71–80 of 337 posts
I use, bookmark, and recommend https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions , which is just a reverse chronological feed of videos from channels you subscribe to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 reac…
The issue is that we don't really have a good method for measuring uncertain interests and since most algorithms have an underlining "make the company money", we don't get anything beyond the same ol' same ol' recommendations.
[1] Underwater Basket Weaving is a placeholder for anything - yoga, video games, cooking, politics, essentially anything you are currently NOT getting presented.
This is a weird way to say "ideas that we suppress for being misinformation are sometimes actually true."
I hate how it has now started slipping Hollywood movies into my recommendation feed. All of a sudden i'm seeing the credits on a 2 hour movie after watching a 15 minute UrbanX video. NO YOUTUBE, BAD. If I wanted to watch shitty movies I wouldn't be on YouTube.
In general I hate how YouTube is now filled with videos from high production studios. And most of these aren't even full-length episodes, but rather ~2 minute excerpts. I miss the old YouTube when most content was produced by individuals.
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.
Instead, I have to explicitly go into "Subscriptions", and hope that it was posted recently-enough for the channel to show up in the 6-or-so sorted-by-recency channels at the very top, rather than in the alphabetized list (since there are so many channels in that alphabetical list, that finding anything marked as new in that list is basically impractical.)
This article started out talking about what good signals are to drive a recommendation algo, but it ended up concluding with all the different ways YouTube goes against those signals to censor videos or otherwise manually tune your feed instead. The meaning of "recommendation" seems to have shifted from "what we think you want" to "what we want for you." It's not a wrong use of the word, just different from what you…
I think this is a pretty fantastic summary of what has gone wrong with a lot of big tech. Facebook, Twitter, youtube, Google search, iOS, Android, and Windows all have moved toward taking away user control and trying to move you toward more of what they want you to want. If it's not recommendations, it's forced updates, device scanning, or "influencers".
We badly need some of that disruption these same companies used to preach about. The current cohort is becoming ossified and user hostile, just like the companies they replaced.
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.
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 go…