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No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

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Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#411

Post by 0xffff2 »

smaryjerry wrote: post #288
miniwark wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done it a lot for around a year, but i think than the block list is very limited, because after a will the same "blocked" channels come back again in the list. I have now stopped to use this fake feature. I am sure of it because i regularly block official news or music channels, but they appear again anyway after a wile. It's the same for the "not interested" feature. I have stop to tell them, when asked, why…

I am convinced the not interested button does absolutely nothing.

I'm baffled by people who says things like this. I make heavy use of both "Not Interested" and "Don't recommend Channel". They don't do as much as I would like (why oh why does Youtube insist on thinking I'm interested in obscure Rap/Hip Hop?), but I can clearly see recommendations shift over time. Marking any single video doesn't seem to do much, but marking 5-10 similar videos (mostly) does something.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#412

Post by matyasrichter »

rchaud wrote: post #315

Three dot menu button > Don't Recommend Channel That's all it takes on Android and desktop Firefox browser. I've been on Youtube since 2006 and never needed to use the Dislike button. Just zap 'em with "Don't Recommend" and you'll never see it again.

How dare you write a HN comment that doesn't complain about how used to be so great back in the day but has since been ruined by internet media, corporations, and websites that rely on javascript!

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#413

Post by wildrhythms »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #409

Saw like the exact video in your example - it had 50% downvotes. I'm using the Return YouTube Dislike addon for Firefox.

You should know that those add-ons (there are dozens of them now) all use their own independent databases... so you're seeing dislikes only from people with the initiative to have stumbled upon and installed that specific extension. Sadly, there is no public backend API that exposes real Youtube dislikes today.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#414

Post by wildrhythms »

mardifoufs wrote: post #165
Sebb767 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now I just have to check the comments. The problem is that the comments section can be fully managed by the uploader. It's easily possible for them to delete negative comments or even to add filters to do so automatically.

Yeah I've seen some channels switch to "sort by new" by default for their comment section, making it a lot harder to get any useful signal at first glance.

Creators can withhold comments until approved, so even 'new' is only showing the most recent approved comments.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#415

Post by zhfliz »

moffkalast wrote: post #201
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a "don't recommend channel" option if you click the 3 dots button on a video. I use this liberally for all sorts of reasons and it makes my recommendations much better.

uBlock breaks that menu though, so it's a hassle to turn it off, block it and then turn it back on. Especially since you have to refresh and youtube randomizes the recommendations again and sometimes hides all traces of that channel.

works fine with no issues at all for me on uBlock origin. unless you're talking about literal uBlock, which i can't comment on.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#416

Post by wildrhythms »

magic_hamster wrote: post #14

YouTube actually works pretty well for me. Most of the time I get great suggestions and it feels like there's a lot of great content to watch (if only I had the time to actually watch everything). I don't know the inner workings of YTs algorithms, but I believe it helps that I never watch the low quality drivel and have very focused topics that I subscribe to. I also don't spend too much time on YouTube so every time…

+1 I have a habit of opening anything that might remotely poison my recommendations in right-click > Incognito. Youtube recommendations have always been annoying for me... constantly showing me things I've seen before, but generally I understand why it's recommending me things, and I understand the overlapping circles of topics and where the videos are coming from.

I also religiously use the three dot > Don't recommend video option on videos that are low quality, clickbait, etc. in my suggestions. Not sure what signal that sends to Youtube exactly, but those types of videos show up less and less in my recommendations. I call it weeding the garden.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#417

Post by rane »

yodsanklai wrote: post #112

Yes, as expected, this degraded the YouTube experience for some users. I mostly watch technical content, and the like/dislike numbers were extremely valuable to avoid losing time on a so-so video. Maybe it's different for political stuff or news, but for high-quality non-controversial content, you expect very few dislikes. Now I use the view/like ratio as primary filter, but it's not as useful. I don't know what they…

You should really try the extension that brings the dislikes back.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#418

Post by qwerpy »

heleninboodler wrote: post #400
_v7gu wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emotionally, I really get it. We feel positive towards positive thoughts and vice versa for negative ones. But in the context of information, a "recommender" that recommends everything is equivalent to one that recommends nothing: both are worthless (ie can't provide any new information)

Yeah, I think you get zero information from someone who only upvotes or only downvotes, whereas you get some signal from people in the center.

Counterpoint: highly partisan voters who upvote anything from their team and downvote anything from the other, regardless of quality.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#419

Post by wildrhythms »

asddubs wrote: post #37

get the extension "BlockTube" and block any channel that does this. after a while your feed will get noticably better. People are saying not to click but IMO it doesn't work that well. I make a point of never clicking on any video title like that, and still kept getting flooded My favorite pattern is saying "THIS" and withholding what exactly the video is about - once I saw it used twice in a title and it just cracke…

FYI there is an option for this built into the Youtube suggestions. Hover over a suggestion > three dot menu > Don't recommend channel. I use this option, as well as the "Don't recommend video" option in combination for a year, and my suggestions are almost always relevant and high quality every time I log in. The few low quality videos that slip into the suggestions, I immediately prune them and block the channel too.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#420

Post by godshatter »

electroly wrote: post #280
sph wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

IMO mass unsubbing is the wrong response to take if you want a good YouTube experience. The best way is the opposite: subscribe to EVERYTHING you like even a little bit, and then use the Subscriptions page as your home page. Ignore the real home page, ignore the algorithm entirely. I've done this and the irritation is gone.

I stay logged out, and use a private session when I go to YT. I keep a home page of bookmarks to content creators I enjoy content from, linking to their main page, and either follow one of those links in to see what they've posted lately or go to the home page for YT, ignore everything, and search for something specific. If I run into a new content creator I like, I add them to my bookmarks.

I started this for privacy reasons, but I really like it now because they don't know enough about you in a private session to mess with you, and their search is usually good enough to find what I'm looking for. There is then a golden period where the recommendations are actually useful that lasts for maybe a dozen videos or so after which they try to psychoanalyze you too much and then it's time to kill the old private session and start a new one.

I've gone from being anti-privacy to being anti-privacy and anti-algorithm both.

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