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YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

engadget.com

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Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#151

Post by donio »

mdcds wrote: post #103
mikrl wrote: post #80

I didn’t like when they removed the dislike counts, and I still don’t like it. When I look for videos of folks working on Subarus, I don’t want to have to manually scrub through the video to gauge the quality. Before I’d just look at the ratio and if I was feeling generous I’d preview the frames to see if they had what I wanted. Now it takes me at least 2 mins longer to get to the same judgement which begs the questi…

I've been using Return Youtube Dislike addon for Firefox. Idk how accurate it is, but you can gauge the sentiment (mostly positive, mixed, mostly negative)

I believe that uses a separate database that was seeded from scraped youtube data but now it's only updated by those who use the addon. So it would have a much smaller sample size for recent activity.

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#152

Post by bushbaba »

poglet wrote: post #109
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #32

The trick to improving YouTube recommendations is to regularly prune uninteresting videos and channels. Eventually this should start surfacing videos you're more likely to find interesting. I've actually hit the end of my recommendation stream on the mobile app after marking dozens of videos with Not Interested. Once this happens it starts recommending videos you've already watched or older videos from creators you'v…

Occasionally I have to clear my search history and 'start again'. Once YouTube think's it knows what I like, I get 1 or 2 categories of videos I might watch and barley anything else related to my subscriptions.

You could just use incognito mode to view Youtube and see the suggestions

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#153

Post by astrange »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #112
wussboy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Search reveals two or three relevant videos but from that point on the search results are indistinguishable from the regular feed. And I get the same video recommended to me all the time. Sometimes back to back!

If you’re not watching ads, you’re worthless to Youtube. Scrolling through search results wouldn’t increase revenue.

YouTube doesn't show you ads if you buy Premium.

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#154

Post by chillfox »

johnfn wrote: post #67
sph wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube absolutely IGNORES your preferences. I watch it daily, I have never listened to any hip hop, I don't watch sports nor trending topics, yet every single day it suggests football videos, MMA, the latest hiphop hit, and celebrity crap (imagine the Kardashians) among my other interests. I click "don't recommend this channel", or "I don't like this video " every single day, I have an extension to make this conveni…

> I watch it daily, I have never listened to any hip hop, I don't watch sports nor trending topics, yet every single day it suggests football videos, MMA, the latest hiphop hit, and celebrity crap (imagine the Kardashians) among my other interests. I don't have this experience at all. YouTube recommends me pretty much exactly what I've been recently watching. I watch a lot of long form interviews and tech videos, and…

I used to have the same experience of YouTube recommending just more of whatever I just watched, and at most recommendations would stick around for 6 weeks before it forgot about a subject. That was until earlier this year when I watched some videos from MrBallen (camp fire stories based on real events), and ever since then I have gotten my recommendations filled with crazy conspiracy stuff.

It stopped recommending his videos months ago, but lasting damage has been done to my profile or something like that because the conspiracy stuff sticks around and has crowded everything else out. The old behaviour of fixating on something I just watched for 6 weeks no longer happens.

I suspect that certain types of videos/subjects are able to leave a massively oversized weighting for a category on your profile that everything else get's completely dwarfed by.

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#155

Post by donio »

slacka wrote: post #149
donio wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what we are doing differently but for me it's pretty much random and useless. It seems to be a mix of mostly old videos from channels I follow anyway and random junk I am not interested in. I am sure I could find something new and interesting in there if I looked long enough but the signal/noise ratio is very low. Old account with thousands of views and likes/dislikes.

Do you prune your history of garbage? Every time I clear out all the click-bait, poor quality, and accidental picks out of my recent Watched History, I find the quality of the recommendations go up. Are you subscribed to some high-quality channels?

I don't prune the recommendations (since I don't use it) but my subscriptions are always carefully curated, about 50 channels I think. My subscription feed is all good, that's what I use as my landing point.

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#156

Post by SicSemperUranus »

tgtweak wrote: post #141

Didn't they remove the dislike button? Amusingly, TikTok just implemented a dislike button very recently.

There's still a dislike button, it just doesn't show the like to dislike ratio, so it's barely worth pressing. The outcry at the time seemed to indicate that this is explicitly to appease bigger media companies, who put out crap and don't care what anyone thinks (but do care about what people think other people think).

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#157

Post by dd36 »

khyryk wrote: post #150
everdrive wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some might say that you can still use search At some point Youtube search was neutered. I get 5-10 results for any given query before Youtube gives up and just offers me recommendations rather than search results. Interestingly, if I search google for [search term] site:youtube.com, I actually get pages of results which are never present in the Youtube search. Sadly, it seems that Google has intentionally diminished…

I've had videos not show up in the YouTube search despite the query matching the video title verbatim.

Same

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#158

Post by dchftcs »

jdmdmdmdmd wrote: post #43
kache_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is actually quite a good way to find youtube channels! I find them through twitter, 4ch, and friends.

>twitter, 4ch, and friends I was under the impression that these three are mutually exclusive to each other

Maybe that's the point..

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#159

Post by tartoran »

khyryk wrote: post #150
everdrive wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some might say that you can still use search At some point Youtube search was neutered. I get 5-10 results for any given query before Youtube gives up and just offers me recommendations rather than search results. Interestingly, if I search google for [search term] site:youtube.com, I actually get pages of results which are never present in the Youtube search. Sadly, it seems that Google has intentionally diminished…

I've had videos not show up in the YouTube search despite the query matching the video title verbatim.

Yep, I confirm that is my experience as well. Google is starting to inch towards the television industry. In all honesty Im not watching any TV these days but i imagine its some advertising and snippets of content. Youtube without membership or ad blockers is just like that if not worse. From how if started to what is has become it’s a long way…

Re: YouTube’s ‘dislike’ barely works according to new study on recommendations

#160

Post by toss1 »

khyryk wrote: post #150
everdrive wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some might say that you can still use search At some point Youtube search was neutered. I get 5-10 results for any given query before Youtube gives up and just offers me recommendations rather than search results. Interestingly, if I search google for [search term] site:youtube.com, I actually get pages of results which are never present in the Youtube search. Sadly, it seems that Google has intentionally diminished…

I've had videos not show up in the YouTube search despite the query matching the video title verbatim.

Yup. I now pretty much use YouTube search only to call up a video where I have the YT ID. Everything else is a waste of time, and I just use DDG search if I want to find something without the ID in hand.

How management thinks it is a good idea to make their products useless by letting a bunch of self-aggrandizing "analysts" or marketers or whatever attempt to manipulate their customers/viewers is beyond me. The fact that they are all paid to fork it up so badly is just mindboggling.

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