YouTube is still useful. It's a giant repository of videos that get indexed by search engines. The way to use it is: 1) know what you want to watch beforehand 2) search using a different engine like DDG 3) use yt-dl to grab the video and watch offline The mistake would be to "log in" to the actual site, and click on the "recommended" rubbish and all that algorithmic cruft to manipulate, data-mine your soul and mislea…
Personally, the algorithm works very effectively at stealing my time. Bikini catwalks, scamming phone scammers, MMA fights, math entertainment, people who build cool shit. This is of course subjective, but I basically can't open youtube.com without wasting 10 minutes. If I ever get the idea of going to YouTube for a legit purpose (e.g. finding a conference talk, or listening to music), my brain's first response is "o…
No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
171–180 of 498 posts
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending really, really old videos from people I normally watch. It's always done this, but it seems worse recently. Also, subscribe to a channel, get recommended their entire repertoire of the last decade. I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss. What…
I genuinely don’t understand why Google got it right with Circles, realizing we have different orthogonal interests… but all my YouTube subscriptions go in a giant pile, as if advanced math, news, and rap videos are fungible content. I want some ability to create sets of channels with a focus and only access that when I want to. I think the problem is that YouTube has always been a manipulative and exploitative platf…
You might try the PocketTube extension to categorize your subscriptions:
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#173I never trusted YT algorithm or any recommendation algorithms for that matter.
I always watch YT videos straight from search results or links that I get sent.
I always kept my watch history and search history off.
Recommendation algorithms are not tuned to serve niche users but want to maximize watch duration from maximum number of viewers.
YT tells me several times a month that I have search histories turned off and my recs are bad and I should consider turning it back on. Never.
Even when I had it turned on, I got "popular" videos based on my location, age, gender etc. that I hated. Or I got recommended one to two hours lecture videos. Nobody just decides to spend two hours just because some algorithm thinks that is a good fit.
I use FF + uBlock on PC and YT vanced on android.
I never even look at my feed.
So, lack of dislikes (or any other recent change) has not changed anything for me.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
where does the extension get the data from, though? it's not like they just have to remove a `display: none` somewhere.
Apparently some previously-scrapped data for older videos that gets updated, and heuristic estimates combined with extrapolating data from those who use that extension and like/dislike. LTT did a video where they found the accuracy really good. Beating Google at their own game, they (apparently) are.
> with extrapolating data from those who use that extension and like/dislike.
Often you see the opposite, where a third party service provides customers with a feature extending the features of a big service like youtube or twitter, and then the big service buys the startup offering that extension, or integrates the feature themselves, leaving the extension dead. Now we see it happening in reverse direction, very interesting.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#175You can tell YouTube you're not interested in the video or to explicitly not recommend a channel.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#176I don't personally think the dislike button is the explanation. But something seems to have changed in the Youtube recommendations algo in the last few weeks. In my experience, the algo has gotten very noticeably worse recently: - Recommending lots of 6 - 12 year old videos on topics I'm interested in (who cares about a 12 year old product review?) - Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending reall…
> Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending really, really old videos from people I normally watch. It's always done this, but it seems worse recently. Also, subscribe to a channel, get recommended their entire repertoire of the last decade. I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss. What…
Algo fail: I will see the same videos recommended visit after visit.
Just give me a "Not Interested" button over each recommended video so at the very least the pool is refreshed.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#177I don't personally think the dislike button is the explanation. But something seems to have changed in the Youtube recommendations algo in the last few weeks. In my experience, the algo has gotten very noticeably worse recently: - Recommending lots of 6 - 12 year old videos on topics I'm interested in (who cares about a 12 year old product review?) - Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending reall…
> I don't personally think the dislike button is the explanation.
Eh, it could be. Hiding the dislikes certainly affects the like/dislike clicking behavior of the user. This creates feedback loops that are very hard to predict by simple A/B testing.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#178Hit the 3 dot menu button on a video, then click either "not interested" or don't suggest channel.
It only takes a little effort every visit to tune your recommendations.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending really, really old videos from people I normally watch. It's always done this, but it seems worse recently. Also, subscribe to a channel, get recommended their entire repertoire of the last decade. I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss. What…
> I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss. Don't know if you knew this, you can use RSS to get feeds of the channels you want without subscribing or even having a Google account. Good in-browser add-on for following, organizing etc. of RSS feeds: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/feedbroreader…
I use the RSS feeds with Elfeed for Emacs which allows me to search, filter, and modify feed entries as they are fetched. Additionally, you can use an https://invidious.io instance - which also provides RSS feeds - to avoid sharing any personally identifiable info to YouTube. I've setup elfeed to provide a keystroke to watch the videos ad-free using mpv. All together, this is a much more privacy and attention respecting way of consuming videos.
Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
#180Yeah YT is basically ruined, it only serves as video storage now.