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

towardsdatascience.com

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

#81

Post by crispyambulance »

stingraycharles wrote: post #29
pantelisk wrote: post #25

The 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…

I think youtube recommendations are a sneaky and opaque thing. Whatever they're doing, "it works" well enough for their ulterior motivations rooted in surveillance capitalism.

The OP is absolutely right in wanting to regain some control over what's presented to his eyeballs. Right now the only way you can do that is to right-click on an offending video and select "don't recommend this channel" or "not interested". That only partially works.

I wish there were some way to specify actual words in a "black list" such that videos whose titles or descriptions contain a black list word would NEVER be presented as a recommendation. This is sort of like Twitter's muted words list. It really is the only way to block content that you really don't want to enter your headspace. Not perfect, of course, but better than being left to the whims of pavlovian algorithms coordinated by ever-improving AI.

I once made the mistake of viewing a Jordan Peterson video. It was mildly interesting, I found him somewhat provocative but a bit paternalistic, not my cup of tea, no big deal. But then... I got a ridiculous number of men's right's or "red-pill" videos recommended to me which were totally disgusting. It's easy to see how people can get radicalized or worse all because somebody is paying Google money for clicks and Google is, in spite of whatever they say, disinterested in our well-being.

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

#82

Post by splaytreemap »

Krasnol wrote: post #27
pantelisk wrote: post #25

The 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…

It really does sound like a fake review. Especially considering the fact that you did not even attempt outlining what the reason might be why so many others have the opposite experience.

I have the same experience as the above user. I primarily watch guitar and exercise videos, and have never had any complaints about the youtube algorithm. The one algorithm I do feel underperforms is Spotify's. For some reason, their discover weekly is always filled with covers of songs I already have in my playlists.

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

#83

Post by bra-ket »

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…

agreed, it's strange that with all their legions of machine learning PhDs Youtube recommendations still suck.

The worst part is when it gets stuck on particular video/topic and just keeps recommending the same thing for months.

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

#84

Post by bfung »

ChrisLovejoy wrote: post #23
mod wrote: post #22

Instead of the lambda workflow, you could just stick it on a server in a cron job. I pretty much do that with a bunch of things on DigitalOcean, although there's a ton of comparable services.

ah okay, thanks. Yeah I think I may have over-complicated things by trying to use lambda. Will look into doing this on DO

If you already made an AWS account, the t2.micro EC2 will work as well, free tier!

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

#85

Post by selestify »

bra-ket wrote: post #83
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…

agreed, it's strange that with all their legions of machine learning PhDs Youtube recommendations still suck. The worst part is when it gets stuck on particular video/topic and just keeps recommending the same thing for months.

I’m sure the YT algorithms are optimized just fine for whatever revenue metrics they’re maximizing. You and I might just be part of the edge cases that they haven’t bothered improving their models on just yet

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

#86

Post by bobbydreamer »

YouTube or Google search business need algorithm change. They need to go back to what they had 7-8 years back.

Tiktok had the best recommendations system so far. They are designed to keep you hooked. YT they are designed and give feel you are wasting your time on this so go back to your life.

Not sure if search engines can provide user defined algorithm plugins for searching or day use search algorithm 1 or 2.

Most of the time feel like I am restricting myself from watching new videos in youtube because it might think I like this starts to recommend that will be a problem. So I don't even anyone my mobile to watch youtube videos. They should have incognito button so that I can watch new stuff.

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

#88

Post by aeternum »

bpodgursky wrote: post #19

Note that a supplemental option is to also delete your YouTube account. I was worried I'd accidentally nuke my gmail account, but turns out you can delete your YouTube account + history without affecting any of your other Google services (I did it last night).

Youtube has some quality content that is not available elsewhere. For example it would be illogical to shred your library card just because you don't like the books that the librarian shows you.

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

#89

Post by JSavageOne »

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.”

This option would single-handedly fix their completely broken music recommendation algorithm that only seems to auto-play the same 5 or so songs that I recently listened to and thumbs-upped.

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

#90

Post by disown »

Is there anything to help one stop wasting time by reading about how to stop wasting time?

People must waste more time reading about how to not to waste time than anything. Just like all these people being unproductive while reading about how to be more productive.

Of course the solution to all this is self-discipline but that doesn't sell.

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