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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

#71

Post by zamadatix »

smusamashah wrote: post #58

I find youtube recommendations on homepage really interesting. So much that I wish that article suggestions by Google in Android left side window were as good. I mostly watch tech, games, dev, toys etc. including rocket jump, Siggraph, viva LA dirt league, corridor, Tom Scott, Vertassium, Steve mould, numberphile etc. I almost always end up finding something interesting to watch. When it's not, I either mark it as 'n…

The thing I hate about recommendations on the homepage is clicking one 30 second funny video from a friend results in clicking "not interested" in 30 videos on the homepage to stop them from being recommended. Similarly, even if you use a different account, if you watch something you like and the algorithm decides it's more related to some other topic you don't like or thing you have no interest in it also floods the recommendations with this "fresh" topic you're "interested" in simply because you liked a video it misclassified.

Much like the author I have no problems finding "decent" content from traditional wide audience channels like Tom Scott, Veritasium, Numberphile, Siggraph, etc it's trying to find that 1 video out of the full homepage of recommendations that's not mainstream but actually "very good" and in depth that ends up eating more time than watching the videos - followed by a refresh to apply all of the "not interested"s I added to try to steer away from certain content. Definitely going to try this repo when I get home.

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#72

Post by Zancarius »

frankosaurus wrote: post #48
stingraycharles wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

I've had a similar experience. Anything I don't want to litter my recommendations I view from a private window. If I accidentally click on something I don't particularly want to watch, I remove it from my history.

It's not perfect, because as you go down the YT rabbit hole, you'll invariably get fed "top ten X" type clickbait videos if there's anything that's remotely related to what you're watching, but it does reduce the noise level.

Curating your subscriptions also helps.

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#73

Post by smoe »

pantelisk wrote: post #39
raunakdag wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://ww…

I reckon part of why it works well in this case is, because they are relatively popular (tens of thousands to millions of views) songs in somewhat niche genre. So maybe more similarity between users? In more mainstream genres, say Hip Hop, Rock, Metal, EDM i feel it is much harder to break out of the loop of sameishness although the genres have much more to offer.

Also in either case, I'm pretty sure, the vast majority of songs out there have sub 10k views and basically never get recommended. Just top of mind a few songs, that based on the list above you might like, but I think I would never have discovered via algorithms, unless I already happend to start quite close.

Roel Funcken - Balaklavskiy prospex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7WVGwb-9x8

Subheim - Foray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ7IHYSrquc

Klez.E - Nachtfahrt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi-8wkccjsw

Altın Gün - Cemalim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_J3-yr9GNI

Ok, the last one is fairly large, but it came to mind :) I do discover quite a bit of new music on YouTube, but only when I deliberately select a starting song and go from there, on the main page there is rarely something interesting. If there is music at all. I'm sure it would get a lot better if I'd listen music primarily via YouTube.

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#74

Post by ma2rten »

ChrisLovejoy wrote: post #50
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could explicitly tell YouTube “don’t ever recommend videos I’ve seen.”

amen! I wish you could crank up exploration cf. exploitation in your settings or something

It would be cool in general if recommendation algorithms or search algorithms were more customizable. I would imagine you could put some code into your settings that controls which recommendations you see. The platform, like YouTube in this case, could compute features that enable different kind of recommendation algorithms. There could be communities of people who tinker with this and share their recommendation algorithms.

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#76

Post by rollingchunder »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #49
smoe wrote: post #34

Really 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.”

Awhile back I started using a video's 'like' button simply as a mechanism by which I could tell if I had watched something before since I did get repeat recommendations. Then, if I clicked a recommended video again later, I'd know I had already seen it. Over time, as far as I could tell, YT stopped recommending videos I'd seen before as there were fewer and fewer videos I would check out that I had already seen.

May also be attributed to something else, or I'm getting old, but it seems to have been a fortunate outcome.

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#77

Post by _boffin_ »

This is a great start, but there's a huge portion of data you're just flat out missing from this--comments.

There's so much useful information inside user comments.

I have a theory that I'm truthfully too lazy to test out, but I'm presuming that lower quality videos are going to have an average comment text complixicity number lower than the higher quality videos, especially as your topic gets more specific/technical.

Take a look textstat(1) for some examples.

(1). https://github.com/shivam5992/textstat

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#78

Post by bobbean »

simlevesque wrote: post #40
dastx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I constantly have the same issue. Youtube even shows the video as already watched. I click not interested, then already seen, but another one pops up in it's place. Quite annoying.

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#79

Post by sincerely »

ma2rten wrote: post #74
ChrisLovejoy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

amen! I wish you could crank up exploration cf. exploitation in your settings or something

It would be cool in general if recommendation algorithms or search algorithms were more customizable. I would imagine you could put some code into your settings that controls which recommendations you see. The platform, like YouTube in this case, could compute features that enable different kind of recommendation algorithms. There could be communities of people who tinker with this and share their recommendation algo…

Steam added this feature recently (https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/ lets you add weights for "niche/popular" and "older/newer") and I've never had so much fun browsing a store. I hope other platforms take note

Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time

#80

Post by throwaway69123 »

bigtones wrote: post #61
throwaway69123 wrote: post #59

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".

This seems to be only available on the home page, but thank you I didnt know this exists. Do you know what the option on the video page itself does "Not interested"?
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