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On YouTube’s recommendation system

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Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#51

Post by kikokikokiko »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #30

Why don't they let me tell them the interests that they are trying to infer? I'd be really happy to review sets of recommendations and indicate the kind of videos i like and the kind i don't.

Because this way YOU would have the power to decide what you see, and why, I ask, would the biggest corporation in the world not use this power themselves? They can literally change minds and public opinion using it. Imagine the implications in terms of public police, elections, even the general zeitgeist of the population about the company itself. Google will NEVER allow it's users to decide for themselves what they want to see.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#53

Post by oehpr »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #30

Why don't they let me tell them the interests that they are trying to infer? I'd be really happy to review sets of recommendations and indicate the kind of videos i like and the kind i don't.

In some vein they kind of do this by letting you like or dislike videos. The problem is almost all of them see this as an opportunity to signal others. Which means that your likes and dislikes are also value judgements, that you may or may not be comfortable making.

They have at least have "not interested" but it's a clunky system.

TikTok is having more luck because they're getting this data by watching WHEN you stop watching a video. Video's automatically play, so the default signal when you swipe past something is "no".

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#54

Post by LeoPanthera »

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://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/youtube

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#55

Post by atum47 »

I always wonder if those big platforms commercialize recommendations. I'm pretty sure it happens one way or another with the music app. The auto generated playlist always have some artists that I really dislike and would never listen, but are pretty popular.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#56

Post by hwers »

Best decision I ever made was installing an extension to get rid of the recommendations (they're such crap - I wish they would actually try to recommend me things with a high likelihood of me enjoying rather than whatever propaganda youtube wants me to see).

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#57

Post by dvlsg »

tsumnia wrote: post #48
lordentropy wrote: post #5

For me, it seems like youtube's recommendation system mostly gets stuck in the local optimum. Once you watch a video from a particular channel, it'll keep on recommending the videos from the same channel for months. Soon, the recommendation just consists of stuff from the channels that have you already viewed. You rarely see new types of recommendations.

Most systems have this issue. I've described it as a 'fear of recommending something you hate'. They know you watched X video from Y channel, so there is a good chance you'd like Z video that has a similar fanbase or content. However, it becomes this echo chamber of only recommending the same content over and over again because they don't want to suggest something you don't like. That's because to their metrics, you…

YouTube still recommends stuff I hate all the time, despite me explicitly trying to tell the system I'm not interested.

To pick an example, my YouTube recommended section is full of videos of people reacting to the things I actually like to watch. I don't want to watch people reacting to the things I like. I just want to watch the things I like. I try to tell YouTube that by saying "Not Interested" to all of the reaction videos, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#58

Post by steveklabnik »

jeffwask wrote: post #44
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…

It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again" to make it stop.

As someone who had a bit of a YouTube hobby and is trying to get back into it, I've generally found that the algorithm brings me a larger audience than I would have otherwise. I've published three videos in the last 28 days, and my analytics says I've gotten 5200 views across all my content in that time. I have about a hundred subscribers. Search is still king, but 15% of those views have come from suggested. I've got a 7.8% CTR so it's suggesting it to quite a few people.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#59

Post by kikokikokiko »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #25
encryptluks2 wrote: post #15

And as I got on YouTube just now, the recommendations are just utter junk. It is a bunch of clickbait on things I don't even like and find annoying and repulsive. This is why I use things like youtube-dl, NewPipe, etc.

I use uBlock Origin to hide every video on the recommendations panel except for what is about to be played next. It is surprisingly great.

I use uBlock on a slightly different way. I set filters for specific channels or "channel networks", for instance if I don't want to see any Vice related video show up in my recomendations, i.e. "Vice Fightland", "Vice bla bla bla" etc, I set a rule such as:

www.youtube.com###dismissible:has-text(/Vice/)

This way, any channel that has the word Vice in it will never show up to me in recommendations, be it on the main page or the sidebar. This "has-text" regex is really useful, not just on Youtube. I use it a lot, all over the internet.

Re: On YouTube’s recommendation system

#60

Post by dpcx »

pg_bot wrote: post #6

Can we get a button to stop recommending videos that have already been watched? On the front page out of 12 videos listed, I've already seen 7 of them and have no need to watch them again.

It's not perfect, but in Firefox this definitely helps: https://github.com/EvHaus/youtube-hide-watched
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