Mastodon.art has a small but nice community. AI art isn’t allowed. Someone could always lie, I guess, but the community is small enough that engagement bait isn’t really a thing, there’s much larger mastodon instances those people would probably use. They also aggressively defederate fascists.
YouTube offers random A/B testing of titles and thumbnails now, and unfortunately the clickbait/red circle/soy face stuff absolutely does work. Everyone seems to agree that the “metric has ceased to be a good measure” when it comes to the algorithm, but it’s so opaque and omnipotent that people who can’t afford for their videos to be buried have no choice.
YouTube doesn’t just reward you for doing it, you are actively punished for not doing it. The same way one “underperforming” video can have cascading negative effects on your entire channel.
I can’t imagine relying on it for my family’s income. Google basically has hundreds of thousands of people doing spec work for them.
I was listening to a best-selling author’s recent audiobook, and the professional voice actress messed this one up. So you’re in good company. Really, who can we blame but the Greeks?