#Viewer Retention

[garvescope]

The One Stat Netflix Prioritizes Above All

Here’s the brutal truth Netflix doesn’t advertise, but their internal documents (leaked in 2023) confirmed: completion rate is king. Not views. Not likes. Not even watch time in minutes. If viewers don’t finish your film, the algorithm assumes something’s wrong—and it buries your title. It gets recommended less. It drops lower in search. It quietly disappears into the black hole of…

[ursaspecter]

I'm glad adding captions to internet videos is becoming more commonplace but I hate when they're in that annoying Mr. Beast style where it's one word at a time at a rapid pace. Like yeah maybe some people can read that fast but not everyone can.

Or when the captions are auto-generated and the person doesn't go back and fix them to make sure that they match what is being said.

I'm not even Deaf or HOH but I like to use captions when I can and so I can only imagine how frustrating it can be for someone who actually needs them only to find they're inacurrate or straight up incorrect.

[screenshotsonpinterest]

I’m fucking sorry but I would rather hear a white lady’s life story 8 times over because I hear another internet recipe video start with “did you know that if you combine…”

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

[mech-pilot]

reddit app is fucking darksided i fucking. apparently visited the fnaf theories community one time on my phone so it was sending me push notifications for recc'd posts through no action of my own. we need to start killing people

[marsixm]

also has anyone else noticed the tiktok search is like actual useless garbage. why has every website just. totally forgone how any search function works

[lynxgirlpaws]

i have GOT tog et better at not looking at numbers lmfao

[elytrafemme]

OH MY GOD. THE DOUGDOUG & FAILBOAT FRIENDS TIL DEATH PANEL AT PAX WAS APPROVED...

[reasonsforhope]

When self-described “ocean custodian” Boyan Slat took the stage at TED 2025 in Vancouver this week, he showed viewers a reality many of us are already heartbreakingly familiar with: There is a lot of trash in the ocean.

“If we allow current trends to continue, the amount of plastic that’s entering the ocean is actually set to double by 2060,” Slat said in his TED Talk, which will be published online at a later date. 

Plus, once plastic is in the ocean, it accumulates in “giant circular currents” called gyres, which Slat said operate a lot like the drain of the bathtub, meaning that plastic can enter these currents but cannot leave.

That’s how we get enormous build-ups like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant collection of plastic pollution in the ocean that is roughly twice the size of Texas.

As the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, Slat’s goal is to return our oceans to their original, clean state before 2040. To accomplish this, two things must be done.

First: Stop more plastic from entering the ocean. Second: Clean up the “legacy” pollution that is already out there and doesn’t go away by itself.

And Slat is well on his way.

Pictured: Kingston Harbour in Jamaica. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup Project

When Slat’s first TEDx Talk went viral in 2012, he was able to organize research teams to create the first-ever map of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. From there, they created a technology to collect plastic from the most garbage-heavy areas in the ocean.

“We imagined a very long, u-shaped barrier … that would be pushed by wind and waves,” Slat explained in his Talk. 

This barrier would act as a funnel to collect garbage and be emptied out for recycling. 

But there was a problem.

“We took it out in the ocean, and deployed it, and it didn’t collect plastic,” Slat said, “which is a pretty important requirement for an ocean cleanup system.”

Soon after, this first system broke into two. But a few days later, his team was already back to the drawing board. 

From here, they added vessels that would tow the system forward, allowing it to sweep a larger area and move more methodically through the water. Mesh attached to the barrier would gather plastic and guide it to a retention area, where it would be extracted and loaded onto a ship for sorting, processing, and recycling. 

It worked. 

“For 60 years, humanity had been putting plastic into the ocean, but from that day onwards, we were also taking it back out again,” Slat said, with a video of the technology in action playing on screen behind him.

To applause, he said: “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, honestly.”

Over the years, Ocean Cleanup has scaled up this cleanup barrier, now measuring almost 2.5 kilometers — or about 1.5 miles — in length. And it cleans up an area of the ocean the size of a football field every five seconds.

Pictured: The Ocean Cleanup's System 002 deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup

The system is designed to be safe for marine life, and once plastic is brought to land, it is recycled into new products, like sunglasses, accessories for electric vehicles, and even Coldplay’s latest vinyl record, according to Slat. 

These products fund the continuation of the cleanup. The next step of the project is to use drones to target areas of the ocean that have the highest plastic concentration. 

In September 2024, Ocean Cleanup predicted the Patch would be cleaned up within 10 years. 

However, on April 8, Slat estimated “that this fleet of systems can clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in as little as five years’ time.”

With ongoing support from MCS, a Netherlands-based Nokia company, Ocean Cleanup can quickly scale its reliable, real-time data and video communication to best target the problem. 

It’s the largest ocean cleanup in history.

But what about the plastic pollution coming into the ocean through rivers across the world? Ocean Cleanup is working on that, too. 

To study plastic pollution in other waterways, Ocean Cleanup attached AI cameras to bridges, measuring the flow of trash in dozens of rivers around the world, creating the first global model to predict where plastic is entering oceans.

“We discovered: Just 1% of the world’s rivers are responsible for about 80% of the plastic entering our oceans,” Slat said.

His team found that coastal cities in middle-income countries were primarily responsible, as people living in these areas have enough wealth to buy things packaged in plastic, but governments can’t afford robust waste management infrastructure. 

Ocean Cleanup now tackles those 1% of rivers to capture the plastic before it reaches oceans.

Pictured: Interceptor 007 in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup

“It’s not a replacement for the slow but important work that’s being done to fix a broken system upstream,” Slat said. “But we believe that tackling this 1% of rivers provides us with the only way to rapidly close the gap.”

To clean up plastic waste in rivers, Ocean Cleanup has implemented technology called “interceptors,” which include solar-powered trash collectors and mobile systems in eight countries worldwide.

In Guatemala, an interceptor captured 1.4 million kilograms (or over 3 million pounds) of trash in under two hours. Now, this kind of collection happens up to three times a week.

“All of that would have ended up in the sea,” Slat said.

Now, interceptors are being brought to 30 cities around the world, targeting waterways that bring the most trash into our oceans. GPS trackers also mimic the flow of the plastic to help strategically deploy the systems for the most impact.

“We can already stop up to one-third of all the plastic entering our oceans once these are deployed,” Slat said.

And as soon as he finished his Talk on the TED stage, Slat was told that TED’s Audacious Project would be funding the deployment of Ocean Cleanup’s efforts in those 30 cities as part of the organization’s next cohort of grantees. 

While it is unclear how much support Ocean Cleanup will receive from the Audacious Project, Head of TED Chris Anderson told Slat: “We’re inspired. We’re determined in this community to raise the money you need to make that 30-city project happen.”

And Slat himself is determined to clean the oceans for good.

“For humanity to thrive, we need to be optimistic about the future,” Slat said, closing out his Talk.

“Once the oceans are clean again, it can be this example of how, through hard work and ingenuity, we can solve the big problems of our time.”

-via GoodGoodGood, April 9, 2025

[speci-society]

Infuriating thing ive noticed on some tiktoks is that they have captions for some speaking parts in a video but not all speaking parts. Like you can clearly see someone's lips moving and there were captions for a solid 15 seconds straight, and now there just. Arent? Even worse if they go in and out of being captioned. What is the thought process there???

[cheesebreadgremlin]

So, today was rather frustrating in regards to trying to stream. I had to restart my computer several times, mess around with settings in Streamlabs, and even then I was only able to stream for 21 minutes. Twenty-one. Whole. Minutes. That's not enough time to do everything I wanted to do. I had this issue yesterday, but it was significantly worse today. Once I get back from the convention I'm working at this weekend on Sunday night, I'm gonna start troubleshooting and transferring my scenes to OBS or Twitch Studio.

[kraniumet]

(sees the new 911 gifsets on my dash) this feels prophetic just like when I had that good omens aziraphale crowley kiss dream

[gooseworx]

why is there no theme song after episode 1?

Theme songs decrease viewer retention or something like that. That's what I was told anyway.

[moonssugar]

maybe its because i grew up watching planet earth but to me it feels like newer animal and nature documentaries rely more and more on the cuteness factor and relatability to educate than they did a few years ago. im noticing this because even medium form videos on youtube about maybe one species now seem to have more jokes and tangents or euphemisms than objective information in a way that feels gradually more unbalanced. i know capturing people's attention and getting them to actually care about nature is extremely difficult but when animals are presented as being just funny or sooo weird or something to gawk or worse as shock value i feel that the sense of wonder and respect for them decreases. an animal just can't be itself objectively , it has to be memeable it has to be relatable and cute it has to be anthropomorphized and clips of it can only be 10 seconds long. the sense of wonder imbued in people when they get a glimpse into the life of a creature they never knew existed but that they share a planet with, a creature that has a life of its own thats separate from ours but still interwoven with it. that creates genuine respect and awe for nature. if theyre just something you can scroll past alongside cute puppies and kittens with a funny caption or theyre living as a pet in someone's house that swears theyre an ambassador animal or whatever then something has been lost. i cant sit through a watch or listen to a documentary in that kind of format, the ones that constantly make jokes at living creature's expense and are desperate for viewer retention but can't take the little time it has to go in depth about what it is theyre actually presenting or even truly care to. the result is people care about them less and with less seriousness than they should

[tubbytarchia]

Wild Life finale spoilers: It's seriously so tragic that the interesting themes and drama Wild Life was leading up to came to such a full-stop after struggling to get off the ground with all the hampering from the gimmicks

This isn't me being a girlie kicking my feet at yuri, I'm genuinely upset that Gem and Pearl didn't end up reaching any real conclusion or even any development, and based on what CC Pearl has been saying, I cant help but feel that things just didn't end up playing out the way she wanted. Remember when she said she had "plans" way back in episode 1? It feels like she's desperately trying to kickstart this at several points and especially in the last episode, only to come out of it calling herself and her finale pathetic. And that's just one example of a storybeat I wish were given the chance to go somewhere. I think what exemplifies this whole point well is Scar's rollercoaster, which didn't get a chance to be built till the finale, and even then it failed to kill anyone (aside from zombie Skizz) like he'd wanted since episode 2 before his own unceremonious death

This isn't the fault of any CCs but I do feel like the gimmicks being so intrusive can't be understated, there's nothing wrong with them in a vacuum but for anyone including the CCs seeking out a Life Series experience it's an obstacle. I'm happy for the player who won but I'm so sad that of all seasons they win the one with the least tension or meaningful viewer retention or investment in the characters. To call it underwhelming would be putting it kindly. In the end this has all just felt like bare explorations of interesting themes being presented and done, the series is over now. Nothing about Wild Life will keep me awake at night like the previous seasons aside from what COULD have been and that's really, really sad to me

[brainrotisseriechicken]

hello . posting chat screenshots w my art for viewer retention. do u guys fw the format

doodles and scraps .... . n stuff. follow for more quality content

[televisionenjoyer]

Is it that all good sci fi has already been made or....

There's no way in hell that all good science fiction has been made get real. I do think science fiction is going through a crisis mainly because they're trying to make everything palatable and marketable to the mainstream and like. I'm gonna do some introspection and say that star trek has been a perpetuator of this since the late 80s in a way HOWEVER. there's like a marked pre and post MCU heyday and that the MCU actually is a great example of what I'm getting at.

The MCU in my opinion started off fun and enjoyable even if a bit shitty. I'm a trekkie I can handle shitty. However the problem arose when they started hiring every popular actor ever and roping their fans into this universe where you kind of have to watch a bit chunk of it to understand it and so they sell you their shitty streaming service and they make spin off series of the spin off series and no you don't understand you GOTTA watch it because otherwise you won't get the newest zionist movie and whatnot. Oh but also they expand on this in the comics and the marvel rivals game and so on. So they sell you a bunch of stuff. And since it works, they buy the star wars ip and start doing the same. I don't give a fuck about cassian andor SORRY I don't.

All the while they're roping in people from all demographics and trying to satisfy these new audiences, like idk, Pedro Pascal fans or Brett Goldstein fans or whatever, who come from different genres, and like ok let's face it:

Science Fiction is in it's conception very camp. Cringy even, to the joyless outsider.

So, in order to retain this audience they try to un-cringe science fiction. To make it, idk, deep, more action-y, taking itself more seriously. IMO this just makes it more cringe. I personally as a self identifying geek would much rather watch a show like the later seasons of legends of tomorrow, where they embrace the goofy nonsense of the genre, than yet another MCU show on Matt Murdock SORRY. They killed foggy even so I don't give a crap.

Then sometimes they go "oh man I don't think star trek fans like all this new grittier and grimer star trek I mean they hated our CIA propaganda how can we appease them" and so they try to bring back camp by... doing a SpongeBob crossover I guess??? Cause like. You know. They too have to sell their own shitty streaming service. That's how the world works these days. It's all about awareness, consideration, acquisition, retention and advocacy of viewers. The fucking customer journey. They're customer journeying us. Which like. Fair. It is a product. We live under capitalism.

But in essence what I'm trying to say is: Where's the passion? Nothing feels organic anymore. Nothing honors the quirky roots that science fiction had because they're marketing science fiction to people who don't like science fiction!!!

And no, all good science fiction hasn't been made, but in order for more good science fiction to happen this new paradigm of bringing science fiction into the mainstream needs to change.