I really wish youtube allowed me to block channels, so over time the quality of videos I do see improves.
It does allow you to block channels. It's the option "Don't recommend channel".
I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
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Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#62I really wish youtube allowed me to block channels, so over time the quality of videos I do see improves.
Quality of channels can go up and down though? Surprised if disliking a couple of vids from a channel isn't enough to prevent getting suggestions for that channel?
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#63I want something like AdBlocker extensions but for replacing algorithms of these social media platforms. It can be community driven so I can select “give me scientifically proven posts” algorithm or “non political stuff” algorithm.
As image recognition of objects seems pretty far on, I'd like to block all images of pets ... sorry, I don't care about your pets.
Seems doable.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#64Dumb quantitative approach may work for some. Views and subscribers counts are close to irrelevant IMO when it comes to niche or expert subjects. Freshness is irrelevant for woodworking.
I would prefer saved searches. But YouTube doesn’t seem to index the auto generated subtitles.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Personally GRAPE content (Guns / Religion / Abortion / Politics / environment) especially from opinion news sources. I notice that when I consume these content I never end up feeling better than when I started regardless of whether I agree / disagree with them. Also a huge time sink. Also, entertainment content about celebrities like the kardashians.
I'm thinking maybe an extension where when you sign up, it asks: "what do you NOT want to see", and then for all topics you pick it will block videos on those.
Kind of like when you sign up for Twitter or Medium, it asks you for topics of interest - here it would do the inverse
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience the YouTube algorithm is very easily manipulated. Just scroll through your feed and select "not interested" for what you dislike. The type of content changes very quickly.
Over the years I’ve probably „blocked“ every single term from the Star Wars universe. Yet as soon as the next iteration of the franchise approaches box offices I find myself flooded with the most absurd cross-marketing videos you can imagine. Not talking about (official) ads. I have the strong impression the algorithm either takes ad campaigns into account — or is being abused by advertisers very successfully.
Makes sense, ads are payed per impression, so if a company soaks away more impressions that don't lead to actions then that means more revenue. I guess the trick is to make sure your still - only just - the best cpm around.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#67I've done a lot with Lambda, but only with node and go. I've never hit the problem you found -- perhaps translating to another language would work? I've heard that a lot of pythonistas like go, and it doesn't look like you're doing anything too difficult, so it should be possible.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#68Earlier 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…
I actually agree with OP. YouTube recommendations on my primary account are quite good. I attribute this to careful curation of my logged-in viewing habits. > you watched a video about the US elections That's the problem. As a rule, I never view political, celebrity, or clickbait videos when logged in. There is such a vast amount of dreck in these categories, you're sure to be disappointed sooner or later. If I see a…
Nice "hack" with incognito! I also notice that Youtube will catch on to a random video I watch and recommend me similar things, even if I am not interested in those topics. I'll think about incognito in the future! "Right Click -> Open Link in Incognito Window"
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#69Really 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 wish I could explicitly tell YouTube “don’t ever recommend videos I’ve seen.”
* Except for music.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#70One feature I wish Youtube had was a preview thumbnail that was made of 10 screen shots from key moments in the video, side by side. Would make it easy to filter out all the talking head. And right away see if its worth watching.
Does the video teach you something worth knowing? Feel like this could be answered by taking the captions and ranking the difficulty of the language used, or making a word map. Then have AI deciding is this about math, science, politics, and so on. Even simple as rating the words on a grade reading level would help to filter out useless videos.