Don't forget you feed the algorithm. I use Youtube mostly for hobbies. A couple examples are cooking and small engine repair - I find it super valuable to watch multiple people do the same thing in different ways. Anecdotally, the algorithm does a really good job giving me more content/channels both narrowly related and slightly expanding the interests. Sure, it can be frustrating if you watch a clickbaity video that spawns a genre of clickbaity content recommendations - but it doesn't take long for those to stop showing up so long as you don't watch them.
‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
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Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#152For 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…
> But people who watch stupid and destructive stuff (even once) are doomed because they are going to get the same and worse kind of content recommended over and over.
It's also important to note that a lot of users similar to you never make it to this paragraph. They just assume the reports about the dangers are overblown.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#153For 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…
When I watch junk on YouTube I need to open the link using Chrome's incognito mode.
When are companies going to give us more control over what inputs we give their recommendation algorithms? There should be a button that says "hey, I'm going to watch this because I'm only human, but please, don't show this junk to me". Or, "hey, I understand this content creator has thousands of videos and uploads content daily, but, I'm only interested in this one video, not in their daily vblog from today"
I literally watch 1/3 - 1/2 of all my videos now in incognito mode on YouTube, just because their algorithm is so aggressive when it comes to recommending junk / 'content creator' noise.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#154I gave up on the recommendations completely. It has been nothing but videos I've already watched (about 90% of what I saw came from my playlists and subscriptions) and videos that have nothing to do with what I'm watching right now. So I did the following: - installed a plugin that redirects me from Home to Subscribtins page, effectively disabling the Home page completely - deleted all history from YouTube - disabled…
What's the redirection plugin? I was considering this myself.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#155Giant tip: look at https://www.youtube.com/feed/history and remove any videos you don't want included for recommendations - it really helps clean up your suggested videos. Doing that, combined with liberally using incognito mode for one-off video watching, helps keeps suggestions actually reasonable.
More people in these comments need to know about the history page. I personally recommend just clearing it from time to time. Obviously when you're getting bad recommendations. But even when you're getting good recommendations, it's easy to find yourself in a rut of watching the same stuff and reseeding the recommendations system can help you find new content.
I like Youtube's recommendations. They just seem to get too narrow too fast instead of experimenting with showing you videos that it's less confident you might like. Thus resetting history is necessary.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#156The impact of such algorytms is devastating. Not only because they recommend engaging content that may lead to addiction and waste of time, the most precious thing every human being has. What is even worse such algorytms force creators to become part of this harmful scheme. Knowledge is the thing that is hurt also. It should be out there. For decades people learned how to explain complex things in an easy way. Becaus…
I feel that this is becoming true of much of the internet. The number of lame, banal blog posts that I come across is just insane. A lot of the tech blogs are just cheap ripoffs of original documentation/examples or just fluff. This is madness.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#157If you want a glimpse of the average person's youtube experience, open the site in incognito and go to the "trending" tab.
It's a completely different site depending on what you initially search for when you start using it.
The problem is, 80% of youtube userbase never really typed a search query for anything in the first place, and as a result the stuff they get recommended and watch is pure shit.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#158For 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.
There definitely needs to be a "reset" button on these services, or at least a better way for your to actively monitor your algorithmically-determined interests and give feedback (I swear, you watch one SNL video...).
Another poster in the thread said you can do this by editing your watch history, which frankly would have never occurred to me as a way to influence the algorithm. It should be a more explicit feature for any sort of recommendation engine.
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#159If you want a glimpse of the average person's youtube experience, open the site in incognito and go to the "trending" tab. It's a completely different site depending on what you initially search for when you start using it. The problem is, 80% of youtube userbase never really typed a search query for anything in the first place, and as a result the stuff they get recommended and watch is pure shit.
I believe trending is hand curated by youtube
Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)
#160For 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…
When an user becomes aware of the algorithm and purposely avoids clicking on videos that interest him slightly because it can radically change his suggestions for days or weeks,
it is a sign imho that the algorithm is not well designed.