Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube • Hacker News Board

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#151

Post by jakeogh » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

itchyjunk wrote: post #81

sametmax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NSA mass surveillance was considered conspiracy before PRISM. Worse, people that said it was a conspiracy are now calling other things conspiracy, without any consideration for their past errors.

There seems to be people around who still think NSA mass surveillance is a conspiracy. Heck, don't the flat earther think round earth is a conspiracy? One mans theory is another mans conspiracy.

"don't the flat earther think"

Sure... some. But that's not the reason it's promoted. Paradoxically, many "fall for" it's real utility my merely lumping it in with whatever they want to discredit; disinformation is rather effective when it attaches obvious bs to other things.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#152

Post by criddell » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #103

criddell wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they would fix their iPad app. I'm learning to play guitar with the JustingGuitar channel. Justin has created playlists that match his book that I bought. But as soon as I play a video from that list, it seems to lose that context. Plus, on the iOS app there's no way to search within a channel or playlist. If I want to find Justin's lessons on a Nirvana song I have to search "justin guitar nirvana" rather than…

Have you tried deleting the iPad app and using the website?

The app is better than the website in other ways so I'm reluctant to do that. I actually called YouTube and talked to somebody about this. Whether or not that makes a difference, who knows?

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#153

Post by eanzenberg » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #145

My biggest problem with YT recommendations is that they dramatically overweight recent videos when generating the recommendations. I mean, I can spend a week doing nothing but watching (well, listening) to videos of classical music performances, and my recommendations will be full of classical music, exactly as you'd expect. Then I watch one random one-off thing, like "15 funny pitbull fails" and suddenly ALL of my r…

I tried FB video recently and was amazed by its predictions. It was pulling up compelling video from stuff I liked a decade ago that I was more than willing to view, it was kind of uncanny.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#154

Post by akhilcacharya » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

JaimeThompson wrote: post #86

fzeroracer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theories are, for the most part, a right-wing thing. Unless you can give me examples of conspiracy theories and their peddlers on level of Alex Jones for the far left.

The anti-vaxers are from all over the political spectrum I am sad to say.

The most notable anti-vaxxer is our President.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#155

Post by longway2go » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

gothroach wrote: post #132

wlesieutre wrote: post #53

What really bugs me is when a video literally has "Episode 18" in the name, but somehow the recommendation list on the right side fails to find the one with "Episode 19". But if I want to go watch Episode 5 again or jump ahead to Episode 26, it's happy to help. Awesome.

As I remember at least some series videos used to be recommended in order, but I haven't seen that in a while. The behavior that really gets me now is having the top recommended videos on my YT homepage ones I've watched... Recently. I can watch a video from my notifications, and then have it stay at the top of my homepage until I hide it manually. Refreshing the page changes some videos, but rarely the top few. Of c…

I think when you turn off tracking what you watch it warns you this will happen. it does this for me i think and didnt before i turned off watch history.. but maybe i am just imagining that. And maybe you havent turned off watch history.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#156

Post by chipotle_coyote » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #126

JaimeThompson wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one report videos to Youtube that violate their policies and actually get them to do something about it. It appears one can talk about the Holocaust not being real / that people don't get killed in mass shootings in the United States all they want and keep their monitization / Superchats.

What's the problem with videos like you mentioned? Do you think all videos in which people are wrong about things should be taken down? If somebody writes on their blog that they don't think the holocaust is real, should their blog get taken down, or is there something different about it being a video? In my opinion, YouTube has gone much too far towards the side of taking down videos rather than leaving them up. We…

The counterargument here is that "everyone" doesn't laugh about how stupid these videos are. Many people do, maybe most people, but some go, "Well, yeah, it's kinda crazy and stupid, but it makes you think." Fringe ideologues may upload videos to YouTube in part to hear themselves speak and to preach to the choir, but they also expand their audience and reach.

Do you think all videos in which people are wrong about things should be taken down??

Suppose Video A posits "your computer has a little gremlin inside of it and you should shove an oatmeal cookie into the CD slot at least once a month to keep the gremlin happy" and Video B posits "the Jewish-controlled mass media is conspiring to make us believe school shootings are a real thing and you should stockpile weapons for the coming race war." They are both technically "videos in which people are wrong about things," but isn't there a qualitative difference between those two things? Don't you think it's defensible for YouTube to take down Video B without taking down Video A?

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#157

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #136

webwanderings wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you investigated their rabbit hole for children? YT for Kids simply needs to die. They are evil.

Tangent: I'm expecting a kid, and time will come in couple years, when I'll want to show them kid videos. I fully intend to set this up as streaming from a library curated by my wife & me, populated with youtube-dl and through other means. I know some people on HN have such setups; could you share recommendations for hardware and software stack? I suspect a Raspberry Pi may not be enough (having network and USB shari…

If you're in the United States, 90% of the population can receive the 24/7 PBS Kids channel over the air for free.

If you're worried about the quality of content from YouTube, or the chances that someone gaming the system dumps questionable content into your stream, it's worth spending ten bucks on an antenna. It's also good for supplementing your child's YouTube viewing when YT starts showing the same stuff over and over.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#158

Post by blancheneige » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #122

itchyjunk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be people around who still think NSA mass surveillance is a conspiracy. Heck, don't the flat earther think round earth is a conspiracy? One mans theory is another mans conspiracy.

There's some fun even around the origin of the term. In late 1963 JFK was assassinated. According to a sourced referenced on Wiki [1] the first mainstream reference to "conspiracy theory" was the New York Times who, in 1964, posted some 5 articles using the phrase. In 1967 the CIA had a psychological operation manual on discrediting conspiracy theories. [2] The reason I mention JFK there is because the conspiracy the…

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#159

Post by MeltySmelty » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

JaimeThompson wrote: post #130

jstanley wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with videos like you mentioned? Do you think all videos in which people are wrong about things should be taken down? If somebody writes on their blog that they don't think the holocaust is real, should their blog get taken down, or is there something different about it being a video? In my opinion, YouTube has gone much too far towards the side of taking down videos rather than leaving them up. We…

I think that videos that say kids didn't die in school shootings should not be allowed to make money off of said videos especially when they try to get people riled up to harass the survivors and their parents. Furthermore I expect Google to apply their policies evenly which they don't. If violations of Google ToS are reported they should be taken care of don't you think. It isn't like you can actually debate them on…

I bet you're from Europe. Keep your draconian laws over there, please.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#160

Post by sdfasdslk » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

Nowhere to go but up, really.