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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)

#361

Post by MeatBro »

haolez wrote: post #91
gfxgirl wrote: post #44

I know I'm old but dang for some reason I really dislike recommendations from almost any company. For media I grew up in the 70s and had the TV Guide. I'd look through to see what I wanted to watch, circle some things and then watch. No spying what-so-ever. So, I like for example HN where AFAIK I'm not tracked so much and I choose what I want from the top of the list. Conversely I mostly hate Amazon, Netflix, Amazon…

I open private tabs as well for some videos that interest me, but that I wouldn't like to keep receiving recommendations on similar videos. I thought I was alone :)

You can look into invidious BTW

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

#362

Post by MeatBro »

eecks wrote: post #119
gfxgirl wrote: post #44

I know I'm old but dang for some reason I really dislike recommendations from almost any company. For media I grew up in the 70s and had the TV Guide. I'd look through to see what I wanted to watch, circle some things and then watch. No spying what-so-ever. So, I like for example HN where AFAIK I'm not tracked so much and I choose what I want from the top of the list. Conversely I mostly hate Amazon, Netflix, Amazon…

I've never been into recommendations and I find most are awful. TikTok is addicting but it's all rubbish content. I feel like I am in the minority in how I use YouTube. If someone shows me a video I'll watch it, but I don't browse YouTube.

Many people nowadays use client apps and invidious for YouTube.

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

#363

Post by MeatBro »

orange_tee wrote: post #189
gfxgirl wrote: post #44

I know I'm old but dang for some reason I really dislike recommendations from almost any company. For media I grew up in the 70s and had the TV Guide. I'd look through to see what I wanted to watch, circle some things and then watch. No spying what-so-ever. So, I like for example HN where AFAIK I'm not tracked so much and I choose what I want from the top of the list. Conversely I mostly hate Amazon, Netflix, Amazon…

I much prefer a really good and feature full browse and search functionality rather than recommendations. Youtube has really poor search and even worse browsing ability.

The browse would be good if it wasn't location based

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

#364

Post by AlexCoventry »

aendruk wrote: post #240
AlexCoventry wrote: post #219

There are chrome extensions which disable the recommendations sidebar in YouTube. I recommend using one. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-youtube-rec... Not sure if this is the one I use, because I'm on mobile ATM. But it's a similar idea, at least.

A simpler solution is to just use your ad blocker: www.youtube.com###related It's worth taking moment to familiarize yourself with adding this kind of filter.

Thanks.

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

#365

Post by falcrist »

MeatBro wrote: post #359
falcrist wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it many times now: people should be avoiding "the algorithm" as much as they can on streaming and social media sites. On Facebook "avoiding the algorithm" entails creating a friends list of all your friends, then using the link to that list as a portal into facebook. Posts and shares are listed in chronological order without anything missing (which is absolutely NOT true for the normal news feed, even when…

I think client apps can help a lot in all of these cases. Like newpipe for YouTube or infinity for reddit. They clear out tracking as much as possible and let you browse without logging in. But the website of all these site feels useless and slow to me. Recommendations were good on yt, but I think they stopped it during the election. So, I defaulted to newpipe and freetube.

In my experience, recommendations are still good. You just can't rely on them anymore because if you keep following them, you tend to go to whatever is popular rather than going deeper down the rabbit hole like you used to.

You have to mainly keep to your subscriptions, and use recommendations occasionally.

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

#366

Post by JSavageOne »

Youtube prioritizing "watch time" is why Youtubers take 1 minute of content and stretch it out to 10 minutes. It's an enormous waste of everyone's time, and it's crazy to think about the enormous power and influence Google has over humanity's behavior.

I always wondered why Youtube never tried to get their algorithm to optimize for quality. For example, one way to do this would be to look at comment lengths and threads. I'd imagine that for more quality videos, you'd have people writing longer comments and responding to each other.

I'd be in favor of regulation enabling users to have some semblance of control over the recommendation algorithm given that it has such an enormous effect on their lives. Ideally you'd have competitors driving improvements like this, but Youtube is effectively a monopoly at this point.

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