How often do you watch embedded videos?

I'm curious about how often people watch videos that are embedded into discussion topics. I'm not asking about videos where the video is an integral part of the original post in a thread, but where a video is thrown into a thread mid-discussion.

I wish there was a opinion vote for "NEVER".

If a youtube is more than 5 minutes long, I move on.

For me, it depends on who's doing the posting and whether the video seems relevant.

Sometimes someone will post a 2hr presentation of Gabe Brown's and I will watch it.

If Ludie posts something, I will watch it.

If some random person without a history of good, relevant posts posts a video with no indication why it's relevant, I might ignore it or watch a minute or two to see if it should be reported.

Very frequently.  And I try to link appropriate videos in threads when I feel it adds value.  Youtube is a gold mine of great information, with people like Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown, and many others who are doing permaculture and regenerative agriculture on a large-scale.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video (a well-made video) is worth a million.

I've learned a great deal from various videos that people have linked here on Permies.

The reason I don't watch the videos is that I'm afraid that I will get a computer virus. I'm not very savvy when it comes to computers but I've seen what happens to friends' computers when they get one. So I don't take any chances.

So, can anyone who is techy literate tell me if viewing a video on Permies is safe and virus free? I really, really, really can't afford to get a computer virus!

Su Ba wrote:So, can anyone who is techy literate tell me if viewing a video on Permies is safe and virus free? I really, really, really can't afford to get a computer virus!

Su Ba, I can't vouch for what might happen if you click through to YouTube where there are various kinds of floating banner ads on top of the videos that you have to try to click on in order to make them go away (and if you click the wrong tiny box, so sad for you!) but if you limit yourself to pressing the play button on videos that are displayed in threads here at Permies, that's very safe.  I don't want to say 100% safe because in this modern world I never know when somebody will come up with some new horrifying attack or exploit -- but that would be a genuinely astonishing one.  I honestly believe it's 100% safe to watch a Youtube video that's embedded in a Permies thread.

With respect to your broader concern about computer viruses, I don't know if you have any budget for antivirus software defenses.  But if you do, I have a product endorsement for you.  My online work for the last fifteen years requires me to spend a lot of time surfing the web in what Google calls "bad neighborhoods" -- the kind of websites that try to load viruses onto your computer in an endless stream.  So I have to have good anti-virus defenses.  I pay about $100 a year for a product called "Norton Internet Security" and it is worth every penny!  When I hit a "bad neighborhood" little alert boxes start popping up telling me the names of all the horrifying attack viruses that are being fended off, but nothing has gotten past the Norton Software in the dozen years or so that I have paying for the product.  Very likely this is overkill for your needs, but if it's a thing you worry about and you can afford it, I can promise that this product would give you peace of mind!

Frequently

Watching videos on Youtube is perfectly safe.

That said, length is the deciding factor for me generally.  

Personally, I can read faster and better than I can listen, so generally I will only watch a short video if it's something where seeing a process is an asset. The exception is when the poster specifically says something like, "this is inspiring to watch while eating lunch", in which case I'll book-mark it for such an occasion. For me, podcasts are even worse than videos, as they take way too much energy to decode. Audio is *not* my strength. That said, some of the instructional videos I have watched through permies have been excellent and far easier to understand than text alone would have been.

The data allowance from my service provider is so low that I rarely load images, browse without JavaScript as much as possible. I've also configured my browser to not download embedded fonts. The web has gotten so incredibly bloated since it's inception. If I could have 3 superpowers, at the top of the list would be the super power to force at least web developers to have to read out loud every single byte of every page they ever browse regardless if it is a site they are developing or just a site they are visiting for entertainment. This would include not just the html, css, javascript, but also a hexadecimal representation of every image, icon, pdf, audio, video and any other bit of data that constitutes a web experience. I may exempt them from reading of things such as operating system updates or desktop executable programs. If that didn't lead to the web becoming less bloated, I'd use my superpower to require them to read it all in binary. Of course since the reading would be required to be done out loud it may annoy their spouse or children or others. In case of any annoyance, they would be required to either cease their browsing session, seclude themselves so as to not annoy others, or transcribe with paper and pencil every byte that would have been read out loud.

<loosing his balance and falling off of soapbox>
Oh, yeah embedded videos......
......well I do my best to never even be aware of the existence of embedded videos by configuring my browser to never load them. I still have work to do on that because occasionally some slip by. This is the case even when I am at a WiFi hotspot with unlimited high speed internet access.
YouTube has a special place in my /etc/hosts file so it doesn't waste my bandwidth.
As for videos that are an integral part of the initial post, I almost never watch them. If there is a video I think I really need to watch, it gets bookmarked into a folder to stuff to watch when I get to a WiFi hotspot.
More often than not I find that videos are a waste of time to watch due to the fact that the necessary data could have much more efficiently been conveyed through a plain text document possibly with a few images. There are rare occasions that a video may equal or exceed the efficiency of conveying an idea accomplished by a text document with images. Numerous videos are very poorly made and they are filled with uhms and other filler words, they don't get right to the point. If you are making a video to tell me a recipe for insect repellent...DON'T!! and for the love of all that is holy, don't make that video promising a non-toxic insect repellent recipe and take 18 minutes discussing DEET and how bad it is!! JUST type up a text file with the ingredients and any mixing instructions and be done with it! If you want to make a video of how to paint a mountain scene then that may be something that would be more difficult for someone to learn by reading a text file with or without pictures so a video may be appropriate. In most cases, if you want to make a high quality worthwhile video, you need to invest quite a lot of time into it. In most cases, you should start with writing a script and then proofreading that script and then rehearsing and then doing as many takes as necessary to get it right, doing any necessary editing.

Depends. If it pertains to the OP and sounds interesting by the title AND doesn't have one of those typical static images with a way too close up of a face and big bright words, I'll click play and see what happens. If it's long and starts out with some ad like intro that the typical wanna be youtube video star would have, I'll shut it right down and move on. I've been online since the mid 90s.

gawd, I'm getting old. I remember wishing I had a 56k dial up modem like my buddy had. I only has 28k.

I'm with Jay...I'm a text-friendly life form and ingest huge amounts of information this way. Videos, to me, can be really frustrating if the presenter takes ten minutes to convey something that I could have read in depth in two or three. I often watch videos at 1.5x or 2x speed, and that gets close to a leisurely read while retaining the visual context.

It's the visual context where great videos can really shine. If you're explaining something tricky and showing gets the message across faster, then by all means show it. I'm addicted to cool engineering-type explainers, permie how-tos, and time lapse sequences. And good music is a plus.

Jay and Phil expressed my opinion as well-- I don`t want to listen to 5 minutes of blather before getting to the meat if I can just google something and find a diagram or text.

i DO watch youtube videos, but almost never from here- I walk on a treadmill most evenings and watch homesteading videos, generally, to keep myself amused. When I`m here on the internet, it`s during the workday, when I`m taking breaks (and if it`s not a workday, I`m nowhere near a computer). My workday is reading, and videos are leisure, during exercise. In fact, if there is something interesting here I`ll tag it to watch later.

I only watch them if they

(1) Only last a few minutes or less
(2) Were posted by someone I respect
(3) Someone really convinced me that they'd be worth watching

I generally only watch maybe 5% of videos I run across on permies. All but maybe 2 of them met all three of the above criteria. I don't have time to sit and watch a video waiting for something informative. Plus, I have kids and they will stare at any video I'm staring at. They need to play, and I need to get stuff done, too!

I quite often look at videos, unless they are from somebody who constantly posts nonsense. But when I look at video, I watch the first few seconds, then I zip forward to see what they're talking about and then I go near the end and if it looks like it's going to be any good, I might watch it from the beginning.

I almost always skip it if there's a lot of dead time with people greeting friends or introducing their kids or naming the animals or some other thing
.
I want them to state what the video is about, and then I want it to be about that. I also want free Wi-Fi all over the city, and that hasn't happened. It's okay to want things.

I rarely watch them mainly because most people don't get to the point quickly - habitually include loads of superfluous chitchat and ignore the KISS principle.

Some things can be better explained in a graph, photos, table, etc with captions.

Usually if the video interests me, I open it in a new tab and run it in the background while skimming the rest of the thread, then go back and watch it when I'm done reading if it sounds like it's something I find worth watching.

Last vote in apple poll was on November 19, 2021