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

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

#201

Post by hanniabu »

everdrive wrote: post #82
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…

>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…

> Sadly, it seems that Google has intentionally diminished Youtube's own search function in order to prioritize use of the recommendation system.

That's because recommended videos are more popular, and more popular videos earn them more ad revenue.

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

#202

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rtsil wrote: post #119
darth_avocado wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with this approach is that it takes a lot of curation to get your recommendation in a decent shape and it takes you one accidental video view to have your feed be full of uninteresting content related to that video. This asymmetry is the root of all the recommendation system problems.

Remove the unwanted video from your history and it will no longer affect your recommendations.

Similar on Facebook: I click through to a scam product to gather details and send a complaint to ASA (in UK). I then say "don't show me stuff like this", block the "story", block the advertiser.

Now consistently I get adverts from Facebook for that same product from other scammers, no matter how much I block them. Presumably because that advert 'engaged' me for the longest. Eugh.

Incidentally, ASA responded that it was not a UK company ... which sounds like "we don't care about scam advertising we're just here for the paycheck". The company were advertising on UK Facebook and held a UK registered trade mark.

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

#204

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #171
treeman79 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine will not give up on family guy. Hundreds of dis likes. Don’t recommend.

AI: Oh, showing /u/treeman79 some Family Guy videos increases their engagement, MOAR FAMILY GUY!!!111oneoneone

I assume that's exactly it, why else would companies do this sort of thing, or are all media companies inept.

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

#205

Post by Ferret7446 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #129
Sophistifunk wrote: post #75

Why is everybody pretending the recommendation system is designed to show you what you want to see, rather than to maximise ad revenue?

Why is everyone pretending that the maximal amount of ad revenue comes doesn’t come from showing you what you want to see? Individual videos don’t pay to be in the recommended feed. There’s no opportunity to see an ad except when you watch a video. YouTube has a perfectly balanced incentive to show you more content you’ll watch. Where is the exclusive choice between (what the user wants to watch) and (what makes more…

Technically correctly, although there is a subtle nuance here.

What you want to see is not necessarily the same as what you will end up watching. Just because you dislike a video doesn't mean you wouldn't watch it.

Or put another way, you can tell YouTube what you want (to be perceived socially as wanting) to see, but the algorithm knows what you actually want to see.

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

#206

Post by narrator »

brigandish wrote: post #180
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…

Search is entirely crippled for new stories now. If I saw some breaking news on Twitter I used to pop over to Youtube to find original or better footage than news services were getting, or to get it faster. Impossible via YT's search now, it's just pages and pages of old-media channels with their thoughts on the footage, always clipped down and talked over. Even Twitter seems to do this now, it's becoming harder to f…

Yandex.com, my friend. It even returns results from Ulta Cancelled video websites like Bitchute, Rumble and Odyssey.

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

#207

Post by cowtools »

daveoc64 wrote: post #131
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…

The problem with the dislike button seems to be that nobody agrees on what it should be used for. In previous HN discussions, it's become apparent that some people use it to say "I am not interested in this video". That is of zero use to other users. The video isn't necessarily bad, it's just on a topic you don't care about. If you are instead using it to mean "this video is factually wrong" or "this video is obnoxio…

I think the solution would be to just make the down-vote do nothing but increment the visible counter, and also make it so that users that can't comment if they already voted. This allows people to simply signal their disapproval without fighting repetitive flamewars in the comments or suppressing content they don't like.

Or maybe if you're running a forum where you want to promote controversial content and hide boring content, just make the downvote act identical to the upvote, so users are incentivized to downvote and argue if they think it is argue-worthy and just ignore if they think it is too boring to discuss.

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

#208

Post by pbhjpbhj »

daveoc64 wrote: post #131
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…

The problem with the dislike button seems to be that nobody agrees on what it should be used for. In previous HN discussions, it's become apparent that some people use it to say "I am not interested in this video". That is of zero use to other users. The video isn't necessarily bad, it's just on a topic you don't care about. If you are instead using it to mean "this video is factually wrong" or "this video is obnoxio…

If only we had a way to spend billions of $¥€ on putting the greatest minds in the World into a single company who could solve this at the drop of a hat.

It has to be control, right, surely Google are competent to fix this overnight of they wished?

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

#209

Post by boastful_inaba »

yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #198

I dont see it mentioned BlockTube extension [0] anywhere in the comments yet. It automatically blocks videos/channels based on your defined keywords and it works perfectly. For some period of time my main YT page was filled with a variation of videos about "walking in Tokyo". I'm not interested in walking in cities nor Japan, so I have no idea where that came from. No matter how many of these videos I marked as "not…

I second the BlockTube recommendation. It's great for spoiler avoidance too!

Put in keywords like:

  "ending explained"
  "top 10"
  "death scene"
  "betrayal scene"
  "all bosses"
  "all endings"
as well as series names that you don't want to be spoiled on, and suddenly your Youtube experience will be much better.

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

#210

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #205
vineyardmike wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone pretending that the maximal amount of ad revenue comes doesn’t come from showing you what you want to see? Individual videos don’t pay to be in the recommended feed. There’s no opportunity to see an ad except when you watch a video. YouTube has a perfectly balanced incentive to show you more content you’ll watch. Where is the exclusive choice between (what the user wants to watch) and (what makes more…

Technically correctly, although there is a subtle nuance here. What you want to see is not necessarily the same as what you will end up watching. Just because you dislike a video doesn't mean you wouldn't watch it. Or put another way, you can tell YouTube what you want (to be perceived socially as wanting) to see, but the algorithm knows what you actually want to see.

Isn't it more like YouTube can condition you to get obsessed and practically addicted, that's better for revenue so they do their best to do that?
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