<story><title>I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it&apos;s ridiculous)</title><url>https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/i-built-5000-raspberry-pi-server-yes-its-ridiculous</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>geerlingguy</author><text>Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it&amp;#x27;s one of the dumbest things about current YouTube...&lt;p&gt;The thing is, from all my own A&amp;#x2F;B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.</text></item><item><author>rym_</author><text>I get so frustrated with the idiotic thumbnails on youtube video these days. I am sure it&amp;#x27;s all optimized for the maximum number of clicks&amp;#x2F;views but if I see a still that looks the way it does at the bottom of this page I generally just don&amp;#x27;t watch it on principle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>colechristensen</author><text>The question not being asked is how your audience changes A vs B in other ways than size.&lt;p&gt;You can easily A&amp;#x2F;B test yourself into mediocrity by constantly optimizing for a larger, dumber audience.  They stop liking your old content (despite your dumb faces, etc) so you make new content they like more, keep that cycle up for a while.&lt;p&gt;And you end up making emotionally charged rage-porn political videos and have become the next Facebook&amp;#x2F;cable news&amp;#x2F;etc.&lt;p&gt;This is also why the second or third album for a band is usually the best; they get popular and start letting their audience design their music and become repetitive and mildly awful.</text></comment>
<story><title>I built a $5k Raspberry Pi server (yes, it&apos;s ridiculous)</title><url>https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/i-built-5000-raspberry-pi-server-yes-its-ridiculous</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>geerlingguy</author><text>Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it&amp;#x27;s one of the dumbest things about current YouTube...&lt;p&gt;The thing is, from all my own A&amp;#x2F;B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.</text></item><item><author>rym_</author><text>I get so frustrated with the idiotic thumbnails on youtube video these days. I am sure it&amp;#x27;s all optimized for the maximum number of clicks&amp;#x2F;views but if I see a still that looks the way it does at the bottom of this page I generally just don&amp;#x27;t watch it on principle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjk166</author><text>I honestly wonder which came first, the viewer preference or the algorithm.&lt;p&gt;Like are there people out there that see a whacky face in the thumbnail and think &amp;quot;Oh that&amp;#x27;s a video I want to watch!&amp;quot; and the algorithm just got trained on that?&lt;p&gt;Or did whacky faces just resemble something (from the algorithm&amp;#x27;s perspective) that was briefly popular and then a positive feedback loop of algorithm recommends it -&amp;gt; gets popular -&amp;gt; algorithm updated to recommend it more often.</text></comment>