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

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#191

Post by sorenjan » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #187

gothroach wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I mark a video as "Not interested" I get a link to "tell us why", where "I've already watched the video" is an option.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#192

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

abakker wrote: post #141

gothroach wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 this behavior is probably driven by people like me, who use youtube mostly for music. I repeatedly listen to/watch performances on youtube because to me it's the only streaming service I have. I frequently come to youtube just to watch stuff I've already seen. I find the recommendation in that context to be uncannily good and they keep me coming back to find new music and to see the cool performances I've alr…

When I'm programming, gaming I mostly listen to retrosynth and outrun.

For that youtube is great because it's autoplay just seamlessly plays one after another.

For everything else it's recommendations are hilariously bad.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#193

Post by throwawaysea » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

AgentME wrote: post #161

nightski wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this is annoying. Personally I enjoyed watching the conspiracy theory 9/11 videos even if I didn't believe it for a second.

Maybe they should be there for people who seek them out, but YouTube shouldn't be recommending them onto people who didn't previously want them and who might not be approaching it skeptically.

Why is it YouTube's business to judge truth and falsehoods and provide a manicured walled garden? That seems like an avenue for all sorts of manipulation, censorship, etc.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#194

Post by rasz » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

beart wrote: post #138

gothroach wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's possible your adblocker is preventing YouTube from tracking your watched video history. I know pi-hole does this by default unless you whitelist certain domains.

user agent hits Google random-string.googlevideo.com/videoplayback with referrer, ip, signature and several other parameters coding your individual user id, Google knows every single time who, why and when requested particular resource.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#195

Post by manfredo » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

shaki-dora wrote: post #169

manfredo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, YouTube actually recommends liberal content at a rate substantially higher than conservative content. Centrists content links to liberal content about three times more frequently than it links to conservative content. Is there evidence to corroborate the claim that YouTube is pushing people to extreme content? The data seems to indicate otherwise. https://www.thepostmillennial.com/does-youtube-facilita…

Sure, if CNN is „iberal“, and QAnon is „conservative“.

I'm not sure I follow. The implication of your comment seems to be that extremist content is more conservative. On the whole I agree. Which is why the fact that YouTube steers people towards conservative content less than centrist or liberal content broadly contradicts the claim that YouTube is steering people to radical content.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#196

Post by rasz » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:30 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 wrote my own tempermonkey userscript just for that occasion to hide already watched recommendations :/

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#197

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

Hm - I was hoping to read a little bit about the algorithms behind YouTube's recommendation engine but instead got a few paragraphs informing me that YouTube was going to implement (even more) arbitrary censorship and claim it was in the spirit of "protecting" us.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#198

Post by autokad » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

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.

there are times that "Episode 19" does in fact exist but even when I search for it, it finds NOTHING

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#199

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #162

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…

All the AI stuff is really still incredibly dumb. Same for Amazon: Buy a mixer and suddenly you will be haunted everywhere by ads offering more mixers.

[deleted]

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#200

Post by LeftTurnSignal » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 10:34 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…

I don't have much to add, other than I have had some good results with using the application "4k video downloader" to grab playlists on youtube. I'm not a fan of the generic name, but it does what it sets out to do and is fairly cheap. I'm sure everything can be done with youtube-dl, but I don't have a ton of experience with that.

I am able to get most of the videos downloaded and converted using that application. Sometimes I have to go and manually get a couple of videos that failed to download, but the app has served me well.