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Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

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Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#51
post #46

You really have to pick a category. For example, "News & Politics" is decent. Of course, an alternate ranking does nothing to fix the problem of videos that have simply been banned by YouTube. Lots of good stuff is just missing now. Freedom of speech: tearing out a man's tongue doesn't prove him wrong, but it does prove that you fear his message and it strongly suggests that his message might be correct.

Yeah the education category is alright https://www.fairtrending.com/?lang=en&fc=cat&cat=27&tag=&msc...

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#52

OK... opinion post here... hell with that... rant here. I have to say the whole notion of "trending" I find ridiculous, and even a bit offensive. That somehow because a zillion people find something interesting, that I should, too, makes clear that the best we've done in filtering is assume people are sheep and need to be "fed" as such. Even with the targeted suggestions they do when they look at my viewing history (…

I totally agree that popular stuff is beneath us techno wizards, but thats not the point of fairtrending.

The magic of social media is that corperate executives and media conglomerates don't get to pick what goes to the top. The users do. That's why Facebook 'curating' the trending news feed was so messed up. The whole point of trending is to see what actual real people are interested in, not just what a dozen editors in a backroom want you to see.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#53

Pewdiepie has the #1 spot on fairtrending and is no where on Youtube's trending. Ellen Degeneres and Jimmy Falon are you Youtube trending but nowhere on fairtrending. "Elitist corperate control over mass media is great because I don't like what normal people do." -people in this hackernews thread

Pewdiepie has the #1 spot on fairtrending and is no where on Youtube's trending. Ellen Degeneres and Jimmy Falon are you Youtube trending but nowhere on fairtrending. "Elitist corperate control over mass media is great because I don't like what normal people do." -people in this hackernews thread

What about those of us who would rather stick a fork in our eye than watch PewDiePie, Degeneres, or Fallon? I’m not seeing the praise for what you’re calling “elitist corporate control,” so much as despair that the supposedly fair option is at least as hideous as the rigged option. Beyond that if we define normal as in Normal Distribution, then who’s fault is it if you expected to find the middle of that distribution on a site called Hacker News? Most people would be bored out of their skin on this site and that’s fine, just as it’s fine for a subset of the population with shared interests to enjoy it.

If you want normal as in average, you’re barking up the wrong tree, and FaceBook, Instagram, and the rest have you covered. If you’re seeing a lot of praise for the YT algorithm, rather than dislike of both algorithm and lack of curation, I must be missing it and you could maybe point it out?

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because those videos don't actually drive much engagement. Most sermon videos -- for example -- tend to be relatively slow-paced, lightly edited (if at all), and do not use any visuals beyond a fixed camera on the speaker. All of these factors are poison to engagement, even for users who might otherwise be interested in the content.

Do you know how many views Easter sermons get, or are you just assuming it's not much? I would be quite surprised if the youtube algorithm is looking at video editing style.

> I would be quite surprised if the youtube algorithm is looking at video editing style.

I didn't mean to imply it does -- at least, not directly. But those factors affect how users interact with the videos, which YouTube measures as engagement. And a typical sermon is likely to look especially bad on certain engagement metrics; in particular, their length means that users are less likely to watch them to completion, and even less likely to watch multiple videos in a single session.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#56
It seems like they're doing something similar to how Reddit's "hot" algorithm reportedly works. As of 2015, that was supposedly like:

log(upVotes - downVotes) - (hoursOld / 12.5),

according to https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-reddit-ranking-algo....

Fair Trending basically differs just in the log() part, substituting (fractionUpVotes * views) for (upVotes - downVotes). This could change the ranking if a lot of people view without voting either way.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#57

Pewdiepie has the #1 spot on fairtrending and is no where on Youtube's trending. Ellen Degeneres and Jimmy Falon are you Youtube trending but nowhere on fairtrending. "Elitist corperate control over mass media is great because I don't like what normal people do." -people in this hackernews thread

Spot on!

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#58
I don't care about the popular crap on YouTube. I do care about the tiny subset of YouTube which is relevant to my interests. YouTube should accurately recommend related content, but does a terrible job, and is apparently getting worse. This is noticed by the obscure content creators, here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRB8O08PjnA&t=1s

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Elitist corperate control over mass media is great because I don't like what normal people do." -people in this hackernews thread This seems blown out of proportion. "I don't like what normal people do, so I will probably not look at trending to find content" is what most people are saying.

Fairtrending isn't about recommending stuff you personally are interested in. It's designed to acurately report what is actually popular and not just being promoted by Youtube. I think that went over the head of the people complaining that their personalized recommendations are more interesting to them.

I think everyone gets that trending isn't personalized. It's possible that a lot of people have no interest in what is objectively trending, and defer to personalized subscriptions and other feeds. I'd imagine that most people are interested in what is trending (otherwise, it wouldn't really be trending), but HN is hardly a realistic sample of most people, so you can expect people here to be surprised that X, Y and Z are trending over the world.

Re: Fair Trending: Objectively-Ranked Trending YouTube Videos

#60

The initial page it showed me was a trainwreck of absolute garbage. I think they need to go and work on their sums a bit more.

>I think they need to go and work on their sums a bit more.

What does this mean? Are you saying Youtube needs to improve, Fair Trending needs to improve, or the viewers need to improve?

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