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Nobody wants this

Many people have complained about the enshitification of the internet, mainly due to the effects of AI and related technologies.

Combine this with YouTube's endless quest to make changes that nobody wants and you'll have to topic for today's column.

Just a week or so after enforcing changes to their policies which were allegedly designed to reduce the amount of AI-generated boilerplate content on the platform, YouTube has just come out and announced that it's more tightly integrating its own generative AI into video and image creation.

Here we go again.

What are they smoking at YouTube central?

Perhaps one of the most divisive forms of content on YouTube is the "shorts" format.

While some folk are happy to waste their lives scrolling through the endless stream of mind-numbing short-form videos that are YouTube's attempt to out-do TikTok, many more of us despise these bits of brain fungus.

The problem (for those like myself) is that YouTube provides no way to dodge this mindless content. There is no "excude shorts" filter on searches and even if you click the "hide shorts" button you're told either "we'll show you LESS of this content" or "shorts will be hidden for 30 days".

What part of I NEVER WANT TO SEE ANOTHER SHORT does YouTube not understand?

And now, in their endless attempts to force shorts on us all, YouTube has integrated its AI video generator VEO2 into the workflow for creating and publishing them.

Yes, it is now even easier to create short clips that have so little value that even when monetised, millions of views will barely earn you enough to buy a coffee.

Perhaps you're thinking that I am over-stating the issue of the way Google is enshitifying YouTube but to see what others think I urge you to look at these comments left by readers of ArsTechnica. They relate to a story on the subject (scroll up to see that story) and very clearly show that nobody needs this change, nobody wants this change and nobody at Google/YouTube gives a damn about what people want or need.

It's now all about the money I guess. Well over at Google and YouTube it's been all about the money for a very long time now.

Another recent report clearly shows that Google's AI summaries on search results halves the number of clicks that those results get. Google's AI is effectively making the websites that were scraped to train that AI, redundant.

As Google positions itself so that people won't need to leave its properties, even when searching, a lot of websites may decide it's simply no longer worth the cost of being online and shut their doors. No doubt they'll be replaced by a tsunami of AI-generated sites containing nothing but dross. That dross will then be scraped and used as part of future AI training datasets.

Then the AI psychosis sets in and AI effectively ankle-taps itself.

Unless those "pure" datasets have been carefully archived and curated, we'll reach a point where we don't know exactly when the rot began to set in. I predict that AI will go from useful servant to savant, its potential all but destroyed by the equivalent of inbreeding due to feasting on its own AI excrement.

Oh boy, exciting times ahead.

And, if you want to stay ahead, please take time to remember how to think for yourself. Don't allow AI to become a crutch that is so over-used that your own brain no longer functions as it should.

Carpe Diem folks!

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