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

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#181

Post by TravisDick » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #176

> We now pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics—on any given day, more than 200 million videos are recommended on the homepage alone. What does the first part (wider set of topics) have to do with the second part (number of videos recommended)? Anyway, YouTube recommendations are generally quite poor I find, though sometimes a few gems come along. I also made the mistake of watching YouTube on my Android…

Just guessing, but it could be that they are claiming that 200 million unique videos are recommended on a given day, with the number of unique videos being a proxy for how diverse they are. Perhaps before some of their recent changes, the number of unique videos was smaller. (Who can say for sure, though)

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#182

Post by EpicEng » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 9:53 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…

It's terrible. I have to completely log out when I watch videos which put me to sleep a couple times /week because I don't want my suggestions filled with dry history lectures.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#183

Post by porpoisely » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

Improving recommendations? All I'm seeing is a complete deterioration of youtube's recommends since the glory days of the early 2010s.

How about stop spamming me CNN, SNL, Late Night Show ( kimmel, john oliver, etc )? I've yet to accidentally click on these links/channels in all my years using youtube and yet, I still see them every day? Why?

I've pretty much given up on recommendations and just directly go to the channels I want to watch. There was a time ( early 2010s ) when youtube recommends was great and it was actually fun going down the youtube recommends rabbit hole. Now it's just corporate shilling. Just like google search and its incredible decline.

You guys aren't going to improve anything because you don't have competition.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#184

Post by jalgos_eminator » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #140

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #85

Say what you want about YouTube recommended political videos, but I have found some absolutely great music because it showed up in my recommended. A small Canadian band showed up in my recommended and that first song captivated me. Then I listened to their other singles and two albums, and now I'm going to their show next month. Also, I just found an artist from Belarus that makes fantastic synthpop. The weird thing…

> an artist from Belarus that makes fantastic synthpop Alright, I'm gonna need a link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypknY6nIDe0

Check the comments. It looks like there were plenty of people who had the same experience as me.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#185

Post by icsllaf » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

I have always had the idea that there should be a law requiring any recommended item anywhere on the internet to be accompanied with a reason of why the item has been recommended. Youtube already does this with certain videos but I would much like it to be expanded completely.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#186

Post by jalgos_eminator » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

timmaah wrote: post #117

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #85

Say what you want about YouTube recommended political videos, but I have found some absolutely great music because it showed up in my recommended. A small Canadian band showed up in my recommended and that first song captivated me. Then I listened to their other singles and two albums, and now I'm going to their show next month. Also, I just found an artist from Belarus that makes fantastic synthpop. The weird thing…

The Dead South ? They seem to be oddly popular on youtube.

"Men I Trust" from Quebec. This is the song that started it for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IZKcb3LndA

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#187

Post by ZoomZoomZoom » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:09 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…

What drives me insane is there's no way to mark videos as watched. You can hide them only with "not interested" even though you totally are.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#188

Post by ZoomZoomZoom » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #96

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.

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…

I strongly recommend downloading educational and otherwise valuable content. It solves so many problems, present an possible.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#189

Post by cycrutchfield » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:14 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…

Read the Youtube recommendation paper (https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub45530) and it will become very clear why it recommends a ton of high-engagement clickbaity content based off of a minimal set of recent watches.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#190

Post by microcolonel » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

YouTube keeps showing me videos I have already seen, while not sending notifications for videos on channels I'm subscribed to (yes, with the bell!). In order to find videos from people I am subscribed to, I have to go to their Twitter/Discord/Minds so that I don't miss out on at least one video per day, it's nuts.