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YouTube, the jewel of the internet

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Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#431

Post by coldpie »

Gunnerhead wrote: post #309
emodendroket wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube algorithm is honestly pretty good at surfacing stuff I'd want to watch. My biggest carp is it's heavily based on what I was watching recently but my interest in various topics waxes and wanes and I don't necessarily want wall-to-wall basketball content just because I watched a lot of that last week.

Agreed. One annoying example is that I occasionally play white noise when I can’t sleep. YouTube will now always recommend me white noise and sleep noises when I’m casually browsing. No matter how often I press that I’m not interested.

You can remove those videos from your watch history, which should remove them from the algorithm. It's a bit of a chore, but should do the trick.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#432

Post by Fnoord »

nomilk wrote: post #262
sitkack wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had the YT algorithm "hunt me" for a weeks, keep recommending some what looks like a dumb-ass video, only when I finally cave in and watch it, I get it, I needed to see it. The thumbnail and the title didn't did it the opposite of justice. I even tried using the yt api to see if I could scrape the recommendations but they aren't in there. You would have to scrape the browser while logged in.

Russ Roberts (host of Econtalk podcast) says: take the teacher, not the class , meaning (at least in economics) you'll get more value from a great teacher of a boring topic than from a poor teacher of an exciting topic. I feel that describes my YouTube preferences: I'd prefer to see amazingly intelligent/engaging content on any topic than just average content on topics I'm ostensibly very interested in.

Ah, that explains why teachers dislike students who are disinterested. Its not merely a disregard for the subject at hand, it tells them they're not the great teacher they'd like to believe they are. The best teachers I had, also had great humor. Great humor helps a lot.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#433

Post by circuit10 »

grecy wrote: post #430
circuit10 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine most big YouTubers can’t moderate each comment like that though, so it’s effectively the same as a shadowban in that case

They have teams of people doing it. Comments only go into that queue when certain words are used, and they have to be bad. Well reasoned disagreement never goes in there. Even just “what you said is dumb, I know better that you” doesn’t go in there It’s always comments like “f$&@ you, moron, “.

But links often go there as well

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#434

Post by sofixa »

helpfulclippy wrote: post #195
mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

I am... OK with the Youtube algorithm. I find that it is pretty good at this point at not giving me stuff I find awful. However, I think it has lost a lot of ground in helping me find newer, more obscure topics that I'd also find interesting, compared to where it was 5-6 years ago. Overall I think Youtube IS a jewel of the Internet. The amount of astoundingly interesting, informative, entertaining, educational, insig…

> My big fear is that someday, Youtube will no longer be profitable

Why do you think it's profitable? It makes for a decent chunk of Alphabet's income, but they don't break down costs so we have no way of knowing exactly how much it costs to store and seemlessly deliver zettabytes of video.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#435

Post by arethuza »

mastax wrote: post #81

I'm going to go against the grain here and say my YouTube algorithm is great. Signing out of YouTube and viewing the default home page is a reminder of the horrors that lie beyond, but my little corner of it is a bit too good. There was a period of time semi-recently when the algorithm was better than my heuristics, too. I had associated too-good thumbnails with overproduced shallow clickbait videos churned out by co…

The algorithm that YouTube uses to suggest videos to me is really good.

Whatever mechanism is used to select the ads to show me seems like a stubborn practical joke - it is appalling. And I'd love to know why it likes to show me ads for commercial products (such as accountancy software) when I watch on my Apple TV but completely different nonsense on my other Apple devices.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#436

Post by NickC25 »

YT's algorithm is great - shows me a great mix of mindless stuff I like that I can just watch and not think or put on in the background (sports highlights, music playlists); or stuff that I need to pay attention to (politics, finance, how-to's), and even some guilty pleasures (film/tv clips, comedy sets, etc). It's great.

The shorts, however, need to just die. Youtube, stop trying to compete with TikTok. You have a niche, and need stick to it. No need to dumb down with crappy content and actively work to shorten attention spans with cropped clips and cannibalize your main product.

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#437

Post by [deleted] »

cubefox wrote: post #368
alex_young wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a NYTimes podcast on the subject. Not really a made up thing on wikipedia: https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole

The NYT is very left-wing, so of course they are more willing to support and promote such theories. My point is that similar things could be said about the "woke" just as about the "alt-right", but Wikipedia would never allow such an article.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#438

Post by kowabunga123 »

cubefox wrote: post #368
alex_young wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a NYTimes podcast on the subject. Not really a made up thing on wikipedia: https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole

The NYT is very left-wing, so of course they are more willing to support and promote such theories. My point is that similar things could be said about the "woke" just as about the "alt-right", but Wikipedia would never allow such an article.

Yes indeed. I think you'll be astonished by the data demonstrating the trend here.

It shows how around 2010 [1], there was an inflection point in main stream US media. It appears to be a coordinated campaign. Which would make sense given Operation Mockingbird [2]

[1] "Many trends develop over decades but I’ve never seen change so rapid as the breathtaking success of what one might call social justice concerns. Beginning around 2010-2014 there appears to have been a inflection point. Here from Zach Goldberg on twitter are various words drawn from Lexis-Nexis."

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th...

[2]

"Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. "

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

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#439

Post by pkulak »

bippingchip wrote: post #389
pkulak wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always laugh when I see a chess tournament recap video with the most clickbait title and thumbnail ever. Like, did they add explosions? And then it’s just a normal video, and very enjoyable. So, no harm, no foul.

Also a gothamchess viewer I see :) Levy's indeed always making a sport of it to have the most clickbaity titles and thumbnails, but the chess content is really really top notch. (especially for low ELO players like myself)

And of course he directly addressed it mere hours after my post. Haha

https://youtu.be/nTocrbqGCWs

Re: YouTube, the jewel of the internet

#440

Post by tomashubelbauer »

figassis wrote: post #337

Too bad only the US can pay for premium

I'm in the Czech Republic and I used to be subscribed to YouTube Premium until they removed dislikes at which point I canceled my subscription. Not sure what country you're from but I am pretty sure there is an array of countries where you can get Premium now.
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