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

engadget.com

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

#261

Post by Kbelicius »

maroonblazer wrote: post #106
harry8 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in a minority. Why do you think they built their recommendation system with you in mind at all? You've already paid, you no longer impact the fit of the short term revenue maximization objective function.

I suspect daily/weekly/monthly active users and minutes viewed are a metric they're interested in maximizing. That would be incentive to optimize the recommendation system for paid users too.

I think that, concerning paid users, what they would be interested in would just be daily/weekly/monthly paying users. As for minutes watched they'd be incentivized to reduce it as far as it is possible while still retaining a paying user. After all, they don't show more ads if a paying user watches more minutes of video. At least not yet.

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

#262

Post by notahacker »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #202
rtsil wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Facebook cares so little about scam content I'd regard them as actively complicit in the scams by this stage. Reported a scam as blatant as a Nigerian Prince (crypto product with "guaranteed income" of thousands per week which is "recommended by Martin Lewis" who actually took legal action against them over fake recommendations, according to a fake news website which rips off BBC News web design) to them and the feedback widget later informed me it had been reviewed and found to not be violating their scam policy. And yes, I got more of that type of website in my feed due to "engagement", which I suppose at least wastes advertiser dollars...

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

#263

Post by qwertox »

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…

Apparently you cared enough about it to start watching it after reading the title. A video with "Rust" and "Tokio" in the title will probably be unwatchable if it has a like to dislike ratio of 1 to 3, even if the title signals you that you want to see that video. But since there no longer exists this ratio, you'll have to watch it partially only to notice that it is bad. And then dislike it (and then have this dislike action have no effect whatsoever in future recommendations, apparently).

I absolutely hate it that they removed the dislike counter, it was so valuable.

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

#264

Post by chillfox »

johnfn wrote: post #243
chillfox wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have the same experience of YouTube recommending just more of whatever I just watched, and at most recommendations would stick around for 6 weeks before it forgot about a subject. That was until earlier this year when I watched some videos from MrBallen (camp fire stories based on real events), and ever since then I have gotten my recommendations filled with crazy conspiracy stuff. It stopped recommending h…

Out of curiosity, do you watch those videos? Is that what trains the algorithm to show more of them?

Nope, never watched any of the conspiracy videos. I did however watch quite a few of MrBallens videos, specifically all the cave/diving ones, they are just great stories.

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

#266

Post by dncornholio »

amatecha wrote: post #19

This reminds me of how games ( cough LeagueOfLegends cough ) match me up with a player that I literally just reported for harassment, griefing etc. in the previous match. Like, there weren't any other possible players to match me with out of the many thousands? I don't mind waiting a few more seconds to match up with someone else! I'm getting a lot of responses as if I expect the player to be totally blocked from mat…

Your solution is to lower the chance of a rematch. But it's not impossible. Right?

Who says LoL doesn't do this already? Maybe you did got matched in a this unlikely scenario.

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

#267

Post by sytelus »

robswc wrote: post #96

Honestly, I feel like YouTube recommendation is the _only_ good thing YouTube has lol. I often see a ton of complaints about the recommendations but I've honestly never had an issue. I know that yes, you click on one video and now all the sudden you get 100s of that type... but it sorta works for me since it seems like that "effect" wears off just as fast as it starts. For example, I have a friend that's into cars. I…

Most people don’t understand here that folks at YouTube have probably ran thousands of variations of their algorithms and their current system is likely the best yet for keeping highest engagement on average. The issue might be that majority of the population might love recency bias. Folks here are not representative of general pop but they get overrun by majority preferences.

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

#268

Post by vodkapump »

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…

I have done this for recommendations, and it now only shows videos I have recently watched, usually the 3-4 previous videos I watched.

If I click on anything I wouldn't usually watch, it is then the only thing that goes in my recommendation for a good 2-3 weeks. I watched one dashcam video the other day that someone linked me, which had the tags Tesla and Elon Musk.... Now the only thing I get in my recommended is incredibly strange videos about Elon Musk and Teslas.

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

#269

Post by shultays »

I am pretty sure it is working as intended. And the intention is not for you to customize your feed, it is for youtube to customize it for better retention in average. In dislike's case, you are marking the video as controversial which is a good metric for the video and youtube pushes it more

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

#270

Post by [deleted] »

honkler wrote: post #188
brigandish wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you will watch ze approved media, and you will be happy.

[deleted]
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