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YouTube Oddities

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Re: YouTube Oddities

#21

Post by throwanem »

twisteriffic wrote: post #10

Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are basically gore/grossout videos. It's still…

Do you use the "not interested"/"don't recommend channel" options on these, or report them?

If not, it may be worth a try. They seem to do a lot to steer Youtube's recommender away from the more gamy regions of its latent space; for example, something like a year ago I saw recommended such a video, immediately reported it for "violent or repulsive content", and thus far haven't seen another. The same has been true for the occasional weirdo along the stripe of modern Russell Brand.

To be clear, I don't think the report was acted upon by Youtube, but I do think the signal inherent in the action must be accounted for in its recommendation model.

Also to be clear, this is no defense of Youtube. It's pretty trash these days, and even the most innocuous recommendations I get have very little to do with anything I'm actually interested in, but this does seem to keep it from getting the idea I might want to see incels and gore.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#22

Post by jsheard »

rwmj wrote: post #13
PetitPrince wrote: post #6

> Roel Van de Paar, at this current time has 2,035,484 videos uploaded. > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-oYb2-xN5FbCXy0167Gg What the hell. It doesn't seems to be autogenerated video.

It looks like the kind of video spam that now shows up in searches for technical questions.

Those seem to be getting more common, it's very annoying. Another genre is autogenerated "product review" or "comparison" videos that are just ChatGPT-generated fluff copy read out by text-to-speech voice over a slideshow of product images, presumably to push an affiliate link in the description. Most of them get few if any views but they're so easy to make they just take the shotgun approach and hope some win the SEO lottery: https://i.imgur.com/xebU9os.png

That channel has some hits, they posted a monitor "review" which pulled 20k views and a few dozen comments from real-looking people seemingly unaware the channel is run by a Python script.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#23

Post by adl »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
twisteriffic wrote: post #10

Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are basically gore/grossout videos. It's still…

I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your viewing history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen YouTube recommend one of those in my life.

I've seen them pop up (hehe) while searching for multi-tools and bushcraft videos. Never seen one before.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#24

Post by jabroni_salad »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
twisteriffic wrote: post #10

Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are basically gore/grossout videos. It's still…

I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your viewing history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen YouTube recommend one of those in my life.

> search results

the real problem is that youtube has decided to just put normal recommendations on the search result page in the place where search results should go. I use the extension 'unhook' with the setting 'Hide Inapt Search Results' to remove that misfeature.

this feature was presumably somebody's baby and I'd really like to read their writeup where they unironically exalt its virtues so I can try to gauge how far up their ass their head is.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#25

Post by throwaway4roel »

PetitPrince wrote: post #6

> Roel Van de Paar, at this current time has 2,035,484 videos uploaded. > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-oYb2-xN5FbCXy0167Gg What the hell. It doesn't seems to be autogenerated video.

I worked with him and he was as weird as you'd expect. He got let go after getting in someone's face for saying "oh my god", because it's "taking god's name in vain". (:

He used to do that back then too, AFAIK they were absolutely autogenerated.

(throwaway because I don't want him to harass me, he does do that too)

Re: YouTube Oddities

#26

Post by taocoyote »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
twisteriffic wrote: post #10

Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are basically gore/grossout videos. It's still…

I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your viewing history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen YouTube recommend one of those in my life.

I have my childrens accounts under my main account. If they watch a lot of certain types of videos, that will show up as a suggestion under my main account. I'm positive its not because they are using my account, I watch videos with them.

I also have a second account for watching more technical videos and that leaks into my main account suggestions.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#27

Post by sosodev »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #2

Okay just in case someone who knows reads this. Why doesn’t Youtube Premium background play work with members-only videos? Became a member of a channel with spoken content and can’t even lock my phone when playing a member’s only video. Posts and complaints on this go back years, with zero explanation from Youtube as to why this is, if it’s intentional or a bug, etc.

YouTube premium is ridiculously janky for the price. I’ve gotten ads in weird, new parts of the app multiple times as they’re experimenting with new strategies. Like while scrolling shorts for example.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#28

Post by johnnymorgan »

taocoyote wrote: post #26
crazygringo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your viewing history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen YouTube recommend one of those in my life.

I have my childrens accounts under my main account. If they watch a lot of certain types of videos, that will show up as a suggestion under my main account. I'm positive its not because they are using my account, I watch videos with them. I also have a second account for watching more technical videos and that leaks into my main account suggestions.

I got those for a bit but it was a couple months back.

YT algo is so messed up and it seems the more they try to shape the content people view, the easier it gets for bad actors to exploit the algo.

Shorts are the absolute worst for it and it's why I mostly stick to my subs page over the home page.

Re: YouTube Oddities

#29

Post by johnnymorgan »

qup wrote: post #11
twisteriffic wrote: post #10

Least favourite behavior of YouTube these days is the mass of pimple popping and wart removal videos that show up near the top of search results for damn near anything. "Fluke 87v power on options"? Pimple popping. "Generator repair"? Wart removal. And it isn't just one, it's dozens of them, to the point where there might only be one or two relevant results and the rest are basically gore/grossout videos. It's still…

I've never seen one recommended, just a counter-point. I watch YouTube daily.

Do you never see content that has no connection to your viewing habits?

It happens all the time and I got hit with the warts and pimples a few months back, just a counter point, I watch YT daily.

It's mostly shorts where you will see it

Re: YouTube Oddities

#30

Post by p1necone »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #2

Okay just in case someone who knows reads this. Why doesn’t Youtube Premium background play work with members-only videos? Became a member of a channel with spoken content and can’t even lock my phone when playing a member’s only video. Posts and complaints on this go back years, with zero explanation from Youtube as to why this is, if it’s intentional or a bug, etc.

Youtube background play being a paid feature is so brazen. Google are disabling a basic UX feature in their OS and then letting you pay for it in one app that they control.
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