The results don't seem very interesting. The highlighted results are just generic vlogs. The highlighted GPT-3 video was just someone sitting ina chair reading text.
I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
151–159 of 159 posts
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#152Earlier 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 always start with a fresh session and never log in. Then if I'm researching a particular topic, I always get recommendations on that topic. If something is worth saving, I bookmark it like a regular page to access it in future sessions.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#153Could this become smarttube.com?
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#154YouTube recommendations are generally not good. After I activated my pi-hole it went completely useless. The other day I was suggested Japanese motorcycle drifting.
I wrote my masters around the YouTube algorithm and the implications on politics. Some of my findings: - The algorithm works differently in English or other languages; - The number of views is not a very important metric on the recommendations - The number of interactions is a much more important metric for the algorithm - The algorithm seems to be fairly simple: the more a video has the searched keyword, the better chance you have for it to rank higher - YouTube doesn't necessarily put you on a "bubble" as defended by some authors on other social media platforms. It suggests videos that are related but if no other videos are relevant, it has no issues with suggesting content that is contrary to the initial. An example would be: "Donald Trump speaks about the elections". If no other Donald Trump content is available, it will suggest content about the elections, and this might mean a video about an opponent
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#155Really 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 want this for Spotify. Especially the ability to say "wipe your recommendation model you have on me for the weekly list and start from scratch."
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their recommendations are not designed to make you happy, but to optimize their business. They are driving you to ads, not joy. The ML PhDs could be working just fine. You won’t know.
I pay for YouTube premium, so I don't have ads. Still, I'm seeing many of the problems other people are talking about, especially 10 minute videos where the content could be explained in 10 seconds.
Though that's a reason why many people don't pay for YouTube premium, not why you somehow deserve better treatment.
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#157The 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…
Seconded. I find YouTube’s algorithm to be fantastic (maybe I’ve given it too much training data). It does a great job suggesting videos about my various hobbies, movie clips and obscure music recommendations. Surprised it works so poorly for others.
The surprise is mutual :)
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#158I 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
Maybe a "this is cool; but enough for now" button? It would remember the category that you like but turn down its recommendation frequency for a duration (session?).
Re: I created an alternative to the YouTube algorithm to stop me wasting time
#159Do reduce the distraction of YouTube, I stripped off all the suggestions and comments from it. This makes it so YouTube just shows a single video, and doesn't send me down a rabbit hole.
I used stylebot chrome extension with this css:
#masthead-container, .videowall-endscreen, #secondary, .ytd-comments, #upload-info, ytd-video-owner-renderer, .super-title,.ytp-ce-element, #items {
display:none
}
const $ = jQuery;
function hideThem(){
if(jQuery('.ytd-compact-autoplay-renderer#toggle')[0].checked){
jQuery('.ytd-compact-autoplay-renderer').click();
}
}
hideThem();
$(document).ready(()=>{
hideThem();
});