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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)

#351

Post by zionpi »

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…

but many years later,some videos in watch later list have gone,it seems that no way to find them back.

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

#352

Post by beepboop43 »

scrollaway wrote: post #348
beepboop43 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, do you download them one at a time or do you have a "system" for handling them? I ask because this seems like a great idea. I've already written a script to read from a list and download and now I'm wondering if I don't just use use that instead of "watch later" going forward. Curious if you do anything beyond adding them one at a time I should consider before changing my approach.

FYI youtube-dl can download playlists. I heavily suspect you can even use --continue to download missing updated bits in a playlist you previously downloaded

Good point on the playlists, it hadn't dawned on me that 'watch later' is a playlist. Haven't tried continue, in the past I've created a 'downloaded.txt' file which gets updated as files download and then checked before it runs again so it doesn't try to re-download them.

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

#353

Post by nixass »

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…

YouTube provides high quality for everyone, because it knows what your preference is. For poor dumbs the suggestion feed full of conspiracy videos is very extremely quality in their eyes too. The other thing is that we consider their videos - crap

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

#354

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #333
tmakks wrote: post #55

> Chaslot noted that divisive and sensational content is often recommended widely: conspiracy theories, fake news, flat-Earther videos Not true at all. In many countries, content from Corona-deniers is instantly removed, even in live streams, and their creators are banned for 1 or 2 weeks. Edit: Downvoters, please just comment

Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've been doing it a lot, I'm afraid. They ask: " Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[deleted]

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

#356

Post by sreejithr »

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…

I don't think people who say "For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic" actually get the point. Although I won't judge your opinions or preferences, the real issue with Youtube or any recommender system is the way it games your dopamine system.

Studies have shown how the prospect of an unknown reward riles up users of social media platforms. Is this a bad thing? It might depend on who you ask. For someone like me, who has been through multiple addictions (cigarattes, drugs), I know that abusing dopamine affects quality of life, productivity and happiness in general.

In that way, I think recommendation systems which optimize for higher engagement is toxic. I think there's value in having an AI do the heavy-lifting of choosing the right content for us. But, the AI's rewards should align with what I need, which is quality content tailored for me (whether or not it increases my engagement on that platform).

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

#357

Post by dr_zoidberg »

raydev wrote: post #296
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…

> 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 something cool, useful and healthy. You must never be curious about things outside of your passions. I play Fortnite with my kids casually. I looked up a howto a few weeks ago, and my recommendations are still 25% Fortnite related content, even though I only watched one video o…

> I play Fortnite with my kids casually. I looked up a howto a few weeks ago, and my recommendations are still 25% Fortnite related content, even though I only watched one video one time.

In general I've noticed that YouTube favors your "newest outliers" (let's call them) over stuff you've historically looked at. Probably the rationale (optimization metric?) is trying to capture you into content that might add to your total watch time on the platform.

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

#358

Post by scrollaway »

beepboop43 wrote: post #352
scrollaway wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI youtube-dl can download playlists. I heavily suspect you can even use --continue to download missing updated bits in a playlist you previously downloaded

Good point on the playlists, it hadn't dawned on me that 'watch later' is a playlist. Haven't tried continue, in the past I've created a 'downloaded.txt' file which gets updated as files download and then checked before it runs again so it doesn't try to re-download them.

Yeah you don't need that downloaded.txt, youtube-dl can do that all on its own with the right flags :)

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

#359

Post by MeatBro »

falcrist wrote: post #278
gfxgirl wrote: post #44

I 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…

I've said it many times now: people should be avoiding "the algorithm" as much as they can on streaming and social media sites. On Facebook "avoiding the algorithm" entails creating a friends list of all your friends, then using the link to that list as a portal into facebook. Posts and shares are listed in chronological order without anything missing (which is absolutely NOT true for the normal news feed, even when…

I think client apps can help a lot in all of these cases. Like newpipe for YouTube or infinity for reddit. They clear out tracking as much as possible and let you browse without logging in.

But the website of all these site feels useless and slow to me. Recommendations were good on yt, but I think they stopped it during the election. So, I defaulted to newpipe and freetube.

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

#360

Post by MeatBro »

jobu wrote: post #217
gfxgirl wrote: post #44

I 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…

It amazes me that advertising companies have been able to brainwash companies into paying more for "targeted ads". Usually I spend a few days doing research into whatever big purchase I plan to make, then for the next 6-12 months I get spammed with ads for that product on every platform. It's such a waste of their money and my time.

Just use ublock origin(firefox). If on apple then safari should be good too.
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