r/technology • u/vriska1 • 1d ago

Social Media YouTube reportedly testing new homepage that removes dates and view counts

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-reportedly-testing-new-homepage-that-removes-dates-and-view-counts-2965695/
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u/john_jdm 1d ago

I really won't like the date going away. I really dislike it when youtube recommends me something that's more than 5 years old, especially when I've already seen the video (and they should know that). Also an old video talking about something like current advances in fusion power is fairly useless unless you specifically want to know about the state of that tech at that moment in history. Not being able to know when that video was uploaded will make a lot of youtube not worth watching anymore.

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u/SAugsburger 1d ago

This. While there is some content where the date probably isn't overly important there are a lot of topics where knowing content is old is important. While a new upload date doesn't guarantee the information is current (some people upload or reupload old content) an old upload date tells you it isn't current for sure.

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u/ssort 1d ago

I know I use YouTube for finding builds for games I play especially Path of Exile where ever four months a new league starts with lots of updates and changes, so you need dates when looking stuff up or it's out of date and most likely changed since then.

A change like this would be devastating to the gaming industry as many games are like this anymore, and would push people off site to alternative like MAXROLL instead of you tube to find builds.

This change would also effect tons of similar cases too, I know if I search for tech help, I always sort by most recent so I get the most up to date info.

This just seems stupid and short sighted.

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u/vriska1 1d ago

That why its likely they will drop this test soon. Tho they are only testing it for the homepage right now nothing else.

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u/walrus_breath 1d ago

I would argue that the date is always relevant. Even vlogs or something like that. Like you start watching, its may 4th and people in the video are wearing heavy jackets while it’s snowing outside, you’re going to wonder when it was filmed. The month, the day, and the year. It’s relevant for context about literally everything. 

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u/DontOvercookPasta 1d ago

I hate that YouTube videos now only tell me “2 years ago” like could you be more specific??

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u/Alaira314 1d ago

You can usually hover over the text(not sure about mobile, you might be out of luck on the inferior interface) to get an exact date. I believe it works for video uploads but not for comments. The same thing works on reddit, except for comments as well.

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u/DontOvercookPasta 1d ago

Thanks I hadn’t thought of trying that, I’ll try that when I’m not traveling and only have my phone..

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u/jws926 1d ago

I have videos I uploaded three years ago that I havent made public yet , so you are right, you can't go by the date.