I promise, just read my comments
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- Does CZcams feel different lately? Do you feel like CZcamss comment section is hard to navigate and filled with spam? Do some of your comments magically disappear? Do you think CZcamss comment system is outdated and maybe even rigged against you?
Well, you are not alone, and I have the answer and explanation to all of these concerns and questions. I'm dead serious. There's an explainable answer to all these issues, so let's get started.
Here are the chapters for this video. Feel free to jump around accordingly:
0:00 Introduction
1:05 Outdated Comment Section Design
2:48 What Is UP With Pinned Comments?
3:26 Why Does This NEVER Work?
3:58 CZcams's Biggest Problem
6:55 Creator Example
7:32 Why You May Feel Silenced on CZcams
8:46 What CZcams Needs To Do
10:19 Taking Things A Step Further
11:10 Why CZcams Feels Different AND Outdated (The Facts)
Channels featured in this video:
/ @lexfridman
/ @nationsquid
Note:
I deliberately leave the channel icons and video titles on each video for reference in case anyone wants to see the full videos featured in these documentaries. If anything is unclear, or for additional references, please reach out, and I will happily provide a link to any of the following content discussed, featured, or used as a b-roll in the video.
Copyright Note:
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.
Music:
All songs featured in the video are from:
- Epidemic Sound: share.epidemicsound.com/8mvwnm
- CZcams's copyright free music library.
- Or some of Ian Taylor's incredible music. Please check out his music on Spotify if you are into that style. I cannot emphasize enough how good the music is.
=-=-=-=
Creators note:
Hello, my name is Zackary Smigel. I've been creating CZcams videos since I was a kid. I started CZcams full-time about five years ago. You might have seen me from Real Estate License Wizard, where I obtained 60,000 subscribers and over 5 million channel views. I have since left that channel for creative pursuits, and this is my first crack at starting something new. I'd appreciate a like and subscribe if this content interests you and I captured your attention for even just a few moments.
On a secondary note, this was the first video shot at my new place. I'm not a huge fan of how the lighting and audio turned out. I definitely need to play around with my setup next time. So its a work in progress! Regardless, I still hope the video is enjoyable for you. This is something I've wanted to cover for a while now!
Thanks so much for watching,
Zackary Smigel
#youtube #videoessay #zackarysmigel
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Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more engaging video commentary!
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The support I've received lately has been insane. You all have no idea how meaningful it all is. THANK YOU. Please answer honestly: Do you think CZcams has changed for the better or not? Or just drop your favorite ice cream flavor!
EDIT: Uh oh looks like we reached the cap at 501!
Howdy.
Test comment, please ignore
It has been changing for the worse. My comments never really disappear, but I've just switched to my phone because of the ad problem.
Also Pistachio is best ice cream flavour imo.
Mint chocolate ice cream is goated
It has been getting rather odd, seeing low rated comments on the 'top' sorted while having to dig deeper to find the actual top rated comments always makes me question if there is a positive bias going on.
I'll tell you what i believe is going on with that. I think it's biased in favor of _recent_ upvote activity over older upvotes, and also in favor of net upvotes (upvotes minus downvotes) over gross.
So when a video is brand new, the comments that get a few upvotes right away, get bumped to the top of the list. After a minute or a few minutes, comments get progressively downgraded if they're not sustaining a high rate of new net upvotes. Plus, new comments from higher-rated commenters are shunted to the top or near the top at first, to give them a chance to be seen by people who never or rarely tap "sort by newest". After a minute or two, if those comments are not getting enough traction to compete with the most popular older comments, they get dropped down the list a step at a time.
After the view volume of the vid begins to stabilize, the order of the top comments becomes more or less frozen in its then-current state, excepting the occasional new comment that qualifies for a test run near the top.
@@courtykat There's a type of CZcams comment that is plaguing the comment section. Some variation of "Can we appriciate how much effort they put into this?"
It sounds so artificial and doesn't offer any insight or discussion about the video. Because it's so commonly used I don't see it as sincere praise but rather a tired meme or some kind of bot comment. They're not saying it because the creator is good (even if the creator is good), there's something else going on.
@@HadenBlake Haha, I'll have to check it out... thanks
@@dakat5131 Yeah, it's not memes, it's pretty obviously paid comments and they go on to the top bc the commenters have nurtured their score by posting "real" comments elsewhere in which they only make points that agree with the channel in order to maximize their net upvotes. But of course this is hardly unique to YT. I don't think any of the major platforms care too much about policing it, even though it's basically a way to steal adshare from other creators and advertisers.
@@dakat5131 What gets me is not the constant comments like those. It's the times when someone points out how spammed that comment is, and you get 37 people calling you a horrible person for getting tired of seeing the same comment over and over again because "some people enjoy it". The same goes for all the people that just literally quote a random line from the video with no commentary whatsoever.
i don’t know what CZcams is trying to do at this point. there’s so many easy quick things to do that would make CZcams so much better. its like they are purposely trying to make us angry.
Edit: I know CZcams are in it for the money, but the changes they have been making just lose them money.
Agreed, it's very odd!
yes, yes it is. rage is op in driving so called engagement, the only metric they think = money (and it kinda does since it drives their ad pricing, it is a self fulfilling prophecy, on account of them also controlling fate and pretending they don't).
This has been true of all free Google products for 5-10+ years.
CZcams isn't here to provide a good service, they're here to make money. If they make a change it's because they believe it'll make or save them money.
Yep, that code is quick and easy
i love how sorting by top comments does anything but sorting by top comments
Lol facts.
lol it has gotten even worse your the top comment on my page WTF
The whole notifications system is busted anyway. I regularly get notifications for livestreams that happened days ago on channels I didn't turn on notifications for.
What if we let AI run our platform? It's a 30 billion dollar company, what could go wrong?
I love this hyper meta critiquing of the platform we use everyday but don’t think about critically. Keep up the good shit dude
Thanks dude!
@@ZackarySmigel I'm your biggest fan! Hope this comment goes through.
Emplemon has some excellent videos critiquing how youtube is run and managed if you want more like this
Twsting
Testing*
I get the feeling that CZcams doesn't want people having discussions, they want to funnel people onward to the next video, and then the next, and so on, so they can show you more ads.
......
you can stop a video
......
I agree with this 100% I remember how 5+ years ago (or even further back) it would be extremely common to see very long discussions under videos. Now it feels like they've all disappeared.
Why is there no option to see the exact dates of when comments were posted? And also the ability to search comments based on the date(s) they were posted and maybe by certain users too.
Agree 100%
Thank you for the shout-out and amazing video as always Zack!! Keep up the amazing work! ✨
Thanks man! :) You too!
Heyyy it’s you! Love your vids man!
Another issue is creators astroturfing a positive reception to an unpopular video by Hearting so many positive comments it swamps any other comments, unless you're willing to scroll for ages. With Dislike Count removed, creators can hide a negative reaction to a controversial video quite easily
creators can already delete comments off their own videos, and I like it that way, keeps rude people off
@@diethylmalonate Yes but this way they can fake an overwhelmingly positive reaction by cherry picking and stickying the most extremely positive ones to the top for pages and pages
@@diethylmalonate Some people deserve rude comments. They can always turn off comments altogether, which would be preferable to creators getting to police and select comments at their whim.
Actually there are browser extensions that bring you back the dislikes. They still exist, but YT just chose to not display them.
Another major problem for CZcams is they get swear words auto-removed, but sometimes the most vile comments have no swear words in them so they stay up. And as we've seen, the AI still isn't that smart to detect it, and sometimes it feels it flags more false positives than legit ones.
Can't tell you how many times i felt my blood boil when my opinion was instantly removed but the dam bots saying they're "farts smell better than" xyz is kept up no matter what. 🤡🤡🤡
Bro searching comments would be so helpful on old tutorial videos that the creators don't respond to anymore.
To be able to see if anyone had the same bug in their code that i do and how they fixed it would be a *GODSEND*
One thing that CZcams has been doing that helps with scammers (but only on your videos) is that it highlights the content creator's name. Also, now that CZcams shows handles and not plain display names (which it doesn't do any real checks on), it's harder for people to impersonate you.
Ive really disliked that change I miss being able to change my username
@@William_Nowin
Technically you can still change your username and handle (the latter must still be unique though), but there's a cooldown period.
My favorite thing is how I get a notification every time someone comments on a comment I've also commented on - while that's not a response to me at all!
The comments section is an integral part of the CZcams experience. I, alongside many other I imagine, read the comments of a video while watching it. And just by coincidence too, a lot of comments I scroll past by talk about an exact moment that just happened in the video. There is a sense of comfort in reading the comments while watching CZcams videos that I'm not sure why that platform has given so little thought in improving its features.
I would like to think CZcams factors in comments as another part of its algorithm when it comes to engagement since more people commenting generally means an interesting discussion is sparked or there's simply a large fan base, so to see it go largely ignored sucks. I mean watching CZcams on the computer means I sacrifice the ability to watch videos and read comments at the same time and the growing viewer base of people who watch CZcams on their T.V means commenting isn't even a thing anymore.
I think all the suggestions that you pointed out Zack is definitely a great jumping point for CZcams to start taking action as so much of CZcams's identity and community is built within the comments section, flaws and all. Hopefully with enough outcry about this topic CZcams can actually take notice and do something about this.
I've loved your recent videos by the way and I'm glad you've managed to find your groove with the latest uploads and the title/thumbnails. Major congrats and I personally hope I can grow as fast as you have!
Thanks so much! Really appreciate the perspective and detailed comment. I do think with enough outcry something can be done. We can only hope!
the comments section definitely adds value to the videos. I get to look at what other people think and read counter-arguments and explanations.
with tv shows and movies, I often have to look elsewhere.
I find picture-in-picture mode (right-click twice on a youtube video and it should come up as an option) helps with letting me watch a video while scrolling the comment sections of youtube videos, but it feels more like a patch than a proper fix as subtitles stay up in the box the video normally fills.
It being a different window means you can resize it and move it around as you wish though, which is pretty neat. It also prefers sticking on top of anything else you have open (unless you want to play a fullscreen game, in which that's finicky at best) which can be nice too.
Definitely wish there was an in-youtube fix though.
@@skalicia Yeah I agree. I wish the video would remain its current size while I scroll down on PC.
One thing that has absolutely gotten better about CZcams, at least for myself, is buffering. I was thinking to myself earlier today about how every video I would watch on CZcams like 10 years ago would CONSTANTLY buffer unless you either watched it at qualities below 316p or just waited for a while and let the video fully load at a higher quality. I can't even remember the last time I watched a video that buffered a ton, even at 1080p (without auto quality turned on). Most other stuff has been actively worsened by CZcams itself, like getting rid of community subtitling, forcing creators to either hire someone to do captions, do them themselves, or rely on the god awful auto captions. Most creators rely on auto captions which really sucks. I understand that it was taken away to prevent malicious use of the feature, but taking them away entirely is like punishing the whole class for one kid doing something wrong.
Yeah, there should be still an option to make subtitles for video, but to avoid abuse it first should be sent to the author for a review.
To be honest, CZcams hasn't changed in a good way at all in the last few years. The horrible rewinds we used to have, creators having to tiptoe around certain subjects and words because they can get demonitised, just to name a few. And like you said, CZcams seems adamant on wanting to fix issues that need no fixing, but the things that do need fixing are just shoved aside. But I stay on youtube because there are so many wonderful, informative and serotonin boosting things on this platform. There are so many things I watch here: let's plays, speedruns, documentaries, vtubers, music videos from my childhood and much, much more. But I do feel like CZcams has lost its spark/charm. I know that CZcams has to regulate a few things, but backin the day you could pretty much post anything, and everyone would be ok with it. These days everyone gets offended over everything (and this is coming from a very left oriented person) to the point it honestly becomes a bit tedious. Also, I miss how back in the day you could customise your youtube page, way more than you can do now. With colors, images, I believe polls as well? Man, that was so fun.
But as much as I hate current CZcams, I will always stay. Because of the wonderful videos people make.
I do miss some of the old customization channel options
Another problem with the comments section is that there's no way to dislike them in a meaningful way. There should be no reason there should be a million comments saying the same joke or repeating the same series of emojis
Love the videos mate, CZcams definitely needs to add dislikes to comments.
Absolutely - add that to the list. And thanks, love your videos too man.
Fr add dislikes for videos and comments
My experience: Comments of mine without expletives, inflammatory language, could disappear. Sometimes the trigger words are directly quoting parts of the video. A good third of my comments never get published, only I can see them. (I load up the same video in an incognito tab, and it's not there.) And I know for a fact that they aren't all held for review, they are mostly shadow banned. Seeing this insanely high ratio, I think my account itself is being kept on a short leash.
(And there is a fairly high chance that since I complained about it, you will never see this comment either.)
I've been having the exact same issue.
I have been wondering for so long why my comments on some of my favourite videos kept disappearing. The paranoid part of me wondered if the creators had deleted them, but I didn't think that was a rational explanation, and now I know for certain that it's not correct. Thank you!
"Do your comments magically disappear?" OMG YES!! I've been having that problem for YEARS!! Like at least five years. I've noticed that if I type more than two or three comments, the first comments I made disappear.
it honestly breeds antisocial tendencies, which is why i simply make my comment and try not to respond (notifications turned off, but sometimes my fingers remember how to get back to a comment if it was on an important topic, so i have to control myself). usually two or three comments into an exchange, the worst and best of humanity can be brought out, which is very confusing emotionally.
It feels like bickering, worse than Twitter. Even with comments that have positive sentiments 🌳
Really interesting perspective!
I'll get notifications for random replies that have nothing to do with what I wrote, and actually locating the comments sometimes requires a lot of clicking "see more" and scrolling through a few comments at a time instead of being able to go right to the comment I'm being notified about
Oh yeah that's very true. As someone who is Trans I get this firsthand with lots of people harassing me with hateful phrases just for commenting even if my comment has nothing to do with me being Trans. And the way they say things is in a way that gets around youtube's tos for hate speech so they get away with it. It makes me want to not really interact with the comments much at all
@@lssjgaming1599Have a lovely day internet stranger.
/I wanted to be more positive but couldn't find words
I’m so glad that you’ve been able to grow so quickly. Keep it up😊😊
Thank you so much!!
average youtube moment
average youtube comment
@@medokn99average youtube reply
@@medokn99average reply to a CZcams comment
@@medokn99average youtube reply to a youtube comment
average CZcams reply
Re: Notifications - Another thing that drives me insane is how you'll get ONE notification ever for a response to a comment, and once you click it it's gone forever. There's no inbox or anything for seen/past notifications, you get one chance and that's it. And coupled with how impossible it can be to sort through the comments section to find your own it makes getting back to some comments literally impossible. Even something as small as the page not loading once you've clicked the notification can cause you to lose it forever. Baffling.
If this guy is heard by CZcams (which won't happen but it's a fantasizing thing to imagine), we could be enjoying old golden CZcams era again.
What golden era? CZcams comments were always terrible spam holes.
Remember "This is Bob"?
I hope so! That would be so much fun!
You would be surprised. Channels much smaller than Zacks have had the opportunity to to talk with CZcams and Susan herself. Its Becky Boop was an example.
@@SuperSmashDollshow hellish the comments were was always proportional to the channel size. smaller niche creators often had spam free and vibrant communities
I adore this channel. You are pointing out facts that others haven't been able to pin down. Please keep this up, I really hope it shakes things up!! ❤
Thank you! Will do!
@ZackarySmigel the only irony of of this video is that your main comment is capped at 500 again
Another banger yet again. These videos you post allow me to think about these issues WAY more critically than ever before. I always thought I was crazy thinking about these topics. Glad to see I'm not alone here.
Thanks Zackary!
I appreciate that man. Congrats on your recent success and being creator on the rise!!! That's HUGE.
@@ZackarySmigel Thanks gamer I appreciate it. Funny enough, I had to come back to this video to see your reply since CZcams didnt tell me LMAO
If they truly cared about impersonator accounts, spam and scams, they would at least have an option to report a comment and a channel for being an obvious impersonation and/or scam.
I’m mixed on whether or not comment history should be publicly available. If it’s an option, cool. But if it’s forced on you, people can cyber harass you by replying to all your comments on random videos. That sounds like a niche issue but I’ve experienced it on other platforms
But in regards to comments disappearing, yes, it is VERY annoying. I’ve found that avoiding swear words, not liking your own comment if it’s new, and waiting at least an hour before editing your comment, seems to help then not disappear. But it doesn’t always work
Or s/b, also saying it or rather the long from will get the comment also
Another thing I regularly notice is bot accounts copying real comments and then somehow getting near the top of the Top Comments section. There have been a lot of times where I see a normal looking comment and realize from the profile picture or name that it's a bot, even if it has a large amount of likes or real(?) comments under it. I can't even trust the comments I read anymore.
The comment section is something near and dear to my heart too! I'm really glad to see you provide actual solutions to the problems here rather than just complain about the issues.
Had to pause @2:34 to say: what if they _don't_ want people commenting though and it's just a legacy feature they have to deal with? What if they don't want people commenting because then they're not watching other videos and therefore getting served ads? Remember, from their perspective, youtube is an ad platform with content attached.
I might be exaggerating a bit there but think about this: they only have finite dev time, why would they dedicate it to features that would draw eyeballs away from the videos and therefore ads?
That makes logical sense unfortunately.
Yes, it looks like 500 comments is the max for a comment thread. Thanks for the great work, Zachary. :) Hopefully this video will be a catalyst for change at CZcams
My view shows 501 replies to the initial comment and *no* possibility to reply and more.
@@anniestumpy9918 interesting! I am now seeing the same thing with still no ability to reply! I wonder if creators are also limited by the ~500 comment cap?
There must be some filter to make likes limited. Foil Arms and Hog get loads. At least one doesn't have Premium, ironically. I wonder if this has something to do with it...
I swear I've seen comments with more than 501 replies. Mandela Effect???
switching the places of the title and the "caption" that would normally be in the thumbnail is a brilliant touch that I haven't seen anyone else doing; keep up the good work
CZcams for me hasn't really gotten better since I joined he platform.
I joined in 2015-ish and I can swear that the more I grew up and the more I saw the updates and understood how CZcams works, the more I felt like they are very out of touch for the target audience for this platform.
For me the new UI that they changed to is too different, I adapted to it, but it made things look so ugly.
The search system sucks ass, shorts is literally so distruptive to each search or even going through the homescreen.
It honestly really sucks how much worse they make the platform when there are obvious ways where they can actually improve the website.
The fact that they removed dislikes as well, like bro, what is CZcams anymore 💀
Don't get me wrong, I love the platform still, but it has a lot of things that I do not like about it.
2015 was already in the midst of yt going downhill
@@gandalf_thegrey I wasn’t really old enough to understand anything so I was fine with the platform
honestly I think every social media shoyld have an upvote/downvote system like reddit, after dislikes got removed on youtube it seems like an obvious thing to do in terms of UI design,
For all the hate Reddit gets, in my experience the system works really well. There may be some poorly moderated subs where it doesn't but for most of the subs you're likely to see the comments at the top are usually ok at worst and the stupid stuff is at the bottom.
People say it leads to echo chambers and that's a very valid concern, but in all honesty the stuff that ends up hidden because it's heavily downvoted clearly deserved it.
Sure you have some reddit moments™ where stuff gets downvoted for no apparent reason (including the 4th comment in any chain, but that's more of a funny in-joke than anything) but it works fine overall, the good clearly outweights the bad for a lot of people.
It's baffling to me that the dislike button on comments is just a placebo when it could be genuinely useful and an actual improvement to the website, but with YT obscuring *THE* important dislike count (i.e. the video's one) you might as well remove it entirely. Bless the ReturnCZcamsDislikes extension
You forgot about the fact that some youtube videos actually have a "Timed" comment option
Yea I'm wondering why it's not on every channel
Until the feature is out on every video and available for everyone I didn't think it was super important to cover. Personally I haven't used it at all, as I don't see it on most videos. But I agree, I could have mentioned it.
Wait what? What is that?
@@ZackarySmigel there's also members option too. But you need to have membership on your channel
@cheeseburgermonkey7104 if anyone included a time stamp in their comment it would have it's filter. And jump you to them
I've been bitching about this for years. My account is nearly as old as CZcams itself and I've seen all the changes through the years (anyone else remember the 5 star rating system before the thumbs up/down system?). One of the major things I miss is being able to to view your own comment history. There was literally a place on your own profile page where you could see every single comment you ever made. I don't know how long ago that was but it seems like ages. Why did that go away? Maybe it was a technological challenge back then, but now? Now that YT is part of the great Google empire? You can search and sort through the vast internet, but you can't remember my (relatively) tiny comment history? That's just one gripe among many that I've had over the years with CZcams comments.
Agreed being able to see comment history on your profile would be massive.
Now you have to do that through your Google account. It's still there, but buried. Have a look.
My account is also roughly as old as the site. (Sidenote: do you ever get your app glitching out and claiming your account is unverified and therefore unable to access age-restricted content, despite the account itself being 18 years old? I started getting that recently and it's just so delightfully bizarre.) I remember the whole evolution from the star ratings, the different sorting options, comment history, etc. I also remember those years where they tried to force everyone to merge their accounts with Google+ and required users full names to be visible on all comments a la Facebook. A few of us got around it by just never logging in during that time.
When the forced merge thing was finally dropped those of us who dodged it found that what appeared to have happened on the backend was that dummy G+ accounts were created for us, suggesting that the G+ infrastructure was a necessary element of the comment interface. So based on that I would put forth the theory that at least part of the simplification of the comment section functionality has to do with it being built on the shambling husk of what used to be G+, and that as CZcams steadily loses institutional knowledge of how any of that worked they've had to strip out as much functionality as possible. This might even be why the notification system doesn't work either, as that might have partly relied on some aspect of G+ infrastructure (maybe even as fundamental as the server architecture or whatever) and fixing it would require too massive a rebuild.
Of course it probably doesn't help at all that legacy accounts such as ourselves keep bopping around dragging two decades worth of retired variables, bloated algorithm profiles, strange holdover features like favorites playlists and all that trash. Sucks to suck though I ain't gonna stop.
It is odd how YT uses "engagement" as a metric, buy doesn't tell us when someone answers our comments. It is like it doesn't want emgagement
Is there a possibility that CZcams actually profits from bots? Imagine if CZcams can artificially push engagement on videos that have a possible high ad revenue, would bots be able to increase this even further? There is no way CZcams is just ignoring these issues. I kinda feel like there is more behind the scenes.
Thanks for mentioning the search issue! I used to be able to find anything, no matter how obscure or specific. Now it’s nearly impossible unless it’s already viral or trending.
It’s so nice to be validated in my frustrations like this. Often times with annoying app features I feel like I’m screaming into the void because these platforms are so integral to our online existence that developers can shove sh*tty features/interfaces down our throats and tell us to shut up and eat it cause they know what’s best for us. I’m tired…
And it feels like such a fruitless endeavor to contest these changes because they don’t *actually* care about user experience, they just care about engagement
I'm glad I could validate your frustrations and I agree. That's kind of why I started doing these type of videos. I feel like not enough people are talking about these issues (that can be minor for some but significant for many).
I absolutely love the channel
Really hope CZcams starts to listen to creators such as yourself on what needs to be done or we are gonna see the decline of a website with so much potential! Awesome video btw! I never really comment on videos but I'm really wanting you to make it BIG and wanna drive up that engagement in whatever way I can! Keep doing you :)
I appreciate that your comment! Thanks so much!
I wish it would let me hold comments for review indefinitely rather than automatically delete them after 30 days, so it was feasible to manually approve comments if I come back from a two-month hiatus.
I currently have a terrible problem of letting youtube eat all my comments because I don't make videos often enough to want to check them
In my opinion, CZcams are completely incompetent and have no idea what they're doing or just don't care what the creators and viewers want. Where did the Channels tab go on the Creator profile page? Why can't I see a list of creators channels anymore?
I find it kinda funny that bots magically seem to disappear on videos talking about them. Could just be that people are more aware of them though
Dude I’ve always wondered why replies to my comments were almost never notified to me it is so annoying. And sometimes I will get a decent amount of engagement with an old comment and it notifies me months later for no reason.
i am so happy yt recs brought me to you, your videos are exactly what i want to watch
honestly i have *never* heard of you until the "does youtube feel different?" video- forgetting the title but THE FACT THAT IT PROVED YOUR POINT made me keep watching xD
I feel like Reddit is a very bad comparison for comment moderation.
Every subreddit needs voluntary moderators that still have a lot of work after the automated filters went through. They are basically doing what every CZcams channel has to do. Go through a long list of blocked comments and check if it's correct.
Also the karma system only works if you stay inside your bubble. As soon as you say something controversial in a subreddit you get mass downvotet. A system like this just strengthens echo chambers.
For sorting though CZcams would definitely benefit from more options
I used to comment on youtube videos all the time, but more recently it's started to feel like too much effort, so a lot of the time I end up just watching and continuing. Everything you've mentioned is something I've had trouble with, and it's actively hurting my motivation to interact on the platform now.
with the community* Bots seem to have more creativity than the likes farming copypasta comments these days.
I miss being able to search for comments and not just videos with the search bar. That was very helpful for when I couldn't remember the video title or channel name. Also there can be some very interesting comment threads that get lost as soon as you refreshed the page. Be nice if we can find them again
Thank you! I have noticed so many of my comments getting deleted. Even just stuff like “Amazing!” I don’t know if this comment will stick.
And on my own videos I will sometimes have the comments section switched off without me knowing.
I have definitely been getting less notifications from CZcams the last couple months, although I don’t think I have been commenting less!
After the video about the site feeling off, my algorithm has only gotten worse.
I hardly get recommendations from people I follow, and there's a bunch of recommendations for content much shorter than my usual 20 minutes+ content viewing.
I'm ok when its still like 10 minutes+ or if its music, but a lot are like 30 seconds to 3 minutes of content and not music.
I never usually click on these except for a very few specific creators but they keep being pushed on me.
And if I watch ONE video from a new creator CZcams pushes it for WEEKS.
Its annoying
Yeah, the reccomendations system is seriously scuffed. I got freaked out once when I got mock gore videos in my search for videos completely unrelated :(
I always find that when I show replies to a comment, not all of them are there. Sometimes, NONE of them are there
I really hope this channel continues to gain a following, it would be great if youtube noticed and responded to the issues on their channel by listening to fan criticism
I almost never get notifications for comment's, but I woke up today with three of them leading back to this video
OMG yes. The notifications I get on my comments is so fn random, there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to what I’m being shown. Why does YT only tell me sometimes that somebody liked or replied to a comment? Why do some of my comments not show?
"HUGE FAN of dilf nakeyjakey" he said via the worst way to have a conversation
I also have the SAME exact problems with comment notifications and I thought it was just a me thing
Ahhhh RuneScape music, I see now why you popped up on my algorithm the other day. I’m staying subscribed of course
i doubt youtube wants people spending time commenting and having conversations. Their focus is on getting people to click on as many videos as possible in as short a time as possible, their ideal is having users glance at the comments, maybe add a like or their own comment, and click on the next video.
Their Shorts feature really does encourage that kind of interaction, doesn't it? CZcams's going the way of TikTok and it makes my skin crawl.
@@boop004 And regular videos of any kind are punished compared to shorts. Shorts are shown to way more people, but for a shorter time. Getting thousands of views in an hour makes putting effort into making a video that gets maybe 4 views in a week feel not worth it.
First Rule of CZcams:
You aren't allowed to know any of the rules transparently, because then you'd find a way to hack it. This trickles down from Google philosophy. When users know the rules, they engineer it. "Most links wins, so I'm gonna buy links."
If you were planning on another video in this series, I personally would be interested in a video on how videos themselves feel different because of the strict language filters and other censorship that CZcams requires creators to have.
comments make sense for CZcams to encourage. keeps people on the platform and returning to videos they've already watched
This is not a spam comment and I am very proud that it’s true❤
that's what a smart bot would say
now that you mention it, yeah i haven't been getting comment reply notifications...
They need to hire this guy!
The thing i really hate about the comments is youtube hates sending notifs for replies. Used to be able to actually talk with people, now it will randomly change my settings to not get notifs from replies and when i change it back it will send me notifications *some* of the time.
0:08 all the time, i have a lot of arguments with stupid people, and it just ends up feeling like youtube is promoting bigotry when they prevent me from participating in these conversations
That’s the explanation of what i have been experiencing.
I had a normal debate and though the other person had different opinions- but we had a tone of respect- but I had to manually go through my email notifications rather than direct in app notifications to get their response. But when other party is too polarised or abusive or trolling- i get quick notifications , as if they know our psyche will like to open up the app quick
The most crazy thing was that, youtube hides comments without updating the count. For example, I saw a comment has 2 replies. When I clicked in it, it has 0 visible comments. This drives me crazy.
I’d love a search option. Whenever I watch Philip defranco, I want to engage on 1 particular story but I can never find any comments related to it
I was going to ask you to make a video about this! This is so true.
CZcams has made some good changes but they also keep deleting useful features. In addition to the removed comments features you mentioned here, off the top of my head:
They used to let you sort your subscriptions into groups, so you could have multiple custom feeds that only show the newest videos in that group; like your subscription feed but narrowed down however you like.
They also used to let community members submit captions to videos, but it was removed because "most people weren't using it" (newsflash, most people don't have a big enough audience and most people aren't hard of hearing or deaf, CZcams).
I could go on. CZcams HATES having good features. It sucks here.
I promise, I haven't been disappointed by any of the video CZcams recommended me of yours.
Also, before listening to the argument, I agree.
Glad to hear that! Thanks!
I’ve been saying for a while that a comments section akin to forum threads would be the best way to go. Visually speaking. Then take the Reddit aspect of thumbs up and down for quality comments and you’ll have the best stuff upfront. Then add a tab where you can filter for different types of comments such as Questions, Suggestions, Compliments, etc.
I hate that I can't put a hyperlink to clarify information or back up a claim.
Once again you knocked it out of the park ⚾️! Great video Zack Smigel!
The comments section has been pretty messed up for a while and they're definitely not doing enough to fix it, one thing I'd like to see in terms of filtering is language, while you can translate comments sometimes I find it really frustrating when watching certain types of videos (mainly kpop related) that I have to scroll for ages just to find one English comment as all the 'top' comments are in other laguages. I do think it's a good thing that the comments can be a multicultural place but it would be nice to be able to filter specific languages within the comment seciton so I can actually read/engage with other people.
One thing I have been noticing more recently over is how bad the search engine has gotten, I tried searching for videos about a specific game the other day and after the first handful of videos it started showing 'related' videos that weren't what I was looking for and it's really annoying, I was looking for reviews or lets plays not 'My top 10 -blank- games :/
Thanks for making great informative videos!
It's kind of funny how scammers have been using the same tricks forever. The spiel of "I became rich with the help of Mrs. Jones" followed by "different people" also praising "Mrs. Jones" could have played out in a newspaper or around a travelling salesman 150 years ago with little change.
Those comments are so jarring because they're so different from the rest of anything else going on.
Who talks like that?
It's probably at least partially a gulibility test, but it's hard to imagine anyone who would fall for it would be watching the videos that those comments are on.
There is also a new topics option, a timed option and a members option but all of which depend on certain comments (topics depends on how much there is of a certain topic, timed is specifically if lots of comments time specific parts of videos, and members is self-explanatory) but i still feel like your suggestions are better
I have a friend who spends hours doing nothing but commenting on CZcams shorts, you’d be amazed how often he messages me about his comments being deleted while seeing a dozen bots on the same video
YTS comment sections are often like Twitter comments. So many roughly the same comments summarizing the video but not adding anything to it.
The bots probably get deleted too but since there are so many of them and spamming constantly some get through.
I want to know what my BEST PERFORMING comments are.
I went back to a video from years ago and was surprised to discover 600+ likes and dozens of replies to mine. No alerts, no email, no recognition. It's impossible to find my old comments most of the time.
Also tons of my comments have been shadowed -- they magically disappear although some people can see them because I received a few emails that when I tried to reply back, I couldn't because the comment was no longer there, at least for me. How did they reply to it in the first place, then?!
A ranking of my top comments of all time would be fulfilling and drive even more engagement.
@CZcams, LISTEN TO YOUR USERS AND CREATORS.
This was a great video! Thanks for making it!
I've not personally seen many spam bots/comments not going through but that might just be because I'm not going on big channels like I used to.
I do think its important to hold CZcams accountable with its UI and how it deals with the comment sections since it does feel like there's tons of small tweaks that could vastly improve the experience. I know many people are still struggling with false copyright claims.
Great work on the video! Fingers crossed CZcams gets their act together
I’ve noticed it’s highly situational. A video about *anything* economics-related will be flooded with scam comments, for example
The "Top Comments" seems to be a combination of upvote and that the comments are positive sounding. Probably from the same argument that they used to remove downvote. This results in dangerous top comments on fake videos that all promote the content of the video.
As a CZcams comment section, I can confirm that I am broken.
I've found that in general, sites with huge social portions just don't care. I run several of the largest groups on Facebook and it is just nonstop spam, all day, every day. We've implemented tons of rigorous features on Facebook to try and deal with it but it's still just constant. Even Facebook's own features barely work. It has a "hold for review" type feature that 50% of the time captures someone's random dog post, while we still get outright horse-porn bots posting in the group. We can post-approve every post, but that's a ton of work with millions of members and a dozen mods, and still does nothing about comment sections.
Facebook doesn't care, or can't fix it, as far as we can tell.
I think it’s def gotten worse. Why am i being recommended channels that have single digit views about things i never showed interest in? Why is it when i search a video abt something specific i get unrelated videos and even shopping links after the first few results? Why can’t i block channels that i never want to see content from?
This opening music is from fucking RuneScape. My man!
I think they need a big competition to make things better. More competitions means they are finally doing better things to get our attention
They wouldn't. Because people price ads these things based on engagement metrics, and these frustrating but still technically functional shite comment systems are great to pump it up. So the competitors will also be bad, and YT's would just be differently bad to remain competitive, but still designed for engagement metrics, which can only lead to shite comment systems, in account of being useful to the user being literally not even on the list of priorities
That's Tiktok and it's only made things worse.
@@CarrotConsumer Every major website wants to be TikTok and it's been a disaster for everyone
@@doctorrobert1339 Tiktok is really a different genre. CZcams has a monopoly on longer videos. No competitor right now is rich enough to afford 100 quadrillion bytes of storage. I want someone to challenge CZcams but realistically speaking it's never gonna happen.
This is another good video! I have a few extra thoughts pertaining comments based on my own experiences.
CZcams has always had a 500/501 comment reply cap, I remember seeing and dealing with the cap back in 2013 if not earlier too. If I had to guess the reasons it's for maintaining a stable server, too many replies can cause issues. I understand the frustration though on the 500 cap as sometimes it feels too small.
As for comments disappearing, it's even happening to comments that aren't held for review. I had a friend comment on a video of mine recently and when I want to reply to it directly from the video, it wasn't there. I had to actively seek it from sorting by 'Newest Comment'. Even from the creator dashboard it wasn't there unless sorted by new comments. That video has since gotten more engagement that my normal video so if I want to go back and read it, I have to scroll down to the bottom of the new comments tab. It's frustrating to see because it's not like this friend has anything wrong with their account - they have made plenty of public comments before, it's just this one got hidden explicitly. There was no real reason for it.
I've now seen three of your videos and all three were slam dunks! You've made a subscriber out of me.
Awesome! Thank you!
I had my comments disapperaring on my own videos!
I hate the placement of the comment section, I have to avert my eyes so that the top comment doesn’t spoil the video
I actually have the same problem about getting notifs for comments and replies! I miss so much of it. : /
There is one thing that I REALLY like about the comment section though. I appreciate that I can see a few of someone’s recent comments on the channel and how many total comments they’ve made on the channel and hearts received from the creator (at least I can do this on the app). It makes it very easy to see if they are just in the comments spreading hate/spam.