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I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
31–40 of 159 posts
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#32The youtube algorithm is working extremely well, to the point where I find hard to believe it does not have any human in the loop or active moderation. I have discovered so many interesting types of music and documentaries and subculture/subgenres on it. It manages to hit my interests so well, that I rarely go to netflix nor spotify anymore for discovery. I 'll either directly go watch something that I 've chosen on…
What are your interests, both entertainment and music wise?
If you could drop some examples it might be easier to understand why it’s working for you.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#33The youtube algorithm is working extremely well, to the point where I find hard to believe it does not have any human in the loop or active moderation. I have discovered so many interesting types of music and documentaries and subculture/subgenres on it. It manages to hit my interests so well, that I rarely go to netflix nor spotify anymore for discovery. I 'll either directly go watch something that I 've chosen on…
Are you for real? YouTube seems to do terrible at the recommendations. It cannot even recognize that when I’m behind the computer, I’m not interested in watching documentaries and when I’m behind my Apple TV, I’m not interested in listening to music videos. It’s such basic stuff, let alone the actual recommendations; it just keeps rehashing the same channels. “Oh you watched a video about the US elections, let’s bomb…
My biggest annoyance is that it suggests videos I've already watched. Old and new. I totally understand if a recently uploaded video gets suggested several times a day or over a few days, but it suggests videos I've watched years ago, and also months ago. Over and over again.
Their "don't suggest this video" or channel doesn't work for shit either.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#34Really cool project, going to play around with it, since I wanted to experiment with alternative algorithms for these kind of platforms for a while, but didn't found time to get started.
My biggest gripe with YouTube recommendations, or any service of that kind (Spotify, Amazon, etc.), is that they don't understand what aspects of the content I value. So it is a huge hit and miss. Sometimes it works, because I guess I just happen to value the same things that the majority of people do, other times, I might watch an hour long very in-depth video about a topic, then YouTube for a week or so tries to get me to watch 5 minute, rather shallow introduction videos that are way more popular. There is nothing wrong with those videos per se, they are often really well made, but it is not what I'm looking for.
Other times it picks stuff up from the long tail that seemingly gets into a feedback loop, suddenly reaching millions of view, with practically zero relevance to me.
Then there are some personal tastes of mine, e.g. that I can't stand the, I guess I'd call it the "Youtube Voice" where creators go completely over the top instead of talking like a normal person.
I wonder what metric could be used as a proxy to get better recommendations? Or if a better approach would be, to just build a better custom search so I can tweak it to what I'm looking for at this moment in time.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#35This is great. I feel the same way, but have been trying to train the existing YT algorithm. I started using my work email youtube profile to actively subscribe/like/save videos that I want to see more of (about hiring, management, culture, Kubernetes, devtools etc). At the same time I aggressively choose "not interested" and "do not suggest this channel" when the algorithm isn't suggesting what I want (more detail:…
Sounds similar to how I trained my TikTok feed while I was playing around with it for a week - repeatedly clicking on not interested for dancing, cooking, and general youth stuff left me with a feed composed of nature videos - pretty cool.
On a side note, tiktok has to have the best recommendation algorithm possible - not good for us, but good as in addicting.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#36This inspired me to think: would it be possible to employ an opposite approach - negative selection. Develop a browser extension that hides bad results (based on smart filters) instead of trying to guess the best?
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#37I found YouTube suggestions to be generally useless, so I have just disabled the suggestion sidebar completely[0]. Leaves more screen space for the video. The reason I found them useless is that the suggestions were too specialised. I usually do not want to watch a dozen videos on the same topic. I usually want to watch one high quality video about it, then move on. Same with channels. I do not want to follow ten cha…
I like the blog!
Yeah, that's pretty much my exact gripe - that the algorithm just keeps wanting to show you more of the same. It's like a friend who gets obsessed about one thing after you said you liked it once :')
I'm not sure how best to solve this though
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#38This inspired me to think: would it be possible to employ an opposite approach - negative selection. Develop a browser extension that hides bad results (based on smart filters) instead of trying to guess the best?
really interesting suggestion, I like it
what do you think would be good markers of a bad video? other than the obvious (clickbait terms, repetitive/generic titles), I'm not sure what could work. any suggestions?
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#39The youtube algorithm is working extremely well, to the point where I find hard to believe it does not have any human in the loop or active moderation. I have discovered so many interesting types of music and documentaries and subculture/subgenres on it. It manages to hit my interests so well, that I rarely go to netflix nor spotify anymore for discovery. I 'll either directly go watch something that I 've chosen on…
What are your interests, both entertainment and music wise? If you could drop some examples it might be easier to understand why it’s working for you.
(Please see the reply I left to Krasnol). So, if you just gave me a search-bar and have me play music, it would be post-rock or metal. And what I get on spotify is a bunch of post rock and black/death metal. Which is fine, but predictable and kinda boring.
But youtube manages to recommend to me things that aren't in my alley, but I somehow end up loving.
(just a random sample from music) "Heilung - Lifa" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BsKIP4uYM
"The caretaker at the end of time" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWksPWDKOc&t=10573s
"Babe Rainbow - Secret Enchanted Broccoli Forest" - https://youtu.be/lh2qHxUDt6o?t=26
A whole new genre called DungeonSynth - https://youtu.be/E9R-vzIe8x0
And one called Witchhouse - https://youtu.be/6XIlNP-c4Ds
And Sovietwave goth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZZSyO28RUg
Uhh, drum n bass n sax?? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G55GspnNkBo
And the latest weird recommendation a San Jose band called Sunami.
Oh And This! - https://youtu.be/cIMKJ43TFLs?t=76 ---- I wouldn't be searching for any of that on my own. But I love all of it (ended buying merch from quite a few "youtube recommended" artists). To me that is as successful a recommendation system as it can be. It shows me things I didn't even know I 'd love! From Jazz, to Funk, to Ambient, to SovietWave goth, to psychedelic rock, the list is always expanding.... I was never that open minded, but now I am. Maybe this is more on me and how my personality evolved through the years than on youtube's recommendations...
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But you can see that many people had the same happen to them by how popular comments like this are -> "You didnt find this video. It found you." Or "I would love to know what I did to make this come up in my suggested videos. Holy shit this is awesome!"
Curious, ain't it?
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you for real? YouTube seems to do terrible at the recommendations. It cannot even recognize that when I’m behind the computer, I’m not interested in watching documentaries and when I’m behind my Apple TV, I’m not interested in listening to music videos. It’s such basic stuff, let alone the actual recommendations; it just keeps rehashing the same channels. “Oh you watched a video about the US elections, let’s bomb…
My biggest annoyance is that it suggests videos I've already watched. Old and new. I totally understand if a recently uploaded video gets suggested several times a day or over a few days, but it suggests videos I've watched years ago, and also months ago. Over and over again. Their "don't suggest this video" or channel doesn't work for shit either.
Are you sure the video was registered as seen ? Sometimes on my phone I watch a video and I don't see it in my latest seen videos. It's an issue with Play Service I think.