Here’s why you can’t click the title to go back to YouTube on our videos.

For about a year, I’ve gotten notes from readers asking why our YouTube embeds are broken in one very specific way: you can no longer click the title to open the video on YouTube.com or in the YouTube app. This used to work just fine, but now you can’t.

This bothers us, too, and it’s doubly frustrating because everyone assumes that we’ve chosen to disable links, which makes a certain kind of sense — after all, why on earth wouldn’t YouTube want people to click over to its app?

The short answer is money. Somewhat straightforwardly, YouTube has chosen to degrade the user experience of the embedded player publishers like Vox Media use, and the only way to get that link back is by using a slightly different player that pays us less and YouTube more.

  • MrAlternateTape@lemm.eeEnglish
    211·
    16 hours ago

    YouTube is simply squeezing hard now.

    They are big enough that 90% of the people who do look at videos do it there. So a video that is posted elsewhere simply does not get the exposure that it does on YouTube.

    That gives them a lot of power. And they use it to squeeze as much money as possible from anyone they can. Now, if they would do big squeezes, people would notice and they would at least try to find other sites.

    So just like abuse, it’s a slow process of tearing little barriers down of what is acceptable, until at some point users one by one start to realize it has all turned to shit.

    But that is going to take a lot of time, and until that happens we are just going to see more reports about all the things YouTube does.

    We will keep seeing angry nerds upset about it, and they will block ads and work around it. But nothing else will change. And that is such a small part of the userbase of YouTube that they don’t even feel it.

    So I’m going to block ads, watch what I want to watch as long as the site is usuable without ads, and I will stop using the site when ads can no longer be blocked. YouTube is simply not that important to me.

  • noodlejetski@lemm.eeEnglish
    684·
    21 hours ago

    Here’s the really long version: like everyone, we publish our videos on YouTube

    I think I’ve found the underlying issue

    • skulblaka@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      161·
      15 hours ago

      We won’t have a competitor until people start posting shit elsewhere and people won’t start posting shit elsewhere until we have a competitor with a solid user base.

      It’s a catch-22. I don’t disagree with you here but I also don’t see a good answer. Companies are going to post their news where an audience exists for that news and I have a hard time saying that that is wrong for them to do.

  • KingOfTheCouch@lemmy.caEnglish
    13·
    16 hours ago

    I’ve noticed this and really thought it was the website. All sides lose.

    Enshittification at its finest.

    • randombullet@programming.devEnglish
      65·
      17 hours ago

      They want to force you into the YouTube website for analytics and watching habits. Maybe you’ll find a video that catches your fancy and spend longer on there.

      • theherk@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        17 hours ago

        That doesn’t make sense in this case. The opposite in fact, as pointed out in the text. They removed the link that leads to that scenario. So now they just use a slightly different player to get that behavior.

    • ryper@lemmy.caEnglish
      13·
      15 hours ago

      The player that got the link back to Youtube removed allows publishers to sell their own ads. Seems like Youtube is worried about the content of ads it doesn’t control and wants to limit its association with them, so if, say, someone sees a porn ad, they blame the site the player is on, not Youtube.

  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.orgEnglish
    431·
    24 hours ago

    It’s all going to shit. Let’s burn it all down and start over. Will it be better then? Probably not, but burning it down will feel good I imagine.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    118·
    1 day ago

    the only way to get that link back is by using a slightly different player that pays us less and YouTube more.

    Add a “watch on YouTube” link above or below your embedded videos?

    • Zombie@feddit.ukEnglish
      141·
      19 hours ago

      Don’t host on YouTube? They’re a big company, I’m sure they’ve got the resources for a couple of video files.

      • diffusive@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        18 hours ago

        Then they need to find advertisers. This is the hard part. Advertisers are familiar with the platform and tools of YouTube, having them to submit ads in other platforms is where the for-profit video hosting becomes tricky

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      14 hours ago

      The problem as presented is that the player they want to use pays them less money. Every other platform would pay them no money, or negative money.

      So.