I get so frustrated with the idiotic thumbnails on youtube video these days. I am sure it's all optimized for the maximum number of clicks/views but if I see a still that looks the way it does at the bottom of this page I generally just don't watch it on principle.
Believe me, I had a nice discussion yesterday with my sister (who helped me take pictures for the thumbnail), and we both agreed it's one of the dumbest things about current YouTube...
The thing is, from all my own A/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.
The question not being asked is how your audience changes A vs B in other ways than size.
You can easily A/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.
And you end up making emotionally charged rage-porn political videos and have become the next Facebook/cable news/etc.
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.
> The question not being asked is how your audience changes A vs B in other ways than size.
That's not how it works.
The most important factor to get views on YouTube is the recommendation algorithm. It makes a huge difference. YouTube will not even push your videos to people who are subscribed to you if the recommendation algorithm doesn't favor them.
As the click-through rate is an important part of how the algorithm decides what to recommend, you need a catchy thumbnail and a somewhat clickbaity title or you will be reduced to oblivion by people who use one regardless of the actual quality of your content. The story is the same with the length of video.
Veritasium made a couple of very good videos on the issue if you are interested.
Youtube algorithms are truly weird. I have a YT account with, I think, 3 or 4 subscribers and maybe a dozen or two views on the 10-20 videos I ever uploaded. I basically use YT to upload things that I want to share with some close friends.
Then, earlier this year, one of my videos suddenly skyrocketed[1]. It was an old video, 10 years or so, and it only consisted of one 10 second scene of a movie that I found funny at that time, and that I shared with a couple friends. It had about 50 views until march.
Then, it suddenly exploded, and now that video has just short of 1 million views, with a peak of ~60k or so per day.
I have absolutely no idea what crazy algorithm suddenly started recommending a 10-year-old video that is nothing more than a 10s snippet from a hollywood movie to millions and millions of people around the world.
The most interesting part (for me) was the psychological effect this had on me. First, my phone started sending notifications like crazy (I turned them off pretty quickly). That changed into a daily morning-routine of "let's see how many people watched the video this night"... Then, when the new followers came (I gained a couple hundred during that time) I had a feeling of guilt because I think they somehow "expect" similar clips from me from now on, and I would be letting them down (of course, totally irrational, I could care less of what some random people expect from me). Then I started researching how much revenue I could have gained from that if that were a "real" video with original content and ads thrown in.....
the only culture I like about Youtube is how the other commenters and viewers know that they all found each other due to the algorithm, because they watched anyway!
What the parent comment said still applies. Algorithm or not, you can become a top pop singer either by having a really good voice and being talented or by being singling about how you enjoy something controversial just to create outrage. The only difference is your audience.
It's going to be really hard to be a top YouTuber if the YouTube algorithm just doesn't show your videos in the same way the best singer in the world would never get any audience if no one could hear them sing.
More than that, they are probably training models to predict the click-through-rate based on the image thumbnail, automatically discounting your content if it doesn't look like this, even if it does end up attracting clicks in reality!
A/B testing attracts the bots in my experience. Peoples' tastes change quicker than the bots' decision models do. Given that's somewhat of a bold statement, then try this thought experiment: If A/B tests actually work, then wouldn't you expect there to be zero films and/or TV shows released that are flops?
I honestly wonder which came first, the viewer preference or the algorithm.
Like are there people out there that see a whacky face in the thumbnail and think "Oh that's a video I want to watch!" and the algorithm just got trained on that?
Or did whacky faces just resemble something (from the algorithm's perspective) that was briefly popular and then a positive feedback loop of algorithm recommends it -> gets popular -> algorithm updated to recommend it more often.
I've discussed this with my brother a bit (he's a neurologist, though not a specialist in vision), and he seems to think part of it goes back to our brain's instinct to react more to 'face' than other stimuli. Therefore thumbnails with a discernible face will do better.
And on top of that, an expression outside of "stock photo smile" will stand out more, and if you combine that, plus a catchy title that piques your interest, and have a video that can back it up, it will do a lot better than just having a video that has good content.
This explanation never really made sense to me. It's not like videos are hidden in a background and the thumbnail needs to stand out in our field of vision. Videos are presented front and center, and you're only looking at a few at a time. I presume everyone looks at all the video thumbnails; I just go left to right, top to bottom. Maybe if you were presented with hundreds of options at once and had to click on something quickly, something that draws the eye might get that sort of response, but that's not how Youtube works.
Instead you are presented with a small number of options and given unlimited time to choose, and the consequence of choosing a bad video is several minutes of wasted time. I presume most people are asking themselves "do I want to watch this" and deciding "yes, this video looks interesting/entertaining/etc." Maybe if the effect were small, like 1-2% I could believe its just a slight nudge due to psychological hacking, but the reported differences in the tens of percent and the extreme importance that seems to be placed by the algorithm indicates this is a major factor in peoples' decision making process.
I doubt this is how most people's eyes actually scan a visual field. I expect there's a lot more randomness going on subconsciously, and that face-like features cause a higher subconscious dwell time.
had to click on something quickly...but that's not how Youtube works.
I think for most people it is. Scroll scroll scroll tap, all within a few seconds.
It's how we scan text. I'm also reading the titles of the videos. Maybe there's a very quick scan of the page beforehand, but if I click on any of the options presented, it's only after I've done that main scan.
When you're only presented with a tiny bit of information, it doesn't take long to evaluate a decision. A few seconds is a long time. No one, at least to my knowledge, is opening youtube and clicking on the first thing they see in milliseconds. Hell, just variation in page loading time probably has a bigger effect on what we see first. Critically though, there's no deadline - even if you see something you want to watch quickly, you don't have to click on something if you don't see something you want to watch. Without time pressure, there's no need to make an impulsive click.
> he seems to think part of it goes back to our brain's instinct to react more to 'face' than other stimuli.
I've noticed this same thing with advertisements and dancing. Why are people always dancing and singing in advertisements? Seems like people just are wired to pay attention to certain human behaviors.
I also think the graphics, title, face; these are signaling some level of effort and focus. It might not be the individual face, graphics, or title, it could be just their presence.
I think people's eyes are just naturally drawn to faces, so more people end up seeing the thumbnail among the grid of other videos, and are more likely to watch the it as a result
That's the base narrative, but I find it difficult to believe without proper controlled testing. People are 25% more likely to click on a technical video when the creator is trying to look like a buffoon? It just doesn't sound correct.
People don't click on the video because of the dumb face. They watch the video if they think they'll be interested in it. But the dumb face makes it more likely that you will initially notice the thumbnail
Weirdly enough, the algorithm works wonders for me when I'm not logged in. It does what it is supposed to do. Give me more of what I might want while throwing in a heathly dash interesting things I might be interested in. YT to me, bon apetit.
But when I'm logged in, it shows me the exact videos I've been avoiding watching these past few weeks and when I do watch a video, instead of showing me similar vids or vids from the same creator - it just shows me videos I've watched or the video updates I've been avoiding. And the odd Taylor Swift MV, an artist whose works (is it even music) I've never even...not even in a mix.
He's explained it's pretty much for the same reason the OP did it. It's possible to prove it works, especially when you're releasing a video each day. Youtube at this point is about optimizing clicks. People like Mr.Beast generally know their video title and thumbnail before they even start production on the content.
Unconvinced. LTT has 1 or 2 good videos for every 30 videos they release. Maybe the face helps people click the bad videos, but the good videos stand for themselves and it's likely that he would be successful without playing the game. (His all time most popular video doesn't have a thumbnail of him making a weird face. It's his most popular video of all time because his guest was exceedingly entertaining.)
(Also, I don't mean for this to be an anti-Linus post. How he built LMG is a great story and he deserves the success he's achieved.)
Very offtopic but, at first I thought you said L1T and we almost had to take this outside. Level1Techs is awesome. Can't say much for LinusTechTips as it's targeting a different audience, though the young man does seem charismatic.
But why is view count the only metric you care about? How about getting fewer views but more engagement, with viewers that want to see the content but are turned off by the stupid thumbnails?
Getting fewer views (and likely much reduced watch time) means YouTube's algorithm quickly buries your video.
You and I might use subscriptions on YouTube (just like I prefer RSS), but 99% of viewers for some reason just go to the home page and click on things YouTube recommends (regardless of whether they subscribe to a channel).
If you don't get recommended, you don't get views, and it's even less likely that regular viewers (outside the few who actually check their subscriptions page) will engage with your videos.
Also, Bryan Lunduke also moved over to Locals and has generally expressed that it's a more pleasant community: https://lunduke.locals.com/
Of course, i don't doubt that it's akin to financial suicide for anyone who relies on YouTube as their main source of income, but if nothing else, it's nice to see people standing up for their principles, instead of selling out and trying to build their platform on another site that can end their presence at will.
I guess only time will show whether there ever will be any financially feasible alternatives to YouTube, though.
> Getting fewer views (and likely much reduced watch time) means YouTube's algorithm quickly buries your video.
Question remains: so what? Unless you are monetizing your videos and intend to make significant money from “engagement”, why would someone single-minded let optimize for views or algorithm-friendliness?
For this guy, I guess he’s trying to make a living from YouTube, so I guess… by all means growth hack your video thumbnail. But for the rest of the video uploaders, absent a desire to monetize, a video with 100 views is no worse for the uploader than a video with 100,000 views.
My guess is that everyone that uploads videos with catchy titles and thumbnails wants to monetize their videos eventually. Even if money isn't a motivation, getting more views probably has a value in itself for most content creators.
Because the video includes paid promotion and YouTube does not reward fewer views with more engagement.
(and if we're honest if you really do want to see the content then depriving yourself because of the contents of the thumbnail feels very self-defeating)
Maybe both your observation and HN is right: the distribution is multi-modal in the sense that (presumably) there is a large majority of people where the thumbnail works for and views the content, and then there is a small (and possibly vocal) minority of people who absolutely hate it and treat it as an anti-signal. I know I belong in the latter group and will lose all interest in the video once I see the weird face and the edited icon. I've seen a few of your videos and they're indeed very good. That said, I've noticed that I semi-consciously would avoid your video due to the icon which triggers an immediate reaction from me to stay away. It's a shame, because I know that the videos can be good, but the thumbnail is actively driving me away. In a way, I'm no different than the people who clicks on these videos, as I am also judging a book by its covers.
This kind of multi-modal behaviour can be very hard to capture with A/B test. You get a large influx of people that more than offsets the loss in the other audience pool. It's also anyone's guess on which group is better. From a pure business perspective, it's probably okay to lose me, as I use adblock and/or youtube-dl to watch the videos, which means I don't really drive revenue. That said, I've noticed some second order effects: as I'm more technical, I would recommend these type of content to others who will listen to my advice. I've noticed similar effects with others. If the more technical people are in the second group and are driven away, I wonder if this kind of stuff makes a difference with the long term health of a channel/content generator, which could be very difficult to quantify.
Like the sibling commenter here, reactions to this (as I've observed) are indeed very bimodal. If I see any video on YouTube with a face with a strong expression, I will not click it, no matter how interesting the title, because I hate how contrived the thumbnail is.
I think it might be more honest of you to phrase it not as: I have to do this because otherwise I don't get 20% more views. That feels a little bit disingenuous to me. You don't have to do anything. You could probably get a lot more views by colluding with another YouTuber to create drama or apparent "fights", like so many seem to. Aka, go full Kardashian. But you don't. You choose very explicitly what you do. Which does include goofy face thumbnails, but does not include staging YouTube drama.
A more honest phrasing to me might be something like: "Goofy faces get more views, and without them, my YouTube channel has much less income. I'm trying to support myself with YouTube, and so I am doing goofy faces even though I hate it and think it's completely asinine." You get really close to something like this phrasing, & the underlying message can be gathered by your other comments, but you don't outright own it. If you are going to do something asinine for exposure, you might as well own it imo.
So, with that out of the way: This project is really cool and thanks for doing a write-up & video on it :)
I just wanted to thank you for replying so candidly and I did not mean to turn this post in a discussion about youtube thumbnails, your post otherwise was quite interesting!
Having a face in the thumbnail helps me to identify channels that already of interest me. That is the positive.
While there is an element of entertainment to the channel, I usually view your channel for information (e.g. interesting project ideas). I expect the thumbnail to show me what the video is about. If an exaggerated facial expression draws my attention away from that, or leads me to believe there is more entertainment than substance to the video (e.g. it is for shock value), then I will simply skip over it.
Throwing in a face for a 20-30% increase in views is almost certainly worth it. The question is: are the exaggerated attention grabbing thumbnails worth a bit more than that? Each time I skip a video, the channel's relevance goes down in my mind. Each time the relevance goes down, I am less likely to assess future thumbnails positively.[1] My thoughts are that the "bit more" may be of short term value for gaining viewers, but counterproductive in retaining long term viewers.
[1] Yes, it is an unfair assessment since it is based upon unwatched videos. On the other hand, viewers are confronted with a deluge of videos each time they visit YouTube.
Could you please A/B test if it needs to be your exaggerated face or if stock photos would suffice? ;)
Also kudos to building your brand, I only saw the headline and already figured it might be you.. (or Linus, but it didn't say anything about /dropping/ 5k)
That's a good question, actually. I don't know what the inflection point would be, but at some point too, you get some face recognition with existing audience that might increase the CTR versus stock photos.
I think it would have a lot to do with whether the presenter is part of the video (I do 'talking head' a lot) versus off-camera (like, for example, ETA Prime, LPL, or AvE).
Exaggerated face with a PCB is basically your trademark. If you see it while scrolling you know it's you (and that it's going to be high quality content).
I'm not convinced that it's optimized in any way. Linus claims to have A/B tested it, but changing the thumbnails disturbs the experiment too much (different time of day, Youtube knows that you changed the thumbnail and probably uses that information for something, CDN lag, who knows what else), and the sample size is too small to be statistically meaningful.
I watch a ton of YouTube and exaggerated facial expressions in thumbnails are rare in the channels I watch. The channels don't seem to be suffering for it, many have subscriber counts in the millions. I even have a concrete head-to-head example. Every Saturday morning, two channels I watch (clough42 and blondihacks) both post videos. YouTube puts them at the top of recommended every Saturday without fail. clough42 uses his face in the thumbnails, blondihacks uses a picture of her project. Both get recommended. Both channels have grown dramatically over the last year. As far as I can tell, YouTube considers them equally good.
On the other hand, I might not be the target demographic for "I cobbled together a bunch of computer shit" videos (which is kind of LTT's and Jeff Geerling's shtick). So maybe it's the right optimization for that kind of channel. (But if you want revenue, then your sponsors probably want me watching the video and not 13 year old kids with no money. Just saying.)
I will conclude that I pretty much won't click videos like this. Seeing the inside of someone's mouth in a computing video basically says to me "look, the content isn't very good, but I know how to play the game". This is unfair (Jeff, your content is fine), but it's how I feel. It's like seeing the first Google result for "foo bar" being "Cheap Foo Bars Foo Bar Food Bar Foo Bar Compatible With Quuxgorch". I'm not going to click it. You may have won the algorithm, but you didn't win me.
I'd believe it works in an A/B test, but the end of the day the reason it's higher is young children click on anything with that stupid looking face on it.
So I bet it does result in higher views, just children viewing it.
Doesn't mean you should do it though, maybe try having some dignity.
I came into the comments just to say exactly that. What’s worse is that OP is aware and admits it’s stupid, yet continues to engage in this shady, annoying, and extremely stupid tactic.
I don’t click on crap videos and content like that on principle. Interesting or not.
I don't know what Jeff Geerling's income is, but I'm pretty sure he's a full time Youtuber at this point. He doesn't like the stupid thumbnails either, but generating Youtube views is pretty much his job. Maybe there's some kind of long term strategy where refraining from stupid thumbnails curates a more intelligent audience, but if your livelihood depends on audience size, that's a big risk to take. In fact I hope it works out that way, but until that's a proven strategy I can't fault geerlingguy for the stupid thumbnails.
Youtube is gamified. Jeff doesn't play the game, he doesn't get the views. If he doesn't get the views, he doesn't get the sponsorships. If he doesn't get the sponsorships, he goes back to being a just another devops engineer who doesn't make the thing no one else will ever make.
I get it, the face is the worst. But until youtube fixes its algorithm (i dunno, to de-prioritize videos with 'the face') the Jeff's have to do the face to get the views to get the algorithmic advantage to get the views to get the sponsors to make the making worth the making.
I understand where you're coming from, but you're talking as if this "Jeff" is a machine and not a person. He's a real human who can think and make decisions regardless of what this "algorithm" could potentially dictate. This prioritization of the "face" is all speculation at the end of the day, and until the "Jeff"s of Youtube stop acting like machines and start acting like thinking-individuals who don't think that the end justify the means, the stupid face will take over, and this is what I and others are criticizing.
Isn't it how YouTube works now? It's not 2005 anymore; Cringe thumbnail, Click-bait headline and more cringe in the Video is the standard operating procedure for someone who wants to make a YouTube career, eventually making enough revenue to do all that in a larger scale with Michael Bay movie budget.
There are very few left on YT who continue to make unedited video in the maker space[1][2] and obviously get punished by YT algorithms for that.
Cringe is part and parcel of YT, If we don't like it we should be watching videos on PeerTube, LBRY etc.
I'm glad I'm not the only one with this feeling. I get that it's producing more views and you need to play the youtube game, but I miss a lot of content just because I decide NOT to click out of principle.
It’s not just the thumbnail faces. Streamers constantly overreact to even the most mundane things.
My son and a friend of his were watching some pair of Minecraft streamers, and I couldn’t get follow what was happening. Both men were constantly yelling “WHAT? WHAT? OH MY GOD! AHHHHHHHHH!” As far as I could tell, they were both yelling independent things, and just walking around sheep.
As someone who constantly underreacts to everything, even when I receive a nice gift, I must confess that I am somewhat jealous of the streamer generation.
I think it's because the thumbnails are small, so if the faces aren't exaggerated you won't perceive any particular emotion at all. It's a bit like the difference between theatre and film acting.
This is probably why. Similarly, stage makeup on actors is typically very heavy to accentuate the facial features at a distance, making them easier to read.
But that starts from the premise that you even care about the "emotion" expressed in the video. While I'm sure that there are many genres of videos where the emotions expressed by the authors are relevant to the topic at hand, there are many topics in which an expression of emotion, let alone an exaggerated one, is completely out of place.
I don't think that's true. I'm sure a lot of youtubers want people to enjoy their videos and get something from them, but they're also monetizing eyeballs. That means clicks on videos, which means grabbing attention in the video thumbnails. All other things being equal, people will click on a thumbnail with someone with an exaggerated facial expression more often than a neutral one.
As to why that works, my theory is that we're wired to respond to more extreme emotional displays because we're socially oriented great apes and that kind of information is important for navigating the world.
Really sad to see so many people dismiss this just based on the YouTube thumbnail at the bottom. Jeff consistently makes very high quality content, I really enjoyed his series on Kubernetes, I would urge you to look past any preconceptions there.
The fact is, if YouTube makes up a sizeable portion of your income, and that can increase by a factor of 10% just by making a dumb face, you’d be silly not to do so. It’s unfortunate that this is the way things work, but I can personally look past that to ensure that creators who provide value to me are able to put food on the table.
There's a thread not too far from this one where people are complaining about the difficulty of cancelling subscriptions to their gyms. I'm sure the gyms use similar reasoning.
Enticing someone to try the content is different from making it difficult for them to stop paying for it. A more appropriate analogy would be if gyms noticed that having pictures of fit people in the advertisement increased the effectiveness of the ads and you were complaining about that. A face in a thumbnail has no cost to you.
That's a fair assessment. So I guess the question is, do we think having ads that psychologically manipulate us into doing things we would not otherwise do are not making the world a worse place? Because I feel that they are. There is a mental cost to fighting this attempted manipulation that we all have to pay.
> The fact is, if YouTube makes up a sizeable portion of your income, and that can increase by a factor of 10% just by making a dumb face, you’d be silly not to do so.
Sorry, I don't believe profit motive alone should ever be acceptable justification for making the world a worse place. You might argue that stupid faces and clickbait titles don't really make the world a worse place, and if that's the case we'll just have to agree to disagree.
This guy makes free high quality content for random strangers online to enjoy and learn from and you’re unironically accusing him of making the world a worse place?
Spend 1 week doing the work of making free content for strangers online and then you can get on your soapbox about YouTube thumbnails. Until then you just sound like a parasite.
Yes, I am. It's only a tiny bit worse mind you, but it all adds up.
Just because you make something and give it away doesn't entitle you to a pass for making the world a worse place in the process. People make systemd for free and get endless shit about the ways it makes the world worse, google produces chrome for free and gets endless shit about the ways it makes the world worse, etc.
Besides, lets be clear here: if the goal is to produce and give away videos they don't need to optimize for generating clicks, and therefore ad revenue, do they?
> People make systemd for free and get endless shit about the ways it makes the world worse, google produces chrome for free and gets endless shit
The existence of systemd and chrome have unequivocally made the world a better place. The world would unequivocally be a worse place if they did not exist.
> Besides, lets be clear here: if the goal is to produce and give away videos they don't need to optimize for generating clicks, and therefore ad revenue, do they?
You sound like someone who has never made anything independently in their life. He has chosen to make a living by providing free technical content online. That’s clearly his passion and it’s a net benefit for the world. To support his passion he needs to make sure he can make a minimum profit otherwise he cannot sustain his work of providing you with free content. To support himself he must optimize his view count to get his ad revenue to a minimum amount, as well as generate other revenue sources.
This should all be obvious to any functioning human so either you are completely detached from reality or you have some problem with independent creators needing money to live. But then why? It’s a job like any other, except in his case his job provides you with free high quality technical content.
> The existence of systemd and chrome have unequivocally made the world a better place.
Whether or not that is true is besides the point. The point is that it is valid to criticise them regardless of the fact that these things were given away for free.
> You sound like someone who has never made anything independently in their life.
Incorrect.
> He has chosen to make a living by providing free technical content online.
Let's all take a moment to ponder this particular arrangement of words.
> To support his passion he needs to make sure he can make a minimum profit otherwise he cannot sustain his work of providing you with free content.
Why is he entitled to this? What I mean is, why should I consider his ability to do the kind of work he wants and get paid for it sufficient justification for preying on human psychological quirks to get them to do something they, rather objectively, would otherwise not do?
> It’s like you have a problem with independent creators needing money to live.
Quite the contrary! But we're not paying this creator are we? This creator is "giving" us their product for "free"... with the expectation of receiving ad revenue from our views, a not-insubstantial portion of which were admittedly provoked by exploitation of human psychology.
>> The existence of systemd and chrome have unequivocally made the world a better place.
> Whether or not that is true is besides the point. The point is that it is valid to criticise them regardless of the fact that these things were given away for free.
You’re moving the goal post. My initial comment wasn’t because you criticized him. You may do that all you like without any issue from me. My comment was responding to your claim that he was making the world a worse place because of his YouTube thumbnails.
>> You sound like someone who has never made anything independently in their life.
> Incorrect.
Prove me wrong, link me to anything you’ve independently created for others online.
>> He has chosen to make a living by providing free technical content online.
> Let's all take a moment to ponder this particular arrangement of words. Then, lets all take a moment to ponder the meaning of "free".
You’re joking right? Free as in people do not have to pay money to watch his content.
>> To support his passion he needs to make sure he can make a minimum profit otherwise he cannot sustain his work of providing you with free content.
>Why is he entitled to this? What I mean is, why should I consider his ability to do the kind of work he wants and get paid for it sufficient justification for preying on human psychological quirks to get them to do something they, rather objectively, would otherwise not do?
He’s not entitled to anything. This has nothing to do with him doing the work he wants. You accused him of making the world a worse place for styling his YouTube thumbnail in a way that maximizes the number of people who click on his video. That’s obviously silly when his videos are adding much more to the lives of many hundreds if not thousands of people.
YouTube gives everyone the ability to create custom thumbnails. Should he make one that’s all grey? Obviously not. Accusing him of psychological manipulation because he puts the effort into making his thumbnails more appealing is ridiculous. That’s like saying artists who make more appealing art are engaging in psychological manipulation. Given the option, it’s only rational to make appealing thumbnails and appealing art just the same. Intentionally choosing to not do so would be more concerning.
> But we're not paying this creator are we? This creator is "giving" us their product for "free"...
His content is unequivocally free, no scare quotes needed. Most people get value out of watching his videos. Also advertisers make money from people watching it. It’s a win-win. Not everything is zero sum. You aren’t paying just because he’s earning.
> You’re joking right? Free as in people do not have to pay money to watch his content.
Sure, in a very literal interpretation of the word "free", the same interpretation that would allow me to say "I'm free to not pay my taxes".
> You accused him of making the world a worse place for styling his YouTube thumbnail in a way that maximizes the number of people who click on his video. That’s obviously silly when his videos are adding much more to the lives of many hundreds if not thousands of people.
Can you not see how much this reads like marketing copy? You make it almost sound like they're doing the world a service by getting them to click on the video (thus generating money for them) they otherwise wouldn't have.
Putting that aside, as I mentioned elsewhere I am not convinced by the "ends justify the means" argument on display here.
> That’s like saying artists who make more appealing art are engaging in psychological manipulation.
They are, but that's also precisely what they're selling. We view art with the expectation and desire for it to manipulate us. I suppose you could make the argument that at least some people actually want that from youtube thumbnails, but I would point out that that is roughly equivalent to saying people actually like the addictive qualities of lootboxes.
I agree if we’re talking about YouTubers who are already making millions, but if you’re a smaller channel making high-quality videos, I would imagine that view bump is the difference between being able to work on producing videos full time, and having to work multiple jobs.
At that point then, maybe the thumbnails do make the world a worse place, but I believe that’s offset by having more of the good-quality videos produced (since more time can be spent on them if you don’t have to work 2 jobs).
I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this. Obviously the same utilitarian calculus doesn’t apply if the content a channel is producing is crappy alongside the obnoxious thumbnails.
The ends justify the means? I'm not convinced that's a good rationale. For one, everyone thinks their ends are the important ones so of course they justify the means, even though no one else necessarily sees it that way. Again, I point at the thread with the discussion of gym membership cancelation practices. Of course the gym can justify that to themselves: it's better for the customer because as long as they're paying anyway they're probably going to use the service and become healthier people! Or even just: I like money!
There is an argument to be made that engaging in this metric-chasing behavior will invariably lead to worse content anyway. After all, if there was a lot of demand for the content being produced then such tactics shouldn't be necessary in the first place. Over time, the kind of content they produce could continue to regress towards the mean, which is garbage.
Precisely my point. Where would you personally draw the line? Would you invent a new kind of unstoppable popup ad? Unbreakable DRM? Would you implement an overly complicated and error prone gym membership cancellation procedure?
You can easily justify all that to yourself for selfish reasons. That does not mean that I have to think it is ok.
yea, i totally agree with everything you are saying except that making a silly face in a thumbnail does not carry the same ethical weight (or really any at all) as unbreakable DRM or malicious pop-ups or uncancellable subscriptions. So i guess, in conclusion, i don't agree with you at all and i think your argument is complete horseshit. cheers!
Yes agreed, HN is an amazing community but there seems to be a sizable contingent of grumpy old men when looking at some comment threads like this one above. nature of the beast I guess.
The headline buries the lede: It’s a NAS build that uses expensive SSDs.
I’m looking forward to the day that I can retire my spinning-disk NAS, but at $700 per 8TB SSD I think it’s going to be a while before they’re cheap enough that I want to take that leap.
Like this article concludes: Using a Raspberry Pi for an SSD NAS is a huge waste. There are plenty of low-power Mini-ITX or smaller x86 boards with substantially more compute power than the Pi.
Hard drives can easily saturate a 1Gbps link. And RAIDed hard drives can saturate 5Gbps or even 10Gbps with enough parallelism.
I'm not sure if any NAS is cost-effective when you use SSDs, aside from maybe a cost-effective SSD cache (Maybe a $100 to $250 1TB L2ARC cache, depending on the speed of the SSD you get).
Indeed, the board in the video (Radxa Taco, hopefully for sale next month) would actually make a decent 1 Gbps NAS (with a 2nd 2.5G port if you want to also use it as a router or have higher network storage speed for short bursts) for HDDs.
Most of the average NAS HDDs top out at speeds that are within the Pi's performance realm, though software RAID and ZFS both bottleneck a bit, so you can't get a full 2.5 Gbps (2.3 Gbps real-world) through the Pi to the disks.
Interesting, I have an old HP MicroServer laying around gathering dust. It only has a dual core AMD Turion (like Intel Atom) and 4Gb of memory. It should be easy to retrofit this with a Pi, in fact there's an empty 5.25" drive bay on this case.
> I’m looking forward to the day that I can retire my spinning-disk NAS, but at $700 per 8TB SSD I think it’s going to be a while before they’re cheap enough that I want to take that leap.
It's not just the price - SSDs are not a good choice for long-term storage, especially if they're not powered up continuously.
In practice, I don't really care about those SSD limitations.
Modern SSDs last long enough that I can cheaply upgrade in 5 years to something else before any of the drives likely fail.
If one or even two drives fail, I'm covered by Raid-Z2.
Continuously powering solid-state drives is really not a big deal. The 10 Gigabit ethernet adapter in my NAS would probably have more idle power draw than 6-8 idle SSDs combined. The entire system barely pulls 20-25W at idle.
I've heard about the same thing, but I have yet to see evidence of this. I have an old SSD on the shelf that I may be power up every 1.5 years or so, and so far, it works fine. It's around 8 years old.
I mean, it could always do that. You can connect a ton of drives over USB (I think the device limit is 127).
The question when it comes to RPi-powered NASes is whether it can do that well and the answer is as everyone expected: not really; the CPU is the bottleneck regardless of the underlying interface the drives connect over.
These sorts of articles come up a lot on HN, where it's "I did <some mundane thing for any recent x86 PC> with a Raspberry Pi!"
There's an odd fascination with this specific brand of hardware that I can never totally wrap my mind around. I guess it's probably an easy way for people to try out a Linux based computer with a minimal expenditure, and a launching point for new users to start trying things out. Of course, it's not like RPi has a monopoly on little low powered Linux computers either - there are plenty of alternatives even in that niche (e.g. from Pine64).
That's always my question with these too. I want to know if the RPi can saturate a 1GbE connection, and really, even if the RPi can connect a bunch of SSDs, how well does it really use those resources -- and like you said, the answer is usually no.
> Pi's bus being only Gen 2 and x1 means you're quite limited in terms of bandwidth
In my testing over the past year, almost everything gets a 5-20% speed boost by cutting out the USB 3.0 layer, except for large file sequential copies. It adds up, and is also more reliable and practical for things like ZFS.
Disagree. Plain Pi won't be able to attach 4 sata drives natively and is not a real alternative for actual NAS. This might be. Jeff does a lot of Pi-NAS testing and I'm thankful for that, as I find of the shelf solutions lacking a lot. Mostly software-wise. There is a huge demand for a simple NAS device that is not much larger then drives it uses, but doesn't have Qnap OS installed on it.
It has good network connectivity. 2.5G is a nice option for homelabs and actuall advanced home use.
> There is a huge demand for a simple NAS device that is not much larger then drives it uses, but doesn't have Qnap OS installed on it.
So how did this article enlighten you on software alternatives to Qnap?
Not saying the board is uninteresting, I do like these new PCIe breakout Pi "motherboards". But the whole I built a $5k server is the wrong way to sell it.
> a simple NAS device that is not much larger then drives it uses, but doesn't have Qnap OS installed on it.
Well, you could just install your favorite Linux distro on a QNAP NAS device. Cost-wise the Pi-NAS option isn't even competitive if you aim for similar spec and form factor and packaging.
a) it's hard to get support on the device when you can't provide any of the configuration dumps they ask (from their software) :)
b) It is not even close to being comparable in price with NASes Jeff tests and shows on his videos and blogs. PiBox (currently on kickstarter) is $250 in a version that has a full solution, including case, pi, charger, LCD, OS, fan, board to connect regular 3.5" drives... It is the same form factor, it has better spec than cheapest qnap devices.
Not sure about ARM-based NAS, but most x86-based QNAP NAS devices are basically a PC in hardware configuration with mature Linux support, so there's not really any support issue.
The PiBox case apparently can only house two 2.5" SATA drives, not regular 3.5" hard disks commonly used for cheap mass storage. 2.5" hard disks seem to peak at 5TB per drive so the potential capacity is limited unless you go with SSD at much much higher cost.
The PiBox's 15W power supply leaves very tight margin for its components: Pi4 peak power consumption is about 6.5W, two SATA SSDs will peak over 5W each as well, so you should watch for power for stable operation.
I couldn't find a 2.5" 2-bay NAS model so the form factor isn't identical, but the closest match is probably QNAP TS-230 w/ similar 4-core ARM A53 SoC supporting two 3.5" drives for $199. The obvious downside is that RAM is capped at 2GB and that might be a deal breaker if you want to run lots of apps, but for entry-level storage needs it should be sufficient.
PiBox with 2x3.5" is in the making, I'm actually waiting for it to be "released".
On Qnap and Linux - I'm not talking linux support. It... exists. I'm talking hardware product support. 2-3 years of warranty are standard in my region. But if I can't provide them with "proper" logs and allow them access using their software, they just won't investigate further.
The clickbait buries the lede. The Radxa Taco is an upcoming Pi breakout that come with support for 5 SSDs and 2 Ethernet ports for $100 bucks. Looks cool.
I have the Radxa 4 port SATA card[1], same JMicron chip, but for a pi4 via USB bridging "clip" in an aluminium heatshink chassis. Its working ok but the fan goes on a lot, I guess driving real spinning rust disks (I couldnt afford SSD) burns heat.
Also running ZFS. I love doing backups via zfs snapshot to an external drive.
I will probably buy this CM4 based unit. Just came here to say "the gear works, does what it says on the label" based on my experience with a prior card. (now unavailable I believe)
I am quite disappointed how slowly 2TB SSD are dropping in price. I use 2TB shucked SATA HDD, they were <$100 AUD each. I actually did think a 2TB unit would by now have dropped to =~ $120 AUD by now. I guess I didn't predict supply chain shock or the stickyness of NAND pricing.
Yeah don’t get all the gruff towards this. It’s an experiment and he took the time to put together a compendium and video about it. I’ve learned quite a few thongs from Jeff and not every creation is going to be an award winner, but at least he did something.
Jeff - you mentioned "Pi's bus being only Gen 2 and x1".
Do you see a linear scaling if those interfaces on the Pi are improved - i.e. is there anything else that looks like a near-term bottleneck if those are improved?
Great article - I love watching your youtube channel as well
Right now the CPU itself is also a bottleneck quite often. I'm often puzzled by why certain things slow down and find often the Pi's CPU architecture is slightly 'weird', especially in how the PCIe bus works.
I hope whatever comes next will have a more standard PCIe bus, and if nothing else Gen 3.1 or Gen 4, even if only x1 (that bandwidth would be a great boost).
I have a question about this. I don't use unencrypted storage and RPis have no hardware accelerated extensions.
But modern SSDs do, and IMO it is good enough for some stuff even considering the issues. They call it Self Encrypted Disks but I don't know if this feature requires some BIOS specific instructions or special devices like TMPs or if there are special parameters one could pass to GEOM or LUKS to use those encryption capabilities.
Anyone could give me a brief explanation on SED and if they could be used on RPi?
SED requires a key server to function or a utility to manually enter a password. sedutil appears to be the go-to on linux assuming it's not your boot drive:
The common standard for SED is TCG OPAL. This has a pre-boot image allowing you to enter your password. Once the drive is decrypted it is completly transparent with your unmodified bootloader and kernel loaded with normal commands.
I don't think the RasPi can trigger this unlocking nor could be modified to.
For all the I/O bottlenecks it has, I've still been rather surprised at the Pi 4/400's raw number-crunching power. It compares well to a 3.3 GHz i3-2120 in a clustered number-crunching task I sometimes run (via MPICH) - which seriously surprised me. I suspect that if it were too big to fit in-cache, the Pi would probably fall flat on its face, but still it just floors me that this itsy-bitsy SoC can do so much on seven watts at the wall socket.
The title is accurate and the actual device is shown, isn't it?
At a glance you can see that it's a pi with a lot of attached storage, so the thumbnail actually conveys just about all you'd need to know to decide whether to watch or not. No deception.
Seems pretty reasonable.
Now if instead of the guy's face and his own hands, there was a bikini model doing yoga...
The only reason why I followed the link to the article is because of the author and it appeared on HN. If I had seen that thumbnail on YouTube, I would have scrolled past it immediately since it looked ridiculous and like the sort of video that would not offer meaningful insight for the amount time invested into watching it. Thankfully the blog post was upfront about the limitations. (I trust the video would be as well, but the blog post allowed me to reach that conclusion faster.)
I tested that last year in a couple videos comparing an ASUSTOR to a Raspberry Pi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBccak8f-VY (it works fine, though network copies are still 20-30% slower on the Pi compared to the other NAS).
I may do another video on a different NAS that has a CPU closer to the Pi's.
The Taco is able to supply enough power for Seagate IronWolf NAS drives. I tested 4 of them, the one concern I have is it doesn't stagger the spinup, so if you did 5 plus a high-power NVMe you might be in trouble right at system boot.
That's what he does though: push the Raspberry Pi to its limits (and this allows us to keep our wallets safe from thinking we might want to throw expensive SSD drives at it).
