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Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

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Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#261

Post by rasz »

antioppressor wrote: post #145

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…

> on my front page

dont, bookmark https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#262

Post by eks391 »

josemando wrote: post #185
antioppressor wrote: post #145

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…

> If I clear the fingerprints and block the acquiring of these metrics Honesty question here, but how do you do that?

I'm not sure what he means by 'clearing' his fingerprint, but if you visit EFF[0], you can check if your fingerprint is at least random. I've only been able to achieve a random fingerprint on Brave browser. Even clearing all cookies/cache on your browser will not reset the fingerprint. To prevent metric collection, you can't be logged in and you need your browser settings set to block cookies for YouTube. [0] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#263

Post by dwild »

antioppressor wrote: post #174
Tarq0n wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what the recommendations are for. There's a separate page that list all posts by your subscriptions in chronological order, you can find it in the sidebar, IMO it's the only way to use YouTube.

Which is also nonfunctional, useless, not for human consumption. You can't filter those in any way. It looks like a relic from the 90s :DDD. Anything else you want to add?

> You can't filter those in any way.

You can easily filter it, by unsubscribing to content you don't actually want. If you watch so little content of a channel that it annoys you to see it on the subscriptions pages, then you shouldn't be subscribed to them.

I can't see how adding a filter system would be less annoying at that point, you would take more time by selecting some filter than just ignoring that specific content. Out of my 352 subscriptions, I got 22 videos yesterday, quite fast to skip them.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#264

Post by lsaferite »

antioppressor wrote: post #145

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…

Do you also get an endless stream of shuffle dance shorts being shoved down your throat? I think I made the mistake of clicking on one months and months ago and now YT won't stop trying to force feed me those shorts. They are 100% not like anything I watch on a regular basis. So Bad.

Edit: For clarity, I had no idea WTF a shuffle dance was and curiosity got the better of me. Super great way to make me NOT curious about my non-core interests.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#266

Post by petra »

von_lohengramm wrote: post #243
JasserInicide wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When it comes to music, it usually takes up to 5 songs on autoplay before YouTube will get in a rut and replay the same exact sequence of 8 songs. Every. Time. Forever. It's not that I dislike those songs, but I think I'm starting to at this rate.

How can Youtubd's recommendations can be so terrible compared to Spotify???

I don't get it.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#267

Post by dwild »

I never liked shorts on Youtube, even from the creators that I follow. If I want shorts, I go to Tik Tok.

Except that, the Youtube suggestions for me aren't bad. I do believe they are less good than before, because in the past I was able to find at least one new really good channel per month and now it has been a long time without one. It could also be that I found most channels that interest me, or that the pandemic did affect this quite a bit. I still get mostly good recommendations, a third are channels I already subscribe to (which is redundant on the frontpage as I go to the subscriptions pages for that) and videos I already watched, but everything else is mostly content I may be able to enjoy.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#268

Post by thisisonthetest »

sort of related, I wish there were a way to filter suggestions & subscriptions. I only care about videos longer than 4 minutes. Anything shorter is almost always not worth my time. Plus I subscribe to news networks in a foreign language to practice listening and my subscription feed everyday has about 60-100 videos that are a minute or less, or a short. But all I want are the 3+ hour news spots they do.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#269

Post by bmitc »

dereg wrote: post #204
antioppressor wrote: post #145

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…

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…

It's pretty clear to me that YouTube wants to steer you towards content they want you to watch and not content that you want to watch. Watching intellectual long-form content does not equal ad revenue, user "engagement", and whatever else bullshit addictive metrics they only care about.

None of these systems are for the people. It's either about YouTube's bottom dollar or some influencer's ego. It is really amazing to me when I come across old YouTube videos that are just people filming or discussing something interesting without fanfare. You can find newer people doing this these days as well, but it's hard. These types of videos are so refreshing because it's what YouTube should be about: people being creative in honest ways, people talking about or showing something they're interested in, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

#270

Post by lozenge »

UncleMeat wrote: post #86
lozenge wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, YouTube stops suggesting videos from your channel if you aren't posting weekly. They need to keep posting bad videos just to keep the revenue increasing on the good ones.

I'm personally regularly suggested videos from content creators with infrequent posting schedules. Heck, I fairly frequently get suggested a video from a creator who hasn't posted a video in more than a year.

Ah, but are they treating it as a business that needs to earn a reasonable amount of money.
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