Logged out • Hacker News Board

Re: Logged out

#41

Post by mgraczyk » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

Question for anyone working on ranking at Youtube:

Recommendation quality got way worse ~March of this year, presumably due to capacity restrictions after a surge in post-shutdown usage. Anecdotally, the quality has not recovered and is still worse than pre-COVID. Is my experience widespread? What's going on?

I ask as somebody working on a similar product, where capacity caused recommendation quality degradation in March/April but recovered soon after.

Re: Logged out

#42

Post by lazyjones » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

But what is the benefit of logging out? It's not like these websites can't track you and your interests anyway.

Re: Logged out

#43

Post by agakshat » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #10

Youtube's recommendation algorithm is one of the wonders of the modern world. I discovered so many incredible videos that I would never have searched for and that no one would have recommended to me, thanks to it.

My personal experience with Youtube recommendations has been really bad for a long time now. The only videos it recommends that I care to watch are from channels I'm already subscribed to, so no big victory there - any content from new creators is very rarely interesting. My (unproven) theory behind this is that since I started using Firefox and Duck Duck Go, the algorithm has been starved of data about my preferences (apparently, only Youtube search and view history is not good enough).

Re: Logged out

#44

Post by Reedx » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #10

Youtube's recommendation algorithm is one of the wonders of the modern world. I discovered so many incredible videos that I would never have searched for and that no one would have recommended to me, thanks to it.

Comparing YouTube logged in vs logged out... it's no contest really. Logged in is far more useful, even when not including Premium (no ads) and other features.

Logged out I'm seeing mostly useless viral videos that I have no interest in. By default it appears to me that YouTube recommends pure sugar. Whereas logged in you can steer it away from that.

Re: Logged out

#45

Post by lostmsu » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #41

Question for anyone working on ranking at Youtube: Recommendation quality got way worse ~March of this year, presumably due to capacity restrictions after a surge in post-shutdown usage. Anecdotally, the quality has not recovered and is still worse than pre-COVID. Is my experience widespread? What's going on? I ask as somebody working on a similar product, where capacity caused recommendation quality degradation in M…

Maybe you just run out of interesting content to watch?

Re: Logged out

#46

Post by pteraspidomorph » Mon, Jul 20, 2020, 12:13 PM UTC

noman-land wrote: post #23

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just use a private window?

Private windows are all linked to each other. Different private windows are not in different private sessions. They all share the same private session, so It's not really the same.

Interesting, I didn't know that. Seems clear from the language in the initial view of the private window, but I hadn't really paid attention before.

This isn't how I think private windows should work. They should be fully isolated (tabs within the same private window could share a session, though).