[HN Gopher] Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the al...
___________________________________________________________________
Afraid to Google a thing because I don't want the algorithm to
think I like it
Author : edward
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-05-08 10:17 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| smitty1e wrote:
| Sounds like an opportunity for a search proxy service.
|
| Which begets an arms race of proxies, and fake proxies sponsored
| by Google, fuzz proxies blowing up the signal-to-noise ratio for
| your account, TOR proxies for the "double-hush-hush" searches. .
| .
|
| Who knew that the act of finding stuff would be such a
| voyeuristic delight?
| mrweasel wrote:
| The dumb thing about recommendation algorithms are that they
| assume that I'd like the same things, regardless of my mood or
| current situation. YouTube Music at least try to make guesses
| based on the time of day, but fail to take the actual music into
| account and just focus on the bands, and not the tempo, lyrics
| and overall sound of a track.
|
| The only "algorithm" that sort of work is Amazons book
| recommendation, but I'm not sure that not just based on what
| others have bought.
| diegocg wrote:
| Disable your search history
| realreality wrote:
| In the novel, "Feed", one of the characters has a hobby of
| searching for all sorts of random things, in order to confuse the
| algorithms. She would add absurd items to her shopping cart,
| without buying any of them.
|
| The book, written in 2002, was very prescient.
| anticensor wrote:
| You can remove individual items from your search history.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Even in a tweet about algorithms the guy can't help but dunk on
| men to show what a nice guy he is.
| anotha1 wrote:
| Weak ad hominem attack. Not sure why you wasted a comment for
| it.
| fuzxi wrote:
| I missed the part where this was a debate
| nvilcins wrote:
| I think your comment better applies to the tweet being
| referred to, though, not sure "ad hominem" extends to a group
| of unspecified people.
| HKH2 wrote:
| I can't see why stereotyping (especially that which is
| uncharitable) shouldn't be classed as an ad hominem attack.
| marrs wrote:
| Is observing that someone conforms to a stereotype the
| same as stereotyping them though?
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The comment you're referring to didn't occur in the tweet about
| algorithms - it was a reactive comment that occurred in
| response to an experience that happened after the tweet. Also,
| I'm not sure what "to show what a nice guy he is" means here,
| though I'm guessing it's just being used an insult in the same
| family as "white knight".
|
| I can't know whether his comment was reasonable without looking
| through the comments he was referring to (and neither can you),
| but even given that he was being unreasonable, you chose to be
| unreasonable in turn.
| aulin wrote:
| I had a good laugh because that's actually a comment against
| the mansplaining common narrative, people will jump to explain
| things everytime they feel it's easy to add their contribute,
| being the audience a woman or a random guy on the internet or
| anyone they perceive weak enough to be a good target to show
| off their knowledge and skills
| justwalt wrote:
| I think that's a really cynical way to look at it, especially
| when the explanations are public. People can explain things
| to others without there being a hidden power dynamic.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| > Update: random dudes are now saying the unsolicited toxic
| replies are actually _my_ fault for saying something in the
| first place. So NOW I feel like I 've gotten a little glimpse
| of what it's like to be a woman on the internet.
|
| I was very curious about how this is evidence that women
| specifically get berated on the internet rather than evidence
| that everyone is a potential target. Obviously from this
| interaction alone you can't tell if it happens more to women
| or not but... I thought it was kind of funny to say "this
| thing happened to me as a man and now I really understand
| that this thing happens to women."
| happytoexplain wrote:
| How is an example in another context a "comment against the
| mansplaining common narrative"? Even your explanation makes
| it pretty clear that a man-to-woman combination would be one
| of the most common versions.
| aulin wrote:
| He's the one who extrapolated the context, my point is that
| the explainer does it for reasons that have nothing to do
| with the gender of the receiver. And this is one example
| robertwx wrote:
| Rainbow, BLM, it's all there, so he can afford the sharp
| reaction towards the "random dudes".
|
| Without the protective ideological shield, that reaction would
| have been deemed "hostile" and "toxic" by the twitteria.
| domnomnom wrote:
| Lmao good catch. Can someone explain the alternate reality we
| seem to exist in? Do y'all see these people around a lot?
| rexf wrote:
| Is there a term for using Google services less to minimize your
| risk of inadvertently running into a ban happy algorithm? I
| realize the thing to do is not rely on their services, but that's
| _much_ easier said than done
| gostsamo wrote:
| Auto censorship is the general term.
| dusted wrote:
| ctrl + shift + p
| hoppla wrote:
| Now my printer also knows what I read
| capableweb wrote:
| Ah the confusion of application-specific shortcuts VS OS-
| global ones... You're clearly a Chrome user :)
| hoppla wrote:
| I use both Firefox and Chrome. So I see the print dialog
| too often
| DoomHotel wrote:
| Use Firefox Focus on mobile.
|
| On desktop, set Firefox to purge everything when closing the
| browser. Use Chrome only when necessary to do strictly Google-
| related things.
| weeweww32 wrote:
| Should've used NORDVPN FOR ONLY 2,75 A MONTH!
| franciscop wrote:
| Ah the solution is simple, technology is advanced enough that you
| can easily build a music player yourself with local files.
|
| (this is a HN joke)
|
| (but I did start building my own music player)
|
| https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1379765168482172940
| krono wrote:
| It's so weird, across all Google's products I occasionally get
| these weird Arabic and sometimes even Islamic content
| suggestions.
|
| I've never opened any of these links, am not behind a VPN, am
| very much not Arabic and do not understand the language, and -
| with all due respect - am completely uninterested in Islamic holy
| scripture.
|
| Why, even after all these years, Google thinks this is content
| I'd want to see is a complete mystery to me. Something I'm going
| to have to live with for the rest of my life it seems.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I can think of several explanations. The least likely is that
| for some reason your IP (or one of the IPs) is misattributed to
| another country by their geolocation mapping system. Another is
| that some of your property have been used by an Arab (you bough
| a second-hand device, lost a phone etc). More probably ones:
| one of your devices might have been infected or you might have
| clicked an ad that was disguised by something else but was
| linked to products/services offered in Arabic.
| krono wrote:
| Yes those are the only explanations I came up with as well,
| but none of that applies.
|
| I have kept a log of all IPs I regularly connected from, and
| only a single one of those originated in another country -
| another European one.
|
| Never lost a device (jinxed now) or bought or even
| temporarily used a second-hand one.
|
| An ad or intrusion do seem to be the most likely culprits,
| but ads are blocked everywhere, and I believe my security
| hygiene to be pretty decent.
|
| This has been going on for over a decade now. Due to the
| sporadic nature if these happenings, I'm almost starting to
| think there's some old (but still wrong) data stuck on some
| edge node somewhere - or perhaps someone at Google is
| actively teasing me for being so critical of the company :)
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Use a private browsing/incognito window then. Not bullet-proof,
| but probably good enough.
| aulin wrote:
| the thing I hate the most are personalized ads and amazon
| suggestions that keep pestering you for weeks about an item you
| just bought and don't need anymore
| azureel wrote:
| You bought a cable for your phone yesterday. Why don't you buy
| another one? Don't you wanna buy? You sure? Here are the best
| single cables in your area ready to be hooked.
| salakotolu wrote:
| Personalized feeds are broken. I think there's work to be done to
| improve content discovery.
| jackjeff wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| But to what extent would the algorithm know about you if you
| clear cookies/storage data though? I also imagine changing IP
| addresses help... does Google use IP as a source for profiling?
| nichch wrote:
| I can't speak for what data points Google uses for tracking,
| however... with JavaScript, there is a plethora of information
| that can be used to uniquely identify you across IPs, and even
| across browsers. [0]
|
| If you're logged in to a service on multiple devices you have
| now linked multiple fingerprints to your account that can be
| compared against third party data.
|
| A VPN will not protect you from this tracking.
|
| [0] https://amiunique.org/
|
| (I've plugged this site before, so I feel like I should say I
| am not affiliated with it)
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I feel the same, and I stopped using Chrome, Gmail, Google Search
| and Facebook quite a long time ago.
|
| I am not afraid, but annoyed to not have "manual mode" internet
| where everything I do has no hidden consequences and is simply
| what I asked.
| werid wrote:
| It's annoying clicking some youtube link only to find it was
| something you really don't want more of, and then youtube proceed
| to recommend much more of it, even though you barely watched any
| of it.
|
| kinda forces me to watch something else that is new but at least
| somewhat wanted in an attempt to make the algorithm look at the
| new shiny i'm interested in and forget the previous one.
|
| i find it funny though when amazon still make recommendations to
| me based on a purchase in 1998. yes, Jeff, i still want to buy
| wrestling VHS tapes...
| trickstra wrote:
| use Invidious https://docs.invidious.io/Invidious-Instances.md
| shp0ngle wrote:
| You can delete your YouTube history, which will make the
| recommendations usually disappear.
| cookguyruffles wrote:
| I never log into YouTube and this still happens, it's at
| least in part keyed to IP address
| beforeolives wrote:
| This will kind of clean up your current recommendations but
| it doesn't reset the recommendation algorithm like it used
| to. The algorithm still retains memory of your past
| behaviour.
|
| For example if I consistently listen to 3 unrelated songs [A
| B C] on youtube together, the algorithm will regularly
| recommend them to me (because of my unique behaviour, not
| because they're similar). If I reset my history and then
| listen to song A, then B and C get immediately recommended
| even though they aren't similar to A and they don't exist in
| my listening history which means that the information about
| my listening/browsing habits is still there in the
| recommendation model.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| If you turn off watch history is basically only suggests
| stuff based on subscriptions which is much better imo and I
| never need the history feature anyway.
| [deleted]
| eCa wrote:
| Click the three dots and then either "Not interested" or "Don't
| recommend channel".
|
| Seems to work reasonably well for me.
| aulin wrote:
| really annoying if you mostly watch youtube from a tv (unless
| there's way to do that from the youtube app in e.g. amazon
| firetv)
| Measter wrote:
| It doesn't in my experience. I've been telling it I don't
| want to see: news, politics, music, or reaction videos for
| months. It still puts them there.
|
| Last week it decided that I wanted to see rap videos and
| filled my feed with them. I don't listen to rap. I've never
| watched a rap video. I've told it I'm not interested in every
| single video, but it still puts them there.
| makomk wrote:
| Not sure it'll do much about news videos - Google seems to
| force the same presumably hand-picked selection of news
| videos onto everyone's front page, generally covering the
| kind of political topics tech workers think everyone should
| hear about.
| ripply wrote:
| Try going through your watch history/liked videos and
| deleting things if it's really bothering you, I watched a
| bunch of political videos a few years ago and got burnt out
| so I deleted every one (took a few hours) and my
| recommendations instantly changed
| Ticklee wrote:
| I wish someone would make an extension that makes this a
| simple hover+keypress instead of multiple clicks. As it
| stands right now it is too much of a hassle to manually click
| 2 times per video. But if you do not then youtube will
| continue to plaster that video on your homescreen for weeks.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| What if it's from a channel I like but don't want to watch
| that one video...will clicking on this reduce suggestions
| from this channel, will it do nothing, will it unsubscribe me
| from that channel(as has happened in the past), ...?
|
| Nobody knows, I only know I don't want to play this game.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Use Firefox multi-account containers and the temporary
| containers add-on. Now your YouTube starts fresh with every
| new tab. It's actually nice, it means you get to build a
| new set of recommendations each time you open a tab, and
| because YT doesn't have that much data on you yet, the
| recommendations are directly linked to the thing you're
| currently watching, similar to how it used to be before the
| whole tracking extravaganza.
| atatatat wrote:
| Or use different folders of portable Chromium so you have
| any semblance of sandboxing + security.
| medstrom wrote:
| Temporary Containers is a pretty amazing sandbox already,
| as it uses a builtin Firefox feature.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| More or less. Sadly, they still suggest a ton of stuff
| based on geolocation.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| The best way of not playing this game is to, well... not
| play it. Why should you pay any attention to what YouTube
| "suggests" you should watch? I just treat YouTube as a
| service that hosts videos, with a mediocre search feature,
| and I have no interest in what it thinks I should watch.
|
| If a real human mentions a video that piques my interest, I
| may watch it. If I'm interested in finding a video on a
| particular topic, or a specific scene from this-or-that
| film or TV show, I will search for it myself. If am
| interested enough in a certain producer's content, I may
| "subscribe" to them, but I will be the judge if I want to
| watch the latest video they uploaded.
| tarboreus wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > Why should you pay any attention to what YouTube
| "suggests" you should watch?
|
| There is one advantage: some obscure music videos. There
| are some rare pearls with the comments section almost
| exclusively thanking YT algorithm for taking them there.
| Happened to me so many times that I have a separate
| browser instance and a Google account for YT and I'm very
| careful what I click when I use it.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| True, you do have a point there. I'll admit I have
| discovered a few bands/musicians by just leaving YouTube
| on autoplay, after having searched for specific artists I
| already knew to concentrate while working ( _before_ lo-
| fi hip hop was trending!).
| mannykannot wrote:
| This brings us right back to square one: are the benefits
| of the recommending algorithms worth the downside? We can
| make that choice.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I've been trying it for a few months. I dutifully clicked
| away every preposterously stupid clickbait title or thumbnail
| and topic I didn't care about. It had no noticeable effect.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Yes, I always hesitate to mark YT videos as unwanted because
| often it's from a channel I otherwise like a lot and I have no
| idea how YT will behave after that. Considering the site is
| known for even auto-cancelling subscriptions sometimes it feels
| like a UX minefield.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| You should use the dislike button to let the algorithm know
| that you didn't enjoy the video.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| It's better if you click that stuff, it causes the algorithm to
| recommend stuff you don't care about, which means less YouTube
| holes to get sucked into
| spamalot159 wrote:
| It's frustrating that nowadays YouTube seems like it can only
| keep 3 or 4 types of videos that you like in its head. I feel
| like I'm watching the same thing over and over whenever I click
| on recommendations. I totally agree with you.
| travoltaj wrote:
| YouTube's personalization recommendation is a nightmare. Just
| the other day, YouTube played "Billie eilish -copycat" for me
| literally after every other song.
|
| I pretty much only YouTube in Incognito mode these days.
| Everytime I forget, YouTube manages to annoy me so much within
| half an hour that I switch to Incognito again.
| 627467 wrote:
| It's funny, just today I noticed how much _worse_ is Google Now
| feed (or whatever it 's called today) because it keeps repeating
| news items and category that I have very little interest in. It's
| almost like Google is trying to save money by computing less
| accurately for my interests.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I think Netflix is the worst offender.
|
| If you spend a minute too long looking at the menu for a movie it
| will not only auto play, but for the foreseeable future Netflix
| will assume you're watching it, want to finish watching it and
| watch similar stuff.
|
| More than most other services Netflix doesn't trust your ratings
| or your lists when making up recommendations.
| emrah wrote:
| You can delete half watched things from your history so they
| don't show up in the main UI
| pseudalopex wrote:
| You can turn off auto play FYI.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Netflix apparently have no idea what I like. Well maybe they
| do, but don't actually that type of content, so they just throw
| random junk at me.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I don't know how common this is, but I've gotten into the habit
| of creating "personas"-- different users that have different
| habits and are interested in different things, yet all me.
|
| It's insane that I feel it helpful to take on "multiple
| personalities", but there it is.
|
| Part of it is that these algorithms are fairly one-track. They
| can mix it up a bit, but it's always too much of one thing and
| too little of another. They can't truly comport with the reality
| that someone can have multiple interests and tastes.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| This is what Bruce Schneier calls _distorting_ digital
| surveillance. His taxonomy also includes avoiding, blocking,
| and breaking (i.e. crime).
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/data-and-goliath-digital-surv...
| throwaway82003 wrote:
| On desktop Firefox has Multi Account Containers and Profiles.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| another solution is to use 2 instances of chrome or firefox
| with different --user-data-dir which can run in parallel . It's
| actually very convenient for checking up stuff without
| 'messing' the main setup
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Why not use the built-in profile functionality?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| God knows if Google does any kind of cross-correlation
| between them. I would actually expect it.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| They are also part of the Chromium project, so you're
| welcome to check it out, inspect the source code, and
| build it locally.
| thiht wrote:
| Just because it's open doesn't mean anyone can do such
| thing. I'm a professional dev and I can't browse such a
| complex C++ codebase.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| can you use them in parallel? in any case i don't want any
| correlation between the two (other than the IP i guess). in
| my case i often log in to the same website from different
| accounts for testing purposes
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| You can you them in parallel and they share no
| extensions, sessions, website settings, or other local
| data. You can even have separate themes for each profile.
|
| I'm unaware of any potential problems relating to
| fingerprinting and so on, but for your use case it
| doesn't sound like it'd be a problem.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Firefox multi-account containers, no?
| isaacimagine wrote:
| I have multiple about:profiles on Firefox, each with
| different accounts (think school vs personal vs work etc.)
| Works quite well.
| greshario wrote:
| Use duckduckgo and this is a non-issue.
| Garlef wrote:
| I tried it and went back to google because google saves me
| time.
|
| As a dev, I google a lot to figure out how to do X.
|
| My experience with DuckDuckGo was that it added 2-10 minutes of
| filtering for usable results every time.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I am using DuckDuckGo and my experience is completely
| different, but I might be missing something.
|
| Do you have an example of a search you've done where the
| results were much better from Google Search than from
| DuckDuckGo?
| mrweasel wrote:
| My experience is that we reached a point where if
| DuckDuckGo can't find something, then neither can Google.
| For local search Google is still a little better, but they
| choosen to drown out actual results with ads.
| Garlef wrote:
| This might be true. But my point was that DuckDuckGo
| costs me too much time. To rephrase it: DuckDuckGo is
| more expensive to use. (At least for me).
| greshario wrote:
| Not my experience for dev related searches. I assume this
| is because Google has learned I always search for JS
| stuff and I've gotten used to that so I'm not specific
| enough in my searches on DDG.
| lehi wrote:
| _> Do you have an example of a search you 've done where
| the results were much better from Google Search than from
| DuckDuckGo?_
|
| Here you go: https://imgur.com/a/CssDXS3
| Garlef wrote:
| > Do you have an example of a search ...
|
| Due to the very topic this HN post is about, I don't think
| this is a good method - your results might be vastly
| different from mine.
|
| But let's look at the number of relevant results among the
| top 5 results for some thing I recently wanted to learn
| about.
|
| "Comprehension categories" - a rather specific term from
| category theory
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=comprehension+category
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=comprehension+category
|
| Google: 5/5 (for me) DuckDuckGo: 1/5 (for me)
| mdpye wrote:
| You have to be explicit about the context if you've
| chosen to dump the implicit bundle of context.
|
| "comprehension categories category theory" 5/5
|
| I'd hardly say it's 2 to 10 minutes extra work,
| especially for such an obvious example
| smichel17 wrote:
| "Comprehension categories theory" works as well.
| azureel wrote:
| I think this reply is for you
|
| https://twitter.com/jjcollinsworth/status/139066623945075507...
| jessaustin wrote:
| Women just love it when random internet dudes pull the "if I
| were a woman you couldn't point out how trite and pointless
| my complaint is, so let's just assume I am a woman and you
| shut up now" card. It's so cool for them to be the exemplars
| of the trite and the pointless.
| pessimizer wrote:
| To spell it out: it takes an increasing amount of effort to
| avoid any of your interests being tracked, logged, and almost
| immediately used in ways that you _already know_ will be
| destructive. This is also an IT professional and a programmer
| saying this, so they do not want your advice. The fact that
| they can use many, many countermeasures which require many,
| many rabbitholes of research, that as a programmer they are
| able to understand (although they will have to be continually
| updated) is not a way to fix that fear _it 's the
| manifestation of that fear._
|
| After 9/11 and the Patriot Act, librarians fought the
| government to keep the reading habits of patrons private _as
| a core duty_ like doctors pledge to _do no harm_. Now it 's
| difficult to get people to understand why clicking through to
| an attractive hammock while browsing Amazon registering in
| 900 databases and manifesting in ads and cold calls selling
| tropical vacations and being flagged on some government
| system as 2% more likely to be a flight risk if let out on
| bond (who am I kidding, AI doesn't give percentages, it just
| gives conclusions, looking at a hammock might be that stray
| pixel that can turn an OCR "O" into a "Q") - difficult to get
| some people to understand why that would _make you nervous._
|
| The answer to that isn't "use TOR to get to a VPN to browse
| amazon, and pay for that with a burner debit card loaded with
| bitcoin" or whatever works this week. _There isn 't really a
| hammock._
|
| edit: also Amazon has that figured out, some researcher there
| figured out that they can identify you based on your click
| patterns and timing. Right now you can choose between 1) an
| app that will just click on everything silently, or 2)
| another app by a professor at some midwestern university that
| will jerk around the timing and positioning of your clicks in
| a way that throws your fingerprint off. The first app has
| been banned by every store, and triggers 80 warnings and a
| waiver that has to be signed with two-factor even if you
| manage to root your phone and sideload it. You have to
| compile the second app yourself, with a weird toolchain, and
| it draws in 640Mb of npm libraries. It's already been updated
| three times in response to Amazon's countermeasures, and the
| professor just wrote a paper about the entire method probably
| being ultimately doomed.
| fuzxi wrote:
| "I complained on a public forum and received advice. What a
| horrible day to have an internet connection."
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Wow this guy loves to be a victim in as many ways as possible
| to squeeze into 3 tweets! This must be a kind of a Twitter
| archetype.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
| magic, and induces magical thinking.
|
| This is a quarter step away from voodoo and south seas cargo cult
| rituals.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'm mildly curious about the whole Jordan Peterson anti-woke
| movement. Mildly, as in, I'm interested in the arguments but I
| often don't agree with them. I once made the mistake of clicking
| on a Peterson YouTube video and subsequently got only obscene
| alt-right "Peterson KILLS stupid feminist reporter!!" type of
| edited content. Like at some point 80% of my suggestions was crap
| like that, drowning out all the lovely nerdy Tom Scott stuff I
| come to YouTube for.
|
| I had to reset all suggestions to get away from it. Whenever I
| now see a video like that about the culture wars (or about covid
| for that matter), I open an incognito browser and search for the
| title. It's _nuts_ that this is necessary.
|
| It's come to a point that I now hate suggestion engines with a
| passion. I wish I could simply only see the
| tweets/videos/whatever from people I follow/subscribe,
| chronologically. I can't figure out whether the people making
| these services are simply incompetent or downright evil.
|
| The AI future is now and it's awful.
| f00zz wrote:
| Go to accounts.google.com, and under Data & Personalization >
| Activity Controls you'll find options to disable YouTube
| suggestions based on your history. I have everything disabled
| (history, personalized ads, everything), and I only get
| suggestions for channels I subscribed or videos I liked.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| It's a consequence of the algorithm optimizing for engagement.
| YT obviously wants people to stay for as long as possible, to
| interact, write comments, upvote/downvote and follow the chain
| of recommended videos. The longer they stay on YT and the more
| content the consume, the more ads YT can show and the more
| money they make.
|
| Anti-woke/alt-right type content is provocative, controversial
| and makes people engage with. Either because they want to
| enthusiastically join in or because they want to dunk on it for
| how ridiculous it is. And the people who are into it are
| generally _really_ into it, so they 'll keep watching hour
| after hour of it.
|
| YT doesn't care, as long as they get as many people watching
| videos and looking at ads as they possibly can.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > And the people who are into it are generally _really_ into
| it, so they 'll keep watching hour after hour of it.
|
| Maybe that's the effect and not the cause.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| I see it as a self-sustaining loop at this point. At some
| point the flames were lit and fanned, and now they've taken
| on a life of their own.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I think that in the future, having a way to tell the algorithm
| "I didn't like this" will be common courtesy. Especially as the
| algorithm becomes stronger, I.E. companies offload more and
| more curation to ML.
| domnomnom wrote:
| It's going to kill us
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Same. Worse is the fact it continues to make the same
| suggestions no matter how many times I scroll past, no matter
| how many other videos I watch.
|
| I find Spotify similar. I try a suggested playlist. I check out
| after 2 or 3 songs. It doesn't get the hint.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I like recommendation features in principle. I don't want an
| unfiltered feed of stuff.
|
| It would just be nice if they were configurable, understandable
| and actually worked for me. Some systems' "We're showing you this
| because ..." is an important first step, but it needs to go way,
| way, further.
|
| Big companies probably don't do it because they're afraid of
| overwhelming a user, disclosing too much about their own
| algorithm and the things they know ("We're showing you this
| because someone you hung out with on Instagram just before you
| met").
|
| Thus it's probably up to open source projects again to make
| algorithms that actually work for people, not against them.
|
| Are there any such projects already? Are there projects trying to
| dissect common proprietary recommendation systems? They're some
| of the most mysterious influences on current society.
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| On YouTube I create multiple channels to curate my
| recommendations. I have multi modal tastes but most
| recommendation systems don't really seem to deal with feedback
| that spans independent interests very well.
|
| So, one channel for how-to's, crafting, and tech talks. One for
| instrumental and foreign language focus music, etc..
| asadkn wrote:
| Sure lots of negatives, but in a few cases, it can also be
| useful. I have carefully used a YouTube account that's
| specifically trained for just the right music recommendations
| that the auto-play just works mostly right.
|
| I use stimulating music (not relaxing) for work mainly, playing
| in background, and don't want to keep finding new music. Novelty
| is an important factor in stimulatory music. So this has been
| great for me.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Don't use Google to search. DDG!
| sas41 wrote:
| It's crazy just how much I go out of my way to avoid things that
| "personalize" my experience.
|
| I don't use online music services, I discover music on various
| platforms and and download mp3s and keep a local library.
|
| I avoid Youtube at it's defaults, I use 3rd party apps and VLC to
| do most of my watching, other than my subscriptions I tend to
| skim the Home page very rarely.
|
| I do not use Netflix or other streaming services, I try to hunt
| down DVDs/Blu-Rays and prefer ripping them for my personal
| library.
|
| My only problem is exclusives, as a fan of The Witcher series, I
| do feel like I am missing out, but if I feel a really strong urge
| I can always borrow an account from a friend, create a temp
| profile, watch the series and delete it.
|
| Their convenience features just add more inconvenience to me.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The height of first world inconvenience
| qualudeheart wrote:
| You should abstain from googling politically incorrect ideas. It
| is possible that the state will require searches for for
| politically incorrect content be logged and used to create a
| profile on possible dissidents.
| idatum wrote:
| Put in an old DVD of Dr. Strangelove:... recently in the XBox. It
| was just a random thought to pop it in and enjoy. (okay, was
| cleaning up shelf)
|
| I eventually realized I could skip around and enjoy the parts I
| liked. Freely. Without that feeling of being watched.
|
| Flashback.
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