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

On YouTube’s recommendation system

blog.youtube

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 337 posts

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#141

Post by dkarl »

Asmod4n wrote: post #99
jeffwask wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again" to make it stop.

I’m hitting never show this again on one type of content all the time. There are days where my feed consists of like 33% of that stuff and it happens all the time. I’m at the point where it only recommends me my subscribed channels or the stuff I tell it not to show at all some days too. It’s so frustrating.

I think there are some intersections of interest that make the algorithm hypothesize that you're a certain kind of person. Like if you watch a lot of strength training content, and then you watch one lecture on Heidegger, YouTube is like, oh, we finally figured this guy out, he's a white supremacist or at the very least a gun nut. But if I watch a video about cupcakes, I'll only get a few suggestions about baking, not any associated interests, because cupcakes don't combine with any of my other interests to trigger a stereotype.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#142

Post by hwers »

htrp wrote: post #125
hwers wrote: post #56

Best decision I ever made was installing an extension to get rid of the recommendations (they're such crap - I wish they would actually try to recommend me things with a high likelihood of me enjoying rather than whatever propaganda youtube wants me to see).

You can't say things like this without telling us what extension this is

This one https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout... I also remove comments and 'similar videos'.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#143

Post by kikokikokiko »

dvlsg wrote: post #57
tsumnia wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most systems have this issue. I've described it as a 'fear of recommending something you hate'. They know you watched X video from Y channel, so there is a good chance you'd like Z video that has a similar fanbase or content. However, it becomes this echo chamber of only recommending the same content over and over again because they don't want to suggest something you don't like. That's because to their metrics, you…

YouTube still recommends stuff I hate all the time, despite me explicitly trying to tell the system I'm not interested. To pick an example, my YouTube recommended section is full of videos of people reacting to the things I actually like to watch. I don't want to watch people reacting to the things I like. I just want to watch the things I like. I try to tell YouTube that by saying "Not Interested" to all of the reac…

I use uBlock to stop this type of shenaningans. I set filters for specific channels or "channel networks", for instance if I don't want to see any Vice related video show up in my recomendations, i.e. "Vice Fightland", "Vice bla bla bla" etc, I set a rule such as:

www.youtube.com###dismissible:has-text(/Vice/)

This way, any channel that has the word Vice in it will never show up to me in recommendations, be it on the main page or the sidebar. This "has-text" regex is really useful, not just on Youtube. I use it a lot, all over the internet. In your case, switch "Vice" with "react" and I believe you'll get rid of 99% of these videos showing up on your feed.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#144

Post by quakeguy »

grumbel wrote: post #124
jeffwask wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again" to make it stop.

That's why I started using multiple accounts, makes it a lot easier to keep the algorithm on topic and not get side tracked just because you searched for a song or game once. In the end the core problem with the recommendation system is simply that there is only one list of recommendations, which makes it damn near impossible to switch to a different topic unless you start account hopping. The new topic-bar helps a l…

„Using multiple accounts“ „Makes it easier“ That may work indeed, but i wouldnt call it easy in any way, or convenient. Instead try to subscribe to as many channels you find interesting as possible. Thats what worked for me in the end getting rid of the clutter that is suggested.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#145

Post by vl »

swalsh wrote: post #11

The reccomendation system is absolutely dangerous. Just this summer, I watched one video on peppers out of curiousity. By the end of summer I've got multiple different varieties growing, and all the accessories to support them. I'm really enjoying my garden, but it's very unlikely I would have started one without the youtube algorithm. Similarly my doctor reccomended I exercise more, so I started running. Then I goog…

All it means that it is working as intended. Few years ago YT switched to life-time-value optimization. But when you get it to the logical end, ideal consumer for Google is a healthy person with disposable income that spends all of it.

Since Google/YT essentially are shaping you thoughts and behaviours, logical optimization for them is to shape you to be a working sportsman that spends all disposable income on services, experiences and goods bought online.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#146

Post by dilap »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #27
dilap wrote: post #21

I've found some good stuff from YouTube recommendations, but the reccs are mostly pretty dumb -- tons of repeats, tons of "hey, here's something EXACTLY LIKE what you just watched." It's nowhere close to as good as the recommendations for TikTok (which seem to read your mind and your subconscious). Would love to see TikTok make a YouTube competitor.

Genuinely curious, would you actually want that product to exist? I'm at a point where I don't want better recommendations to tell me what to think. I'm already having enough of a challenge keeping my focus with the status quo.

I feel you on the focus challenge -- my heroin is twitter, which I struggle to not read compulsively. (Right now I'm in a "delete my account" phase, but I know I'll go back.)

But for whatever reason, YouTube and TikTok are both very easy for me to consume in small amounts, deliberately.

Perhaps the thing I love most on YouTube is music. I've discovered so much great stuff there. But I'm sure there's more, if I only knew about it!

Beyond music, tons of other weird and/or life-enriching stuffL An old documentary on spanish gypsies. How to make an omlette. Programming live streams. Surreal russian war movies. Old Hunter Thompson interviews. Etc. etc. etc.

But mostly the new stuff I find these days doesn't come from YouTube reccs (which tend to just repeat the same things over and over, or show mainstream fluff, more akin to advertising than a personalized recommendation), but off-site sources, like blogs or twitter links. Which is a shame!

(Sort of tangentially, if I had to restart civilization from scratch and got to pick one single source of information to use, I'd pick YouTube for sure. I just wish Google were a better steward of that rather remarkable collection. (They really seem to be on a vendetta against the "You" part of YouTube...))

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#147

Post by stevofolife »

jeffwask wrote: post #44
swalsh wrote: post #11

The reccomendation system is absolutely dangerous. Just this summer, I watched one video on peppers out of curiousity. By the end of summer I've got multiple different varieties growing, and all the accessories to support them. I'm really enjoying my garden, but it's very unlikely I would have started one without the youtube algorithm. Similarly my doctor reccomended I exercise more, so I started running. Then I goog…

It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again" to make it stop.

You started playing WoW Classic and it was able to recommend WoW-related videos. It did its job. What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? That's not recommendation, that's mass surveillance and psychological manipulation.

But on a useful note, maybe YouTube needs to provide a function to see a list of random videos that are unexplored or new.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#148

Post by [deleted] »

lordentropy wrote: post #5

For me, it seems like youtube's recommendation system mostly gets stuck in the local optimum. Once you watch a video from a particular channel, it'll keep on recommending the videos from the same channel for months. Soon, the recommendation just consists of stuff from the channels that have you already viewed. You rarely see new types of recommendations.

[deleted]

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#149

Post by haolez »

Sometimes, I want to watch a random video that was recommended, but I get anxious about clicking on it and start getting recommendations for that video's theme forever and ever.

Once, I've clicked on a video about Tetris' World Championship Finals (I was curious!), and I was plagued with Tetris recommendations for some months.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#150

Post by skybrian »

swalsh wrote: post #11

The reccomendation system is absolutely dangerous. Just this summer, I watched one video on peppers out of curiousity. By the end of summer I've got multiple different varieties growing, and all the accessories to support them. I'm really enjoying my garden, but it's very unlikely I would have started one without the youtube algorithm. Similarly my doctor reccomended I exercise more, so I started running. Then I goog…

I'm wondering what you mean by "dangerous" and what level of irony you're at. :-)
Post reply on HN