Mozilla Is Crowdsourcing Research into YouTube Recommendations

Post by shajznnckfke » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #159

powersnail wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube's recommendation algorithm is just dumb, in my opinion. At least half of the time on Youtube, I watch classical music, and you would think Youtube would recommend me some classical performances that I haven't yet seen. Nope. It keeps feeding me exactly the same videos I've already watched, despite being basically the largest catalogue of classical music videos. What's the point of a recommendation system if i…

The recommendation system is not "dumb" in the opinion of its designers. Perhaps it is performing exactly as intended. In the same way that online advertising needs to display millions of ads to reach only hundreds of people, the recommendation system may not be intended to work at 100% efficiency. YouTube "recommendations" work as far as I can tell. If you take two people searching for some subject area on YouTube,…

Post by SpelingBeeChamp » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

anjc wrote: post #150

bsder wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the point of a recommendation system if it doesn't even recommend new video of the same category I like? Because YouTube doesn't care what you want --YouTube cares what it can monetize . I suspect that YouTube gets very little money from showing you classical performances but gets lots from showing you the latest "Funny Cat Video". You are the product , not the customer. Once you internalize that, stuff that…

> Because YouTube doesn't care what you want--YouTube cares what it can monetize. > You are the product, not the customer. > Once you internalize that, stuff that Google does makes sense. They published their algorithm. They rank items according to predicted watch-time. The other poster is probably correct, in that many people use these long classical music videos as background music over and over (i.e. high watch ti…

Post by iad » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 6:38 AM UTC

jack_pp wrote: post #38

klmadfejno wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use YouTube infrequently. Usually for binging random content like comedy sketches or speedrunning. No matter what I'm on, there's always a few videos in my recommendations that make no sense and look like trash. Not generically, but specific videos that ALWAYS appear. One of them is "I PAID FIVE BASSISTS ON FIVR TO PLAY AN IMPOSSIBLE BASSLINE" ... Why is this so bad? What are your hundreds of data scientists doing?

They stop appearing if you specifically mark them as not interested

Post by anjc » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

srean wrote: post #166

anjc wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This criticism shouldn't apply anymore. They predict categories you like and you can select a category. The 'All' page should be a mix of all categories, not just cat videos. Amazon on the other hand...

> you can select a category Could you tell me how ? Would love to have that feature. They seem to have turned this off.

Post by boomboomsubban » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 10:36 AM UTC

Funes- wrote: post #147

thatguy0900 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "exclusively for Firefox development" is pretty important. Mozilla is doing a lot of random things these days

>Mozilla is doing a lot of random things these days Yeah, like paying three million to its CEO annually. That's not going into Firefox development alright.