241–250 of 309 posts
This morning I noticed a new source of videos in my "subscriptions" feed from "ThisMorning" a channel I would never subscribe to (fluffy cooking / morning show stuff)... turns out that's a thing Youtube does, randomly subscribe you to stuff.
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The best part of YouTube recommendations - side bar recommendations - have been broken for at least 7-9 years. I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed…
I actually think the sidebar recommendations for a given video (at least for music) are still quite good. It's only when it starts taking into account your watch history does it start to get muddied up very fast. I wonder if there's an addon/userscript plugin that can wipe cookies upon every page refresh for a "pure" YouTube experience every time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best part of YouTube recommendations - side bar recommendations - have been broken for at least 7-9 years. I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed…
I actually think the sidebar recommendations for a given video (at least for music) are still quite good. It's only when it starts taking into account your watch history does it start to get muddied up very fast. I wonder if there's an addon/userscript plugin that can wipe cookies upon every page refresh for a "pure" YouTube experience every time.
This only takes a couple minutes every few days, but it really keeps my recommendations accurate. Every week or so, I go through my watch history and delete videos I accidentally clicked on, or videos I hated so much that they shouldn't be used to generate further recommendations. Pruning your watch history has a particularly powerful effect that I think people miss out on.
Also, I try not to be let down if a particular week has no cool videos. There's no law of the universe that says that every week has to have incredible videos.
Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these creators make. So that means I want the new stuff from the frequented ones on my front page ASAP. Yet, it's a hit and miss. From the remaining 90 channels I never get anything recommended. Why? If I subscribe to a new channel it gets recommended like hell, then…
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I looked up how to pronounce a word the other day and found a 30-second YouTube video. I expected it to be a looping track of someone saying the word over and over, but what I got instead was 25 seconds of someone describing the word's origin (without saying the word itself), and explaining how many people want to know how to pronounce it. Only as the thumbnail overlay popped up at the end of the video did they actua…
This is one thing Google still does well. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+pronounce+foxes
Their search has got pretty bad I've noticed. They've changed it to start showing random shit you might want to watch instead of the thing you actually searched for after the first 10 or so videos. They seem to repeat videos they think you ought to watch quite often in search results as well. Significant downgrade on what it used to be.
Machine learning probably had something to do with it. It notices videos with thumbnails of people with their mouths and eyes wide open doing some kind of shocked expression with red arrows pointing to something perform better than average. Then it starts recommending videos with thumbnails like this preferentially. YouTubers take notice and start producing thumbnails like this for every video. Go to the front page r…
There was a Linus Tech Tips video where he admits that it's stupid, but sadly it works really well. It's a bit like when Wikipedia kept using Jimmy Wales' face in banners requesting donations. People claim to not like it, yet it's was what got the highest conversion rates.
In fact, A/B testing showed that the longer the video they put on the home page, the higher the conversion rate.
It doesn’t give a shit about UX, but generating piles of data for PhDs to generate statistics from.
Sundar bailed on the moonshots, but it’s hiring culture was already established and he’s not been able to turn the focus to interesting things relying on statisticians and leetcoders seeking the so called prestige of churning out nothing.
It’s funny how big corps LARP changing our world but the careless resource waste, rent seeking, gaming agency through corporate propaganda all smell like traditional political correctness to me.