Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On YouTube’s recommendation system

blog.youtube

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 337 posts

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#261

Post by poink »

joe_the_user wrote: post #251
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'd just note some things Youtube doesn't have. It doesn't have any "the key words I'm interested are" section. It doesn't have any fine grained "show me less like this" or "show me more like that" options. That all the filters of net (Google, FB, etc) have convinced users that an out-of-their control recommendation system is a triumph of this sort of system. If you just demand the recommendation system be different,…

> I'd say instead, users are often unthinking and need to be educated.

Oh, is that all?

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#262

Post by owaislone »

Without getting into all the moral and ethical issues, YouTube recommendation system is absolutely useless. I watched one Tesla model S plaid video and now 50% of my feed is about Tesla. I never discover anything new on YouTube anymore. It seems stuck in a very fast feedback loop and has zero discoverability for me. I remember when you could actually "surf" YouTube and discover so much interesting content.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#264

Post by jackson1442 »

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…

This is where DuckDuckGo shines. I never go to the YouTube homepage since I just search `thing i'm looking for!yt` and it takes me straight to the search results for "thing i'm looking for."

Granted, I've never watched much YouTube, but that curbs it even more.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#265

Post by Renaud »

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…

Unhook is a godsend. I'm still spending too much time on YT but at least I am not sucked in by the endless Algorithm of never ending videos.

Unhook for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#266

Post by jackson1442 »

beckman466 wrote: post #126

This is all horseshit. YouTube should be a utility, democratically owned and governed. When are we going to stop pretending this profit-seeking ad platform isn’t dangerous, and start hosting videos according to other metrics than ‘monetizability’ instead.

I think you're about ten steps ahead of where we are now - remember that _the Internet_ is not considered a utility, at least not in the US. How could we consider a capitalistically created internet property a utility when not even our publicly-funded Internet infrastructure is considered a utility?

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#267

Post by mrtksn »

mjsweet wrote: post #163

I fell into a massive YouTube recommendation vortex two 1/2 years ago when my barista basically insisted I take all his Cafe's coffee grounds home and compost them. I had no idea how to compost (he was sick of telling customers it was going into landfill. every. single. day). I now have over 20kg's of worms spread over 30+ worm bins and I'm taking organic residue from all over the district and turning it into valuabl…

Why did you leave? Money or fulfillment?

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#268

Post by stevofolife »

dgritsko wrote: post #160
stevofolife wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? Actually, I think they kind of are trying to do this (in a sense), if you read the article: > Our system then compares your viewing habits with those that are similar to you and uses that information to suggest other content you may want to watch. So if you like tennis videos and our system…

That is true. But the word “next” makes all the difference in the world. If you know what I mean.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#270

Post by freyr »

marapuru wrote: post #135
LeoPanthera wrote: post #54

A lot of comments here seem to not know: 1. If you don't have your YouTube activity history enabled, the algorithm doesn't remember what you've watched and you'll probably get clickbaity/junky recommendations. 2. If you have set your history to expire after some amount of time, it will start re-recommending videos you've already seen once it has forgotten you have watched them. You can set both options here: https://…

I'm pretty sure Youtube knows that people who did one of the things you mentioned get fed up with their crappy recommendations and enable the recommendations, just to be 'fed' with new content. Which in turn is great for their monetization strategy. It would be nice if Youtube offered a feature where the recommended lists are completely removed and youtube simple loads as a search bar. Where you find what you are loo…

Or you’re underestimating the difference between what appeals to you and what appeals to the average visitor.

It wouldn’t make sense for them to show objectively “crappy” content to every new visitor, just to get OP to turn on their recommendations. What we consider crappy is what other people consider entertaining.

Post reply on HN