PBS uploaded the video of Kirk's wife eulogy and the thumbnail was her smiling and people, including myself chocked this up to PBS being propogandist scumbags.
I did an experiment and downloaded their video and uploaded it, and these were the AI auto generated picks.
The thing about auto youtube thumbnails is they almost always pick happy faces over sad faces because in general people will click a happy attractive face over a sad face.
As someone who's uploaded videos to Youtube, youtube's auto thumbnails almost always go for moments where smiling happens because it's "good for the algorithim"
Those were the only 3 choices I was given without having to create a custom thumbnail.
Since PBS news uploads like 10 videos a day, and their videos are just news, they go with whatever the auto thumbnail is over custom thumbnails. The majority of their videos are just screenshots from the video itself. On their channel they rarely use a custom thumbnail.
They're a factory mill trying to compete to get things out in a world where seconds matter in terms of having the edge with views.
Would it be better for them to scrub through, find a shot where she's sad looking, screenshot it and post it as a custom thumbnail out of respect? Absolutely.
But they're a business, and businesses only care about opportunity cost, is the time worth the money, juice worth the squeeze. When you're right on to the next upload immediately, you don't do the due diligence or care about your last upload if you're a video factory mill.
Same thing with all the AI slop channels that fills the internet. They don't care about quality, just about the bottom line.
PBS uploaded the video of Kirk's wife eulogy and the thumbnail was her smiling and people, including myself chocked this up to PBS being propogandist scumbags.
I did an experiment and downloaded their video and uploaded it, and these were the AI auto generated picks.
The thing about auto youtube thumbnails is they almost always pick happy faces over sad faces because in general people will click a happy attractive face over a sad face.
As someone who's uploaded videos to Youtube, youtube's auto thumbnails almost always go for moments where smiling happens because it's "good for the algorithim"
Those were the only 3 choices I was given without having to create a custom thumbnail.
Since PBS news uploads like 10 videos a day, and their videos are just news, they go with whatever the auto thumbnail is over custom thumbnails. The majority of their videos are just screenshots from the video itself. On their channel they rarely use a custom thumbnail.
So they're just lazy as shit.
Understood.
They're a factory mill trying to compete to get things out in a world where seconds matter in terms of having the edge with views.
Would it be better for them to scrub through, find a shot where she's sad looking, screenshot it and post it as a custom thumbnail out of respect? Absolutely.
But they're a business, and businesses only care about opportunity cost, is the time worth the money, juice worth the squeeze. When you're right on to the next upload immediately, you don't do the due diligence or care about your last upload if you're a video factory mill.
Same thing with all the AI slop channels that fills the internet. They don't care about quality, just about the bottom line.
It would take all of five seconds to wait until she's not smiling, take a screenshot, and set it as the thumbnail. Dont excuse their laziness.