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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)

#321

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

vl wrote: post #227
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…

First of all, article is incorrect: for a long time now YT optimizes recommendations not for watch time, but for life-time engagement. YT probably has the most advanced QT ML in the world. Second, it’s trivial to re-adjust recommendations: go to history and delete everything you didn’t like, and recommendations instantly will become much better.

> First of all, article is incorrect: for a long time now YT optimizes recommendations not for watch time, but for life-time engagement. YT probably has the most advanced QT ML in the world.

Lifetime engagement is a function of watch time, right?

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

#322

Post by dokem »

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…

I mostly agree with you except I find it’s easy to steer the recommendation algorithm which is part of why I like it. Sometimes I go on a political/toxic YouTube binge for an evening or two but feel I am able to steer my front page back to more constructive content pretty easily.

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

#323

Post by barrkel »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #309
barrkel wrote: post #5

I find YT does a gradient ascent into more popular videos. I start out listening to a song with 1000 views, I get recommended 10k view songs, then 100k, and before you know it it's back in the mainstream. There's no way to surf a niche, to hunt in a pile of bin ends. I imagine it's similar for conspiracy stuff. It'll point you in the direction of the most convincing nonsense.

> I find YT does a gradient ascent into more popular videos. Doesn't this totally contradict the claim that youtube pushes people to the extremes?

It's within a category. I mean I don't get recommended music videos when I'm watching an episodic video podcast, nor vice versa. But within those categories I get heavily pointed at the most popular for the category. I hypothesize it's similar for conspiracy content.

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

#324

Post by api »

Barrin92 wrote: post #318
api wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube links and embedded videos will tilt your search experience too. The problem is that the algorithm seems biased so that one or two visits to shit causes you to fall down into a spiral of shit. That's probably because statistically when averaged across the entire YouTube user-base, shit leads to more time on the site. Shit is usually more divisive, inflammatory, etc., and negative emotions are the easiest path…

>The problem is that the algorithm seems biased so that one or two visits to shit causes you to fall down into a spiral of shit. after months of having a fairly normal youtube experience basically only playing music I clicked on one Jordan Peterson video that was in a news article, and for the next few weeks all I got was alt-right content in my feed. I even tried to get rid of it by explicitly saying I don't want it…

Yeah I’ve had that experience too. It’s easy to see how YouTube perhaps almost single handedly caused an explosion of fascism among passive media consumers. You hit one of those videos and it rabbit holes you.

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

#325

Post by wpietri »

lopmotr wrote: post #286
wpietri wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fan of Reddit's AmITheAsshole and I'm always stunned by the stories of teens whose life plan is to become an influencer. As a sociological phenomenon, it's fascinating: celebrity distilled down to an implausibly pure form, like Paris Hilton rendered into uncut white powder. But as somebody who feels responsibility to the kids in my extended family, it's a worry. I'm not even sure how to explain to them that it…

You know what's worse than aspirations to become a celebrity? No aspirations at all. I know people like that. They just seem to see the future as a regular life with nothing particularly to do in it except exist and perform normal regular practical activities to sustain it. I can't imagine how dull it must be, but they seem to cope, and get all their excitement from immediate events. I hope you can be happy that your…

Just to be clear, I know of no relatives who want to be influencers. It's only a hypothetical problem for me.

I also have never met people with "no aspirations at all" and am not sure they exist. Although you seem concerned about diminishing people's ambitions, you also seem to denigrate people who want to have "a regular life", as if there's something wrong with people who want to settle down and raise kids and live a good life. That's never been my path, but I respect it a lot.

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

#326

Post by Kim_Bruning »

nullc wrote: post #315
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #147

The Paperclip Maximizer is a thought experiment that shows that if you apply a powerful AGI to something completely innocuous, things can go hilariously wrong over time. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer People are amused to read the story, and then go on their way. But what happens if you apply a rather less powerful AI to something else even just a little bit less innocuous? (like optimizing to grab…

I once contemplated a notion of optimization process risks where we should consider how narrow a target out of the space of all possible universes the process could pull ours into. Unfortunately, I realized that even a simple phase-locked loop -- like what you use to condition an oscillator to be in sync with TAI using GPS -- can actually hit absurdly narrow targets... e.g. two oscillators a continent apart humming a…

Would fitness landscapes help for part of it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape

They're typically used for reasoning about other things, but there's a few useful intuitions you can draw.

Notably, you can't optimize to a point that is not on the fitness landscape in the first place... so the following comic can't happen: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/

Which doesn't mean there can't be any surprises of course!

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

#327

Post by combatentropy »

tsomctl wrote: post #4
thatishard wrote: post #3

My youtube sucks, I'm always looking for stuff to kill my time and youtube recommend the same crap videos 500 times in a row. It take a long time to find something I want to watch.

I've been loading the Youtube homepage every 15 minutes for the past week (I've been sick). It's the same videos over and over again. If I scrolled past it the first time, I'm still going to scroll past it the 100th time I see it.

Agreed. This tweak to their formula would improve it for me masssively: show the video on my Home page just once. If I click reload, show me an entirely new set.

Someone may say, this would bother others, who saw something interesting but didn't click it this time. For me, it would train me to open those in a new tab or save them to my Watch Later list. Or just make it an opt-in feature, this aggressive renewal of the home page.

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

#328

Post by nitrogen »

jessriedel wrote: post #207
_0ffh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use the "watch later" feature anymore. It's always a bit irritating when you want to catch up on the list only to find that a video has been removed in the mean time. So I switched to archiving using youtube-dl. Also nice to have a few backup videos in case of an internet outage.

This is conceivable to me, bit I've never had this happen. What sort of videos would be removed that you actually wanted to watch?

Cody's Lab had a video about refining metal ores removed, as one example.

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

#330

Post by droptablemain »

The author claims that RT is a "state-sponsored propaganda outlet." That paints an unfortunate and misleading image about RT programming. RT, for example, is the home of On Contact -- a Chris Hedges program, as well as former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and "conservative comedian" Dennis Miller. To imply that these people are useful stooges in a foreign propaganda apparatus is rather insulting.
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