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YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

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Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#11
The majority of my YouTube recommendations are videos I’ve already watched, despite there being innumerable videos in the back catalogues of my subscriptions I have not seen. My wife has the exact same problem.

Surely I haven’t seen all of YouTube. I would love if it recommended me things I would be remotely interested in watching, even if they were “garbage” over this. At this point I would almost prefer sketchy conspiracy theory video recommendations.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#12

I really like youtube recs. I have different accounts for different interests and the recommendations are always on point. I don't understand why so many people from the media complain. I think they just don't like that youtube recommends non-mainstream channels too.

I agree, I've actually found some really interesting channels through recommendations. Perhaps the targeting is so accurate due to the years of data they have on my 2 accounts. That said, I recently created a brand new account for my company and the default recommendations seem to be absolute mindless garbage . But perhaps my interests just don't align with what the vast majority of the YouTube-using public are watch…

I've found over the years as I get to be more and more of an irascible old man, that my viewpoints don't align with much as far as popularity goes. And that's okay. Frankly the power in YouTube for me was to look back at seminal events that resonated and transformed my life. It is wonderful for that. However, it's very poor at complex recommendations. If I watch a video about the polar ice caps melting, that doesn't mean I want to watch a climate change denier. I realize this is not an easy thing to solve and that's why it shouldn't be solved solely with algorithms. The same way that copyright claims should have a human touch and not just automatically remove revenue for people on the platform.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#13
post #2

Everything about YouTube doesn't fit my interests or preferences... to such an extent that I use YouTube-DL for almost all the things I watch off YouTube. Recommendations are almost always garbage and I have no idea why. I also think that the search function is bad, like so bad that's it's somehow dishonest. I routinely run the same searches looking for the same thing but find stuff that was made well before the last…

By design, the search function does not return an exhaustive list of content matching your search terms. It returns content that YouTube wants you to watch.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#14
It's like this hasn't improved since the late 2000s. If I forget to disable autoplay and it eventually ends up on a LinusTechTips, it'll be another week before I stop getting recommended nothing but those after every video.

If this behavior is based off aggregate watching patterns, can we at least get the patterns applied to us of people who match our usage demographics and not the tens of thousands of pre-teens being raised by YouTube?

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#15
I don’t even buy the reasoning that the recommendations are somehow “personalized,” because they don’t seem to be... At all. I have never watched a political video on YouTube, or really anything unrelated to music or computer science, yet my “recommended videos” are always full of Ben Shapiro and his ilk. It’s easier to find relevant videos by doing a regular Google search, which is a little ironic.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#16

I don’t even buy the reasoning that the recommendations are somehow “personalized,” because they don’t seem to be... At all. I have never watched a political video on YouTube, or really anything unrelated to music or computer science, yet my “recommended videos” are always full of Ben Shapiro and his ilk. It’s easier to find relevant videos by doing a regular Google search, which is a little ironic.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#17
post #8

I propose an idea, maybe: every video you watch, the original author of that video can set up a list of recommended videos to watch after you are done with the one you originally came for. This way, the original video author has a say in where you head in your Youtube rabbit-hole experience. This is just off the top of my head early in the morning so probably not the best idea, but honestly it seems better than what…

They can already add suggested videos in end screens and in the info card drawer (although the info card drawer is not used nearly as often as it could be, and YouTube doesn't necessarily do a good job of drawing attention to it).

I guess I forgot about that (it probably helps that Youtube doesn't give it much attention as they should). I think those were a step in the right direction but having those possibly at the top of the "recommendation" area or just replacing it completely would be more intuitive to me. Maybe even having it autoplay to the next video set up by the content creator.

I am not a content creator so my opinion is solely from the viewer side. I would love to hear from people who are making the videos I watch and enjoy as well since many of them are using Youtube as their sole income. IMO, you have to please both sides to a certain extent or this all won't work.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#18
I would point to this article:

https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201

My take is that "reccomendation" technology is disasterously bad in most cases but Google has us hypnotized to believe they are "smarter" than the rest of us, although when you look at their definition of "smart" it seems to be a bludgeon to intimidate other people with.

Google doesn't have to be smarter than its competitors, it just has to be smarter than the people who buy ads.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#19

I don’t even buy the reasoning that the recommendations are somehow “personalized,” because they don’t seem to be... At all. I have never watched a political video on YouTube, or really anything unrelated to music or computer science, yet my “recommended videos” are always full of Ben Shapiro and his ilk. It’s easier to find relevant videos by doing a regular Google search, which is a little ironic.

I think YouTube in general has little understanding of how to manage content, which is a weird problem for an arm of Google.

I had a bit of a wake-up call as to just how bad the problem was when I saw video search results for "GPLv4". Normal search engine? No problem. GNU Public License. YouTube? Nope. A bunch of videos from a "gplv4.org" when I try the search just now, which evidently has nothing to do with open source licensing.

Re: YouTube should stop recommending garbage videos to users

#20

I really like youtube recs. I have different accounts for different interests and the recommendations are always on point. I don't understand why so many people from the media complain. I think they just don't like that youtube recommends non-mainstream channels too.

Yes, YouTube recs are very good. Scarily good. I don't know why no one wants to admit it. YouTube's loss function is minimized by you spending hours on there like a vegetable. It's essentially self-driving tier tech applied to making you an addict to media.
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