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‘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)

#251

Post by billfruit »

scrollaway wrote: post #75
qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For 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…

Same experience here. I have to actively curate them by removing some one-off dumb videos from my watch history, but my YouTube recommendations are by far extremely high quality. Youtube is the only service I know of that has actually achieved working content recommendations for me. My Watch Later has hundreds of hours of content from things that I definitely want to watch but I'm either not yet in the mood for or to…

Thing is YouTube has hardly any features to manage a playlist that big. I think it does not even allow to search within the playlist.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#252

Post by WaitWaitWha »

ramon wrote: post #243

Even as guest Youtube wants to do the recommendation algorithm it's great what can I say besides privacy is the last thing they're worried about anyways. They're almost like: You know you're being monitored, don't worry about it we'll get you some great videos along the way.

This becomes very apparent when traveling and using hotel Internet, or built in YT on room's "smart" TV.

The YT recommendations are very targeted, not only for local business but culture, and aggregate viewing patterns. Go to Washington DC, and check YT search patterns. Then, go to Seattle, WA, Memphis, TN, Austin, TX and compare these to each other.

It is a fascinating window into what YT thinks about the local population.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#253

Post by monkeypizza »

shawnz wrote: post #166
pimlottc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 editi…

You can also click the three dots icon next to the video thumbnail of recommendations and select "Not interested"

Every few days if you notice the algo giving too many fast-food style videos, it's worth it to aggressively use this to unfollow all these topics. Miraculously, the next time you refresh your feed, all those old interesting topics you used to be into will come back.

Overall the algo is very very recency-influenced. You can watch videos from a niche interest for a year straight, but if you then spend a week watching nascar, you'll never see anything but nascar videos for months unless you say "not interested".

I imagine they have found that for the average user, having a longer history doesn't improve G's metrics.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#254

Post by disown »

thatishard wrote: post #3

My youtube sucks, I'm always looking for stuff to kill my time and youtube recommend the same crap videos 500 times in a row. It take a long time to find something I want to watch.

You can thank toxic journalists who attacked youtube recommendations for being "toxic". You can also thank the toxic journalists for all the censorship on youtube.

Youtube recommendations 10 years ago was so amazing. Just a refresh or two and you'd get interesting stuff - obscure or popular, new or old. It didn't matter. Now, it's the same corporate, propaganda or popular vids over and over again. You bring up youtube and it's mostly the same exact recommendations from yesterday and the day before. They are literally cycling the same videos over and over again.

Why not make the default search and recommendations "PC" to appease the toxic journalists. But give the users the option to revert back to the "normal" search and recommendations.

Why can't they do it like they do search. "Safe", "Moderate", "The good old days" modes?

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#255

Post by colejohnson66 »

pimlottc wrote: post #191
shawnz wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also click the three dots icon next to the video thumbnail of recommendations and select "Not interested"

This is useful but it's pretty opaque to the user as to what exactly this does.

It tells the algorithm that you’re “not interested” in videos like that one?

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#256

Post by monkeypizza »

leetcrew wrote: post #131

I just find them to be dumb. 50% of my recommendations are videos I've already watched.

This just changed about two weeks ago, right? The rate of suggested rewatches went up from like 5% to 20% for me. And surprisingly, it seems not to have tracked or not be displaying that I've seen it before (with the red progress bar on the thumbnail). I agree this is a bad change, especially deceiving me about my watch history.

This was around the time they changed the mobile progress bar behavior to require dragging to advance, rather than allowing you to jump to the point you select (i.e. away from the model used by the android brightness slider).

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#257

Post by wintermutestwin »

scrollaway wrote: post #173
wolco2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the link?

Just prefix any URL with this exactly: https://web.archive.org/save/ Example: https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v... If it's already saved, it'll do a new snapshot, but I believe the archive is smart enough not to duplicate saved youtube videos.

I tried this and it keeps saying job failed.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#258

Post by monkeypizza »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #69
qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For 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…

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 have this problem too occasionally; but if you spend 2 minutes hitting "do not recommend videos like this" + "do not recommend this channel", all the good content beneath will rise to the top.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#259

Post by nromiun »

In my experience YouTube's recommendations are pretty predictable. If you watch a specific type of content it will keep recommending videos from that type until you search for something else. Sure, it makes some mistakes but you can always customize it to not show some type of videos or channels. If you are getting toxic recommendation all the time there is a high chance that you watch a lot of toxic content.
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