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YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

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Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#81

The main thing I want them to do is not to keep repeatedly showing me the same videos I've already watched. They have little bars under them that show I've watched them all the way through, it shouldn't be that hard.

I've seen video thumbnails with that a red bar baked-in to look like I'm halfway done watching them.

Brilliant hack. My eye naturally glances at those videos because it usually means I was simply distracted and probably want to resume it.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#82
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is kinda my point. The amount of HD traffic and wasted bandwidth is just insane. At what point would YT just acknowledge the same viewer is watching (or listening) the same video over and over and over again before offering a download button? (sure tech ppl can use 3rd-party tool, but all are blocked on Google Play, and most others limited to short vids only)

Sophisticated ISPs hopefully cache that sort of thing.

How will they cache TLS-protected content?

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#83
One of the things I hate about the current algo is that I get suggestions from freebooters who upload pirated content. Say for example, John Oliver airs at 9pm, by 9:32 his opening monologue is already pirated and at the top of my feed.

No matter how much I dislike, report, or ignore these videos, they always pop to the top. I don't view them, and never give them clicks, but because I watch every official John Oliver video, they get recommend to me.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#84
I never criticized them - they can run their business however they please. I'm not a customer (i.e. I don't pay) so I have no right to ask for changes.

I have always been ignoring YouTube recommendations and will continue to do so.

(What I can't ignore is server-side ordering of results, which is a recommendation in itself, so I scroll through a few extra pages of results or use DDG rather than YouTube to search)

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#85
post #67

I thought for a moment they were going to turn off recommendations. For users not signed in, they are on by default. Instead this is like asking users to click thumbs up or down in response to an ad, "Don't show me this ad again" or fill out a survey about the ads. The issue is not that the user is annoyed by a specific toxic video. That is only the effect, not the cause. The issue is that Google's recommendation sys…

> Either fix it to stop promoting "popular" garbage (which is "popular" because it is auto-recommended and auto-played), or turn if off by default.

Or maybe people like content that you don't? People aren't drones who watch something because it was shovelled into their watch next. Chances are it was decent content. For them.

If you consider this a dark pattern then you probably need to get a better perspective. There are far worse actors online.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#86
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I click on "not interested" when it shows videos i've watched the day before, but then assuming i don't want to see videos of a similar type would be a mistake, yet that's how broken the system is. Any attempt to "train" the algo is wasted effort based on past experience. You could say we users have been "trained" by the algo not to even bother anymore.

Also helps to clear your viewing history (Youtube's "History" sidebar tab) every once in a while when you're tired of seeing the same recommendations. For example, I kept seeing Starcraft 2 replays on the homepage after watching the AI vs human tournament which kept helping me procrastinate. I don't even play the game nor subscribe to a single SC2 channel. Cleared history, started off strong watching some of my langu…

I've turned off my view history, but my recommendations are bloody awful. YouTube knows what channels I subscribe to, it knows what I click like on, it knows what video I'm currently watching, but it still serves me recommendations that are apparently totally unrelated to any of that.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#87
post #23

This doesn’t really solve some of the more concerning things about recommendations, which is the gradual ease into more extreme content. i.e., “super Mario speedrun” to “Top 10 speedrunning fails” to “Super Mario speedrunner gets owned” to “Why women shouldn’t be allowed to play video games” or other such hogwash.

At this point I'm pretty sure third parties understand the algorithm a lot better than anyone in YouTube; this would match my experience in MMOs where groups like GoonFleet would reverse engineer hell out of the games to win.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sophisticated ISPs hopefully cache that sort of thing.

How will they cache TLS-protected content?

I believe Google like Netflix put boxes in your ISP's DC to cache for them.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#89
post #83

One of the things I hate about the current algo is that I get suggestions from freebooters who upload pirated content. Say for example, John Oliver airs at 9pm, by 9:32 his opening monologue is already pirated and at the top of my feed. No matter how much I dislike, report, or ignore these videos, they always pop to the top. I don't view them, and never give them clicks, but because I watch every official John Oliver…

His videos are region locked so re-uploads are popular in places like my country. Very unfair imo.
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