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No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

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Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've probably ruined my recommendations forever now. :( I pretty much only stick to subscriber channels now except for stuff people send me. Since there's no dislikes I just don't browse the stuff available anymore. YouTube is definitely worse off without the dislike counter.

There's a "don't recommend channel" option if you click the 3 dots button on a video. I use this liberally for all sorts of reasons and it makes my recommendations much better.

For some reason that only shows up in certain webviews (I’m not interested in the app)

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#163
post #47

I don't personally think the dislike button is the explanation. But something seems to have changed in the Youtube recommendations algo in the last few weeks. In my experience, the algo has gotten very noticeably worse recently: - Recommending lots of 6 - 12 year old videos on topics I'm interested in (who cares about a 12 year old product review?) - Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending reall…

What bothers me most about the recommendations I get are the videos I have clearly watched. "You recently watched this clip, so we at YouTube think you should watch it again."

This is Spotify and music recommendations for me.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#164
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dislike count is still in the data returned by the YouTube API[0], so they're probably getting it from there. [0] https://developers.google.com/youtube/analytics/metrics#disl...

Are you sure? I remember reading that data would be removed at the end of last year.

I don't have an API key handy, but it's not marked as deprecated/removed in the documentation, so I can't see why it wouldn't still be in there.

The dislike count is also still present in the [0] video API response.

[0]https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/videos#resourc...

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#165
post #99

I've only noticed the difference for a very specific set of technical help videos: how to open an X, how to fix a Y, how to pronounce Z. Now I just have to check the comments. The YouTube recommendation algorithm also broke globally about 3 weeks ago. Most people have not noticed it yet, but I haven't asked a single person about it who has said that their recommendations are normal. They've suddenly been full of crap…

> Now I just have to check the comments. The problem is that the comments section can be fully managed by the uploader. It's easily possible for them to delete negative comments or even to add filters to do so automatically.

Yeah I've seen some channels switch to "sort by new" by default for their comment section, making it a lot harder to get any useful signal at first glance.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#166
For me, Youtube ruined... ads. All ads for the past several months have been about Indian pop music, and I'm not even Indian. Something broke in their algorithm (I'm from Eastern Europe). Not that I really cared about ads, and if you think about it, I actually learned something new, there's some nice Indian music I wouldn't otherwise have learned about.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They arent recommendation engines. In the sense that recommendation is not the formal problem of showing someone content with a non-zero probability of their watching it. Recommendation, as we understanding it, means understanding our interests first. Recommendations systems use average expressed preferences (ie., on-average watch frequency) in others to "recommend" you something. If we didnt opt for such metaphorica…

But it does recommend videos to you. It is absolutely not just "Popularity Ranking". On my youtube front page the first row of videos are: a recent Scott Manley video about some SpaceX thing (which is in my interests), a DnD game (which I have already seen on twitch, youtube of course has no way knowing that), a song from a band I'm listening to since a few days, and a video documenting a glider airplane adventure. A…

It is just selecting users based on the videos you have watched. It isnt global popularity ranking, rather its ranking amongst users who also watch your videos.

Your watching a video is only a weak correlate of your preference. If I were recomemnding you something, I wouldnt ask you -- literally -- what specific videos you watch. I'd ask for your (real) preferences: are you bored right now? Do you want somerthing exiting? What's your mood? etc. etc.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#168
post #44

I don't personally think the dislike button is the explanation. But something seems to have changed in the Youtube recommendations algo in the last few weeks. In my experience, the algo has gotten very noticeably worse recently: - Recommending lots of 6 - 12 year old videos on topics I'm interested in (who cares about a 12 year old product review?) - Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending reall…

> Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending really, really old videos from people I normally watch. It's always done this, but it seems worse recently. Also, subscribe to a channel, get recommended their entire repertoire of the last decade. I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss. What…

> What the hell is wrong with modern AI-driven recommendation engines

No idea but it's been an issue ever since I've used Amazon. In a way it's kind of reassuring that their AI is not smart enough to know that after buying a vaccuum cleaner, I am probably not going to immediately buy another one.

Re: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me

#170
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recommending tons of videos I've already seen or recommending really, really old videos from people I normally watch. It's always done this, but it seems worse recently. Also, subscribe to a channel, get recommended their entire repertoire of the last decade. I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss. What…

I genuinely don’t understand why Google got it right with Circles, realizing we have different orthogonal interests… but all my YouTube subscriptions go in a giant pile, as if advanced math, news, and rap videos are fungible content. I want some ability to create sets of channels with a focus and only access that when I want to. I think the problem is that YouTube has always been a manipulative and exploitative platf…

It's a problem with evidence based product design. It's in almost all big products nowadays. The way Google axes products, the way Netflix axes series, the way Facebook populates the timeline. They're throwing away the intrinsic value of the product, for positive graphics in their monthly user engagement presentations.

Facebook's user engagement is probably higher than it ever was. I have a friend who's one of those conspiracy nuts and he's on there all day everyday posting dozens of media links to questionable content. His behaviour is their dream. At the same time almost none of my "normal" friends or family are still there. But they never had much engagement anyway even at the peak they maybe checked Facebook once a day for a couple minutes and maybe post something once per month.

Probably these platforms are all approximating the optimal amount of crappiness they need to be maximally profitable.

I've never owned an iPhone, but Apple's approach is the long term one, where they come up with a product that they believe in and they think the customer should use, regardless of whether they actually want. It let's them always carefully control the quality and resists the temptation to make a quick extra buck. In the end it makes them basically unbeatable, where Facebook has to buy competitors to remain relevant.

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