For some people, the comments are the worst part of YouTube. I could see them being pretty vocal about not liking the design that makes them more visible.
I have the feeling these comments went from overwhelmingly hateful tu overwhelmingly praiseful. I don't know how they managed that transition. Moderation or culture change? They are useless either way.
Youtube comments used to be the worst comments on the net, but for a while now youtube comments have been decent. And no better or worse than reddit comments yet people go to reddit just to read the comments. I find myself often reading comments alongside youtube videos.
I agree with this redesign since it turns the right side of the video into a general social space: chat when it's a live video, comments when it's a normal video.
Related videos, on the other hand, are static and can be easily moved beneath the video.
Truly. I have an extension that blocks them ("Hide YouTube Comments, Live Chat, & Related"). Every so often I will unblock them for a certain video, but life is not better with them for the most part.
I can't remember ever once reading a youtube comment and being glad I did. They are certainly not valuable enough to take away video real estate.
I mostly only watch 'technical' videos like machining, 3D printing, electronics, etc. so sometimes I might think something's wrong or strange and appreciate validation from a commenter saying the same (or learn with them when someone replies in correction).
Or someone will chime in plausibly claiming experience/relevance to the thing discussed and provide some additional interesting information, in the same way we see in comments on HN.
There's a lot of crap too of course, but at least on content that's informational to begin with (not saying memes and music videos) there do exist good comments.
you can expand the video into "theater mode" and it will fill the window width. just as before.
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This is a more sensible design. You can now read comments while you watch a video, which is clearly a more important use-case than browsing a bunch of recommended videos while you watch a video. The comments should scroll independently from the main column though.