usatoday24
The 2025 Internet is dominated by algorithms that seem to know each other better than ourselves. They were only missing Chatbots with memory than adding to your ability to read between the lines.
In this scenario, YouTube is increasingly a beautiful anomaly. While Tiktok, Instagram or X drag us from one subject to another according to the whims of a system that optimizes engagement Pure, Google’s video platform maintains almost anachronistic respect for our choices.
It is the last redoubt where what we are looking for still matters more than what makes us react.
The difference is in Its algorithmic architecture.
- YouTube recommends mainly within the thematic ecosystems that we have already chosen.
- Tiktok, on the other hand, can launch us from vegan recipes to conspiracy theories at a time if that keeps our thumbs sliding.
This thematic verticality It is not altruism, it is part of its business model: You need to maintain long sessions within specific issues, where segmented ads have greater value. Only its consequence is positive for the user. Or at least more positive than the rest.
The best way to understand what makes YouTube different is to live it as a user. When I am looking for videos of Valencia, the algorithm keeps me in that world: post-part interviews, gatherings, montages of the best goals of the season and usually memories of a better past.
It does not suddenly jump to polarizing politics or drag me to incendiary content it happens to provoke my outrage. YouTube respects the thematic ecosystem that I choose. Amplify our searches, do not try to manipulate us better.
The user experience reinforces this sense of control:
- A prominent search bar.
- Channels to subscribe.
- Lists we actively build.
- A history that we can manage.
They are vestiges of an internet where we sailed with purpose, not where we were navigated.
It is also fair to indicate that YouTube belongs to Google, one of the great architects of the current algorithmic Internet. It is not immune to problems – the clickbait it blooms and its own attempts with YouTube Shorts They show that it is not above the market. However, it maintains a different balance.
And the question is obvious: if this more balanced model works for the world’s largest video platform, why do the rest of the industry opt for systems that virtually annul our agency?
YouTube also has serious problems. Their Rabbit Holes (Something like ‘Backgroundless wells’) They can take us on paths cobbled by radicalization. Its monetization system favors the extension and recurrence of quality. We are not facing a hero, but before a survivor who has found a niche where he prosper without completely eliminating our autonomy.
In the end this this chronology of the evolution of the Internet. The web (yesterday Gloria, today survival) was originally a space where we chose our destinations. Today algorithms decide for us. YouTube retains vestiges of the previous model while adapting to the new one, becoming a kind of “Internet inside the Internet.”
This “limited algorithmic autonomy” allows something not only good, but almost sacred: predictability. We can anticipate what we will find, creating a more satisfactory experience. It also allows the fragmentation of communities focused on specific interests, without forcing that everything competes in a single Feed homogenized, which is The great evil of the current X and the perennial identity of Tiktok.
YouTube is not perfect – no one is – but it makes us question if we can design platforms that serve users who want to enjoy healthy, without being hooked or dragged where they do not want, and not just advertisers.
YouTube, with all its contradictions, is a sign that an intermediate path is possible. Where there is some algorithmic manipulation (it is the market, friend), but that coexist with the total user agency.
Outstanding image | Xataka with Mockuuuups Studio
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