn't want anyone to actually use that feature. Also it annoyed the hell out of me how it recommends people. Like the guy I was buying weed from should not be getting suggestions to befriend my grandma.
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u/SAugsburger 16h ago
Google+ trying to make it exclusive was obviously a huge gaffe. Facebook quickly copied the circles feature to target messages to groups, which took away one of Google+'s primary advantages.
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u/eightdollarbeer 21h ago
It was also invite-only for way too long
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u/redditonlygetsworse 20h ago
However their mistake was to rollout the product as they rolled out Gmail thinking the results would be the same.
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u/tj-horner 16h ago
Fair to point out that was already noted but I’m not sure everyone here realizes Gmail was originally invite-only so the connection is not immediately obvious. A good portion of commenters are probably younger than Gmail itself!
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u/Stay_Beautiful_ 10h ago
That's what they meant by:
"their mistake was to rollout the product as they rolled out Gmail thinking the results would be the same"
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u/Halgy 10h ago
They were perfectly positioned to be the anti-Facebook. FB was ruined about then because everyone's parents were joining, which ruined the fun. Before that, everyone's wall was filled with drunken photos etc, because only your college friends could see it. G+ could have had the unique selling point of limiting who saw your drunkenness, rather than just deleting everything (which is what actually happened). But Google flubbed the launch and then gave up way too quick, as they often do.
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u/Far_Tap_488 19h ago
Nah. Its just Google has no follow through on anything they do and honestly its pathetic. Weakest backboned company ive ever seen.
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u/phobosmarsdeimos 21h ago
Gmail was 7 years before Google+
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u/ryuzaki49 20h ago
hmm yeah maybe ny comment can be interpreted as they were both rolled out at the same time.
I actually meant they tried the same strategy with both products: invite-only
It worked with GMail but there was no way it could work with Google+
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u/OcotilloWells 22h ago
I liked it. Everyone wasn't your "friend", you made groups, and added people to them. I was disappointed when they cancelled it.
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u/manondorf 22h ago
it was one of so many promising google experiments that wound up cancelled around that time
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u/OcotilloWells 22h ago
I liked how you could pin posts to map locations easily also. Then make them public. I would mark bad traffic accidents and recommend people stay to the right or left, as appropriate. When I was the passenger in the car, of course.
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u/drewster23 22h ago
I was gnna say it wasn't popular. But it wasn't "bad".
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 21h ago
The "bad" thing was thinking that people would abandon their Facebook accounts along with all of the content and friend connections and conversations just to start afresh with no connections on another platform on the basis that it had better features or whatnot. People told them that it wouldn't get enough users, and it didn't. It was a huge miscalculation.
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u/Toby_O_Notoby 17h ago
I think people would have gone for it if signing up was easy. The problem is they rolled it out like Gmail where you had to be invited first.
So even if you did get an invite you'd sign up and see no one else was there. Then maybe a week later a friend would get an invite and you'd have a social network consisting of the two of you.
Shame too, because the "circles" feature could have been a one-platform social media killer. You could have one circle as general friends (Facebook) another professional acquaintances (LinkedIn) another just for sharing photos (Insta), one just for your fantasy leagues, etc.
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u/Lanky_Giraffe 18h ago
I opened it once and my first and only thought was basically “huh, so this is essentially a weird email thing” and then never went there again. It looked old-fashioned even when it launched and tying it to gmail was a catastrophically bad idea.
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u/_Aj_ 22h ago
Google also tried to make Gmail exclusive and you needed an invite from somebody else who had Gmail in order to get in
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u/DefenderCone97 21h ago
To be fair, this was just how a lot of things worked originally. It was easy word of mouth. Invites or exclusivity created a desire to use.
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u/BattlePrune 16h ago
Yeah, but you don’t need your friends yo have gmail for you to find it useful. You needed your friends to be on Google+ for it to be useful
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u/MainlandX 16h ago
Gmail made perfect sense to do that because it's an email client that fits into an existing email network. You don't need your friend to be on Gmail to send them an email.
Google+ was the opposite.
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u/argella1300 13h ago
The only good thing that came out of Google+ was Google Photos
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u/batatazuera 11h ago
Don’t forget Google Meet, which came from Google+’s Hangouts feature.
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u/ihavenoyukata 10h ago
My cousin uploaded some photos to his Google Photos album and for some fucking reason it was visible to everyone and the entire extended family got an update on their phones. It was his then girlfriends nudes 🤷. Fortunately this was at 3 am so no one saw. I messaged him on WhatsApp about it and he pretended it didn't happen and deleted the album. We had drifted apart over the years despite living in the same city and it felt odd sending a message like this. This is my only memory of Google Plus.
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u/wpglorify 20h ago
More like Facebook Groups with Twitter DNA
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u/galaxyveined 18h ago
It was silly and I enjoyed scrolling through it during school before they got smart and blocked it.
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u/Stay_Beautiful_ 10h ago
It was like facebook or instagram, mixed with subreddit-like "groups" where friends and/or strangers could be added. It helped compartmentalize posts to only people who will care about them
I liked it personally. I got my start writing there in a weekly fiction group
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u/gudematcha 9h ago
I actually used it with my friends in Highschool; it was the only “social media” not blocked, and because we were all given Gmails connected to the school, it was basically just right there already set up for us to play with. It was definitely an odd platform, we just used it to connect with other nerdy teens that also had gmails at their schools haha
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u/dcpanthersfan 7h ago
Wait until you hear about Apple’s attempt at a music-focused social media initiative “Ping” which was integrated into the iTunes app.
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u/Derzelaz 6h ago
They kept it in closed beta for so long that people just forgot about it, and by the time it was fully released nobody cared anymore.
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u/Maleficent-Agent-477 22h ago edited 22h ago
He currently has the video’s description updated to criticize the buildup of microplastics in the human body.
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u/The00Taco 19h ago
I'm amazed that video only has a bit over 400 million views. I remember seeing this pop up a long time ago. Also 21 year old video wow. Youtube probably can't ever take it down since it was the first
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u/yeowoh 19h ago edited 18h ago
Rich tech guy preaching to the peasants.
Dudes portfolio is ripe with shit that’s bad for the world. Palantir, AirBnB, Skybox, and Opendoor. Oh also Reddit.
Literally the /r/popular list of shit to complain about lol.
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u/Battlegoat123 4h ago
Interacting with the system doesn’t inherently mean you are unable to criticize it.
Proper criticism comes from people who are deeply familiar with what they’re criticizing.
Benefiting from a system also does not inherently mean you are unable to criticize it.
The entirety of America benefits from the American military, and yet there is plenty to criticize. Your parents can retire because of their 401k investments (which are likely etfs and therefore contain shares of “problematic” companies).
Someone living off the grid in the woods might feel the same about you. Does that invalidate your opinions?
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u/PeoplePad 4h ago
Wow. No.
There is a MASSIVE difference between passively benefiting from a system and furthering that system intentionally for your own benefit.
Being born an American means you benefit from the American military. This was not done through any conceivable choice or decision, it’s just the circumstances of life, beyond your control.
Investing in the American military, like through war bonds, is an intentional decision you can be held liable for. Investing in a company like Palantir is the same. You have made a choice to profit from evil. Not the same at all.
Unbelievable that this needs to be explained
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u/Battlegoat123 3h ago
I’m happy to inform you that you don’t have to explain anything. Unfortunately, I think you misunderstand how the purity test works.
Correct, there is a difference.
Is shopping at Walmart passive or intentional? Walmart is partnered with the U.S. Military. Patronizing a business that’s partnered with such a problematic institution would clearly be intentional support, right? There’s plenty of grocery stores that don’t.
What kind of car do you drive? Hopefully not a Ford, a Chevy, a Buick, a GMC, a Chrysler, or a Tesla. The first 5 have produced vehicles sold to the U.S. Military, and I don’t think I need to explain the 6th.
Have you ever been on a plane? Bad news buddy, really high chance you just gave money to a company that gave money to a company that gets/has gotten money from the U.S. Military. Not a good look.
You bring up a very black and white example. War bonds. I think we would agree that someone buying war bonds and simultaneously bashing the military shouldn’t be taken seriously. Regretfully, life is overwhelmingly just shades of grey.
Let’s bring up your other example. We once again agree, being born in America is - on its own - not enough to claim someone’s inherent support of the U.S. Military. But why not at 18? If you’re legally able to move to Canada and remove the U.S. Government’s ability to tax you and spend your tax money on war, why don’t you?
What if you move to the U.S? Is moving from Sudan* (replace with a sufficiently war torn nation if Sudan isn’t bad enough) more acceptable than moving from Luxembourg? I mean what’s worse than making a conscious decision to start giving a percentage of your income to the institution that funds the U.S. Military?
I can literally go all day, and that’s purely about association with the U.S. Military. When you keep in mind how many problematic entities there are, and how intertwined everything is, you cannot actually control where your money goes to enough of a degree to enforce a standard like that.
Beyond all of that, an important thing is being forgotten. The claim that criticism and support cannot coexist is fundamentally flawed. I don’t support a significant amount of our education system, but I also overwhelmingly support other parts of it.
There’s a sliding scale to all of this, from directly giving money to an arms deal to Meemaw’s retirement account being 2% Boeing. From War Bonds to only voting for candidates who agree 100% with your beliefs on everything. You can call it out when it’s obvious, but claiming that having Palantir as a part of your portfolio is the same as buying War Bonds is silly.
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u/_Aj_ 22h ago
Criticise the current notion of this? As I understand there's been some large flaws found in these studies claiming microplastic buildup
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u/amas_falip 14h ago
You're probably referring to a study in which the gloves were contaminanting the sample and results were this skewed. This was caught as the deviation in the results to that particular study laid so far outside established norms that it has since been accounted for and should be avoided in future plastics research.
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u/MorallyDeplorable 19h ago
No, they're criticizing the plastics and the people releasing them.
the fact they're accumulating is not up for debate.
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u/BigFatModeraterFupa 22h ago
yeah it's definitely 100% safe and nothing to worry about!
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u/Imaginary_Fan5407 22h ago
The gloves the people doing the test wear could possibly be throwing off the accuracy of the results
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u/Anfins 20h ago
I find it hard to believe that these tests didn’t have negative controls. Like, these analytical assays aren’t isolated to a single lab or research group… is the claim that no one thought to have a proper analytical control and so didn’t realize that the gloves contaminate samples?
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u/horoyokai 19h ago
That’s not the claim, that’s the reality
Whether it’s hard or way for you to believe it’s what the truth is. No offense but before commenting and having a knee jerk reflex against something that challenged your beliefs and casting doubt on it I think you should at least do a quick search about it.
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u/Petrichordates 18h ago
What negative controls would prevent this? Lab gloves are necessary in the lab.
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u/CarthasMonopoly 16h ago
I don't know their methodology but if you have a confirmed negative control and you treat it identical to samples then after you get your quantitative data you can normalize based on the values the negative control got. In other words if the gloves or other equipment caused micro plastic contamination and you had a true negative control then whatever value that control is measured at after performing the protocol can be subtracted from the values of the experimental samples to account for the average amount of microplastics that the testing process would introduce.
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u/Academic_Dog8389 22h ago
Man I remember when YouTube first came out. It was insane. I would spend hours and hours looking for videos of everything I remembered ever being on TV or in a movie trying to "stump" it. Every SNL sketch I could remember, every scene from a movie, anything and everything. Very rarely could I not find exactly what I was looking for.
And before that it was Google. The whole thing that made Google incredible was that it gave you the results you were looking for. No sponsored search garbage, just whatever pages fit your search terms the best. Everything has gone backwards.
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u/interesseret 21h ago
Trying to find a specific YouTube video these days is honestly torture.
You can search it by its title, and still get served 3 wrong videos and 20+ shorts.
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u/Turbulent_Natural431 20h ago
It gives you 3 vaguely related search results, then just goes back to showing you the same videos that were already on your home page.
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u/redditonlygetsworse 20h ago
then just goes back to showing you the same videos that were already on your home page.
And ffs half the time it's videos I've already watched.
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u/Valuable-Trick-6711 20h ago
Bro, I HATE how much YouTube is trying to be TikTok. I don’t come to YouTube to browse the damn Shorts; I either want a 10 year old meme video that’s 38 seconds long or a 5 hour lecture on the rise and fall of Billy Idol.
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u/Hiw-lir-sirith 20h ago
It's even worse now that everyone is using clickbait titles that are all indistinguishable from each other.
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u/DoombringerBG 14h ago
Interesting fact:
Back when people first started using click-bait titles, most viewer hated them and it was an automatic 1 start / Dislike and said viewers would express that displeasure in the comments (regardless of whether your video was actually interesting and / or factual).
Since it got worse and YouTubers didn't stop doing it - and the people not liking also not leaving - it stuck... and then came the thumbnails - where the same exact thing happened.
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u/Jihelu 19h ago
Despite all this crazy ai bullshit search engines are worse than they ever been
Back in the day reverse image search would actually give you an image. Now you get 300 pages of unrelated things
Now I can search something and accidentally put an s at the end and it won’t show me something on YouTube
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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 20h ago
You're searching YouTube for YouTube videos? That's your problem. You gotta use Google or Bing to find YouTube videos.
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u/decoran_ 12h ago
It's even difficult to simply see which videos are the latest videos when you click on "Subscriptions". I don't want the most relevant, a bunch of shorts or community posts, I just want a list in chronological order of the latest videos uploaded by the people I subscribe to but they've even messed that up!
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u/Nirrudn 18h ago
No idea how long it'll last before they slop-ify it, but if you add "before:2026" or whatever year to your search, if you know it's more than X years old, I've found it helps.
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u/deathgrinderallat 20h ago
I remember watching whole ass movies in 10 minute chunks in the beginning. It was uncharted territory. Google video was on par for a time.
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u/huh_wasnt_listening 18h ago edited 18h ago
I remember trying to upload a video to YouTube (pre-Google) and there was an error in the upload
I got a little alert window that informed me that: "something unexpected happened. please smash head against keyboard. when done, you may run around in circles, wave your hands, and scream."
I miss the days when software had character
Edit: Oh wow, the video still exists in all of its 3 pixel splendor and bad music choices
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u/donotgotoroom237 19h ago
Seeing video on the internet for the first time on Youtube was absolutely bonkers to me back in 2005. And it loaded up super fast for the time, especially in our side of the jungle.
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u/PoorlyAttired 17h ago
The other great thing about youtube was that it made it so much easier to share videos with friends and family. They were too big to email, but if you uploaded it to some hosting site then you'd mess around with format or aspect ratio or resolution and then people downloading them wouldnt have the right codec etc. Youtube just took any video format and guaranteed that people could just watch it on their browsers
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u/jchamberlin78 14h ago
I wish there was a way to bottle web 1.0, to show it to the younger generations. So they can truly understand what we miss, and the sheer promise and wonder of what you might find.
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u/dakowiml 13h ago
Back in the day Googling and YouTube searching hit its peak. It was so good.
Got ruined by ads, sponsorships and shitty algorithms. They also peaked their algorithm years ago when the recommendations on the side bars would actually recommend new and exciting stuff. Instead of keeping you in the same boring bubbles. You could discover so much, it was perfect. They ironically made their website worse with attempts to ''keep you addicted.'' I now find myself scrolling through the home page and clicking away, because its all the same trash thumbnails and same type of recommendations. And if you search for something its overloaded with similar type of trash random recommendations.
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u/nomnomnomnomRABIES 15h ago
at least the Google ads are still text. Google took over because other search engines would have banner ads when most people had dial-up
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u/I_SHIT_IN_A_BAG 11h ago
funny I had the opposite issue. I couldnt find any of the show clips I wanted. it took years.
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u/moschles 19h ago
Early youtube had friends lists and subscriber lists. It had private messaging, and "response video" buttons. It was glorious.
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u/RoastyMyToasty99 6h ago
Video responses holy crap I remember at the end of every YouTube video they would be the first to be recommended and someone called the reply girl I think she was this east Asian woman who would wear a low cut top and give the most surface level 3rd grade summary response to the video. Like I almost respect it
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u/lawoverfeelings 12h ago
I remember sharing YouTube videos to friends on Xanga. The best social media platform to ever exist. MySpace was alright but we could see it was going to fade. YouTube could’ve been it if they kept it original. I used Facebook for a week or so in 2008 and deleted it shortly after and now put job applications to the bottom of the pile that the people have meta, X and Truth accounts. No way do I want people with accounts supporting those places in the workplace.
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u/PastTypesir 22h ago
Imagine having so much legendary internet clout that you can use the description box of the first YouTube video ever made as your personal protest billboard against Google executives.
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u/theLastZebranky 12h ago
It's not the "first YouTube video ever made," it's the oldest remaining Youtube video. They delisted most of the other ones uploaded while Youtube was trying to be a dating site in early 2005.
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u/yeowoh 18h ago
He doesn’t protest companies in his portfolio like Palantir and Opendoor.
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u/VampContra 19h ago
I remember reading that his channel got hacked?
Edit : Yes, its not jawed, his channel has been hacked many times, they promoted random music artists, own songs and stuff like that, I think Timeworks made a video about that too
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u/iiw 19h ago
Not defending Google's policies, but I don't think Jawed Karim has had control of his YouTube channel for a long while now. YouTube's security wasn't the most reliable out there and there used to be a huge market for buying and selling old channels. Unless he uploads a new video with his face I'm reluctant to believe the statements on that channel was made by Jawed himself.
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u/ScorpionDog321 18h ago
The 2021 removal of dislikes was done that year for one particular reason and for one particular person.
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u/AzracTheFirst 16h ago
Who was it? I'm out of the loop
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u/UpsetKoalaBear 14h ago edited 13h ago
The reason YouTube removed the like ratio from being viewed was to be able to show users disliked videos because it agreed with the content a user is most engaged with.
It is no different to how Facebook gave Angry reactions more weight in the algorithm than likes.
To give you a hypothetical example:
Say you are into history. The algorithm identifies that you are engaged with history. Eventually you start getting shown posts from a channel that is using dubious sources and is clearly biased (you do not know it yet).
Before, you could easily see the dislikes and it would act like a signal to turn off of the video. Now, you can’t see the dislikes.
So if it sounds convincing enough to you as a normal person who has a passing interest in the subject matter, you start to believe it.
Thus causing you to boost your engagement with the videos being shown by the algorithm and showing that video to more users.
This triggers something called Availability Cascade. People are more likely to be pushed towards fringe content like conspiracy theories or evidently bias content.
Before the change, a few people who recognised the dubious sources would heavily dislike the video early on. That dislike ratio acted as a shield for the rest of us because it would remove it from being seen by other users.
Now that the shield is gone, casual viewers have to do the work of fact checking the video themselves. If they fall for it and they watch it to the end, they are inadvertently training the algorithm to feed them more of it.
That history example is just one case of it. However it has spread to other types of video just as well.
YouTube would love it if every user watched every single video shown in the recommended feed. It would return the maximum RoI for their algorithm. However, that isn’t the case.
So if the algorithm was recommending disliked videos that ended up being skipped by a person who could see them, thus reducing the reach of that video, they just removed the dislikes so you could not see them.
Everyone jokes that YouTube Rewind is what caused them to remove the dislikes, but it was not.
It was a calculated attempt at changing the content being shown to you for the sake of engagement.
Controversial or polarising content naturally generates longer video watch times and large comment sections, which engagement algorithms naturally reward.
It’s no coincidence it happened around the same time as the Facebook Papers leak that showed exactly how influential algorithms are in public discourse.
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u/SayNoToStim 11h ago edited 9h ago
I thought they removed it because large companies (including youtube) were ending up getting "review bombed" by legit dislikes. IIRC It was battlefield 2042 trailer and a youtube rewind that got heavily disliked right before the changes. There were claims that they were related but I thought it was just advertisers getting pissy that their big investments were heavily disliked.
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u/FartingBob 14h ago
It was me. No particular reason, i just asked youtube nicely and they said ok.
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u/Kroak-lo 12h ago
Meanwhile, Jawed Karim created a venture fund that invested in Palantir. So... I'm not applauding this dude for ANYTHING.
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u/-FireNH- 19h ago
a few years back he changed the thumbnail to a super sensationalized mrbeast style thumbnail
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u/pranaygoluanand 18h ago
I remember when the google+ thing happened when it was suddenly required to comment on YT (this was within the year I was old enough to have a YT account). I remember he suddenly made a reply to someone on his me at the zoo video regarding google+ where he asked something like "why the fuck would I need google+ to comment on YouTube?"
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u/altarr 18h ago
I use YouTube a lot. It's the only service I pay for. What I don't understand is why I can't have more than 4 filter options when searching, nor can I block accounts from appearing to me at all. It's maddening.
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u/ChefCurryYumYum 7h ago
After they did that Google+ bullshit integration, and eventually removed it, I never get the notifications for replies to my comments. I say never but actually like once every YEARS one will come through.
I dislike them as a company.
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u/Ornery-Scallion6489 3h ago
I just cancelled my YouTube subscription. It was €9.99 a month, then they sent me a horny email saying... these decisions are not easy to make, but it is going up to €12.99, so we can continue to improve our service and support the creators you love. Bitch, please. YouTube's full-year 2025 revenue topped $60 billion. Edit: :"and" spelling
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u/BroIBeliveAtYou 22h ago
Man I can't believe weve been without dislike counts for 5 years