[HN Gopher] On YouTube's recommendation system
___________________________________________________________________
On YouTube's recommendation system
Author : scommab
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-09-17 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.youtube)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.youtube)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| One thing I don't like the recommendation system is that it
| offers videos I already watched and even bookmarked. It also
| offered videos from people I subscribed but this is OK-ish
| because some accounts have hundreds or even thousands of videos.
|
| Basically, all recommendation system are based on one hypothesis:
| I know more about your preference than yourself. I can't say I
| agree with it.
| jlos wrote:
| So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I actually enjoy
| YouTube's recommendation algorithm, though I do make an effort to
| point it in the right direction. One example is guitar players:
| I'm an active guitarist, I've been for years, but as I got older
| the discovery phase of music dropped off. However I found YouTube
| constantly recommends amazing, phenomenal guitar players who
| almost immediately move into my list favorites. But some of these
| guitars only have a few thousand subscribers , there's very
| little chance I would have ever found them without youtube, and
| almost certainly no chance they would ever have an audience
| without this recommendation algorithm
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > 3. Do recommendations drive viewers to increasingly extreme
| content?
|
| > As I've explained, we actively demote low-quality information
| in recommendations. But we also take the additional step of
| showing viewers authoritative videos about topics that may
| interest them. Say I watch a video about the COVID-19 vaccine. In
| my Up Next panel, I'll see videos from reputable sources like Vox
| and Bloomberg Quicktake and won't see videos that contain
| misleading information about vaccines (to the extent that our
| system can detect them).
|
| What is Google/YouTube's full list of "reputable sources". Is it
| even reasonable to maintain such a list given how often sources
| treated as authoritative can be wrong? Doesn't this amount to
| artificially converging users' information exposure towards
| either the reigning authority or towards whatever Google/YouTube
| favor?
|
| Generalizing my concerns further, I am not comfortable with
| having a narrow set of monopolistic tech giants serve as king
| maker in our information landscape. Perhaps what we need first
| and foremost is a renewed set of anti-trust laws to break up
| companies with giant market caps and to address the reduced
| competition faced by widely used platforms built on network
| effects.
| atum47 wrote:
| I always wonder if those big platforms commercialize
| recommendations. I'm pretty sure it happens one way or another
| with the music app. The auto generated playlist always have some
| artists that I really dislike and would never listen, but are
| pretty popular.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| The best recommendation system for me is none at all.
|
| I recommend using an extension called 'Improve YouTube!' [1],
| which allows to collapse/hide
| recommendations/comments/ads/related videos/autoplay etc.
|
| There's also YouTube Vanced [2], which allows some of these
| things on Android.
|
| 1. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improve-youtube-
| vi...
|
| 2. https://vancedapp.com/
| keb_ wrote:
| I use a bit of CSS to remove the sections of the page that show
| recommendations while watching a video, and turn off autoplay. I
| then only ever navigate to my subscriptions page. In general, I
| try to avoid YouTube recommendations at all costs.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The best YouTube interface I've yet found is the commandline
| "mps-youtube" (mpsyt) utility (https://pypi.org/project/mps-
| youtube/)
|
| Unfortunately, it's been all but entirely crippled through API
| limits.
|
| When it did work, what it allowed was:
|
| - A terminal text-only interface.
|
| - The ability to search by keyword _or_ publisher.
|
| - The ability to restrict to music, or all videos.
|
| - The ability to set playback preferences (audio only, video,
| preferred resolution)
|
| - The ability to create current or permanently saved playlists.
| These could be edited down from the search results.
|
| - Runs on Linux, MacOS, Android (under Termux via pip), and
| Windows (Cygwin or WSL). On Android, it permits backgrounding
| video or listening to audio only.
|
| - Accrues no user history.
|
| - Recommendations-free.
|
| And the killer feature:
|
| - The ability to play through a curated playlist from beginning
| to end.
|
| (It also suppresses advertising, which is a plus in my book.)
|
| You could also download directly from the utility (audio, video,
| or both). All state are retained locally, there's no need to have
| or use an account.
|
| For topics of interest, I would stack up 5, or 10 or 20, or 40
| videos, and roll through them over an hour, day, or week. It was
| really marvelous.
|
| As noted, YouTube killed it through their application API
| control.
|
| mpv offers the ability to play back either a single video, a
| (separately maintained) playlist, or a channel or YouTube
| playlist, and is my usual go-to. It's also useful on other sites
| (mpv uses the youtube-dl utility which supports a whole slew of
| video and audio sites and platforms).
|
| Absent mpsyt, what I'll frequently do is use YouTube's site
| search or a third party (e.g., DDG video search) to grab a bunch
| of video URLs, and either play those from the commandline (mpv
| will take multiple arguments) or as a saved file (useful for
| restarting later). This gives an ad-free experience as well.
|
| But for YouTube itself, mpsyt was amazing.
| pg_bot wrote:
| Can we get a button to stop recommending videos that have already
| been watched? On the front page out of 12 videos listed, I've
| already seen 7 of them and have no need to watch them again.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| If you're logged in, hover over the video, click the three dot
| menu, then select "Not Interested".
|
| If you are not logged in you can't do this, for obvious algo
| manipulation reasons.
| pg_bot wrote:
| This doesn't work, it will just show more videos I've already
| seen.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Well yes, it doesn't change the algorithm. It just drops
| that particular video.
| barbazoo wrote:
| You're right but somehow I would think that YT should know
| which videos I've already watched...
| sbierwagen wrote:
| There's lots of music on youtube. Some "videos" get
| rewatched hundreds of times.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Those are in a category called music.
|
| Even without the category system, if the user never ever
| goes back to rewatch a video they've seen, it could
| perhaps realize that the user doesn't _want_ to rewatch
| videos they 've already seen. Or if some videos or
| channels have a very high re-watch rate and others don't
| (presumably music channels vs., say, a random furniture
| restoration channel), it could tune for that. Clearly
| they're not separating the types, and it's not because
| they're not capable.
| function_seven wrote:
| Yeah, but then Youtube thinks, "He hates that channel!",
| rather than, "He doesn't want to rewatch old videos."
|
| I keep getting old furniture restoration videos in my feed.
| I've seen them already. How about different channels on the
| same topic with new videos posted?
| gothroach wrote:
| When you select not interested, it gives the option of
| saying it's either because you already watched the video or
| that you don't like the channel. I don't know quite why
| they keep recommending videos I've watched recently, but at
| least telling YouTube I've seen a video (...) prevents it
| from spamming my recommendations.
| dashoffset wrote:
| > I don't know quite why they keep recommending videos
| I've watched recently
|
| You probably don't have kids.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Because kids watch furniture restoration videos that GP
| was talking about?
| risho wrote:
| you can tell youtube you've already seen it. you hit "not
| interested" and then click "tell us why" and then hit "i've
| already seen it".
| lucb1e wrote:
| It's quite a few clicks when you could just mentally skip
| over it, but indeed I wanted it to learn so I went
| through the trouble. Again and again. Probably more than
| a hundred times. It doesn't learn. I just pass over them
| now. The algorithm probably knows better than all of us
| what keeps us longer on the site anyway and the button is
| just a dummy.
| function_seven wrote:
| Thanks. I never got to that step because I didn't know
| there'd be another question.
| gremloni wrote:
| That doesn't solve the problem at all. I like and am
| interested in the videos I've watched. I want the algorithm
| to know I'm interested, I just don't want it watch something
| I've watched again.
| stewartmcgown wrote:
| Go to the end of the list of category pills on the homepage and
| click 'New to You'
| dpcx wrote:
| It's not perfect, but in Firefox this definitely helps:
| https://github.com/EvHaus/youtube-hide-watched
| willhinsa wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28569079
|
| > 2. If you have set your history to expire after some amount
| of time, it will start re-recommending videos you've already
| seen once it has forgotten you have watched them.
| [deleted]
| bergesenha wrote:
| I second this. I also wish the algorithm would throw a real
| curveball once in a while too, something completely different
| to what I have been caught in.
| imglorp wrote:
| While we're at it, how about just let us call an API and use
| our own recommender?
|
| They probably hate this idea but who knows, that might even
| increase vid views.
| hwers wrote:
| Best decision I ever made was installing an extension to get rid
| of the recommendations (they're such crap - I wish they would
| actually try to recommend me things with a high likelihood of me
| enjoying rather than whatever propaganda youtube wants me to
| see).
| htrp wrote:
| You can't say things like this without telling us what
| extension this is
| hwers wrote:
| This one https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-
| remove-yout... I also remove comments and 'similar videos'.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| You can accomplish this without a dedicated extension by using
| either uBlock Origin's element blocker, or if you're handy with
| CSS, the Stylus CSS manager.
|
| Using uBlock Origin, right-click the part of the page you want
| removed, select the "remove element" option, confirm it's got
| the right bits selected, and nuke.
|
| Using Stylus, you'll be opening up the element inspector and
| finding the relevant selectors. Fastest option is to apply a
| "display: none important!;" directive to that.
|
| Stylus is by far the more powerful and flexible of the two, and
| you can do far more with it if you care to. uBlock should be
| sufficient though.
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| > 3. Do recommendations drive viewers to increasingly extreme
| content?
|
| > As I've explained, we actively demote low-quality information
| in recommendations. But we also take the additional step of
| showing viewers authoritative videos about topics that may
| interest them. Say I watch a video about the COVID-19 vaccine. In
| my Up Next panel, I'll see videos from reputable sources like Vox
| and Bloomberg Quicktake and won't see videos that contain
| misleading information about vaccines (to the extent that our
| system can detect them).
|
| When my parents watch 30 consecutive videos that mention that you
| can't trust the mainstream media, what good is suggesting to them
| a Bloomberg video?
|
| My parents aren't on FB or any other social media. But over the
| last 10 years they have gone off the deep end after watching more
| and more insane videos on Youtube. It started with hours of Ron
| Paul videos. Then Alex Jones videos. Who knows what cretins it
| offered up after that.
|
| They've stopped talking to me recently. It's because I've gotten
| the "Kill Shot" after they've explicitly told me not to. I'm
| apparently going to die from the covid vaccine within the next 6
| months to 3 years... On my last phone call, they've told me that
| 300 old money families (who are all also insane
| environmentalists) have hatched and are executing a plan to
| depopulate the planet to 500 million... as told on the "Georgia
| Guide Stones".
|
| The US Government also has mind-control devices that are
| convincing people to get the shot. They told me the mind control
| devices were first used during the Iraq War, because it convinced
| so much of the Iraqi Army to surrender en masse.
|
| Also, all of our technology comes from the wreckage of crashed
| UFOs, most famously the Roswell UFO. My Dad thinks I'm naive for
| not believing this.
|
| Both my parents have college degrees. My Dad has a masters in an
| engineering field. They were once relatively un-political and
| rode out the Great Recession without any harm. Maybe they just
| didn't handle retirement well. But I have a decade of nearly
| daily emails from them... "Watch this! [youtube link]". When they
| are gone, I'll have documentation of their decent into madness,
| with hyperlinks all going to 1 domain. I'm sure YouTube is doing
| all they can.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Once you start watching Alex Jones videos, the algorithm starts
| to bubble up some nasty stuff.
| exolymph wrote:
| I'm sorry that you're in this painful situation. Personally I
| don't think the root problem is YouTube -- rather, it's your
| parents' confirmation bias. They _want_ to believe these
| things.
|
| I've watched Alex Jones videos myself. I did not leave wanting
| more and no recommendation algo could change that. (Lest I
| leave the wrong impression, the same is true of AOC going live
| on IG.)
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > They want to believe these things.
|
| This isn't exactly new. When I was growing up, there were
| tabloid newspapers in the supermarkets with wacky headlines
| like "woman gives birth to two-headed bat", "aliens abduct
| CEO of GM and replace him with robot clone" or "Elvis is
| alive and acting as president of the United Nations". They've
| moved online, but they were always there. Somebody was buying
| them, even back then - enough to justify the costs of
| printing them and paying to have them placed in supermarket
| checkout counters.
|
| What's also not new is the influence of unelected,
| unaccountable busybodies interjecting themselves wherever and
| whenever they can to suppress whatever they personally don't
| happen to like on your behalf (always, always, "for the
| children" as we see here). Back then it was Jerry Falwell,
| Pat Robertson and Tipper Gore with their "moral majority" -
| they didn't care much who believed that they needed to wear
| tinfoil hats to protect their brains from being reprogrammed
| by government radio waves, but they sure did care about
| anything that undermined the position of the christian church
| in daily life, and they were really successful with it. Now
| all the people who opposed them back then are... doing the
| same things themselves.
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| This may be true. Ultimately my personal story is not worth
| much. I do know that there is a growing community of people
| who share this story, though. One does not personally need to
| be affected to notice an uptick in anti-knowledge behavior
| recently.
|
| The greater point is that if X percent of the population has
| biases that if fed would lead them to deranged behavior, is
| it responsible to take advantage of that?
|
| The reasonable discussion of course goes to how big of a
| number is X. If 100,000 families get destroyed per decade, no
| big deal in relation to those sweet advertising impressions,
| I guess. But if FB, YT, Reddit, etc collectively take the
| mostly hands off approach, does X become big enough to
| achieve history-book-level harm? Like making [effective
| representative democracy, pandemic response, ecologic
| collapse mitigation] impossible.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Personally I don't think the root problem is YouTube --
| rather, it's your parents' confirmation bias. They want to
| believe these things.
|
| The thing is, most people, including likely you and me, have
| _some_ defect. Some aspect of constructing a "good"
| society[1] is setting up systems to counter the effect of
| these defects. If you have a system that _fosters_ a person
| 's defects, it is fair to be critical of it.
|
| Or put a simpler way: It's as fair to criticize the Youtube
| algorithm as it is to criticize a newspaper that only prints
| positive news about white people and negative news about non-
| whites. Sure - any given reader can choose which newspaper
| he/she will read, and the root cause is the reader's bias,
| but I think most would agree it's a problematic newspaper
| that is making a bad problem worse.
|
| [1] Whatever that means.
| foolinaround wrote:
| but in your analogy, there is both positive and negative
| news about white and non-white people.
|
| the reader just goes to the sections for positive news
| about white people and negative news about non-whites. He
| tears up the rest.
|
| --
|
| Is it not like one goes to breakfast at his local diner,
| and every day, eats a plateful of bacon. Should the server
| knowing his patterns take away his bacon?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| You have my sympathy. I have a similar if less extreme
| experience. For me, it happened when my mother moved to
| Florida.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I hate how it has now started slipping Hollywood movies into my
| recommendation feed. All of a sudden i'm seeing the credits on a
| 2 hour movie after watching a 15 minute UrbanX video. NO YOUTUBE,
| BAD. If I wanted to watch shitty movies I wouldn't be on YouTube.
| [deleted]
| foofoo4u wrote:
| In general I hate how YouTube is now filled with videos from
| high production studios. And most of these aren't even full-
| length episodes, but rather ~2 minute excerpts. I miss the old
| YouTube when most content was produced by individuals.
| wincy wrote:
| I've started getting sub-1minute videos popping up constantly
| on YouTube. If I wanted that I'd use Tiktok (I don't). On
| mobile you can hide a video but it doesn't prompt you to stop
| the channel entirely. So I just keep getting these dumb
| recommendations.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > I miss the old YouTube when most content was produced by
| individuals.
|
| "Old YouTube" was mostly full Simpsons episodes before they
| got taken down
| smegger001 wrote:
| >> I miss the old YouTube when most content was produced by
| individuals.
|
| >"Old YouTube" was mostly full Simpsons episodes before
| they got taken down
|
| I'm not sure I see the problem there.
| skytreader wrote:
| For a less serious take, I've been playing a game with Youtube's
| recommendation system that I want to share. It works like the
| Wikipedia link game[1][2] but more stochastic, I'd like to think.
| To play the game:
|
| 1. Have a specific video in mind. It mostly comes to me from
| memory of recommendations past. For example, "Hey I remember
| Crash Course Film History had an episode on _2001: A Space
| Odyssey_. "
|
| 2. Now the fun part: _NEVER_ use search to find the video
| (external search engines too!) directly _or indirectly_. Rather
| try to bias the recommendation algorithm until it recommends that
| video to you again. You can only try to influence the algorithm
| by watching other _recommended_ videos, liking, or disliking.
| Recommendations come from the homepage or from the sidebar when
| you watch other videos; this means you can 't start your search
| by visiting their channel
|
| In this example, maybe I'll try watching more content from Crash
| Course. I've been watching STEM Crash Course lately so maybe I'll
| click on the first Crash Course Humanities content that gets
| recommended. To bias towards movies maybe I'll watch myself some
| Nerdwriter. Again, note that searching for Crash Course
| Humanities content is considered cheating. It has to be
| recommended to you.
|
| It's a race against yourself to get to the video you want.
|
| Obviously, I don't have anything better to do with my time ;).
| Once I was looking for a video I was extremely sure Tom Scott
| made. After what's basically a nonsequential brute force search
| through his channel (again, only through recommendations!), I
| still couldn't find it. I gave up but I still didn't search,
| rather I emailed Tom. He replied only to say he's never made such
| video. This is when I used search; it turned out to be from Vox.
|
| I just wanted to "stick it to Google": if they are going to
| profile me and my interests, I won't make it too easy. With this
| game, I'm hoping my interests appear broader than they are to
| Google.
|
| Have fun.
|
| [1] https://www.thewikigame.com/
|
| [2] https://degreesofwikipedia.com/
| handelaar wrote:
| That's a lot of text just to bury the question "why does Youtube
| never ever stop shoving literal Nazis onto my front page all the
| time?" a thousand words down and then... not answer it.
| Applejinx wrote:
| They pay to be seen. Several different entities have a reason
| to fund that.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| The Orwellian language in this piece is absolutely ridiculous.
| hammock wrote:
| This article started out talking about what good signals are to
| drive a recommendation algo, but it ended up concluding with all
| the different ways YouTube goes against those signals to censor
| videos or otherwise manually tune your feed instead.
|
| The meaning of "recommendation" seems to have shifted from "what
| we think you want" to "what we want for you."
|
| It's not a wrong use of the word, just different from what you
| might expect.
| seneca wrote:
| > The meaning of "recommendation" seems to have shifted from
| "what we think you want" to "what we want for you."
|
| I think this is a pretty fantastic summary of what has gone
| wrong with a lot of big tech. Facebook, Twitter, youtube,
| Google search, iOS, Android, and Windows all have moved toward
| taking away user control and trying to move you toward more of
| what they want you to want. If it's not recommendations, it's
| forced updates, device scanning, or "influencers".
|
| We badly need some of that disruption these same companies used
| to preach about. The current cohort is becoming ossified and
| user hostile, just like the companies they replaced.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| is nobody going to talk about the trending tab? It's full of
| cringe atleast in India region. they seriously need to work on
| it.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Recommendation on YouTube is somewhat good but search sucks. When
| you search for something it throws at you random garbage on top
| of the thing you are actually looking for, think AltaVista vs
| Google yes Google you own the YouTube. There is no ability to
| search for videos in playlists and there is no ability to search
| videos' comments.
|
| Also they say >borderline content--that is content that comes
| close to, but doesn't quite violate our Community Guidelines.
|
| TOS can not treat anything as "borderline"; borderline is akin to
| robbing a bank and then telling a judge your crime was
| "borderline" because you were out of money and you needed to get
| your financial situation straight by robbing a bank. My point is
| TOS and Law are binary either something is allowed or forbidden
| there is no middle ground.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > TOS can not treat anything as "borderline"
|
| They addressed this, I think, later in the article
|
| > With all that, why don't we simply remove borderline content?
| Misinformation tends to shift and evolve rapidly, and unlike
| areas like terrorism or child safety, often lacks a clear
| consensus. Also, misinformation can vary depending on personal
| perspective and background. We recognize that sometimes, this
| means leaving up controversial or even offensive content. So we
| continue to heavily focus on building responsible
| recommendations and take meaningful steps to prevent our system
| from widely recommending this content.
|
| So much, in terms of moderation, what is acceptable, etc. is a
| constantly moving target. Even if there is an exactly right
| answer today, it might become an important conversation to have
| tomorrow
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| > With all that, why don't we simply remove borderline content?
| Misinformation tends to shift and evolve rapidly, and unlike
| areas like terrorism or child safety, often lacks a clear
| consensus. Also, misinformation can vary depending on personal
| perspective and background.
|
| This is a weird way to say "ideas that we suppress for being
| misinformation are sometimes actually true."
| judge2020 wrote:
| 'sometimes true depending on who's watching, what their
| cultural background is, and whether or not the idea presented
| is proved with future research'.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I don't get this one. How can something be true for only some
| people?
|
| If you say "people shower every day on average" then that
| might be true in hot sweaty climates more than in temperate
| ones where people might shower every other day instead, but
| that's not really what's meant with misinformation. So I'm
| not understanding how the things that one means when talking
| about misinformation -- e.g. that lemon juice cures cancer or
| that homeopathic medicine works better than placebo pills,
| those kinds of things is what we're talking about right?
| Isn't that universally false (or true, if something is not
| actually misinformation but only labeled as such because
| people don't like the facts)?
| jedimastert wrote:
| I mean, context really is important. "Ivermectin won a Nobel
| prize" is an objectively true fact, but depending on who you
| are that either means basically nothing or go eat horse de-
| wormer
| jedimastert wrote:
| Super interesting somewhat buried link on the guidelines for
| evaluators. I just assumed they were private so I never bothered
| to look them up; I wonder how easy they were to find before today
|
| https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I find it pretty decent if you tell it you don't like certain
| videos. But it fails to identify obvious, literal sequels to your
| current video. And if you don't trim it, it will surely feed you
| clickbait garbage.
|
| On some level people love to click on things they expect to hate
| and downvote it. I suspect that increases the odds of showing
| them similar content, vs. say, spotify which explicitly says
| "sorry we will try to avoid things like this". Youtube should
| make it clear which strategy they're doing, and they should do
| the latter.
| htrp wrote:
| > This means each borderline video watched is a lost opportunity
| to monetize, leading to real lost revenue to YouTube.
|
| The only thing you need to read from that post
| bryanthompson wrote:
| The whole system is infuriating. I stay pretty well in one lane
| for what I want to watch, and if I _accidentally_ click on ONE
| music video, the whole feed is wrecked for months.
| mef51 wrote:
| If you think of the Youtube recommendation system as a person,
| you would immediately understand how creepily this person is
| behaving by trying way too hard to get what it wants from you (ad
| clicks) under the guise of caring about you or your interests.
|
| Just because I click on a video and watch it entirely doesn't
| mean I want to see more like it, and it doesn't mean it was
| healthy for me to watch, it could have just been a distraction.
| But now this system will latch on to my need for distraction and
| keep nagging me with stuff in the long term that is ultimately
| harmful to me.
|
| I don't believe recommendation systems like this can ever really
| understand people well enough where a person can walk away and
| feel healthy about it. But they are great at generating money and
| that is why they exist. I can see and appreciate the amount of
| effort that is trying to make these systems better but they are
| fundamentally flawed and limited.
| dilap wrote:
| I've found some good stuff from YouTube recommendations, but the
| reccs are mostly pretty dumb -- tons of repeats, tons of "hey,
| here's something EXACTLY LIKE what you just watched." It's
| nowhere close to as good as the recommendations for TikTok (which
| seem to read your mind _and_ your subconscious). Would love to
| see TikTok make a YouTube competitor.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Genuinely curious, would you actually want that product to
| exist?
|
| I'm at a point where I don't want _better_ recommendations to
| tell me what to think. I 'm already having enough of a
| challenge keeping my focus with the status quo.
| spiderice wrote:
| I would. Not because I necessarily even want to use it. But
| at this point, I consider any competition to Youtube to be a
| good thing. It's been over a decade without Youtube having a
| single viable alternative, and I want that to end.
| dilap wrote:
| I feel you on the focus challenge -- my heroin is twitter,
| which I struggle to not read compulsively. (Right now I'm in
| a "delete my account" phase, but I know I'll go back.)
|
| But for whatever reason, YouTube and TikTok are both very
| easy for me to consume in small amounts, deliberately.
|
| Perhaps the thing I love most on YouTube is music. I've
| discovered so much great stuff there. But I'm sure there's
| more, if I only knew about it!
|
| Beyond music, tons of other weird and/or life-enriching
| stuffL An old documentary on spanish gypsies. How to make an
| omlette. Programming live streams. Surreal russian war
| movies. Old Hunter Thompson interviews. Etc. etc. etc.
|
| But mostly the new stuff I find these days doesn't come from
| YouTube reccs (which tend to just repeat the same things over
| and over, or show mainstream fluff, more akin to advertising
| than a personalized recommendation), but off-site sources,
| like blogs or twitter links. Which is a shame!
|
| (Sort of tangentially, if I had to restart civilization from
| scratch and got to pick _one_ single source of information to
| use, I 'd pick YouTube for sure. I just wish Google were a
| better steward of that rather remarkable collection. (They
| really seem to be on a vendetta against the "You" part of
| YouTube...))
| [deleted]
| schleck8 wrote:
| How did Google get the .youtube and .google TLDs?
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How did Google get the .youtube and .google TLDs while barely
| using them?
|
| They got it by paying money and meeting the other new-gTLD
| compliance requirements during the new gTLD gold rush.
|
| None of those requirements involved current use or a forward
| commitment to heavy use, so the "while barely using it" is
| irrelevant.
| schoen wrote:
| https://icannwiki.org/.youtube
|
| https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD
|
| It's pretty strange to me that ICANN allowed the "brand TLD"
| concept.
|
| I remember being impressed that the Aga Khan has his own TLD
| under this program:
|
| https://icannwiki.org/.agakhan
| mjsweet wrote:
| I fell into a massive YouTube recommendation vortex two 1/2 years
| ago when my barista basically insisted I take all his Cafe's
| coffee grounds home and compost them. I had no idea how to
| compost (he was sick of telling customers it was going into
| landfill. every. single. day). I now have over 20kg's of worms
| spread over 30+ worm bins and I'm taking organic residue from all
| over the district and turning it into valuable soil amendments. I
| never thought 5 years ago I would now be on the cusp of leaving
| digital marketing and going into manufacturing soil amendments.
| Profoundly life changing experience.
| swalsh wrote:
| The reccomendation system is absolutely dangerous. Just this
| summer, I watched one video on peppers out of curiousity. By the
| end of summer I've got multiple different varieties growing, and
| all the accessories to support them. I'm really enjoying my
| garden, but it's very unlikely I would have started one without
| the youtube algorithm. Similarly my doctor reccomended I exercise
| more, so I started running. Then I googled how to improve, and
| soon I'm purchasing gear, and trying supplements. The amount of
| economic activity driven directly from Youtube has to be HUGE.
| sigmar wrote:
| The same thing happened to me with plants. I knew nothing about
| plants last year. Now I tell people I was radicalized by
| youtube into a house plant and pepper plant obsession.
| isk517 wrote:
| Running is a hobby that feels like it should be cheap but gets
| surprisingly expensive. Two quick pieces of advice to save you
| from a bit of hurt. 1. Track your miles, shoes need to be
| replaced every 300-500 and 2. Go get a foot orthotic and gait
| assessment done. Wearing the right type of shoes and finding
| out if you require orthotics is a easy way to prevent injuries
| that won't pop up for another year or two down the line.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I know quite a few casual runners (5K to 10K) and been
| running for over 15 years myself. Other than a $120 pair of
| running shoes every year or two, what is the expense? Maybe
| the water backpack things if you are into extreme running?
|
| It is not even a separate expense for me, as I just use my
| running shoes as my regular shoes. Also, maybe it is my gait
| or my lack of weight, but I estimate my shoes last 1k miles.
| isk517 wrote:
| I suppose things aren't as expensive if you are a casual
| but I'm still surprised you can get 1k out of a pair of
| shoes. My mother also runs and is significantly lighter
| than myself and she gets shin splints if she doesn't change
| runners out at 500 miles. My current system is to run a
| pair of shoes for about 350 - 450 miles then downgrade them
| to a pair of walking shoes in till they fall apart.
|
| I started running fairly casually but eventually started
| doing marathons. I run about 110 miles a month so I'm
| switching out shoes every 3 months. My feet suck so I'm
| also replacing a pair of orthotics every 2 years. I got a
| full set of summer and winter running gear and enough of
| each to last me a week. I also have a hydration vest, a GPS
| watch (not necessary but very useful), a set of Aftershokz
| bone conductive headphones so that I can listen to music
| while maintaining situational awareness, a pair of good
| sunglasses specifically for running (I sweat a lot and
| would not want to ware the same pair for everyday use), I
| have a few soft flasks that go in my hydration vest, and
| I've had to invest in a pretty decent treadmill to run on
| during the worst parts of winter.
|
| Not everything I've listed is 100% necessary but as with
| most hobbies it finds ways to become expensive the more
| dedicated you are to it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, that sounds like it would add up! I feel like if I
| would dissuade myself from going on a run if I had to get
| all that stuff ready. Even putting sunscreen on sometimes
| feels like a bummer.
| beckman466 wrote:
| What makes you share such an unrelated anecdotal story here?
|
| Seriously? Is it _' telling 'cute' stories to distract from the
| black box youtube algorithm that creates white
| supremacists'_-time? It comes across as incredibly
| unempathetic, gaslighty and dismissive, posting on a thread
| that is discussing an important societal problem, especially
| using the word 'dangerous' in the sarcastic way in which you
| used it here.
|
| Also the reader has to to replace YouTube's cryptic _'
| borderline'_ label in this article with the word _' white
| supremacist'_ and/or _' alt-right'_ to get the real picture.
| 5faulker wrote:
| It's a consumption-driven economy, where those who are
| economically useless are driven out of the game.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is the best one-liner here all week +++
|
| me: art, philosophy, religion, culture -- avidly
|
| me on youTube: Rizin/UFC re-runs, live concerts of
| commercially successful bands, D&D themed games
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| Huh, not YouTube but the companies paying content creators to
| make videos featuring their product.
| jeffwask wrote:
| It's sad because I remember being able to find new and
| interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all
| corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of
| WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded
| with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and
| replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again"
| to make it stop.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| As someone who had a bit of a YouTube hobby and is trying to
| get back into it, I've generally found that the algorithm
| brings me a larger audience than I would have otherwise. I've
| published three videos in the last 28 days, and my analytics
| says I've gotten 5200 views across all my content in that
| time. I have about a hundred subscribers. Search is still
| king, but 15% of those views have come from suggested. I've
| got a 7.8% CTR so it's suggesting it to quite a few people.
| cma wrote:
| Like Facebook now does for "boosting" post shares, I wonder
| when the YT algorithm will start incorporating pay to win
| mechanics.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| It seems like YouTube has realized that winner-takes-all
| is bad for the health of the platform, and is trying to
| grow smaller creators. I suspect they won't do this,
| because they realize that it ultimately strangles growth.
| Mr. Beast (for example) is already spending about
| $4MM/month on making videos; if they allowed this kind of
| stuff, well... not many people could compete.
|
| We'll see though!
| cma wrote:
| After I made the post I remembered they already do it.
| Brands can pay to sponsor existing videos that put them
| in a good light. These recomendations do have an [Ad]
| tag, but the extra views and impressions are allow to
| feed into the algorithm which then doesn't have to
| maintain the [Ad] tag going forward:
|
| https://support.google.com/google-
| ads/thread/10007177/using-...
| kenjackson wrote:
| What corporate stuff do you have on your main page? Mine is
| all pretty much filled with content that matches what I
| watch.
| yummypaint wrote:
| This seems pretty tautological. What you watch will reflect
| your reccomendations because there is a causal relationship
| there, unless you never use youtube for discovery. I
| alledge that what people spend time watching is more
| heavily shaped by reccomendations than they are aware of.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Personal experience sharing time. I use YouTube heavily,
| and even pay for YT Premium.
|
| The other day a little modal appeared on the side of
| youtube.com desktop saying something like, "Curious for
| new stuff? Explore content that isn't what you usually
| watch."
|
| It ended up being sorta like an alternate reality. It was
| all the topics I usually watch, but with different
| channels I don't normally see at all. In other words, it
| was as if all the channels I normally watch don't exist,
| what else would exist to fill the void.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| YouTube premium is the best streaming service. There's so
| much content of high quality content that's relatively
| niche. I recently stumbled on SummoningSalt's videos
| about speed runners and I can't imagine any other medium
| that would create incentives for that type of content. Of
| course you don't need premium, but no ads is great! I've
| gone on to support people on patreon from YouTube, from
| cgp grey to stuffmadehere. I can't imagine finding that
| kind of content on Hulu, Netflix, et al. It's possible
| there are YouTube alternatives as I'm quite old compared
| to a teenager.
| kenjackson wrote:
| What they watch is shaped by recommendations, but I think
| most are also aware of it. For example, when I want to
| watch something about basketball I typically go to
| YouTube and there are recommendations of what to watch.
| There are probably millions of basketball videos, but
| YouTube is going to show me a handful based on previous
| videos I've watched and liked. I'm not surprised to see
| certain content creators more than others. But at the
| same time if they did a poor job of recommendation (like
| Spotify) then I'd probably just go and search through
| channels that I know I like.
| dkarl wrote:
| When you depart from your usual intake, some departures
| are a lot more powerful than others. Sometimes you watch
| something new and YouTube spends days pushing similar
| stuff into your face. Other times you watch something new
| and only see one or two relevant recommendations mixed
| into your usual fare. My hypothesis is that YouTube knows
| that particular topics and particular content are
| associated with usage patterns that make money for them,
| and the algorithm is alert to any possibility of pushing
| users into those patterns.
| kroltan wrote:
| I'm not who you're replying to, but at least for me, I've
| found a way of keeping the recommendations on check.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/XIRW4U2.jpeg
|
| When opening videos that are sent to me by others, I
| always use a private window, so my main account is pretty
| low "variance".
|
| When I find a creator I like, I do a "fake binge", by
| queuing all their recent videos and some old ones too and
| playing them unattended.
|
| I also try to minimize my use of the recommendation
| sidebar, since it usually shows content related to the
| current video rather than the more general
| recommendations of the home page.
|
| When something foreign sneaks its way to my home page, I
| immediately click "not interested", paying attention to
| not hover the thumbnail.
|
| Overall, Youtube has got me trained pretty well, but at
| least I get some nice recommendations out of it, so much
| so in fact that over half the recommendations I get are
| usually videos I have already watched (even if Youtube
| thinks I haven't yet for whatever reason).
| jeffwask wrote:
| I guess what they call it now is the Explore page which is
| all Ellen and Tonight Show clips.
| kyle-rb wrote:
| The Explore page seems to be globally-curated stuff not
| based on personal taste, so it seems like the opposite of
| recommended.
|
| And is that the main page for you? When I open the
| website or the Android app I get "Home". "Explore" is a
| separate tab. "Home" is pretty much filled with
| recommendations from channels I've watched recently, no
| corporate stuff (excluding ads).
|
| I do see the issue of recommendations being flooded with
| one topic you've watched recently, but I generally don't
| have too much of a problem with it. When the
| recommendations stop being relevant/interesting to me, I
| tend to shut off YouTube.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > Mine is all pretty much filled with content that matches
| what I watch.
|
| it should know that I don't want to watch the same things
| every day over and over relentlessly. There's hardly
| anything (by topic) I want to watch again the next day,
| except some news and political commentary which I do watch
| and it NEVER offers me.
| grumbel wrote:
| That's why I started using multiple accounts, makes it a lot
| easier to keep the algorithm on topic and not get side
| tracked just because you searched for a song or game once.
|
| In the end the core problem with the recommendation system is
| simply that there is only one list of recommendations, which
| makes it damn near impossible to switch to a different topic
| unless you start account hopping. The new topic-bar helps a
| little, but still offers no way to get rid of an unwanted
| topic completely.
| jeffwask wrote:
| I did this till I started paying for premium then it
| sucked.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| If you use different channels, premium should work for
| all, right?
| Uupis wrote:
| I use the family plan for multiple accounts. Might not
| fit if you actually use it as a _family_ plan, but it 's
| working out for me so far.
| quakeguy wrote:
| ,,Using multiple accounts" ,,Makes it easier" That may work
| indeed, but i wouldnt call it easy in any way, or
| convenient. Instead try to subscribe to as many channels
| you find interesting as possible. Thats what worked for me
| in the end getting rid of the clutter that is suggested.
| DocEasyE wrote:
| check yolo comics on youtube, they are korean but have
| subtitles and make amazing prank videos not like US pranks
| stevofolife wrote:
| You started playing WoW Classic and it was able to recommend
| WoW-related videos. It did its job. What else do you expect
| from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested
| next or what you're going to do tomorrow? That's not
| recommendation, that's mass surveillance and psychological
| manipulation.
|
| But on a useful note, maybe YouTube needs to provide a
| function to see a list of random videos that are unexplored
| or new.
| dgritsko wrote:
| > What else do you expect from a recommendation system?
| Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to
| do tomorrow?
|
| Actually, I think they kind of are trying to do this (in a
| sense), if you read the article:
|
| > Our system then compares your viewing habits with those
| that are similar to you and uses that information to
| suggest other content you may want to watch. So if you like
| tennis videos and our system notices that others who like
| the same tennis videos as you also enjoy jazz videos, you
| may be recommended jazz videos, even if you've never
| watched a single one before.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| This is probably how both I and many of my friends who
| share interests managed to fall down the same city
| planning YouTube rabbit hole this summer.
| gremloni wrote:
| This is not my experience at all. Everything on my page is
| from independent creators.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| I'm hitting never show this again on one type of content all
| the time. There are days where my feed consists of like 33%
| of that stuff and it happens all the time. I'm at the point
| where it only recommends me my subscribed channels or the
| stuff I tell it not to show at all some days too. It's so
| frustrating.
| dkarl wrote:
| I think there are some intersections of interest that make
| the algorithm hypothesize that you're a certain kind of
| person. Like if you watch a lot of strength training
| content, and then you watch one lecture on Heidegger,
| YouTube is like, oh, we finally figured this guy out, he's
| a white supremacist or at the very least a gun nut. But if
| I watch a video about cupcakes, I'll only get a few
| suggestions about baking, not any associated interests,
| because cupcakes don't combine with any of my other
| interests to trigger a stereotype.
| [deleted]
| vl wrote:
| All it means that it is working as intended. Few years ago YT
| switched to life-time-value optimization. But when you get it
| to the logical end, ideal consumer for Google is a healthy
| person with disposable income that spends all of it.
|
| Since Google/YT essentially are shaping you thoughts and
| behaviours, logical optimization for them is to shape you to be
| a working sportsman that spends all disposable income on
| services, experiences and goods bought online.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| YouTube's recommendation system (and googles search engine if
| you see the comments in the other post today
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764) somehow escapes
| the flak that other systems, such as Facebook news & posts, get
| but I find it's equally damaging to society.
|
| There seems to exist a downward spiral where content that is
| prioritized to be attention grabbing over all else gets the
| most clicks and then drives more content to focus on this. The
| quality of the content itself seems to be increasingly
| inconsequential and has fallen off a cliff in the face of click
| spam.
|
| Anecdotal evidence 1: I used to watch youtube videos for
| investment ideas and now all of these streamers pump out the
| same low quality, not very researched content with their face
| plastered on top with a shocked look on their mug.
|
| Anecdotal evidence 2: My son was shown youtube by one of our
| nannies (despite my rules on no youtube) and has since become
| semi-addicted to the most brain dead content of toys being made
| into knock offs of the reasonable shows he used to watch or
| some adult man child being a weird clown in public.
|
| Idiocracy will be due to memes as much as genes.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Kara Swisher of _The New York Times_ (previously ReCode) has
| been absolutely biting in her criticisms of Google generally,
| Youtube specifically, and other current tech monopolies.
|
| Directly to Susan Wojcicki's face in a live public interview:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=zKrQzJgFWdw
|
| (Starting about 1:50 into the interview.)
|
| Also numerous times in her column and podcast (I can chase
| those down if requested, though they should be prominent).
|
| See "Algorithms Won't Fix What's Wrong With YouTube"
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/youtube-
| algorithm... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20184282)
| ahoka wrote:
| Because why would you do things for free, when you can pay for
| them?
| dsclough wrote:
| I'd recommend anyone looking to take better control of their
| habits in this regard to install the DF Youtube extension. Turn
| it off when you want to tumble down rabbitholes and keep it on
| at all other times. Really makes a difference in how youtube
| usage works over time.
|
| On a related note it would be interesting if someone has made
| some "rabbithole resolving" software - I've noticed that these
| things terminate in extremely similar ways for most people, and
| have had a number of conversations laughing with others about
| how we've gone down the exact same content route. Write some
| code to find the bottom for us and save all the headache (fun)!
| skybrian wrote:
| I'm wondering what you mean by "dangerous" and what level of
| irony you're at. :-)
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I got in the same situation with videos on otters (popular in
| South Korea, it seems) by watching accidentally one in the
| feed, but the music recommendations are either missing or
| missing my preferences, so the system does not really work for
| me.
| jumpkick wrote:
| "Gear" is slang for steroids so I assume this is the joke,
| right? :p
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Read it as "video on preppers" and everything still worked for
| the most part, but you didn't mention freeze dried food or
| holsters so figured I read something wrong.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Same here, though I caught on at "multiple different
| varieties [of preppers?] growing" (WTF?).
| ahurmazda wrote:
| Personally, I carefully guard my youtube feed (same as twitter).
| I vigorously cull (`dont recommend/not interested`) dull videos
| whenever they pop up. Once a month, I will go over my history and
| remove items that I didn't particularly care for in retrospect.
| Youtube's recommendation has gotten really useful for me
| overtime. It keeps my curiosity well-satisfied.
| foolinaround wrote:
| 'low quality' content is ostensibly demoted by this system, which
| was built on the biases of the developers themselves.
|
| At the very least, YT should recognize that this metric is quite
| subjective, and given the vast scale of information out there,
| they simply cannot be the experts.
|
| Sometimes I just dont want any magic, just give it to me.
|
| If I like seeing 'flat earth' videos, then recommend the next
| best 'flat earth' video, just keep it simple?
| paulpauper wrote:
| You youtube algo keeps showing me fox news. I have not once
| clicked but it keeps showing me them.
|
| Also, what is the deal with mrbeast and other video always being
| on default? Did they pay for that exposure or what.
| spiderice wrote:
| > Did they pay for that exposure or what
|
| Kind of. Mr. Beast videos make Youtube tons of money. Shouldn't
| be a surprise that Youtube pushes them harder than videos that
| don't make a ton of money.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Chicken, egg. I am sure finance videos with super expensive
| credit card ads would make more money for YouTube
| timeimp wrote:
| Oh cool. Their algorithm is why I'm now a big fan of Beluga.
|
| Thanks Algorithm(tm)
| ufo wrote:
| This blog post doesn't seem yo answer the hard questions, such as
| why recommend Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi on every video.
| id5j1ynz wrote:
| > For my oldest daughter, it was finding laughter and community
| with the Vlogbrothers. And for my oldest son, recommendations
| brought about a better understanding of linear algebra through
| animated explainers by 3Blue1Brown--with breaks to watch KSI
| videos.
|
| My first thought reading this was about reinforcing a stereotype
| as the son learning hard sciences and the daughter watching fun
| shows about people things.
|
| Did anyone else notice or think about that that?
| BeetleB wrote:
| It is reinforcing a stereotype.
|
| But it is also telling his reality. It wouldn't be honest for
| him to say his daughter watches 3Blue1Brown if she doesn't,
| would it?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Or maybe it's just what HAPPENS in real life when you have a
| son and a daughter, and it's effects can be seem on a societal
| level through, for instance, the number of male vs female hard
| science college applicants for instance. Different genders have
| different interests on AVERAGE. The fact that nature doesn't
| conform to a idealized view of an equal world does not make it
| "wrong".
| smegger001 wrote:
| equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity. you are never
| going to get the first because psychology and biology you can
| only provide for the second.
| exolymph wrote:
| Stereotypes don't come from nowhere. Example:
| https://www.bates.edu/news/2010/12/21/chimp-doll-play/
| foofoo4u wrote:
| Here's an even better resource backed by an extensive body of
| research: https://bigthink.com/the-present/gender-
| stereotyped-toys/, which is based on
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-01989-8
| mpalmer wrote:
| Seems more like it's reinforcing what the kids themselves
| already choose to watch.
| haolez wrote:
| Sometimes, I want to watch a random video that was recommended,
| but I get anxious about clicking on it and start getting
| recommendations for that video's theme forever and ever.
|
| Once, I've clicked on a video about Tetris' World Championship
| Finals (I was curious!), and I was plagued with Tetris
| recommendations for some months.
| skybrian wrote:
| I guess that means you've learned to care a lot about YouTube's
| recommendations? Another approach is to ignore them.
| paganel wrote:
| That's what I personally do, I treat the side-bar as
| basically an ad-bar and my peripheral view just ignores it.
|
| It wasn't always like this, about 7-8 years ago I used to
| discover lots of interesting music after watching some indie
| music video, but not anymore, at some point their algorithm
| just broke (it looks like it's searching for a local maximum
| and once it finds it it gets stuck in there, as someone else
| mentioned above).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I treat the side-bar as basically an ad-bar and my
| peripheral view just ignores it.
|
| I just now realized that I do this too. So much that I've
| never actually paid any attention to the contents of the
| sidebar at all. My brain just automatically filters it out.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I assume the reason people find the YouTube's recommendation
| system less daring about jumping into very different content is a
| certain amount of caution described at the end of the article.
|
| Basically, when you've accidentally created a white nationalist
| movement, you tend to ratchet back your ambitions.
| hammock wrote:
| >Recommendations drive a significant amount of the overall
| viewership on YouTube, even more than channel subscriptions or
| search.
|
| Chicken/egg. Above is true is because they flood the sidebar with
| algorithmic recos instead of your subscriptions, and have tuned
| their notifications to not give you as many, even if you are
| subscribed and even if you click the notification bell.
| luhego wrote:
| I personally like the Youtube recommendation system when
| listening to music. I was able to find and listen songs that
| match my taste.
| [deleted]
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Just please give me some options!
|
| I want to be able to select exploration/discovery vs sticking
| with familiar grounds.
|
| It boggles my mind that there are zero explicit user settings and
| the only option is somehow game the recommendation system.
| beckman466 wrote:
| This is all horseshit. YouTube should be a utility,
| democratically owned and governed. When are we going to stop
| pretending this profit-seeking ad platform isn't dangerous, and
| start hosting videos according to other metrics than
| 'monetizability' instead.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Why don't they let me tell them the interests that they are
| trying to infer? I'd be really happy to review sets of
| recommendations and indicate the kind of videos i like and the
| kind i don't.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Because this way YOU would have the power to decide what you
| see, and why, I ask, would the biggest corporation in the world
| not use this power themselves? They can literally change minds
| and public opinion using it. Imagine the implications in terms
| of public police, elections, even the general zeitgeist of the
| population about the company itself. Google will NEVER allow
| it's users to decide for themselves what they want to see.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| The latest Facebook [leaks](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-
| facebook-files-11631713039) by the WSJ has made it clear that
| these large social platforms have the intent and actively do
| shape public opinion. YouTube is no different. It's clear
| that they have political/ideological leanings and intend to
| use the platform to bend the world to their views.
| rhizome wrote:
| Except for the meager controls they already give you, the data
| flows only one way: from their db of history to your screen.
| You fencing off your interests would complicate this
| immeasurably. I would guess that it would raise the same
| problem that Google Search found with its domain blacklist
| feature 10+? years ago.
|
| I don't think _personal_ recommendations are a good use of
| developer effort, I think I 'd be fine if it just showed me
| videos liked by other people who have liked the same videos I
| have.
| oehpr wrote:
| In some vein they kind of do this by letting you like or
| dislike videos. The problem is almost all of them see this as
| an opportunity to signal others. Which means that your likes
| and dislikes are also value judgements, that you may or may not
| be comfortable making.
|
| They have at least have "not interested" but it's a clunky
| system.
|
| TikTok is having more luck because they're getting this data by
| watching WHEN you stop watching a video. Video's automatically
| play, so the default signal when you swipe past something is
| "no".
| rhizome wrote:
| Huh, I'd assume they are all storing start, stop, and skips.
| MMS21 wrote:
| Why must we click 3 buttons just so the algo doesn't recommend
| the same video, couldn't they use the like/ dislike system
| instead, seriously baffled how those buttons aren't factored in
| at all.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| > Our recommendation system is built on the simple principle of
| helping people find the videos they want to watch and that will
| give them value
|
| Well it doesn't live up to the principle, not even close.
|
| > It's constantly evolving, learning every day from over 80
| billion pieces of information we call signals.
|
| This is probably why. It's a positive feedback loop mechanism for
| noise.
|
| Another reason why is probably that it's metric for "give them
| value" is engagement. Its a dishonest metric, because "gives them
| value" is less important than "give us value", so even if you
| found that it doesnt give them value, you've got a perverse
| incentive to continue doing it and pretending it is in their best
| interest.
| skizm wrote:
| When I open youtube, 10 of the 12 videos displayed are ones I've
| already watched. 1 is a live steam, and one is from a channel I
| subscribe to. The non-viewed video is recommended to me
| frequently, but I've never had any interest in clicking on it.
| What possible "system" could they be using to come up with this
| being the best 12 videos to show me?
|
| FWIW: I pay for youtube music, which comes with youtube premium
| included so I don't get ads, but the recommendation system is
| pretty much useless.
| lordentropy wrote:
| For me, it seems like youtube's recommendation system mostly gets
| stuck in the local optimum. Once you watch a video from a
| particular channel, it'll keep on recommending the videos from
| the same channel for months. Soon, the recommendation just
| consists of stuff from the channels that have you already viewed.
| You rarely see new types of recommendations.
| cronix wrote:
| Visit in incognito mode and don't sign in. Brand new, fresh
| youtube, ready to be corrupted again.
| notJim wrote:
| I've found YouTube's defaults for a lightly-used profile (my
| work Google account) tend to be like Charlie Kirk/Ben Shapiro
| owning the libs type garbage.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Pretty sure that comes and goes.
|
| Comes, because statistically those youtubers are able to
| latch on to some viewers and this drives engagement. I
| believe some of that has been pay-to-win stuff, where the
| youtubers actively advertised and paid directly for
| engagement. Some of those folks are subsidized by
| outsiders.
|
| Goes, because YouTube knows from studying its own business
| that they're capable of driving more engagement by turning
| people into video-obsessed alt-right Nazis. And if it's too
| obvious, they'll be called on it, or actively punished as a
| platform over essentially selling themselves out as a
| propaganda bullhorn to whoever's able to pay.
|
| That being the alt-right Nazis, and those who fund them.
|
| So it goes back and forth. YouTube doesn't always do this.
| It does as much of this as it possibly can, but is
| systemically aware that running with it causes other
| problems, and dials it back to stay out of trouble (and
| because some of the people minding the algorithms are not,
| themselves, alt-right Nazis).
|
| YouTube always wants to find an algorithmic answer for
| everything, and is not afraid to go meta and look at larger
| contexts for what they do. It's a google thing. So they
| want, and don't want, the 'own the libs' paid-for content.
| It's both simple capitalism, and looking at it on a larger
| systemic level where there are risks to allowing their ad
| buys to stoke outright revolution of the country YouTube is
| based in.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| You should stop using the word nazi. It's disrespectful
| to those who lost loved ones in the holocaust.
|
| Separately there is nothing wrong with people who have
| opinions different from yours.
| blondin wrote:
| incognito mode has been the best thing for me lately! it has
| become my normal browser mode.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Something we've noticed in our house is that if YT can't
| figure out who is watching, it just uses the IP address. So
| I get recommendations based on what my kids watch, and my
| wife gets random recommendations for stuff based on what I
| watch.
|
| I've tried the "Don't recommend this" trick, but because
| the kids are subbed (or otherwise watch it), it still keeps
| coming back.
| type0 wrote:
| Incognito mode doesn't make their recommendation system any
| better, but at least it doesn't get stuck on some stupid
| subject because their bs algorithm deemed it important to
| show the same stuff several days in a row.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What this does is to tune the recommendations _for that
| session_ to what you view _for that session_.
|
| If you blindly follow some pratfalls or kittens video,
| you'll get served up junk. If you happen to be researching
| some specific topic (how-tos, explainers, academics,
| technical topics being among my favourites), you'll tend to
| find you're getting recommendations that follow from that
| initial topic.
|
| I _still_ treat recommendations quite warily, but at least
| the ones that come up in such sessions are somewhat better
| than standard fare.
|
| (I never use YT whilst authenticated / logged in.)
| city41 wrote:
| I am a huge YouTube addict and get sucked into it a lot. I used
| to discover all kinds of great channels and really enjoyed it.
| But lately I have noticed I'm not really finding much and the
| amount of watching I am doing has gone down a lot. Not sure if
| they changed the algorithm, or if I've just seen everything I
| like. I have definitely noticed YouTube is recommending me more
| clickbaity and mainstream stuff lately.
| sen wrote:
| Same here, I'm physically disabled and YouTube is the only
| form of "tv" I watch, so I watch a fair chunk of it
| (understatement) and I've distinctly noticed a massive drop
| over the last... I want to say 6 months?... where I've found
| the recommendations to be totally useless.
|
| Way way more recommendations for stuff I'd never consider
| watching, recommendations for "big" youtubers (I almost
| exclusively watch smaller channels based around niche
| hobbies), stuff like that.
|
| I used to think their recommendation engine was amongst the
| best of any service I've used, now it's junk.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| It's changed, I'm in the same boat. The only new channels
| I've found that I love are after seeing them promoted outside
| of YouTube. They clearly intersect with other channels I've
| subscribed to and watch regularly but were never recommended.
| I also notice that the recommendation queue for videos on
| these channels tries to steer you away to larger more
| mainstream channels that are only tenuously related.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That mirrors my experience, too.
|
| In fact, I rarely find YouTube's recommendations to be useful.
| Occasionally, yes, but typically I just get that "more of the
| same" problem.
|
| However, that may be explained by how I use YouTube. The
| article is pretty vague and hand-wavy about how the
| recommendations really work, but it's possible that the fact
| that I don't drive my YouTube viewing from the recommended
| videos list makes the video recommendations worse for me.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I often search for "scientific documentary" or "variety" but
| the algo clearly doesn't want me to discover new things, and
| doesn't seem to include those searches to build the
| suggestions. It keeps repeating the 8 usual channels I'm
| bored of watching.
| derefr wrote:
| Bizarrely, I find the opposite. I follow a lot of channels.
| (More than a thousand, I think.) Among those, some of them I
| watch every time I see them, while others I hardly ever engage
| with. But it's always the followed channels I hardly ever
| engage with that show up in my Recommended feed; while the
| followed channels that I consistently engage with are nowhere
| to be seen. (Not just in Recommended; they fail to show up
| _anywhere_ in all the front-page carousel categories, or any of
| the sub-category carousel categories, on the TV version of the
| app, which is the main way I interact with the site.)
|
| Instead, I have to explicitly go into "Subscriptions", and hope
| that it was posted recently-enough for the channel to show up
| in the 6-or-so sorted-by-recency channels at the very top,
| rather than in the alphabetized list (since there are so many
| channels in that alphabetical list, that finding anything
| marked as new in that list is basically impractical.)
| emilitt wrote:
| I found the PocketTube YouTube extension very useful for
| organizing my subscriptions into categories for easy
| searching. I had the same issue though I'm not sure I'm past
| a thousand subs yet - probably only about a hundred in total.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Instead, I have to explicitly go into "Subscriptions"
|
| This is how I've always used YouTube, and it wasn't that long
| ago that I learned most people don't do it that way. My usual
| pattern is to go to the subscriptions tab and scroll down to
| where the last video I viewed was, then start watching from
| there up towards the top of the list.
|
| It would be really handy if the YouTube app had some way of
| making that easier.
| type0 wrote:
| Their recommendation system is broken. Sometimes
| recommendations are completely unrelated, sometimes the same
| videos get recommended in every page for several days. Videos
| are usually tagged (there are browser extensions to view tags
| on videos), so recommendation can't even match the tags to
| view stuff in a similar ballpark. They demonetize and
| downplay recommendations for decent channels because they are
| deemed to geeky or are not posting videos frequently enough,
| I'm not at all pleased how Youtube gets more and more rotten.
| merth wrote:
| I made a mistake of trying some jazz 5 years ago, now my feed
| cursed. 99% of suggested videos are not clicked yet youtube
| insist of showing same stuff for years.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Have you tried clicking "not interested" on the videos?
| spike021 wrote:
| I've noticed this too. Occasionally I'll look up a how-to/DIY
| thing, watch one video for it, and then all my recommendations
| (even the ones on the front page) revolve around that topic.
| But it's not like I have a consistent interest in it, it was a
| one-off.
| eropple wrote:
| It's worse when it's decided that yeah, you are interested in
| that thing. My interests bounce between woodworking, homebrew
| vehicles, and strategy video games. The YT algorithm gets
| itself totally snarled when I watch a video from one side of
| that fence and assumes that that's all I want to see now.
| Watch a SuperfastMatt vehicle about the Jag he's retrofitting
| with the guts of a Tesla? _Obviously_ you want seven more
| videos from his channel that you 've already watched. And I
| like his channel! Not enough to watch the same seven videos
| again, though.
|
| It also seems to have some classification issues, too. It
| lumps a lot of stuff into "DIY", and woodworking is part of
| it--but so is a lot of stuff that more fits under
| "construction" or "carpentry". No shade thrown, that stuff
| can be interesting too, but there's a large gulf between
| "crotchety woodworking dork going on about tablesaw safety"
| and "refinishing a backyard shed with glamour shots of a Home
| Depot sponsored miter saw set to bouncy stock music" that the
| algorithm does not seem to grok. Maybe it wants me to
| hatewatch that stuff, I dunno.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I can be pretty confident that once I've finished a video,
| that _very same video_ will be on my YouTube homepage for
| weeks. It 's useless.
|
| At this moment, my homepage's first 10 videos include 7 that
| I've already watched.
| gxqoz wrote:
| Maybe they're being fooled by toddlers who love rewatching
| the same video over and over again.
| ysavir wrote:
| Not even that, I bet. I've heard a lot about how YT is
| used for music by many people (myself included,
| sometimes), and recommending the song you just listened
| again probably has a good click rate.
| munificent wrote:
| Yeah, I have definitely watched the same DJ set dozens of
| times for some particularly good ones.
| 8note wrote:
| Or people who are asleep and not switching away from
| auto-plays of the same video
| munificent wrote:
| _> that very same video will be on my YouTube homepage for
| weeks._
|
| I just right-click those videos and tell YouTube I'm not
| interested in it. That helps keep my homepage fresh while
| still being pretty good about recommending stuff I like.
|
| One thing I think must be deeply challenging about
| recommendation on YouTube is that many videos like DIY
| informative stuff only warrant being watched once. But
| music, DJ mixes, livestreams, etc. I will watch over and
| over. So the signal "did I watch this" might mean
| "definitely do not show it again" for some videos and
| "definite do show it again" for others. It's probably hard
| for the system to distinguish those.
| DocEasyE wrote:
| yea ive noticed this happens more on mobile, use youtube for
| casting to TV, i switch between laptop and mobile, see that
| trend on mobile alot more.
| allenu wrote:
| I see this a lot nowadays. It just keeps recycling the same
| things and feels stale.
|
| I remember about a year ago, it got into a weird state where I
| watched an old Cat Power music video, then every time I looked
| at recommendations on _other_ videos it was recommending it,
| again and again... I 'd watch the video again to hopefully make
| it go away, and it would still keep recommending it. It was
| very strange. I ended up just choosing "Don't recommend this"
| on it.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Most systems have this issue. I've described it as a 'fear of
| recommending something you hate'. They know you watched X video
| from Y channel, so there is a good chance you'd like Z video
| that has a similar fanbase or content.
|
| However, it becomes this echo chamber of only recommending the
| same content over and over again because they don't want to
| suggest something you don't like. That's because to their
| metrics, you don't watch it all, you don't see the ads, and
| then you "potentially" leave their platform because there's
| "nothing you like on it".
| dvlsg wrote:
| YouTube still recommends stuff I hate all the time, despite
| me explicitly trying to tell the system I'm not interested.
|
| To pick an example, my YouTube recommended section is full of
| videos of people reacting to the things I actually like to
| watch. I don't want to watch people reacting to the things I
| like. I just want to watch the things I like. I try to tell
| YouTube that by saying "Not Interested" to all of the
| reaction videos, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Those types of videos still tick the box of "relevant" to
| current recommendation algorithms though. I sort of mean
| that algorithms won't branch into unfamiliar territory. So,
| as an example, I've never looked up "underwater basket
| weaving"[1] or getting into to. So from the algorithm's
| perspective, there is an element of uncertainty with
| recommending it, because it doesn't know if I'll like it,
| be ambivalent, or strongly dislike it. Then, it compares
| that rating to other content on the platform, like your
| reaction videos, and even though they may be disliked, if
| they are favorable to others in your focus group, they'd
| still have a higher rating than uncertainty.
|
| The issue is that we don't really have a good method for
| measuring uncertain interests and since most algorithms
| have an underlining "make the company money", we don't get
| anything beyond the same ol' same ol' recommendations.
|
| [1] Underwater Basket Weaving is a placeholder for anything
| - yoga, video games, cooking, politics, essentially
| anything you are currently NOT getting presented.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| I use uBlock to stop this type of shenaningans. I set
| filters for specific channels or "channel networks", for
| instance if I don't want to see any Vice related video show
| up in my recomendations, i.e. "Vice Fightland", "Vice bla
| bla bla" etc, I set a rule such as:
|
| www.youtube.com###dismissible:has-text(/Vice/)
|
| This way, any channel that has the word Vice in it will
| never show up to me in recommendations, be it on the main
| page or the sidebar. This "has-text" regex is really
| useful, not just on Youtube. I use it a lot, all over the
| internet. In your case, switch "Vice" with "react" and I
| believe you'll get rid of 99% of these videos showing up on
| your feed.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| I loathe videos on trending with the exception of some
| science content. I say "not interested" all the time but
| the third recommendation is always some bs I have zero
| interest in.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Yeah, I binged the lockpicking lawyer one day, now that's all
| it suggests.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| It's the worst on "Shorts". There's no way to pic topics and
| I'll often get stuck flipping through the same 3 channel
| videos. For a while I thought "oh it's in beta must not be much
| content." Then after a while something I did made it recommend
| other channels and now I'm stuck in another set of 3-4 Short
| channels :/
| [deleted]
| smegger001 wrote:
| urrgh this reminded me of the several months that the only
| thing YouTube wanted me to watch was WH40K videos. To make it
| stop I had to go through and delete every WH40K video i ever
| watched from my watch history then mark all on my home page as
| 'never recommend again' for a couple weeks.
| lucb1e wrote:
| The recommendations are better if you browse logged-out. More
| diverse, recommending things to satisfy curiosity about related
| topics rather than the same monotonous stuff you already know
| about.
|
| We hypothesized this might be because you're less likely to be
| hooked yet, so it wants you to really get the good stuff and
| hope that you then want to subscribe to or comment on
| something? And once you're signed up, you might stay on the
| site longer if you need to keep looking for stuff you like and
| generate more ad impressions.
|
| I should really do a comparison logged-out vs. logged-in
| because I could swear those ads are different amounts and
| durations. Also it's percentage-wise about as much as the free
| legacy TV channels, except of course YT doesn't need to pay the
| production company -- ShadyVPN already takes care of that.
| bluedino wrote:
| I rarely see things I was 'in to' just a few weeks ago. Weird
| thing is I don't miss them.
| 8note wrote:
| I occasionally get the whole front page as a list of old videos
| from the same channel. All of their videos Ina row for a few
| seconds of infinite scroll, then it jumps to another one, but,
| it won't show a new video from channels I'm subscribed to so I
| have to go poll for them
| stevofolife wrote:
| I think old school recommendations behave that way. You will
| need to introduce reinforcement learning into your reco in
| order to explore and exploit.
| crmd wrote:
| It seems to me that YouTube is doing complex bucket testing
| with the recommendation algorithm. Some days, my recommendation
| list is full of obscure-but-relevant-to-my interests content
| that would require legitimate ML to populate, and then the next
| day my feed is basically SELECT DISTINCT
| videos.* FROM videos, followers WHERE
| videos.creator=followers.creator AND followers.user = $ME
| thejackgoode wrote:
| I stopped liking and interacting with niche stuff because of
| this, I don't want it to interfere with my normal patterns.
| Sounds quite bad, I know.
| godshatter wrote:
| The YouTube recommendation system is okay in short bursts. I
| don't log in and I use a private window when I browse YT. The
| downside is that I need to choose which rabbit hole I want to go
| down with a search, but after that I actually get relatively good
| recommendations for a while, then it slowly starts to decline and
| it's time to open up another private window.
|
| So the system is relatively good starting from a clean slate for
| a short period of time when focused on a relatively narrow set of
| content. Other than that, I haven't found it to be very useful.
| Before doing this, I would rely on search and ignore most if not
| all of the recommendations that came my way.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I use, bookmark, and recommend
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions , which is just a
| reverse chronological feed of videos from channels you subscribe
| to.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| Wow, this is way better. Thanks. It makes me feel like I have
| restored a bit more control.
| djent wrote:
| This link is displayed on the homepage from the button labeled
| "Subscriptions" and is part of the main site-wide hamburger
| menu. How is it people miss this feature? I have always used it
| as my main YouTube home page
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| I did not know about this feed. It's a HUGE improvement over
| the algo, really what many of us wanted all along, a feed of
| the most recent videos published by our subscribed channels. Tx
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| "videos from reputable sources like Vox" - yeah, right...
|
| I wonder who that article is addressed to? At first it may seem
| they want to reassure viewers that they will get shown the best
| content. But the longer the article goes on, the more it sounds
| like a reassurance that they will absolutely block out unwanted
| political views.
|
| Why do they feel the need to put out such an article? To stave of
| government regulation? Or for their own political activism? To
| reassure the leftist mob that they won't be part guilty of
| electing another Trump?
|
| I mean as a user, I'd like reassurance that the algorithm tries
| to show me videos _I_ want to see, not videos that others want me
| to see.
|
| I am not afraid of being shown a flat-earther video, so I don't
| get the appeal of the promise to not show me certain things.
| badmadrad wrote:
| exactly, they are proud to tell you they block videos that are
| "problematic" from being recommended. But problematic to whom
| or what is not described. As this would surely reveal their
| bias in their algorithms. And also who our overlords are.
| Pxtl wrote:
| There's a pretty solid consensus that white supremacists,
| vaccine-deniers, and election deniers are "problematic" and
| YT isn't going out on a limb to make that call.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Be careful with YouTube. For years people have talked about
| social media's effect on mental health, but personally, I've
| found the biggest hit to be YouTube.
|
| Their recommendation system is really the heart of the beast.
| It's essentially a dopamine reward system, not too dissimilar
| from a slot machine at a casino. Pull the lever (refresh the
| page) and get random results! It sucks you in to a cycle of
| refreshing, finding videos you're interested in, clicking, rinse,
| repeat.
|
| Personally I found myself losing hours per day to this behavior
| and gaining very little from it.
|
| Far more productive, is going to YouTube for something SPECIFIC.
| Use the search function to find what you're looking for, and
| watch those videos, but never use the homepage or sidebar
| recommendations.
|
| There are actually google chrome plugins which will totally
| remove the recommended section:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout...
| raman162 wrote:
| I had the same problem as well. The unhook extension works
| great. I also uninstalled the YouTube app on my mobile and only
| use the browser.
| dabfiend19 wrote:
| lol bruh have you ever used tiktok
| seneca wrote:
| > lol bruh have you ever used tiktok
|
| Please don't make low effort posts like this here.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Far more productive, is going to YouTube for something
| SPECIFIC. Use the search function to find what you're looking
| for
|
| I'd sometimes forget what I came for based on the
| recommendations from the homepage. Not that I was logged in and
| saw interesting stuff -- not even -- just the sheer uselessness
| of what people apparently watch the most (clickbait titles,
| soccer match replays, gasping surprised face with all-caps
| title, you know the type). Adding that part of the homepage to
| the ad blocker, using the pipette tool in uBlock Origin, helped
| a lot. Or add the youtube search to your address bar (firefox:
| add keyword search, or go via ddg bang commands) so you don't
| have to open the homepage to get a search box.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > Far more productive, is going to YouTube for something
| SPECIFIC. Use the search function to find what you're looking
| for, and watch those videos, but never use the homepage or
| sidebar recommendations
|
| I've found myself doing this more recently, but I also like
| exploring. I think my goal is to not _start_ from
| recommendations, but a specific curiosity, and roll from there.
|
| Then again, there are plenty of creators that will bring me
| things I never even thought to consider. 3blue1brown was
| mentioned in the article, and I have notifications turned on
| for them because I know for a fact I will watch the entire
| video.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| I completely agree. I replied to another comment with more
| anecdotal evidence but people are absolutely missing how
| dangerous YouTube is because of all the focus on FB. Content is
| getting worse as creators focus on spammy click bait and DO NOT
| let your kids anywhere near youtube... even the YouTube for
| kids. They will end up getting sucked into that dopamine reward
| system you mention, consuming the most banal content.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It sucks you in to a cycle of refreshing, finding videos
| you're interested in, clicking, rinse, repeat.
|
| Well then I guess that I'm lucky that the recommendation system
| almost entirely fails to find videos that I'm interested in!
| iotku wrote:
| >Far more productive, is going to YouTube for something
| SPECIFIC. Use the search function to find what you're looking
| for, and watch those videos, but never use the homepage or
| sidebar recommendations.
|
| Unfortunately the search is far from independent of the
| recommendation algorithm.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| And as I got on YouTube just now, the recommendations are just
| utter junk. It is a bunch of clickbait on things I don't even
| like and find annoying and repulsive. This is why I use things
| like youtube-dl, NewPipe, etc.
| spiderice wrote:
| > This is why I use things like youtube-dl, NewPipe, etc.
|
| Perhaps this is the reason the recommendations are junk? How
| can Youtube recommend you videos if you hide what you like from
| Youtube?
|
| I watch a lot of Youtube, signed in, on Youtube.com, and my
| recommendations are great.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| Do you know if https://freetubeapp.io/ is any better? I do most
| of my viewing on desktop.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I use uBlock Origin to hide every video on the recommendations
| panel except for what is about to be played next. It is
| surprisingly great.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| I use uBlock on a slightly different way. I set filters for
| specific channels or "channel networks", for instance if I
| don't want to see any Vice related video show up in my
| recomendations, i.e. "Vice Fightland", "Vice bla bla bla"
| etc, I set a rule such as:
|
| www.youtube.com###dismissible:has-text(/Vice/)
|
| This way, any channel that has the word Vice in it will never
| show up to me in recommendations, be it on the main page or
| the sidebar. This "has-text" regex is really useful, not just
| on Youtube. I use it a lot, all over the internet.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I've learned so much from YouTube. It's essentially a Gutenberg
| Revolution.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| A lot of comments here seem to not know:
|
| 1. If you don't have your YouTube activity history enabled, the
| algorithm doesn't remember what you've watched and you'll
| probably get clickbaity/junky recommendations.
|
| 2. If you have set your history to expire after some amount of
| time, it will start re-recommending videos you've already seen
| once it has forgotten you have watched them.
|
| You can set both options here:
|
| https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/youtube
| dvdkon wrote:
| I have viewing history tracking disabled and 90% of videos I
| see are new/popular videos from channels I subscribe to. It's
| not so bad, definitely less clickbait.
| marapuru wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Youtube knows that people who did one of the
| things you mentioned get fed up with their crappy
| recommendations and enable the recommendations, just to be
| 'fed' with new content. Which in turn is great for their
| monetization strategy.
|
| It would be nice if Youtube offered a feature where the
| recommended lists are completely removed and youtube simple
| loads as a search bar. Where you find what you are looking for
| without distractions.
|
| I've done this myself by adding the following rules to
| ublockorigin:
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-
| renderer.style-scope.ytd-watch-flexy
|
| www.youtube.com###comments.ytd-watch-flexy.style-scope
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-browse.ytd-page-manager.style-scope[page-
| subtype="home"]
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-renderer
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-vertical-channel-section-renderer
| MMS21 wrote:
| I have my watch history turned off so the red bar doesn't
| appear in thumbnails of videos I left a quarter way through.
| YouTube still shows me videos that I've watched years ago
| (Primitive Technology for example a channel which has stopped
| producing content) and left likes on. How is it that their
| algorithm doesn't factor in likes/ dislikes at all?!
| moogly wrote:
| I only use the Subscriptions page. The frontpage is a cesspool of
| imbecility.
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(page generated 2021-09-17 23:00 UTC)