[HN Gopher] The Boring YouTube
___________________________________________________________________
The Boring YouTube
Author : iosifnicolae2
Score : 98 points
Date : 2022-01-13 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
| animal_spirits wrote:
| YouTube's recommendation algorithm works great for me. I
| consistently tell youtube to not recommend videos that I don't
| want to watch and it will cut them out of my feed. I've gotten
| rid of most clickbaity material and it shows me longer form and
| more in depth content. If your recommendations aren't good I
| suggest using the features to not recommend certain videos or
| ignore entire channels. The algorithm will figure out what you
| want to watch
| dharma1 wrote:
| I can imagine a future where users of content/social networks can
| pick (an open source) recommendation engine/model they like, and
| train/use their own if they want to
| falcolas wrote:
| Might also be interested in astronaut - random low-view count
| youtube videos.
|
| http://astronaut.io
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| this is awesome. It reminds me of early youtube when you could
| go to the new tab and watch videos from randoms pouring in. The
| glory days before youtube face. I hope they add some more
| features, like navigation and control, and maybe choose a
| country or continent. And make the UI more obvious, it took me
| a minute to realise I could stay on a video by tapping the
| circle.
| dewey wrote:
| I was going to say "there's probably a reason these have low
| view counts" but it's actually very entertaining and I just
| spent a few minutes watching these random videos.
|
| - Some birthday party
|
| - a random hiker somewhere in latin america where I even
| clicked through to their channel
|
| - skiing in Korea
|
| - person singing in a car
| mrkramer wrote:
| There are reasons why: Keywords being used in title are not
| popular ones, account not having any videos, subscriptions,
| likes etc. All this is taken as criteria when ranking
| algorithms rank videos.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Anyone remember the Iconian gateway from Star Trek: TNG?
|
| This reminds me of that for some reason.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I have multiple google accounts and have tabs up for each of them
| (thanks to multi-account containers in Firefox). For each
| account, I have tried to to focus on sets of specific interests -
| always being careful to switch to the proper tab when I subscribe
| or search. The recommendations engine only shows me something
| good on a ~1:20 ratio. It seems like it would be so easy to
| improve it:
|
| 1. Show me new videos from my subscriptions! It does this rarely
| and, when it does, it shows me the same video over and over and
| over.
|
| 2. If it shows me a video >4 times - stop showing me the damn
| video!
|
| 3. Have a robust tagging system and use that for new discovery.
|
| 4. Use my subscribed channels for topical relevance REGARDLESS of
| what I have been watching lately!
|
| 5. Youtube is begging to be disrupted by anyone providing good
| curation.
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| 5. I agree.
| adamrezich wrote:
| slightly off-topic but the single most frustrating part of the
| YouTube android app is that when you accidentally tap on another
| video, it loads it up immediately, and there doesn't seem to be
| any way to go "back" to the video you were just watching, aside
| from going over to your History and finding it there. I don't
| watch a ton of YouTube videos but this gets me about once a week.
| is there anything I'm missing or is this as crappy as it seems?
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| It would be useful if Youtube would have some sort of agents with
| which users can talk, something like:
|
| User: hey, the feed is boring - I see the same videos. Could you
| please recommend something I haven't seen?
|
| Youtube: sure, I'll try.
|
| Youtube: is it better now?
|
| User: hmm, a bit better, but I would like some not so boring
| educational videos
|
| Youtube: sure
| dcchambers wrote:
| It would be nice if apps/websites that offer "tailored" content
| (basically every social media and media consumption company) had
| an official way of letting you do an "algorithm reset" to your
| account.
|
| I get why they don't do that - it's all about creating the most
| addictive environment possible to keep your eyes glued to their
| service - but it's something I find myself wishing for all too
| often.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I wouldn't mind it if the recommendations were actually useful.
| A couple years ago I watched a martial arts movie on netflix.
| then it recommended some french art film because I had watched
| a foreign film. Last year facebook suggested I join a group for
| progressive Asian Christians. I am not Asian or Christian. If
| Facebook can't even tell what race I am, then what is all this
| data being used for?
|
| Or on youtube I watched one video by a guy and hated it. Now I
| keep getting recommended his other videos.
| pikma wrote:
| In the YouTube app (android), go to library, history, three dot
| menu, history controls, clear watch history.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Good idea, unfortunately the default youtube recommendations
| also suck.
|
| Unless you are really interested in minecraft.
| Artistry121 wrote:
| I think logging out or just starting a new account suffices. I
| also think in settings Youtube allows you to delete your
| history and therefore the algorithm's learning from it.
|
| Most times I see the front page of youtube I'm happy they take
| me into my own universe of interests.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I think I've disabled my watching history in Youtube and the
| frontpage suggestions are quite poor (mostly videos from my
| subscriptions I have already watched or videos that might
| share one or two tags with a video I watched last year and
| don't interest me at all).
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| Yup, I've noticed that when I use an account old enough (like
| for 7-8 years), Youtube recommends the same videos.. (it
| seems to be in a local maximum).
| cryptojanne wrote:
| Yes that would be wonderful. Sometimes I don't let my
| significant other search for her stuff while i'm logged in, i
| dont want to get suggestions based on her search.
| II2II wrote:
| It doesn't really worked when logged in, but I have used
| Firefox's mult-account containers to create 'profiles' for
| different topics on YouTube.
| markbnj wrote:
| I know recommendations are hard, so I don't want to be too
| critical, but youtube does a couple of things that drive me nuts:
| they recommend videos I've already watched, and which they know
| I've already watched because the site fills in the red progress
| bar on the bottom; they recommend videos I've added to my watch
| later list; and they recommend the same videos over and over even
| though I don't click on them and don't watch them.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I suspect, without proof, that this is because a large segment
| of the global population watches music videos and variety show
| clips on YouTube, over and over on repeat.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| I'll attest that info sometimes I need to do a boring but
| slightly involved task such as putting together a vision
| chart where most of the thinking has been doing, but there is
| a lot of little fiddly arranging boxes and pulling lines that
| is annoying and tedious but requires some degree of
| attention.
|
| The only way to make that bearable for me is to either solve
| the meta problem which often isn't feasible, or turn on some
| mindless show that I've already seen and don't have to pay
| attention to enjoy. I find in particular The Simpsons seems
| to often hit that sweet spot between funny enough to be
| entertaining and mindless enough to not be distracting.
|
| Whereas if I try and listen to a podcast or audiobook it
| requires too much focus and I miss the book or can't pay
| attention to that task I am working on, liking filling in a
| years worth of time sheets at the end of December.
| all2 wrote:
| > liking filling in a years worth of time sheets at the end
| of December.
|
| 10 lines of Python and some browser automation. You did
| mention "solving the meta problem", and this looks like it
| is a candidate for that.
| markbnj wrote:
| >> I suspect, without proof, that this is because a large
| segment of the global population watches music videos and
| variety show clips on YouTube, over and over on repeat.
|
| That's a great point, and could very well explain showing me
| videos I've already watched. Fixing my other two complaints
| would require keeping track of how many times a video has
| been recommended, and consulting my watch later list when
| building the recommendations list. It seems safe to assume YT
| is not unaware of these possibilities, so they must have
| reasons for not adding these signals in.
| danShumway wrote:
| As someone who does put Youtube videos on repeat and does
| follow up on old videos that I still enjoy as "comfort"
| entertainment, I have two points to amend to the above:
|
| 1. I still don't want them showing up in recommendations.
| Recommendations are not a history view, if I'm listening to a
| song on repeat for 5 hours I don't need Youtube to recommend
| it to me. It has been recommended once very successfully, and
| if I need to find it again it should show up in my
| history[0], or at least it should be quarantined to its own
| recommendation section that I can toggle off. Even among
| people who obsessively revisit old videos, revisiting old
| videos and looking for new content are two separate
| categories of searches that should usually be handled
| differently imo.
|
| 2. The fact that I revisit certain series or listen to music
| on repeat for 5 hours does not mean that I want _every_ video
| recommended to me that way -- ideally it should just be the
| variety clips and music videos. Youtube 's algorithms are
| theoretically advanced enough to tell the difference between
| music and a programming tutorial or product review. So there
| shouldn't be repeat recommendations for me showing up for
| stuff like... one video in isolation out of an entire Lets
| Play playlist.
|
| I feel like, Youtube knows that's not a music video: I know
| they know because they already put the video in the gaming
| section. They're just being obstinate and refusing to use
| that information in their recommendation engine, and refusing
| to ask the obvious question of "is a music video consumed
| differently than one video out of context from a Lets Play."
|
| ----
|
| I don't think you're wrong, I think you're probably 100%
| correct, I think that Youtube kind of just optimizes to get
| people to click on things and repeat videos are a way of
| doing that, and the algorithm just does what it does. But I'm
| not sure I know anyone who likes that, I should be the target
| audience for that behavior, I obsessively rewatch stuff all
| the time, and I don't like that behavior, the algorithm
| doesn't feel like it's tuned to my preferences. It feels like
| just kind of mish-mash.
|
| In theory, if it was optimized for me, then I shouldn't be
| losing track of music. But it's not like its reliable enough
| to use as a bookmarking system, if I have a favorite song on
| Youtube I like to listen to, then I can't trust
| recommendations to have it in front of me, I have to actually
| bookmark it or (nowadays) download it and save it to an
| offline playlist.
|
| So if they're trying to please people like me, then... it's
| not working.
|
| <ranton>Personally, I feel like every time I interact with
| Google products or try to dig into how they work or recommend
| things, I always feel like the designers/programmers are
| almost deliberately trying to make their own jobs harder.
| Like they think it's cheating or something to have a toggle
| that could let people turn off this behavior. They have to
| organically have an AI come to every decision or else it's
| not 'real' programming; it's very weird.
|
| I don't understand the reasoning why this wouldn't be user-
| configurable behavior at the very least, why it wouldn't be
| something where we can apply human reasoning on top of the AI
| algorithm. If you work at Google, I promise that no customer
| is going to be mad at you or shame you or say that you're bad
| at programming if you give us really clear controls that let
| us just tell you what we want in a predictable way. No one is
| going to be offended if you just ask us if we want to see
| repeat videos, you don't have to intuit that, we can all tell
| you ourselves and we won't be mad that you asked.
|
| I hate feeling like I have to do reinforcement training on a
| cat to get good Youtube recommendations just because some
| product designer is scared that I'll think less of them if
| they ever admit that they don't magically know my preferences
| without asking. Some people might want repeat videos, and
| some people might not want them, and this shouldn't be an
| existential problem for Youtube, I thought the whole point of
| this algorithm stuff was that I could have an individual
| experience that was customized to me. Instead we've got the
| worst of all worlds because Youtube thinks its a personal
| failure if they don't come up with one single, universal
| strategy for serving videos that makes everyone happy across
| the entire world.
|
| ----
|
| [0]: Shoutout to NewPipe that allows sorting history by the
| number of views. History in general could be way better on
| pretty much platform, but even just that sort option is
| useful on its own.
| rasz wrote:
| I suspect its because Google reused the same recommendation
| code they wrote for ads.
|
| You just bought a new car? have some car ads.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > You just bought a new car? have some car ads.
|
| You are a guy? Have some scammy dating site ads while you
| already are dating, as you get enganged, married and have
| more than three kids.
|
| Doesn't matter that you have taken the time to click not
| interested / not relevant.
|
| My guess the advertiser wasn't too careful and paid good
| money for pay-per-impression in those spots.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > Doesn't matter that you have taken the time to click
| not interested / not relevant.
|
| On YouTube I click this every time, marking "irrelevant"
| vs. "repetitive" ads. Since I've never seen a relevant
| ad.
|
| Sometimes I even go "inappropriate" for casino ads (it
| feels like it's not just irrelevant but inappropriate to
| try to encourage me to gamble).
|
| I've never once noticed Google take that into
| consideration. Marking an ad "repetitive" seems to
| encourage it to repeat.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| I'd be more inclined to believe that it's just the nature of
| how most users consume content.
|
| If you look at the recommended content for most major
| services, they give a lot of space to "stuff you've consumed
| before". Anecdotally, this is true of Netflix (which tends to
| rank already-seen content below it's own-brand shows but
| above other third-party stuff); and it's _especially_ true of
| Spotify, which is constantly pushing me (in a real variety of
| ways) mostly music that I 've already listened to.
|
| I think it's likely that, music video or not, most users on
| YouTube _are_ watching the same videos over and over again -
| hence why the algorithm tries to hard to cater to those
| users.
|
| From a cynical perspective, such an algorithm is also a
| "safe" bet - if you won't even binge videos YouTube knows you
| like (because you've seen them), it will probably be much
| harder to get you to watch lots of videos you _might_ like.
| Users who like to see the same stuff over and over are
| probably giving the best return on YouTube algorithmic
| investment, and they might even be YouTube 's most valuable
| users outside of content creators.
| watwut wrote:
| I think Netflix is bad exple, because their recommendations
| are especially bad in general. Them recommending something
| does not want people actually watch it.
|
| But I agree with larger point.
| kmlx wrote:
| > Anecdotally, this is true of Netflix
|
| i thought this was a bug and I contacted Netflix about it.
| found out it isn't a bug, it's a feature. although i do not
| know anyone who would actually watch a 2hr movie the very
| next day after watching it in the first place.
| realistically their discovery algorithm is not really an
| algorithm, more like a static list of their own
| productions. i do wonder if the "like/dislike" buttons have
| any sort of effect, but it doesn't seem so.
|
| > Spotify
|
| i rarely use Spotify as a music discovery tool. i usually
| read reviews from various sites then I search Spotify for
| the exact album/song. but what i found is that Spotify can
| actually give me some good recommendation after i filled a
| playlist with songs that i like.
| fmorel wrote:
| > anyone who would actually watch a 2hr movie the very
| next day after watching it in the first place
|
| Kids.
|
| Also, people who fall asleep watching TV. Some people
| share a profile.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Scenario for music videos makes some sense if you're one of
| those, but wouldn't it be easy for the algo to only do it for
| music videos only? I agree with parent, that behavior is
| absolutely senseless..
| notahacker wrote:
| I think a lot of tutorials get re-watched too.
|
| I also think that whilst the algorithm is quite good at
| finding things I'd like, it's quite bad at contextualising
| them so music videos and tutorials get mixed up in
| playlists it autogenerates for me anyway.
| rgoulter wrote:
| Other than tutorials and music, there's music's cousin:
| "for noise in the background".
|
| I'll put documentaries or other informational content on
| as "noise in the background". If I'm trying to sleep or
| whatever, then each re-watch can start a few minutes
| later depending on how much I could recall/recognise.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Some waiting rooms put on long youtube videos of stuff like
| "jungle scenery" or "fish" as makeshift screensavers.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Could be, but YouTube does, not for all, but for many, know
| if the video is a music or not.
| nirav72 wrote:
| If youtube can detect copyrighted music - then why can't it
| detect the difference between a music video and a non-music
| video?
| rfrey wrote:
| This is probably true! However YouTube also knows how many
| times I personally have clicked on a video I have already
| watched. Which is zero, barring the possibility of a mistimed
| mouse click.
| danShumway wrote:
| I think this comment sums up my complaints in a lot of
| ways.
|
| Google's entire business model is based around customizing
| content to an individual level. Youtube's whole deal is
| that it theoretically understands what _I_ want to watch.
|
| But it doesn't. And it's really weird to me to even have a
| discussion about what the average user might or might not
| want out of a recommendation engine. I feel like that
| misses the point -- with all of the data Youtube collects
| on users down to what portions of every video they watch,
| why is it so hard for individuals to tell Youtube what
| kinds of videos we want recommended?
|
| Why is it showing repeat recommendations to people who
| don't want them? Google's entire business from Youtube to
| advertising to its calendar features, it's all built around
| knowing what individuals want, and this is an instance
| where even when people are consciously trying to signal to
| Youtube that they don't want something, they can't, and the
| site just kind of ignores it. It's a failed outcome no
| matter how you look at it; the average person's
| recommendation tastes for repeat videos don't matter
| because Youtube isn't just the "trending videos" page, it
| has a section called " _your_ recommendations ".
|
| Those recommendations should reflect the preferences of the
| individual using the site, that was the entire promise
| behind all of this invasive user tracking.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Genuine question: Don't you re-watch your favourite movies and
| TV shows? Why would YouTube be any different?
|
| Your answer to the above might be "never". Which is totally
| cool.
|
| But I think lots of people like rewatching favourite content,
| and YouTube is no different in this regard.
|
| They don't care about recommending you something new, they care
| about recommending you something that you would watch.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Genuine question: Don't you re-watch your favourite movies
| and TV shows? Why would YouTube be any different?
|
| Very rarely. Even more rarely do I re-watch movies less than
| a month later, but that doesn't stop Youtube from
| recommending things I watched the day prior.
|
| If I got recommended something I watched a year ago, sure.
| But what youtube frequently does is just recommend all of the
| videos I watched the day prior.
|
| I would be less annoyed if this wasn't such a recent
| development. Youtube recommendations used to be fantastic for
| me ~5 years ago. I would actually get recommended stuff I
| haven't watched, from creators I didn't know about, on topics
| that I _have_ shown interest in. Now I mostly just get the
| same videos I have already watched or nearly the same video
| uploaded by another channel. Or I 'll watch a single 15
| second video about something I normally don't watch, and
| suddenly half of my recommendations are about that.
| markbnj wrote:
| >> Don't you re-watch your favourite movies and TV shows? Why
| would YouTube be any different?
|
| I honestly don't very often, and when I do it tends to be
| over a span of time long enough to forget many of the
| details. I do have some music videos on youtube that I have
| watched several times, and some instructional videos I have
| returned to occasionally.
|
| So yeah probably its the weakest of my three whines.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I hate that I can't follow an artist on YT Music without being
| subscribed to that artist's channel in YT Video, and having it
| affect my video suggestions. When I say "can't", maybe it's
| possible, and if so, I would love to know how to separate them.
| qqii wrote:
| It's not very discoverable but the category bubbles includes
| one called "New to you".
|
| I've only seen it right at the start or end of the list.
| yumaikas wrote:
| I am definitely someone who will re-watch videos, especially
| video essays, songs, or memes, depending on context.
|
| That being said, one would hope that Youtube would have better
| user segementation, but I can't imagine that is an easy
| problem.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I think showing "watch later" as a recommendation makes a lot
| of sense, if you can trust users to actually wanna watch those
| videos later.
|
| There are videoed you want to watch and there a videos you want
| to want to watch.
|
| There's a quote about classics book being the books you want to
| have read.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| This is actually what makes me bored and stop digging in
| youtube, the general public must have much higher tolerance for
| this. I don't even get shown youtubers I'm subscribed to on the
| main page if I haven't watched their videos in a while.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The one that drives me bonkers, to the point where I destroy my
| YT container and start over is if I watch ONE video, even a few
| seconds (just the click!) means I get flooded with the same
| content. Things like "fixing the thermo-resistor in your wall
| oven" or a specific career YT'er. As a result I am far less
| willing and ready to click around and explore, which you would
| think is directly counter to what they want in the first place
| with their relentless engagement machine.
| notRobot wrote:
| 1. Doesn't seem to be working for me in Firefox
|
| 2. Convert this script into a handy bookmarklet to be able to use
| it with a single click using this tool:
| https://caiorss.github.io/bookmarklet-maker/
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| 1. Hmm, feel free to propose a cross-platform solution :) 2.
| Nice.
| kevincox wrote:
| My problem is that whenever I want to have a video recommended
| and open the YouTube homepage I just get a list of videos that I
| have watched before. I don't know how this can possible be an
| effective way to watch videos.
| rasz wrote:
| I see you bought a washing machine recently, you will LOVE this
| selection of washing machine ads.
| kevincox wrote:
| You'd be amazed how well these work.
|
| Sometimes the order falls through, sometimes the washer needs
| to be returned. The thing is that these items are so high-
| profit that targeting this small chance of purchase is very
| valuable. And these users, even though they have just bought
| this thing that typically they need 1 of for 20 years, are
| still higher probability than average to purchase another.
| neom wrote:
| Do you tell youtube that you've seen this video before? Usually
| after 5/6 of these it starts serving new stuff again.
| kevincox wrote:
| I do sometimes but it doesn't seem to help. Roughly a third
| of the videos have a progress bar underneath (usually
| complete or nearly so) so YouTube knows that I have seen
| them.
| neom wrote:
| You have to be aggresive about it for it to work. It
| totally bogles my mind that youtube doesn't have a toggle
| for this, I get recommending things I've seen before, my
| wife loves it, I must have seen her watch the same youtube
| video 300 times, she doesn't explore youtube she just wants
| the same set of 50 videos recommended to her over and over
| again, this has been a pretty common observation I've
| made... people like this... so then make it a toggle for
| people who don't.
| qqii wrote:
| I recently found the "New to you" category bubble that's solved
| this issue for me.
|
| I don't know how they sort the categories but I've only found
| the "New to you" at the start or end of the list.
| 1_player wrote:
| To me it's hidden at the end of the list, but sometimes it's
| unreachable unless I resize my browser and many times I don't
| have that section at all on my Android TV. Not very useful
| how it's implemented.
|
| Also, let us tell YT we're not interested in a category. I've
| watched a blacksmith video once, I had the Metallurgy
| category recommended to me for 6 months.
|
| Google, the world famous AI company, presents the proof that
| recommendation engines are incredibly dumb and annoying
| except in very tightly controlled environments. There is
| nothing intelligent about it.
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| Yeah, I suppose that they are testing new algorithms there..
| neom wrote:
| If you just tell youtube to stop recommending things you've seen
| and channels you don't want to see as you go, and subscribe to a
| very wide variety of channels, it gets very good at serving you
| new content quickly, at least mine does.
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| I should search for a list of 100 popular channels where I can
| subscribe to :)
| rollcat wrote:
| I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, I guess. I've
| unsubscribed everything, hidden/removed all recommendations and
| like/dislike, view count, subscriber count, etc with some user
| CSS/JS. Logged out for good measure.
|
| Then I've put the 20ish channels I care about into my RSS reader
| (NetNewsWire + The Old Reader, I recommend both), which allows me
| to do things like "mark all as read" on whole folders.
|
| You can get the feed for a user/channel like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=xxx or
| https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=xxx - it's a
| bit cumbersome since YT doesn't provide either link in the
| channel's meta tags.
|
| I only had to do this once, so I've thrown away the code, but I
| had two bits of JS: to generate an OPML file with the feeds for
| import, and to mass-unsubscribe everything afterwards. Maybe I
| should rewrite and publish that somewhere? If there's interest.
| gwenbell wrote:
| >Maybe I should rewrite and publish that somewhere? If there's
| interest.
|
| Please do.
| feupan wrote:
| If you think you'll get better suggestions doing this I'm afraid
| you'll be surprised. Just open the Trending page to see what kind
| of junk is popular. Hint: Curate your feeds if you care about
| them.
| nunb wrote:
| The curation tools are limited especially with playlists and
| worst of all watch later SILENTLY fails after 5000 videos are
| added to the watch later playlist.
|
| Yesterday a watching now playlist glitched and kept looping in
| the middle. I had to manually click on the next video as the
| next button and shift N didn't advance the playlist but looped
| instead.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Wouldn't it be trivial for YouTube to just make a filter that
| says "If a user marks over 20 videos 'Not Interesting' in 24
| hours, stop counting their 'Not Interesting' marks in our
| recommendation algorithm"?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Every once in a while YouTube places a tile on my front page
| asking if I wanna see some different kinds of recommendations and
| I get all excited to see something different and new and get so
| disappointed in myself when I realize I actually just wanna watch
| pretty much the same thing as always.
| drcongo wrote:
| If only it had a feature to get rid of every video with someone
| pulling a stupid face on the poster frame. I might even actually
| visit YouTube if it did.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > I might even actually visit YouTube if it did.
|
| It's much easier for YouTube to get someone who already views
| YouTube videos for some amount of time per day to view more
| using clickbate than it is to get you who doesnt view YouTube
| to start.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| or when you try to use youtube not for entertainment but
| utilitarian (e.g. how do I take a part a door hinge again?) and
| they start the actual information halfway through the video
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| The trick is to recognise those early and switch to a
| different video. Or quickly figure out which channel is more
| serious about getting to the point, and pick their video.
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| Youtube tested some sort of feature where you can see what
| are the parts which are the most watched by people.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I've learned over time that many people who make helpful
| videos are not skilled at how to edit or pace a video at all.
| But I often need the content and can't get it elsewhere. 2x
| is so great for screencast tutorials for things like Blender.
| I can't imagine watching them any other way.
| izacus wrote:
| The bizarre part is - I've seen a lot of youtubers say that
| they hate it, but that it also increases views by a fair
| amount. Which is... wierd.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Linus Tech Tips talked about this a while back, and it is
| just like when Wikipedia uses Jimmy Wales face to raise
| money. Everyone say they hate it, but it is what yields the
| best results.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I'd pay for a YouTube that bans all reaction videos. I can't
| stand them.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Yea, I don't get the appeal of watching someone pretend they
| haven't seen "The Empire Strikes Back" and are watching it
| for the first time and are agog at the the twist.
| krapp wrote:
| The original Star Wars trilogy is decades old by now. Most
| modern Star Wars fans haven't even seen them, much less the
| general public.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Sure maybe? but it's penetrated popular culture enough
| that I refuse to believe anybody would be surprised by
| 'No, _I_ am your father '
| krapp wrote:
| I don't know... _I 'm_ as familiar with it as anyone of
| my generation, but I honestly can't remember when I
| actually saw it last referenced in media or popular
| culture. I'd definitely be skeptical of anyone close to
| my age being unaware of it, though.
| pcurve wrote:
| Try a plugin called "Clickbait Remover for youtube". Your
| thumbnail will be replaced by freeze frame from video. I love
| it. And you can turn it off/on easily.
| drcongo wrote:
| Thanks, turns out from this GitHub thread that there's even a
| Safari version -
| https://github.com/pietervanheijningen/clickbait-remover-
| for...
|
| edit: Bought and installed and I can confirm that this makes
| YouTube at least 43% more bearable. Most of the other 57% is
| taken care of by Vinegar - https://andadinosaur.com/launch-
| vinegar
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I think the parent's goal was to use the presence of a stupid
| thumbnail as proxy for low quality and completely hide those
| videos instead of merely replacing the thumbnail.
|
| Now if there's also something that could detect "YouTuber
| voice" (https://www.vice.com/en/article/aepn94/the-rise-of-
| youtube-v...) or the awful trend of putting a short clip in
| the intro with no context which wastes your time at best or
| spoils the video at worst that would be great as well.
| hateful wrote:
| I have this rule that no matter what the video is - if I
| open it and I hear "hey guys" I immediately close it and
| remove it from my history. I may even block the channel
| itself.
|
| Unrelated, I also tend to have to "block channel" a lot
| after watching a trailer for a movie where I get 10
| recommendations for the same trailer on unofficial
| channels.
| Diskutant wrote:
| about the short clips, try the browser extension
| "sponsorblock" it skips many of those.
| jerf wrote:
| "Stupid thumbnail" as a proxy for low quality is no longer
| a valid metric. The good channels have been, reluctantly or
| otherwise, mostly been forced into following suit.
| drcongo wrote:
| Sadly this is true. I definitely used to use "stupid
| face" as a proxy for low quality but I've seen people who
| make good content doing it recently too, so now it all
| must go.
|
| I'm also painfully aware that I'm an old man shouting at
| clouds.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The reason for this is if your videos stop having a very
| high click-through rate, or impression-to-watch ratio,
| youtube stops recommending it as much, meaning your
| videos likely won't get as many views as they would have
| had youtube not interfered at all!
| ryandrake wrote:
| But it is still a proxy for "content that the creator
| deliberately chooses to make irritating in order to
| appease the Algorithm Gods" which qualifies such content
| as "things I don't need more of in my life". Nobody has a
| gun to their head, _forced_ to making "YouTube Face"
| thumbnails. "Incentivized" is probably the better word.
| Uehreka wrote:
| They kind of do have a gun to their head, forcing them to
| make "YouTube Face" thumbnails.
|
| Like, if you're proud of your work and want it to get
| seen at all, this is what you have to do. It sucks, but
| in many cases any trace of "annoying YouTube culture"
| vanishes the moment after you click and the whole video
| itself is good.
|
| If you want to turn down good videos so you can make a
| point, then go for it I guess. But you're not likely to
| actually change anything.
| ekanes wrote:
| Installed. Wow.
| rchaud wrote:
| Discovered this extension a few months ago from another HN
| thread. It's great, the annoyance levels caused by 'Youtube
| face' was getting to be intolerable. I was making judgements
| on videos before even watching them, because of the
| thumbnail.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I've been using this for about half a year now and it's
| great!
| [deleted]
| mikub wrote:
| That's really the most annoying thing. Even people who make
| good videos do this shit. I just can't say how much I hate(and
| I don't use that word often) seeing angry, sad, or surprised
| faces. When I'm on Linux most of the times I just use newsboat
| and on android it's newpipe with the previewimages turned off.
| But somtimes I have to use the webpage, and it always makes me
| angry.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Some YouTubers outright say it increases views. Given that
| some of them make a living out of this and that I'd rather
| keep seeing their content, I can live with some pandering to
| the algorithm/trends in thumbnails.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Last month I setup tartube to download my YouTube Playlist videos
| through yt-dlp and then I play the videos through Plex.
|
| This was the problem I ran into after doing so, because I never
| officially watch any videos, all of my recommendations are either
| unwanted or downloaded videos. This quickly pushed me to
| subscribe to everything I want to watch, but it's made browsing
| YouTube itself useless as a content recommendation service.
|
| I suppose that could be considered a good thing?
| krapp wrote:
| >I suppose that could be considered a good thing?
|
| It depends. I personally find Youtube's recommendations to be
| useful, particularly at discovering new music and tutorials.
| But that requires putting in the effort to curate your account
| - subscribe, watch, smash that like button, all that stuff.
| Nanplune wrote:
| There is so much incredible content out there that we're being
| deprived of. As someone who loves the "discovery" aspect of the
| internet, I can't believe we dont have better tools for this.
| It's disturbing the degree to which our web experiences are
| curated now.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| anderspitman wrote:
| YouTube is no longer a video hosting platform built on the best
| tech. They're a video discovery platform built on network
| effects. And any startup or open source project that wants a
| piece of this pie is going to have to win on that front.
| cloverich wrote:
| I watch a lot of youtube because its really the only form of TV I
| enjoy any longer. But the recommendations are a drag for the
| reasons mentioned here. What I'd really like is a better channels
| concept -- collections of videos from people I subscribe to -- or
| perhaps other's channels that get regularly updated content. A
| mix of algorithmically generated, user generated, and generated
| from myself (ex: put all my guitar subs into the same channel). I
| keep expecting these things to exist but perhaps user error is
| holding me back.
|
| Having a shared viewing experience with people with comparable
| interests would be particularly interesting. In that case, having
| channels that work a bit more like TV -- as opposed to on demand
| -- wouldn't be so bad because it links you up with other people
| currently watching it. Perhaps even voting to skip or replay.
|
| Its one of those things where, I feel like there is an
| extraordinary amount of potential in this product still, but will
| it ever be tapped? It has so much innertia that time is more on
| its side than perhaps it should be.
| dirtyid wrote:
| I used https://youtube.videodeck.net/ for a long time to have
| Youtube "TV channels" but it got unreliable due to youtube api
| shenanigans.
|
| Now I use a script that makes direct youtube playlists I keep
| in a bookmark folder. Bonus you can set playlists to public and
| use 3rd party youtube apps with sponsor block on mobile.
|
| https://github.com/Elijas/auto-youtube-subscription-playlist...
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| Interesting idea.
| dirtyid wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/awJ6vCe.png
|
| Yeah it's solid setup, one can get a youtube api key and
| setup a decent management spreadsheet that pulls channel
| names and other info.
|
| Only issue with spreadsheet+script is it polls for new
| video on set timer. Apparently possible to be locked out
| with too many requests. I have it every 4 hours, with a
| bookmarket that forces a refresh. Overall it's not a bad
| system.
| mxstbr wrote:
| What's the outcome of doing this, do you just eventually end up
| with weird and/or no recommendations?
| iosifnicolae2 wrote:
| give it a try :)
|
| Usually, you might get videos that you haven't seen before..
| (at least, that's my hypothesis)
| m4l3x wrote:
| Maybe it is just defaulting to most popular? I would be also
| interested in the outcome.
| mrkramer wrote:
| You don't have to mark all YouTube videos as "Not interested";
| you can make front-end which hides all recommended videos so you
| can focus on the video you are currently watching and not be
| distracted.
| lxe wrote:
| Oh no, I liked my recommendations! Is there a way to revert?
| teddyh wrote:
| Even more boring YouTube:
|
| _Remove YouTube Suggestions_
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...
| jrimbault wrote:
| FYI, if you're using Ublock Origin or something like it, you
| can block whole divs with it, wihtout another extension.
| contravariant wrote:
| Its syntax [1] is also surprisingly powerful. You want to
| block an element if it _doesn 't_ contain an element matching
| a particular string/xpath/css selector? But only on specific
| pages? Even if the URL is manipulated by .pushState? Easy.
|
| I've also used it to blur the text of newsarticles talking
| about a particular sports event.
|
| Frankly that part of the extension on its own is amazingly
| useful.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-
| issues/wiki/Static-fi...
| pwenzel wrote:
| Also Distraction-Free Youtube for Firefox and Chrome!
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
| EvRev wrote:
| Recently I added my YT API key on a Kodi box at work and it
| "poisoned" all of my recommendations I see on my YT homepage. I
| look at it as a feature and not a bug, as it has curbed my
| ability to go to the home page and be entertained. Compared to
| the other plugins/add-ons that change the thumbnail or hide all
| the recommendations this seems to be a preferable alternative.
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(page generated 2022-01-13 23:01 UTC)