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On YouTube’s recommendation system

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Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#241

Post by iszomer »

robbomacrae wrote: post #179
swalsh wrote: post #11

The reccomendation system is absolutely dangerous. Just this summer, I watched one video on peppers out of curiousity. By the end of summer I've got multiple different varieties growing, and all the accessories to support them. I'm really enjoying my garden, but it's very unlikely I would have started one without the youtube algorithm. Similarly my doctor reccomended I exercise more, so I started running. Then I goog…

YouTube's recommendation system (and googles search engine if you see the comments in the other post today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764 ) somehow escapes the flak that other systems, such as Facebook news & posts, get but I find it's equally damaging to society. There seems to exist a downward spiral where content that is prioritized to be attention grabbing over all else gets the most clicks and the…

I came to a similar conundrum and concluded that a split across two Google accounts was necessary to keep youtube subscriptions and recommendations in check. Initially, I wanted to separate betwween personal and work but it has now more or less turned into a generic filter between intelligent and casual topics. Incidentally, political content along with it's secondary and tertiary discourse gets the same treatment with little to no exceptions.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#242

Post by el_benhameen »

skybrian wrote: post #150
swalsh wrote: post #11

The reccomendation system is absolutely dangerous. Just this summer, I watched one video on peppers out of curiousity. By the end of summer I've got multiple different varieties growing, and all the accessories to support them. I'm really enjoying my garden, but it's very unlikely I would have started one without the youtube algorithm. Similarly my doctor reccomended I exercise more, so I started running. Then I goog…

I'm wondering what you mean by "dangerous" and what level of irony you're at. :-)

No irony, it’s dangerous. Wait until you get into woodworking youtube … you might be missing parts of your fingers, and you’ll definitely be missing most of your wallet.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#243

Post by merth »

jimmaswell wrote: post #210
merth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a mistake of trying some jazz 5 years ago, now my feed cursed. 99% of suggested videos are not clicked yet youtube insist of showing same stuff for years.

Have you tried clicking "not interested" on the videos?

yeah, didn't make a dent. cant click thousands videos one by one. you show a video 5 times and if I never click, youtube should get the hint.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#244

Post by throwaway192874 »

jeffwask wrote: post #38

I hate how it has now started slipping Hollywood movies into my recommendation feed. All of a sudden i'm seeing the credits on a 2 hour movie after watching a 15 minute UrbanX video. NO YOUTUBE, BAD. If I wanted to watch shitty movies I wouldn't be on YouTube.

it recommended me (to rent) what I thought was a science documentary about space and the cosmos once and i just trusted it wouldn't recommend me some crazy conspiracy theory and rented it... NOPE.

It was about how ancient aliens mined out the moon and control us or some other crazy pills kind of idea

My actual normal video recommendations are quite good and shift alongside my interests over time quite well without prolific use of "not interested" or incognito shrugs. Rented movies seems bad though, especially since I'm already a paying premium user!

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#245

Post by throwaway192874 »

hwers wrote: post #142
htrp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't say things like this without telling us what extension this is

This one https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout... I also remove comments and 'similar videos'.

Why would you possibly want YouTube without the comments? They are one of the fun parts!

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#247

Post by deanCommie »

emkoemko wrote: post #236
kyle-rb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Explore page seems to be globally-curated stuff not based on personal taste, so it seems like the opposite of recommended. And is that the main page for you? When I open the website or the Android app I get "Home". "Explore" is a separate tab. "Home" is pretty much filled with recommendations from channels I've watched recently, no corporate stuff (excluding ads). I do see the issue of recommendations being flood…

yea but its like 100% contend that is corporate... if i want to watch late night talk shows i would do that on my TV.... and most of those videos don't get the most views anyways on YouTube so its basically YouTube promoting corporate media

It's not promoting it - it's showing what other people on YouTube are watching. It's an unbiased look at what other people are interested in.

Home page is the one that's being promoted to you.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#248

Post by deanCommie »

emkoemko wrote: post #234
kenjackson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What corporate stuff do you have on your main page? Mine is all pretty much filled with content that matches what I watch.

if you try watch any independent news, YouTube will never recommend more of it but will give you MSNBC,CNN etc its bad, years ago the algorithm was very good,it would give you a mix of what your into and new interesting stuff now it seems like its pushing corporate content.

What do you consider "independent news"?

The majority of "independent news" have a highly partisan or highly unreliable tilt (both to the Left and to the Right): https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/

Interestingly enough, most people complain about the opposite: that if you watch some piece of slightly tilted piece of content on YouTube, the recommendation goes wholehog and pushes you towards the same radicalization direction, and so you start by watching someone complaining about Feminist Frequency and before you notice you're getting recommended White Nationalist content.

If anything it's probably good that if you're watching "independent news", that the algorithm tries to moderate you with some mainstream content...

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#249

Post by tsian2 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #155

Be careful with YouTube. For years people have talked about social media's effect on mental health, but personally, I've found the biggest hit to be YouTube. Their recommendation system is really the heart of the beast. It's essentially a dopamine reward system, not too dissimilar from a slot machine at a casino. Pull the lever (refresh the page) and get random results! It sucks you in to a cycle of refreshing, findi…

If you're already subscribed to what you consider to be the best channels and they're feeding you more content than you have time to watch, then the recommendation section becomes almost useless. As long as you're using grid view and hiding videos you've watched or aren't interested in. Of course you can still waste hours this way but at least you won't have to keep refreshing in hope of good content.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#250

Post by matttb »

stevofolife wrote: post #147
jeffwask wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again" to make it stop.

You started playing WoW Classic and it was able to recommend WoW-related videos. It did its job. What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? That's not recommendation, that's mass surveillance and psychological manipulation. But on a useful note, maybe YouTube needs to provide a function to see a list of random videos that are unexplor…

I want it to diversify a lot more. There's a lot of room between 'WoW related videos' and 98% of your sidebar is one particular creator (asmon).
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