I just find them to be dumb. 50% of my recommendations are videos I've already watched.
‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
131–140 of 366 posts
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#132A lot of the comments here are in the spirit of "just clear your history" or "just be careful about what you watch." If you have to go out of your way to step over eggshells in order to get good recommendations, that indicates the problem is with the designers and decision-makers instead.
Not only that, it's wrong. I can have zero "conspiracy" videos in my history/cookies and still sometimes see recommendations for it. Granted it was worse years ago.
I actually like conspiracy videos (for fun), but Youtube did something a few years back so that they are recommended with much less frequency.
Also to get a totally clean slate, which is still not perfect as you said, you have to delete subscriptions and likes as well as watch history. I've tried it a few times, but since I keep my subscriptions I always end up back on the same topics.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#133My YT recommendations are usually my already browsed songs, so it's a good thing for me. I also don't login on YT as I don't have a google account. Well, technically I do have one, I created one for my Android emulator but I don't care what's in that account.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't seem that hard to get out of a pit, even with the account. It just takes a couple of days of browsing of the new type of content, along with maybe clicking "don't recommend this channel"/"not interested" 3-4 times, and the algorithm switches to the new things... The algorithm doesn't care, it just recommends.
I want Youtube to recommend educational videos, a la Extra History and 3B1B. That's most of what I watch on Youtube. Youtube recommends stupid crap based on what other people like. If I watch one stupid video not in incognito, ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content. Even within educational videos, if I click on…
Not saying YouTube's recommendation algorithm is perfect but you could try to interact with the feedback popups. That seems to clear up stuff I don't need on my 1st page.
If all else fails, create a new Google account for separate exclusive use should do the trick.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#135After realizing that I would sometimes spend hours caught in the YouTube recommendation trap--to the detriment of my sleep, my work, my hobbies, my family--I've taken steps to manage my borderline addiction to YouTube. Prior to this I'd tried blocking it entirely, but the problem is that there is sometimes valuable educational content that I benefit from watching (even if only to briefly unwind after a day of work). Ideally there could be an option in the YouTube settings to turn off all recommendations, or perhaps a browser extension to remove them from the page, but to solution I ended up with was quite simple: RSS!
I went to every channel with useful educational content that I like to watch, subscribed to their feed (or even indivial playlists) with my RSS reader of choice (Feedly), and the videos get delivered and displayed inline in the RSS reader. No more YouTube binging because I don't find myself with the urge to visit the site, and so I'm never exposed to the recommendations. On the rare occasion where I want to watch an arbitrary video, I open a private browsing session so that the recommendations are uselessly generic.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#136For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…
>That's why I recommend to avoid signing-in into YouTube. Better watch anonymously so you can always clean the cookies and get out of the pit.
When you sign in, you can view your history and remove things you don't want the algo to work on.
Here's what to do instead: Sign in, and use your account to curate what you want to see. As you say, music, education, and for me, it's cookingtube, some non-toxic video game people for sim games and the like, etc.
And my algo recommendations are wonderful. The biggest issue is it forgetting about cool channels and hiding them, and I don't use the bell because I hate notifications, but generally speaking it does a great job.
But if you want to watch something that you DO NOT want the algo matching on: Open a private tab (or clean out your history).
It's actually not bad to keep it under control.
Oh, and when Youtube drops a redpill propaganda video in, or something similar, (it always will try to indoctrinate you into a radical ideology, no matter what), make sure to use the menu and tell it to fuck off and never show it again.
I've got it trained now. No politics! No radicalism! Just good, relaxing, well-made content.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#137I know I'm old but dang for some reason I really dislike recommendations from almost any company. For media I grew up in the 70s and had the TV Guide. I'd look through to see what I wanted to watch, circle some things and then watch. No spying what-so-ever. So, I like for example HN where AFAIK I'm not tracked so much and I choose what I want from the top of the list. Conversely I mostly hate Amazon, Netflix, Amazon…
> So, I like for example HN where AFAIK I'm not tracked so much and I choose what I want from the top of the list.
The top of the list is the product of some recommendation algorithm. Clicking through https://news.ycombinator.com/newest, there were some 900 submissions in the past 24h; you probably chose from a small subset of that.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#138For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…
The problem I've found is that it takes some tuning to get it to stop recommending horrid clickbait, extremist recruiting fodder or just copyright fraud.
You have to actively click "not I don't like this" when you see something low quality.
This means that the average joe will be spammed by low quality shite, where as the power user will get decent recommendation.
I do have a container tab just for youtube, to avoid polluting my recommends with embedded shite.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#139The problem I have with YouTube recommendations is that it keeps suggesting me MOST of the big content providers MOST of the time. Sometimes I want to see a video from that indie creator I subbed to a few months back, even if just to catch up. Not all the time MKBHD or LTT on the front.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#140The recommendations are now almost completely inescapable if you want to continue using their service. They recently did away with email notifications for new content [1] and now the RSS export feature for subscriptions has been removed [2]. I refuse to interface with their algorithm, so I've begun hunting down alternative video hosts and the personal sites of the creators I can find and am preparing to leave their p…
Weird, my RSS feeds have been unaffected.