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‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

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Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#211

Post by davidhalter »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…

Same here.

Since I am not as good with ignoring stupid stuff, I just open stuff I don't want to see in my recommendations in a private window. Works great!

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#212

Post by phone8675309 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…

You definitely don't sound like an outlier.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#214

Post by Minor49er »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #197
nobleach wrote: post #115

At the end of 2016, I was bored and decided to watch a flat earth video. I spent a few evenings going down that conspiracy rabbit-hole as it was completely fascinating. (I couldn't tell if these folks were expertly trolling, or if they were serious). Once I was back to reality (2017) I was done wanting to see anything conspiracy related. It took a year for that stuff to disappear from my right-hand column. I just kep…

Why didn't you click on "Not interested"? It only takes a couple of days for interesting stuff to disappear.

My luck with this has been pretty mixed. I tell YouTube that I'm really not interested in things like Jordan Peterson or ASMR by telling them to not recommend that video or that channel whenever they come up. If I'm lucky enough, those suggestions will die down a bit, sometimes for a few weeks it seems. But eventually, they will start popping back up.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#215

Post by tasty_freeze »

I recently took the radical step of buying a youtube family subscription. I was ad-blocking anyway, but if we only consume free things, then we should expect to be exploited in some way by the websites we consume. The family subscription is $18/month, and I am also spending about $30/month on patreon support.

I'm hoping as a paying customer the company/providers will take my needs more seriously than the people who they have to milk for attention. It very likely won't make a bit of difference unless enough people do the same, and I have little hope of that happening. Most people would rather complain about free stuff than pay for anything.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#216

Post by margo209320 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…

The main advantage of using YouTube with an account, is being able to see what's new from all your subscriptions.

To get rid of the annoying stuff, I added this to my uBlock Origin filters:

www.youtube.com###comments

www.youtube.com###related

www.youtube.com##.ytp-show-tiles.videowall-endscreen.ytp-player-content.html5-endscreen

This of course also eliminates ads.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#217

Post by jobu »

gfxgirl wrote: post #44

I know I'm old but dang for some reason I really dislike recommendations from almost any company. For media I grew up in the 70s and had the TV Guide. I'd look through to see what I wanted to watch, circle some things and then watch. No spying what-so-ever. So, I like for example HN where AFAIK I'm not tracked so much and I choose what I want from the top of the list. Conversely I mostly hate Amazon, Netflix, Amazon…

It amazes me that advertising companies have been able to brainwash companies into paying more for "targeted ads". Usually I spend a few days doing research into whatever big purchase I plan to make, then for the next 6-12 months I get spammed with ads for that product on every platform. It's such a waste of their money and my time.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#218

Post by dave5104 »

renlo wrote: post #153
qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…

When I watch junk on YouTube I need to open the link using Chrome's incognito mode. When are companies going to give us more control over what inputs we give their recommendation algorithms? There should be a button that says "hey, I'm going to watch this because I'm only human, but please, don't show this junk to me". Or, "hey, I understand this content creator has thousands of videos and uploads content daily, but,…

I've had pretty good luck simply deleting the junk videos from my watch history. I can't recall ever seeing a similar junk video being recommended after religiously taking that action.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#219

Post by AlexCoventry »

There are chrome extensions which disable the recommendations sidebar in YouTube. I recommend using one.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-youtube-rec...

Not sure if this is the one I use, because I'm on mobile ATM. But it's a similar idea, at least.

Re: ‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

#220

Post by 13415 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

For me YouTube recommendations are not toxic, they are so amazing I some times wonder how comes the world around is not heaven when everybody has free access to this. That's because I always watch high-quality educational content and some beautiful comforting and inspiring music. So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn…

For me it's the opposite, for some reason practically all Youtube recommendations outside of the subscribed channels are completely useless and I would never watch them. There are only few exceptions. It's not that the recommendations are toxic, they are just extremely bad.

The algorithm doesn't seem to be able to learn what interests me. My suspicion is that this is so because I have a lot of diverging interests that change from month to month. Still, this does not explain why Youtube keeps recommending channels and topics even when I never watch them.

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