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YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

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Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#141

Post by jillesvangurp »

Faark wrote: post #132
jillesvangurp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I click through them once in a while when I'm bored and it consists mostly of stuff I've already watched mixed with stuff I have chosen not to watch from channels I follow combined with random crap. The most annoying thing is that it just fills your feed with stuff similar to whatever you recently did. This is made worse by the fact that they only show a handful of recommendations. The only way to get new rec…

I kind of disagree on what you try to accomplish in your second half. If you want to live here, you should be exposed to local culture and language, and have a somewhat hard time retreating into your own, separate filter bubble. Sure, Youtube could find more effective ways to achieve that, maybe by more gradually introducing you to it (especially language). But with their current capabilities, I'd vote for them pushi…

Why should I be denied access to content I might be reasonably assumed to enjoy? What kind of weird argument is that? From my point of view it's just a good example of broken assumptions in what is obviously a not very sophisticated way to promote and recommend content.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#142

Post by sreyaNotfilc »

dredds wrote: post #35

There is no way that "3 hours of planes taking off" or "3 hours of rain" are getting 10's of millions of views without getting recommended widely, including myself. 18 hours of "ambient sounds" has 130 million views so that's some heavy promotion, not just some occasional insomniac using search.

It really depends. If its a silent video, yea I can see why its bogus. But, if its background noise, then yes its useful.

Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping, I search "white noise" and find videos like this. Usually I click on something like a 'fan blowing' video or a 'thunder storm' video. The noise/pattern combination somehow helps me sleep. It also helps me relax and focus while working.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#143

Post by sreyaNotfilc »

yellowapple wrote: post #51
dredds wrote: post #35

There is no way that "3 hours of planes taking off" or "3 hours of rain" are getting 10's of millions of views without getting recommended widely, including myself. 18 hours of "ambient sounds" has 130 million views so that's some heavy promotion, not just some occasional insomniac using search.

> "3 hours of planes taking off" Now that's a video idea. I currently live right under the flight path for planes flying out of SFO; I should set up a camera and just record the sky, since they fly pretty close overhead.

You may be joking, but that's a great way to earn some revenue for doing essentially nothing.

There's a guy who goes into the woods and takes videos of that environment along with great sound quality.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#144

Post by Faark »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #141
Faark wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of disagree on what you try to accomplish in your second half. If you want to live here, you should be exposed to local culture and language, and have a somewhat hard time retreating into your own, separate filter bubble. Sure, Youtube could find more effective ways to achieve that, maybe by more gradually introducing you to it (especially language). But with their current capabilities, I'd vote for them pushi…

Why should I be denied access to content I might be reasonably assumed to enjoy? What kind of weird argument is that? From my point of view it's just a good example of broken assumptions in what is obviously a not very sophisticated way to promote and recommend content.

I am not sure where you've seen anyone advocate you to "denied access to content". We are talking about a recommendation system. Those are pushing content, and as such include believes, values, etc. This makes companies have a responsibility on what they advocate for and what effect that will have on our societies. If you're talking about opportunity cost: Well, an imaginary flat earth'er or science denier would say the same about getting recommended stuff beyond his bubble.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#145

Post by ehsankia »

a_imho wrote: post #114
ehsankia wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's not about pressure, I run an ad-blocker anyways. Youtube is one of the services I use the most in my every day life, and considering the amount of value I get out of it, giving 10$ back is the least I can do in my mind. I find that many people take online services for granted these days, and don't take a step back to look at how much value these services bring them. I get 50+ hours of entertainment per mo…

Besides the protection racket vibes mentioned you are paying Google first and foremost not the actual content creators. I would argue paying for the hosting actually creates the wrong incentives and empowers the platform over the people whose work you enjoy.

According to Youtube [0], a part of the Premium cost goes directly to creators based on how much time you spend watching their channel. Also, you're not only paying for pure hosting, but for the millions of engineering hour that went into creating the platform. I understand average users not realizing this, but HN should know more than most how much work goes into implementing these services.

And going back to the ad discussion, if you compare it to traditional media, you get to pay more than 10$ and still have to sit through 2-3m of advertisement, compared to the 5-10s long ads on Youtube.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#146

Post by golergka »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #134
cameronbrown wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is a reasonable thought, but how do you explain the new meme comment along the lines of "What the hell was this doing in my recommended?"

Easy: survivor bias. A lot of people are using youtube, and people who get good recommendations don't have any fuel to do memes. So, even if the amount of people who get bad recommendations is minimal, the meme would still exist.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#147

Post by thewhitetulip »

Faark wrote: post #129
thewhitetulip wrote: post #125

These recommendation engines suck During election month I watched lot of news videos Then my feed was just news Then I unfollowed and said "I want to not see channel x" for every 25 such channels And then I watched standup comedy And now my entire feed is comedy bits I've moved back to watching tv shows/reading books and occasionally watching a specific video on YouTube

I have a hard time understanding how youtube can screw this up so badly. Spotify does it nicely. They clearly recognized the few different tastes I have. And then offer separate discovery-queues for each of them and let me decide depending on what mood/situation i'm in. But that might be the main difference... they signal back their knowledge to the user. Steam kind does the same with "Is this game relevant to you?"…

Youtube screws it badly because they think they know better than users.

Re: YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism

#148

Post by lopmotr »

sp332 wrote: post #95
lopmotr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd always assumed you could block specific ads or advertisers since there's a button on each ad with a menu for that (on the circled i button). But when I just tried it, it refused because it said personalized ads were turned off, even though there were turned on. So I guess that's just another weirdly broken pretend-feature.

Is that because you opted-out of ad personalization on https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en ?

No. That's where ad personalization was turned on.
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