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Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

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Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#1

Post by subharmonicon »

I personally find recommender systems on platforms that I am on to be very poor.

I would expect with all the effort that has gone into these, and all the progress in machine learning, these systems would be fantastic and provide recommendations that I really enjoy. But they don’t.

YouTube seems to have a massive recency bias and music, film, and TV recommendations rarely end up being things I enjoy.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#2

Post by andy99 »

They are not optimized for what you enjoy, or even want.

A passable analogy: you buy a car and get hassled, often hard-sold for a pre-paid maintenance package, tire insurance, financing insurance, undercoating, bla bla. You don't want any of it but it's what they push the hardest.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#3

Post by wenc »

They work well if there are lots of people like you (ie you are a normie).

All machine learning algorithms struggle at the edges — they’re very good at predicting aggregate behavior.

If you have eclectic tastes there’s probably not enough data on your demographic.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#4

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

I have a theory that some people's likes are based on things that are too subtle, intangible, or unrepeatable to identify, predict, or data mine. At least that's what I've figured is why recommendation systems don't work for me and why I run into so many dead ends when I try to use clear aspects of what I like to find other likes.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#6

Post by smrtinsert »

Excellent question. All the streaming providers only seem to suggest movies from my generation and absolutely nothing new. It feels like they have created an ultra generic advertising profile for me and only use that to recommend content. It's incredibly depressing. Youtube is slightly better but still extremely siloed. No amount of "algorithm training" seems to help.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#7

Post by behnamoh »

You buy a $1000 scooter from Amazon and then it keeps recommending to you other good scooters for months, even after the return window for the first one is closed.

Yeah, you'd expect more from ML at this point. I wonder how much of ML research actually gets utilized in industry.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#8

Post by neovialogistics »

Scale. Providing accurate recommendation algorithms for thousands+++ of people across thousands+++ of data items is surprisingly expensive in compute and electricity. For any one user, sure you can do whatever you like. When you divide your resources across your userbase the prices get larger and larger.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#9

Post by JohnMakin »

Because the recommendations aren't for you - they are what generates the most amount of ad revenue for them, which roughly correlates to the amount of money advertisers are willing to spend to reach people like you. That is in no way a guarantee that the recommendations will be good for you, because the incentives are not aligned.

Re: Ask HN: Why do recommender systems not seem good?

#10

Post by superasn »

I think a lot of recommendation system take only the positive signals into account but don't take the negative signals that seriously.

So If I like and disliked 10 movies just don't show me movies from users who also liked these. First, filter or downgrade all users who liked what I disliked and then create my recommendations.

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