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Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

youtube.googleblog.com

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Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#251

Post by oh_sigh »

rasz wrote: post #194
beart wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible your adblocker is preventing YouTube from tracking your watched video history. I know pi-hole does this by default unless you whitelist certain domains.

user agent hits Google random-string.googlevideo.com/videoplayback with referrer, ip, signature and several other parameters coding your individual user id, Google knows every single time who, why and when requested particular resource.

Just because they have the data doesn't necessarily mean that they use it. They might rely on some javascript XHR to tell them when a video is really watched. Just guessing here.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#252

Post by jaredtn »

Recommendation systems are often too specific, full of recency bias. I use YouTube for classical music while I'm working, so I play several hours of video every day. My feed is full of similar videos that are all the same! YouTube can step it up by offering a wider variety of potential interesting videos.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#253

Post by tyfon »

beezischillin wrote: post #236
tyfon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's even worse when you make videos, especially when they search for something that is episodic like a let's play. I'd much rather have youtube recommend episode 1 or the first video of the playlist to people but instead it gives them a random one in the middle. This causes the viewer to get mad and press thumbs down. This also makes the "average viewed minutes" go drastically down. That's probably the source of m…

That recommendation issue you point out is extremely annoying since YouTube has no way to reverse the order of videos in a playlist. More often than not for some reason Let's Play and other chronological video authors create their playlists in a reverse chronological order, latest first so it's basically impossible to binge them unless you manually click on the next episode yourself.

I make mine in chronological order!

It's actually just a playlist setting for the creator but the default is reverse and that makes the whole list useless. You even have chrome and firefox plugins to fix it.

I also link the playlist in each youtube description but unfortunately they are not so easy to spot on app/tv/game consoles.

Also, in this case I think it's OK to youtube-dl the list and play them in order locally.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#254

Post by kbrackbill »

rapind wrote: post #170
mindcrime wrote: post #145

My biggest problem with YT recommendations is that they dramatically overweight recent videos when generating the recommendations. I mean, I can spend a week doing nothing but watching (well, listening) to videos of classical music performances, and my recommendations will be full of classical music, exactly as you'd expect. Then I watch one random one-off thing, like "15 funny pitbull fails" and suddenly ALL of my r…

I have the opposite problem. I'm only interested in new videos for the most part, and my recommendations are filled with videos from months ago. It would be much better if they would give us a flag or some date range options. Obviously this increases UI complexity, but maybe it doesn't need to be that prominent?

Things like this were a constant source of frustration at google. The philosophy there was to streamline the experience for showing ads to the masses rather than provide any features for power users. Feature requests like this were brushed off by labeling the requester "not the target user".

I guess we all know this by now, but google doesn't care about your being able to use its products in a reasonable way. In some sense, this makes sense since I bet the overlap of power users and people with ad blockers is pretty high.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#255

Post by kbrackbill »

Yetanfou wrote: post #227
slig wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on mobile, there's an incognito mode (at least on Android).

If you're on mobile there's alternative ways of watching Youtube videos, at least if you're on Android: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe No ads, no direct tracking [1], just videos. [1] Google can still watch your device downloading videos of course...

NewPipe is great. I'm honestly kind of surprised that it's allowed on the play store.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#256

Post by nradov »

paulddraper wrote: post #203
maxxxxx wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the AI stuff is really still incredibly dumb. Same for Amazon: Buy a mixer and suddenly you will be haunted everywhere by ads offering more mixers.

You think that's dumb, but I bet the marketing data behind that says otherwise. You think "I already have a mixer, idiot!" but in reality the chance that you are interested in buying a mixer just went from 1% to 2%. (Because you want another one, because you want to gift one, because you returned yours, etc.)

I'll take that bet. Show us the marketing data.

So far it looks just as dumb to me.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#257

Post by pisky »

kbrackbill wrote: post #255
Yetanfou wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on mobile there's alternative ways of watching Youtube videos, at least if you're on Android: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe No ads, no direct tracking [1], just videos. [1] Google can still watch your device downloading videos of course...

NewPipe is great. I'm honestly kind of surprised that it's allowed on the play store.

It's not afaics. It's on f-droid though.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#259

Post by TheForumTroll »

atonse wrote: post #40

We currently don't allow our son to watch anything on youtube, simply because it's a cesspool of horrible videos for children. You're always almost one click away from some violent video where cartoon characters are getting their limbs chopped off, etc. And it's sickening that Google's done nothing about it. Secondly, I can't watch any video without it taking over my recommendations. Alex Jones for example. I still h…

>And it's sickening that Google's done nothing about it.

So all of us should be handheld on YT because of your son? No thanks. Violence should be allowed. The problem is at your end.

Re: Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube

#260

Post by zozbot123 »

kbrackbill wrote: post #254
rapind wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite problem. I'm only interested in new videos for the most part, and my recommendations are filled with videos from months ago. It would be much better if they would give us a flag or some date range options. Obviously this increases UI complexity, but maybe it doesn't need to be that prominent?

Things like this were a constant source of frustration at google. The philosophy there was to streamline the experience for showing ads to the masses rather than provide any features for power users. Feature requests like this were brushed off by labeling the requester "not the target user". I guess we all know this by now, but google doesn't care about your being able to use its products in a reasonable way. In some…

> In some sense, this makes sense since I bet the overlap of power users and people with ad blockers is pretty high.

Maybe you should speak for yourself? I do not run ad blockers (much less anything targeting Google ads!) and the experience I get as a power user on Google services is no better than anyone else's - although, to be fair, it's not noticeably worse, either. (And mind you, the average ad supplier on the Internet is a hell of a lot shadier than Google, Facebook or any of the big "household name" tech companies!) I'm sure that plenty of other people here can confirm my POV.

Google's trouble engaging with power users as of late is entirely self-inflicted. There's quite simply zero doubt about that.

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