Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/27/google-to-delete-all-youtube-v.html
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None of which interest Google, so they disappear at its convenience.
Their astro-turf, their rules.
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What about the best Youtube channel of all time, Primitive Technology?
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In all fairness, it could be a case of effort versus usage. True, they could have been used legitimately, but how many actually did that? How much of an impact did it have on the servers? And if you do need annotations for your video, is there another service that does offer them like Vimeo?*
I doubt most people will notice, since they have learned to turn off annotations by default.
*I honestly don’t know, I don’t make videos or work for YouTube or Google.
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I felt like I was from the future when I showed my bro you could turn off annotations. I’ll always remember him saying, “I didn’t know you could do that”
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but erratums errata
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Good riddance, occasionally i run into older videos with annotations and they’re the worst.
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People totally abused the annotations, putting them in positions that made them impossible to close, and bullshit like that. This is why we can’t have nice things.
And every business must make unilateral decisions about how it operates. If you take the time to poll everyone, nothing would ever get accomplished. There will always be a segment that disagrees with any change. Even the people who operate this website have done it. You can’t please everyone, so you have to please yourself.
Don’t they do that via the closed captioning function? I’m not sure if that will be affected. And in any case, that use is most definitely the exception than the rule.
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Glad I didn’t use them, ever. When flickr got rid of photo notes, I had a bit more remorse. But it was largely used like graffiti tagging and an ultimate waste of time. Apologies to the .01% who used it for good…
As someone who watches a lot of film and game analysis this bothers me, as I’ve seen many cases where they were used to add corrections and clarifications after the fact. It’s not the biggest deal, but the fact that so much existing text, and context, will be wiped away in a blink is just… I don’t like it.
I’ve long made peace with the fact my own data is vaporous and don’t get too bent out of shape when things get wiped. However, I’m also one to be concerned about the preservation of culture in this fluid age. It makes me think of backer-only updates for crowd funding or Patreon, where I wonder if those updates will ever be made public or preserved when they contain really valuable insights into projects and the creator’s personal process. Game porter Ethan Lee has said developers, big and small, pay little mind to preserving their games for future systems, and hence future generations. It all just makes me kind of melancholy.
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He uses subtitles, it’s a different system.
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The only useful annotations I’ve encountered were ones that linked you to newer or updated versions of whatever you were watching. But those were rare enough that I don’t mind this welcome change. (But fuck Google in the first place for removing the ability to globally disable annotations, forcing you to take the steps with every video.)
Now we can talk about those annoying end card things that cover everything up before the video is even over.
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I don’t like it either. Granted, it’s been a long time since I’ve particularly cared to watch something where annotations are necessary, but there’s a lot of content out there and it’s pretty terrible that it’s going to be wiped forever. They ought to at least make it possible to download them separately or something.
I recall being very impressed by this video and what a relief it was to read simple explanations rather than listen to someone ramble on in some atrocious tone of voice.
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If you download a video from YouTube (various tools), do the annotations come with it?
youtube-dl has a --write-annotations option that does it (tested w/ Jorpho’s offering)
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Hey y’all, is there any way to disable those cards that pop up before the video ends that show other videos you might want to view? Sometimes they block the punch line, as it were, of the damn video I just spent 5 minutes watching!
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What about the ones where there’s an annotation near the beginning that says “click here to get to the good part” when the video has 5 minutes of useless garbage before it gets interesting?
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Yeah, the first thing I would disable. Not going to miss them.
OH stealing!
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