Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

freetubeapp.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 259 posts

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#151

Post by charcircuit »

brookst wrote: post #124
charcircuit wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being shown great videos that are relevant to you is correlated with increased time on the platform and satisfaction which are some of the metrics YouTube cares about. >the 'suggested videos' next to the video you're watching is more than good enough to get recs. Which is also an algorithmic feed which optimizes for the same metrics as the home page.

Let’s say you’ve got a tire you can’t seat on a wheel. Which of these is the YouTube algorithm going to optimize for: 1) a 60 second video showing how to use wd-40 and a lighter to set the bead, or 2) a 7 minute showing how beads can be broken, things you might try, an ad, some bad ideas, a funny guy yelling, another ad, and then how to set a bead with flame Increased time on the platform is a proxy for more ads show…

Let's do an informal experiment. In incognito I searched "how to seat a tire on a wheel"

The first result is 2:43 then 3:14 then a shorts drawer which are sub minute videos then 5:43 then 3:29.

It turns out that YouTube is not optimizing for showing 7 minute videos.

>YouTube optimizes for maximizing ads

While they do monitor for regressions of metrics like ad revenue improvements to the algorithm aim to improve the user experience as opposed to improving revenue.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#152

Post by atoav »

iKevinShah wrote: post #142

I am looking for a Youtube Client or an API that takes me back to that time where you had an opportunity to go to the crazy side of Youtube. No, I am not looking for gore or conspiracy stuff - But you get the point. You start looking at a video from vSauce and then some videos later you are seeing how zebras communicate and what we can learn from it (just an example) Closest I have seen is an extension that adds an r…

There was a website which would only display videos with close to zero views. It is endlessly fascinating what stuff tou get to see there. Stuff that you wouldn't be able to find on youtube if you actively searched for using their search bar.

Found it: http://astronaut.io/

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#153

Post by peepee1982 »

n4bz0r wrote: post #53

People here talking about how they don't want YouTube to make a profile of their preferences, and here I am, wishing YouTube had a better profile of my preferences. Lately, there is almost no new videos in my recommendation feed. It's mostly either the things I've already watched or new videos from the channels I'm already subscribed to. It really feels like I've exhausted the internet at some point. This can't possi…

I think the tracking itself is fine. The recommendation engine just has become really stale. It's hard to believe that out of all the hundreds of hours uploaded per minute (or whatever) there are only like 20 videos per week that I might be interested in. I feel like the recommendations used to be more dynamic.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#156

Post by nickexyz »

lakomen wrote: post #85

We need one to replace vanced on Android and Android TV. We have ad blockers for browsers on the desktop.

Android: https://github.com/VueTubeApp/VueTube Not at all feature complete yet, but looks like a really nice project.

Android TV: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext Amazing client that completely replaced the official YT client for me.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#158

Post by Nitrolo »

MR4D wrote: post #59
n4bz0r wrote: post #53

People here talking about how they don't want YouTube to make a profile of their preferences, and here I am, wishing YouTube had a better profile of my preferences. Lately, there is almost no new videos in my recommendation feed. It's mostly either the things I've already watched or new videos from the channels I'm already subscribed to. It really feels like I've exhausted the internet at some point. This can't possi…

I think you might not be understanding the context of the argument. Google has tons of information on you - way more than it needs, and yet it still doesn’t get recommendations as good as we expect (as you rightly point out). So the issue is that it has tons of extra data than they need because it * doesn’t make their recommendation any better.* Gathering data for the sake of gathering data in todays world of informa…

>For instance, my IP changes when I travel, but I’m an American who speaks English, and yet YouTube insists in showing me local ads in different languages when I’m in foreign countries, despite having my home address (verified with my credit card no less!!!) That’s just laughable.

Funny, my experience with YouTube is the opposite. I'm Italian, but I've emigrated a decade ago. I've tried to purge my Google account of all traces of Italian, changed my languages in my Google profile, settings, and all the places I could find. Google also has my credit card through Google Pay.

And yet they keep switching my YouTube interface to Italian at least once a week. I set it back to English every time but within days it's back.

The Italian interface is perfectly fine, mind you, but they insist on auto-translating the titles of English videos, which a) often results in barely coherent titles and b) the videos are still in English!

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#159

Post by wahnfrieden »

mhss wrote: post #105
MR4D wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might not be understanding the context of the argument. Google has tons of information on you - way more than it needs, and yet it still doesn’t get recommendations as good as we expect (as you rightly point out). So the issue is that it has tons of extra data than they need because it * doesn’t make their recommendation any better.* Gathering data for the sake of gathering data in todays world of informa…

> Google has tons of information on you Do you have any good sources about this? what do we know for sure Google know and track about us? I work for Google now, but speak for myself here. In my time here (not much, less than a year still) I've seen a huge focus on privacy and not storing user data. Then again, I don't work on ads. However, even before working at Google I was surprised that given my liberal sharing of…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

> NSA databank, with its years of collected communications, allows analysts to search that database and listen "to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you've entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future."

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#160

Post by thinkingemote »

capex wrote: post #110

My biggest gripe with Youtube right now is how they've left channel subscription just as a long list. I have hundreds of subscriptions, and they are clearly around a few of my interests...

I make new YouTube accounts (not Google) for myself for the groups of my interests as they don't overlap much.
Post reply on HN