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YouTube suggesting Six Videos at a Time
Yesterday when looking at YouTube over lunch I noticed that they now show six videos at a time, compared to the 20-30 videos they used to show, back in the good old days. This means that you have six videos to choose from. The algorithm is cutting down our choice constantly from 30 videos down to 20. and now 6.
Pigeon Holed
If we watch one channel’s content then that content will be shown exclusively until we grow tired of it, and then we will have to choose from a dozen or less content creators. Sometimes videos will appear in three or four categories. It’s hard to browse when there is so little choice.
Plenty of Choice
In the days of renting DVDs for a night or two we would go into the shop and there would be a few recommendations but then we could go into the library and search for a while, trying to find content by genre, mood or more. Today that browsing experience is getting worse.
When I look for something to watch on YouTube or Netflix and Prime I want to have a real choice. I want to see a breadth of choice within a single screen. I don’t want to be forced to watch what algorithms force people to watch. If you recommend content because it’s popular, but it’s popular because it has been pushed on people, then it is not popular. It is spoon fed. The algorithms are cheating us and content creators. We’re being cheated because we have no choice, and content creators are cheated because they are invisible.
The Paradox
What I liked about YouTube is that it provided us with a breadth of content to choose from. We might have browsed for a few minutes and skimmed through thousands of videos but we had real choice to find ideal content. Now, with six videos being shown at a time we’re forced to pick out of six. This isn’t choice. This is scarcity. Thousands of hours of content are uploaded to youtube every minute and yet the algorithms get everyone to watch the same thing.
The problem is that I don’t know what I want to watch for half an hour to an hour so I don’t have key words that I want to look for. If I’m forced to see six videos, rather than browse, then I’m likely to give up rather than search. Usually we look at YouTube and similar sites to discover new content.
Prime
YouTube wants us to pay for prime but they take our ability to choose. They use algorithms that, because content is pushed on us, become worse and worse with recommendations. We can give feedback, but not proper feedback. I sign up for Prime, enjoy it for a few weeks, and then it becomes toxic and I take a break. The algorithms pigeon hole us, rather than learn about us.
And Finally
I love the medium of video. I love well produced content. I love content of a certain type. Google’s algorithms looks at users and recommends the content that it would give to teenagers to 40 years olds, and vice versa. The recommendation engine knows our age, and our viewing habits over a decade and a half. If people are worried about privacy, just look at ads and YouTube recommendations and you will realise that algorithms know nothing about us. Algorithms, by now, should know that I hate sensationalism. I realise that hating sensationalism is sensationalist. The point is that if recommendations for content are bad, then we are likely to take a break.
Mental Health and Social media
There is a lot of discussion about Mental Health and social media because most people are not social media natives. They are either Luddites who do not appreciate playing with technology. They see themselves as users rather than participants and then there are extroverts and other people who see Social Media as a threat to their way of life. We live in societies built for extroverts rather than textroverts. As a textroverts social media is a place for me to have full conversations without having to compete with extroverts who often hijack conversations through charisma and the superficiality of what they have to say. The Royal Society for public health wrote a paper on the topic
It’s amusing that Instagram is theoretically the worst social app because if people use it like me then they would share their hikes, their climbs and their adventures. These would lead to FoMO and a feeling of solitude if people were motivated to do the same activities as me but unable to. Anxiety, body image, depression and bullying are all consequences of how marketers have encouraged people to use instagram. When brands and social media “personalities” post certain images and when brands promote certain behaviours then they encourage people to idealise the wrong things. They encourage superficiality rather than genuine interactions.
It should be highlighted that a lot of people use Instagram for selfies and this leads people to compare themselves to others. If they photograph food, sports, mountains, seasides and more the negative aspects highlighted above would vanish.
It’s amusing that Youtube is the highest and most positively ranked social medium because it is the one that my generation see as having the most negative comments. We often joke that youtube is fine until you read the comments. It’s good that people like Twitter and Facebook because twitter is great for getting to know people and Facebook is a useful way of staying in touch with friends when we travel and move around for work and university.
The Royal Society for Public Health came out with a few recommendations:
1. The introduction of a pop-up heavy usage warning on social media
If social media is an integral part of social life, rather than an addition to it then this recommendation does not apply. If twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social networks are integrated seamlessly into our daily lives then “heavy usage” would not occur and thus warnings would be redundant. Social media is part of a lifestyle. It is only when marketers trick people into following rather than conversing that it becomes toxic and require time limits.
2. Social media platforms to highlight when photos of people have been
digitally manipulated
If it wasn’t for the selfie and disinformation this recommendation would not be needed. The skills to tell which images are digitally manipulated can easily be taught. This generation grow up playing with the software used to alter these images in the first place.
3. NHS England to apply the Information Standard Principles to health
information published via social media
Media literacy is a skill that should be taught along with reading. As soon as people are able to read they should be taught to discern between reliable and unreliable information. This is a skill that should be taught from the moment someone learns to read to the moment they graduate from university. Media literacy is a very important skill in the information age.
4. Safe social media use to be taught during PSHE education in school
Grown ups are just as likely to suffer from bullying and other behaviour so it does not apply just to children. In the early days of the world wide web we all used avatars and nicknames rather than our real identity. This helped us play online without much danger. We see that safe spaces have been created for people below a certain age to interact online. Now that the world wide web has come of age it is important to work on creating more geographically relevant social environments like this.
5. Social media platforms to identify users who could be suffering from
mental health problems by their posts and other data, and discreetly
signpost to support
The nature of social media can be an introspective one and as such encourages people to be open about how they feel. Aside from signposting people who are at risk social media and social networks could create discreet groups on Facebook and other social networks where people can assemble of their own free will. By discreet groups I mean groups where membership and names are withheld both from within and from outside the group.
6. Youth-workers and other professionals who engage with young people to
have a digital (including social) media component in their training
This point amuses me because when I speak to social media experts and social media professionals I see that they see social media as something to do during office hours as part of their job. They do not see it as an addition to their lifestyle and as such are not natives of the medium. If people have a digital (including Social) media component in their training then they should live and breath it.
Too many people provide the wrong impression of social media and how it can be used. Too many people stigmatise it and this helps to emphasise the negative impressions that mainstream people have of social media. Social media is a lifestyle and only those who see it as a lifestyle should teach social media.
7. More research to be carried out into the effects of social media on
young people’s mental health.
A few decades ago we all lived in villages and everyone we knew lived within walking distance. As time progressed and as trains, cars and jet aviation became part of our daily lives so the village we grew up in became a state, a country, a continent, a planet. If you’re going to study social media on young people’s health then you should not ignore that social media is connecting people living in different villages in the countryside and different streets in towns. As such it means that social media could help people who are geographically distant stay together mentally. What should be studied is the negative impact of marketing on people’s natural use of social networks. Marketing and public relations should enhance, not distract from communicating with people.
Chindrieux Dives
Earlier today I was at Chindrieux, a lake side village looking out over the Lac du Bourget lake in France. It is a nice lake with good visibility. The dive site where my friends and I usually dive is a wall. You swim out for 300 meters before heading down the bank to a little gap in the cliff. At 9 meters depth you start going west along the wall. On this wall you can find lots of shells and the occasional fish hiding in one crack or other. There are overhangs and scree fields. The bottom of the wall is at 65m. From there it slopes gently off to 110m.
So far my dives have only taken me to 40 meters on this wall. Diving in this part of the world takes a certain character type. The water at depth is at a stable 5°-6°c but the water column varies from 21°c at the surface in Summer zo 6°c at the surface in winter. In summer you go from warm water to cold, and then you get back to warm. You’re sweating in your dry suit and to cool down is welcome. In winter the opposite is true. You’re cold. You’re happy to put your dry suit on, and gloves, and hood. The drawback is that you go from cold air to cold water and back. Friends of mine and I have come out of the water shivering in winter, unable to use our fingers anymore. This is all part of the fun.
Today for a change I went with my video camera. I am currently working on a diving documentary and I want to get footage of the surface as well as down below. The vista are nice. You can see parapentistes, the occasional boat, trains passing by and in the distance snow covered mountains. They serve as a backdrop to Aix Les Bains.
I will keep you informed about how this project progresses.
360 timelpase videos
360 timelapse videos provide us with interesting new opportunities. Imagine for example placing the camera out to see near Weymouth beach and watching as the tide comes towards the camera and then beyond it towards the city. Imagine watching as the sun rises on one side of the Leukerbad Valley and sets on the other. Imagine that BBC Natural history unit sequence of sand dunes moving across the landscape one day at a time for a year.
Timelapse with the Ricoh Theta S
Two days ago I was tempted to try a timelapse video with the Ricoh Theta S. My plan had been to take the camera up to La Barillette and film a timelapse. From this point of view you can see the whole of the Lac Léman. You can see from Geneva to Villeneuve on a good day. With a weather system like we have at the moment you can watch clouds form and dissipate. You can also see the shadows left by those clouds and more. With a standard timelapse camera you would see just a small part of the scene. With a 360 timelapse you could look out towards the Alps or around at the cars and hikers. You could look up at the mast and more.
I say that you could do this because there are high winds up there and you need a heavy tripod to keep the camera from falling and breaking one of the lenses. You also need to find something to do while the camera is working.
Yesterday morning was clement, we had clouds and blue sky so I was able to try a timelapse. I set the camera to take an image every ten seconds for an unlimited amount of time. The settings on this camera give you great flexibility with timing. You can go from every eight seconds to setting a much longer amount of time.
You can set the interval to take pictures from every 8 seconds to every 60 minutes and 59 seconds.
You can either preview the image as a spherical image or as an equirectalinear image. Once you are happy with the settings you can start capturing. In yesterday’s test I was able to get more than 600 images on a single battery charge when the camera was set to take a picture every ten seconds.
The obvious limiting factor with this camera for timelapses is battery life. As soon as the camera is plugged in to a power source it turns off and starts to charge. As a result charging and taking pictures at the same time is not possible. There is also the minor issue of having the USB charge port right next to the tripod screw. You would need to modify a plate to charge the camera at the same time. The camera lasted for about 100 minutes before the battery died.
Post production
With the Ricoh Theta S and final Cut Pro X post production is efficient. You are dealing with images with a resolution of 5,376 x 2,688 pixels. That qualifies as UHD. You can import the image sequences from your timelpases straight from FCP X cutting out the need for other apps. Once the images are imported your your event you can open a new project at full resolution. I added the UHD image sequence to the timeline, created a compound clip and then used the speed tool to adjust the duration.
I still need to do some research about how to export the edit at full resolution. As I was given an error message I decided to export the video as 1920×960. This worked flawlessly. I used the Spatial Media Metadata Injector to add the necessary image meta data and then uploaded the injected video to youtube.
I look forward to finding ideas and projects that will take advantage of what 360 timelapse videos have to offer. I feel that it provides us with an opportunity to better understand how time and light evolve in a spherical environment.