[HN Gopher] Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bu...
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Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'
Author : jedimind
Score : 179 points
Date : 2020-07-16 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| jamestimmins wrote:
| 'Videos for the prepper will "explore apocalyptic scenarios and
| how to "prepare" for them."'
|
| Interesting that it seems to suggest that preppers aren't /truly/
| prepping for these scenarios, or that the scenarios aren't real.
| If anything, it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising
| number of preppers right in some sense.
|
| It may not be a zombie situation where people need large stores
| of ammo, but the modern world can fall apart to such a degree
| that the ability to survive outside of dependence on normal
| systems is an advantage.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of
| preppers right in some sense
|
| Right in some senses, wrong in others. The world went a little
| crazy, but there wasn't a total collapse of society. Grocery
| stores still have food in them, the world still turns.
| pps43 wrote:
| There are commonalities. I had some N95 masks since 9/11 and
| bought more after California fires. I did not anticipate
| COVID-19, but that stash still turned out to be useful.
| mantap wrote:
| I don't know. Most of the prepper material I read before the
| pandemic predicted a breakdown in civilisation type situation.
| Even through the stress of this pandemic, the world has
| remained remarkably intact.
|
| A pandemic was consistently predicted as one of the biggest
| risks to the world by people like Bill Gates. But the preppers
| were not super interested.
| kiba wrote:
| We would all probably be better off if we prepped a little
| bit for 'everyday' or 'common' emergency situation such ad
| adverse weathers, with the government prepping for outside-
| the-norm emergencies.
|
| Also, prepping channels seems to be a bit obsessed with
| things as opposed to skills.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Things are easier to acquire than skills.
| dharmab wrote:
| I disagree- the time and money spent on things could be
| spent on a weekend long (possibly free online) course in
| first aid, cooking, hygiene and other basic home skills.
| bluGill wrote:
| First aid skills without bandaid isn't useful. Cooking
| skills without food isn't useful. Hygiene skills without
| soap isn't useful.
|
| You need to prep by having the skills, and having the
| materials. It may be a good idea to know how to make the
| materials, but that assumes time which means you need a
| supply
| dharmab wrote:
| You can stock a 2-year first aid kit and many months or
| years of food at your local grocery store very cheaply.
| If you want to last longer, befriend your local farmer's
| market where you can buy food and soap.
| dharmab wrote:
| I feel like the preppers were not prepared. Too much ammo and
| MREs, not enough pasta and hygienic supplies.
| Zhyl wrote:
| There was a great Cracked podcast about this recently.
| Preppers are basically preparing for some Hollywood doomsday
| scenario where the hero overcomes challenges by putting
| himself first and (sometimes violently) surviving by a series
| of physically demanding challenges that depends on his canny
| and his wits.
|
| The real life pandemic scenario is 'solved' (in the same
| sense) by listening to Government advice, being considerate
| of others and staying at home and watching TV.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Many preppers just want to play soldier and imagine they
| will get to shoot up marauding neighbors.
|
| The real preppers are Mormon families who follow LDS
| guidelines for keeping their pantry stocked with one-year's
| supply of food to provide for their family.
| dharmab wrote:
| As someone who lives in Mormon country, most families
| here are incredibly well-prepared for emergencies. It's
| notable that the LDS-style emergency preparedness assumes
| that social structures will be available through the
| local wards and therefore individual preparedness can be
| planned more practically. For example, emergency food
| stores are standard groceries rotated through the
| household's regular diet rather than special emergency
| foods.
| pps43 wrote:
| > by listening to Government advice
|
| I beg to differ. The CDC insisted masks don't work until
| April, the WHO until June.
| Aengeuad wrote:
| The Twitter account for the British Prime Minister said
| that you can both exercise in parks and that visiting
| parks put lives in danger _on the same day_. Of course
| this should be expected from a populist government that
| needs to put forward multiple ideas to gauge public
| opinion before implementing policy but then any advice
| from the (English) government just comes across as
| contradictory and hypocritical especially when the
| politicians themselves don 't follow the advice.
|
| We had the whole 'masks don't work' song and dance too
| and by all accounts England is one of the worst countries
| for mask adoption rates despite a decent majority of the
| country thinking that they work, adoption rates might
| change a little when masks become mandatory in shops in a
| little over a week but for most people it's after the
| strict lockdown has ended and well past the point of
| being necessary. So I'd agree with you here, it has been
| very hard to take the official advice seriously and it's
| a real shame that a government is muddying the waters for
| political reasons.
|
| https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/12467792104101
| 437...
|
| https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/12468073039756
| 206...
| wunderland wrote:
| The UK is wearing masks at a higher rate than many EU
| countries
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114375/wearing-a-
| face-m...
| pps43 wrote:
| The ammo thing is strange. It's as if they estimate their
| probability of survival in a firefight by assuming their
| adversaries will be as accurate as storm troopers from Star
| Wars.
| bluGill wrote:
| Ammo is useful because if civilization ends you can hunt
| deer and other wild food with it.
|
| How they survive the end of civilization is something I've
| never understood. If the world population is in the
| thousands odds are you are dead.
| pps43 wrote:
| You'll need at most a hundred rounds. There isn't that
| many deer around. Yet preppers hoard tens of thousands of
| rounds.
|
| If you want to be sustainable, get a crossbow instead.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| One of the underpinnings of many preppers' operating model
| was "we'll use the MREs to wait for law enforcement to
| collapse and then use ammo to become king of the hill in
| post-apocalyptic society". They weren't preparing for _all_
| apocalypses, just the ones that would let them use military
| strength to become unchallenged fief lords. In any scenario
| where law enforcement is still operating, their stashes are
| of little use.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _If anything, it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising
| number of preppers right in some sense._
|
| Most preppers I've run into are preparing for scenarios in
| which they finally get to shoot people that they don't like,
| and expect that people who don't like them will try to take
| their stuff and kill them, too. A lot of them are preparing for
| fantasy situations that they're strangely excited about.
| Through that lens, prepping isn't very different than live
| action role-playing.
| djaychela wrote:
| If you want a laugh, delete your YouTube watch history. I did
| this about 18 months ago as an experiment. It took YT a LONG time
| to get back to suggesting anything like worthwhile content,
| despite me spending time on YT deliberately watching things that
| I liked (and avoiding the initial suggestions it gave me after
| the deletion which were all generic videos with millions of
| views.
|
| There are some channels that I used to watch that I no longer see
| as a result of this, but then there are others I wasn't aware of
| that I now see.
|
| I'm careful now to not watch what I consider junk, and if I want
| to watch anything I don't want my suggestions to be influenced
| by, I do so in a private browsing window.
| Kednicma wrote:
| I've noticed that using youtube-dl seems to prevent my
| recommendations from changing much. Are there other tricks that
| one can use to avoid getting bubbled?
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
| CyanBird wrote:
| You are already bubbled simply because you are not watching
| Sudanese music videos...
|
| There is a limited time, and within that limited time you will
| be in an informational bubble because of the opportunity cost
| of new information
| Zhyl wrote:
| I subscribe to Youtube channel RSS feeds with newsboat, but you
| could also follow with any RSS reader.
| bzb3 wrote:
| I use YouTube while not logged in and I use an extension that
| removes all cookies whenever I close a tab. YouTube doesn't
| remember anything of what I've watched.
| kohtatsu wrote:
| Flushing cookies, and watching specific videos in a private
| tab.
|
| If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's
| location, incognito is enough.
|
| Google isn't brazen enough to show you recommendations without
| cookies, despite them being capable of tying your sessions
| together.
|
| I don't use the app on iOS. If you need higher than 720p
| playback for a video you can request desktop site.
| Avamander wrote:
| > If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your
| IP's location, incognito is enough.
|
| I personally find that unpersonalized homepage rather
| offensive. It often considers small countries near a large
| one as a part of it as the borders are unclear for its
| algorithms. The same happens with things like Google Play.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Google isn't brazen enough to show you recommendations
| without cookies, despite them being capable of tying your
| sessions together.
|
| Amazon is. I see pages show up in my products-viewed history
| (logged in) after viewing them incognito.
| vetinari wrote:
| Youtube-dl doesn't have your Google account cookie, so Youtube
| doesn't know it is you.
|
| You can achieve the same effect by logging out Google account
| in your browser.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The latter doesn't (or didn't?) work. I used to youtube from
| a box which had never had a google account, and it still
| bubbled.
| londons_explore wrote:
| YouTube will make you a separate "signed out identity",
| which will be tracked
| vetinari wrote:
| Which is still based on cookies; if you drop them, you
| will start clean again.
| speedgoose wrote:
| This website redirects me to
| https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=
|
| I guess I have to stop browsing Engadget.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| the big fat GDPR-circumvention is also kind of a give-away that
| they couldn't care less about your privacy.
| swebs wrote:
| Same, and uBlock origin stops it from going further. Here's an
| archive link
|
| http://archive.is/k2gG7
|
| But it's mostly just blogspam. Here's the real project
|
| https://www.their.tube/
| kristopolous wrote:
| The recommendations on YouTube are endemic of Google's general
| design problem as of late.
|
| They appear to "go by the numbers" and effectively bucket all
| users together.
|
| So children, who almost all use YouTube and want to watch the
| same content repeatedly, get categorized the same as say, me.
|
| Then they look for the largest patterns without discriminating or
| partitioning and just cater to that.
|
| So for search, they'll ignore the focused queries and just return
| general results. They place amateur and sophisticated computer
| users in the same giant bag.
|
| This is why the order of the tabs on search
| (web/products/images/videos) just dance around and are totally
| inconsistent.
|
| It's also why they axe projects and strip features, replacing
| them with effectively the bubbly hazy shoppingmall version of the
| feature.
|
| Image sizes no longer have numbers in the toolbar. It's some
| amorphous icon, medium, and large.
|
| It doesn't even serve the ends they are looking for. If I was
| really unsophisticated, I'd look for an "icon" and then be
| frustrated because, say Apple, requires 1024x1024 icons, which I
| will absolutely not get with the "icon" size filter. So not only
| are we worse off, but the newer way doesn't even service the
| demographic they're targeting.
|
| Another example, same pattern: Recently all my android devices
| seem to have a much smaller dictionary on their gboard keyboard.
| Less common words are impossible to swype and perfectly valid,
| correctly spelled words are getting the red squiggly underneath
| them because apparently, using an uncommon word must have been an
| error. Almost every day I'm pulling up a dictionary to make sure
| I'm not making a mistake.
|
| I call this "design by dictator" syndrome: some person or group
| (called the design group) is given unlimited unilateral authority
| over all aspects of a product. It's the opposite extreme of
| "design by committee". Nobody else can question or change things.
|
| When nobody is allowed to say "that idea is stupid" then you end
| up getting stuff with lots of stupid ideas. There's a reason why
| the one word critical means "very important", "detailed", and
| "judgmental". Uncountable empires have fallen when it is ignored.
|
| Back in the 90s/early 2000s when I did windows development,
| Microsoft was really quite good at bucketing users. There were
| "channels of usage" available which facilitated many kinds of
| needs and many kinds of users.
|
| By ignoring the variation of sentiment, Google has lost its magic
| and in their quest to please everyone while assuming everyone is
| fundamentally the same, they end up leaving the majority minority
| dissatisfied.
| hedora wrote:
| I use Duck Duck Go's video search. Most results are from YouTube,
| but it completely solves this problem (to the point where I
| didn't even know YouTube bubbling was a thing for most people).
| ausbah wrote:
| I guess a question I have is how does a platform promote
| "truthful" content when only user actions are present (voting,
| viewing, subscribing, etc.) with resorting to an omnipresent,
| final "arbiter of truth" or "presenting all view points as
| equal"?
| Avamander wrote:
| It doesn't. It promotes the truth people want to see, a
| platform can only flag obvious false information but that will
| always piss people off. Imagine if all the creationism videos
| suddenly get flagged as false news, I'd cackle, but YouTube
| would be lynched.
| leppr wrote:
| Or imagine they flagged videos showing how face masks help
| contain Covid-19 as fake news back when the official US
| government recommendation was still to not buy and wear masks
| because they are useless? That'd have pissed people off too.
| FreakyT wrote:
| This does seem like a problem, but at the same time, this would
| appear to be the expected result from a well-written
| recommendation engine. That is, if a user watches a bunch of
| videos about a specific topic, it makes sense that it would
| recommend more of that same topic, since that is clearly what
| that user is interested in.
|
| That said, I see how this is a problem, but what is the solution?
| Do away with recommendations altogether?
| marblessubtext wrote:
| Personally my problem is that it's not just the topic I'm
| interested in, it's also the presentation (therefore the
| channel), and sometimes I watch videos outside my usual
| channels because I have some specific interest. The
| recommendations then go ham for those one-off channels and
| other channels I've never heard of. I refuse to even watch the
| unheard of channels because I know there are videos on the
| channels I DO watch that I haven't watched yet and I want those
| recommended, 9/10 unknown channels I end up not liking and
| watching them makes even more noise. I don't watch anything
| politically sensitive but I can see how this system ends up in
| dangerous territory.
| jlbnjmn wrote:
| Two different recommendation engines. One optimizes for depth,
| the other for breadth. Combined results in the feed for a well
| balanced diet of content.
| Emendo wrote:
| To make it even better for customers, Youtube could break the
| different types of content from the recommendation engines,
| instead of blending everything together under one list in a
| way that resembles a slot machine.
| joedevon wrote:
| Platforms that create filter bubbles should show "opposite
| content"..perhaps with a heading that could have titles like
| "Videos we don't recommend"..."Videos you may disagree
| with".."break out of your filter bubble" or something to that
| effect.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| But would that make much sense? I mean I guess if you have a
| simple metric you could just show whatever is at the other
| end of the spectrum, but after I watched 20 cat videos, what
| would even be opposite content of that?
|
| I'd really like to know how their recommendations even work
| for starters. It currently just seems some simple "more of
| the same" stuff. Could they not just look at the last 100
| videos I watched, then find 1000 users who watched as many of
| those as possible and look for common videos in their history
| that I haven't seen yet. Maybe even make sure those videos
| have as few tags in common with my 100 videos as possible to
| help discover really new content. Really I have so many ideas
| I'd try if I had such a huge source of information available,
| instead YouTube feels like the dumbest "more of the same"
| algorithm they could come up with.
| catalogia wrote:
| Regardless of the merits of this idea, it seems a tricky
| thing to implement. What is the polar opposite of right wing
| political videos? It's tempting to say left wing political
| videos, but both are political videos and thus not opposite
| each other along that particular dimension. So obviously you
| have to pick and choose which dimensions you want flipped and
| which you don't. Otherwise the opposite of political videos
| might be... a documentary about marbles or something. That
| wouldn't be very useful.
| Avamander wrote:
| Do you seriously think a lot of people would want to do that?
| I don't. I think conservatives will yell out loud that
| YouTube is promoting "gay propaganda/agenda" and vice versa
| from liberals.
|
| People intentionally bubble themselves, Twitter with it's
| much weaker suggestion algorithm has netted the same result,
| it really takes a special type of person to fight that.
| bluGill wrote:
| What is needed isn't the opposite view, it is the more
| moderate similar view. Liberals are evil isn't counter by
| liberal conspiracies. It is countered by conservatives who
| can see the point and a middle ground. Likewise liberal
| bubbles are popped by liberals who can understand
| conservative positions.
| kanox wrote:
| Somehow I've managed to avoid most political/argumentative
| content on YouTube and this solution wouldn't make sense for
| me.
|
| Would I get videos about how bikes suck?
|
| What people who complain about "filter bubbles" mean is that
| they're sad that traditional media's hold over what people
| watch is weakening but that's a good thing. I don't need more
| people telling me that "orange man bad".
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I wouldn't strictly limit the term filter bubble to
| politics here. Sometimes its just "whoa that stuff exists!"
| moments. Unless YouTube decides to let some video/channel
| go viral, you'll never get recommended stuff that isn't
| very similar to the last couple videos you watched.
|
| All the cool stuff that isn't related to IT stuff or retro
| computing I've found through comments on hn or elsewhere.
| Like that guy that restores matchbox cars, or the other one
| who builds dioramas.
| jmsaucier wrote:
| One thing I've seen lately is that YouTube will recommend a
| video that I've already watched all of it. And they know I've
| watched it because I leave the watch history on and it has the
| red bar showing how far through the video i watch.
|
| I also don't know if it's because of other users behaviors or
| maybe channels pay for the exposure, but I've seen certain
| channels or topics take over the recommendation list more than
| other topics. Or there's the issue where the recommendation
| list beside a video is all "recommended for you" and not even
| related to the video. On mobile they had to add a button for
| showing videos actually related to the video you're watching,
| but it feels like sometimes even that's hit or miss.
|
| I'm okay with a recommendation engine when it doesnt get stuck
| in this loop of recommending the same videos over and over. For
| now, I just delete my YouTube history about once a month to get
| new recommended videos.
|
| Part of this may be youtubes fight to subvert people leaving
| keywords in the descriptions of videos so instead they're
| analyzing different things trying to build the heuristic. I
| know there's a lot that goes into the engine so it could be any
| number of things.
| Avamander wrote:
| > And they know I've watched it because I leave the watch
| history on and it has the red bar showing how far through the
| video i watch.
|
| Worse is when they wipe that red bar. It's amnesiac, just
| like Google Search and Chrome, those too forget older things.
| I personally find it very annoying.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| > One thing I've seen lately is that YouTube will recommend a
| video that I've already watched all of it. And they know I've
| watched it because I leave the watch history on and it has
| the red bar showing how far through the video i watch.
|
| This may surprise you, but if I like a video I'll watch it a
| few dozen times. I say this might surprise you since it
| certainly surprises my friends who make this complaint.
|
| The accommodations the algorithms make for people like me is
| probably making it worse for people like you.
| nullandvoid wrote:
| Do you still get the same enjoyment out of a video 10 times
| on, serious question?
|
| I'm the kind of person that can never watch a film twice
| within the same year (normally longer), same with series
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| The same enjoyment? No, of course not.
|
| More enjoyment than anything else I can think to watch?
| All the time.
|
| Funnily, for feature length films I can only watch them
| once every few years as well.
| grugagag wrote:
| > That is, if a user watches a bunch of videos about a specific
| topic, it makes sense that it would recommend more of that same
| topic, since that is clearly what that user is interested in.
|
| For how long though? In a short session it does make sense but
| having that trail you along for weeks to months is not only
| annoying but misguided as well, it diminishes the richness and
| the variety of the content and kills exploration.
|
| This should come with a reset button or simply be based on your
| last search or something like that.
|
| And there should be a way to block channels that you don't find
| interesting. There are some channels that I am not interested
| into their content that keep on showing on my recommednation
| list no matter what I am searching for. I want that to go away
| and without a plugin or some hacks that is not possible on
| youtube.
| throwayws wrote:
| See TikTok [1] as an example. The idea is to mix in different
| content. Making the goal not to match perfectly but to match
| different topics.
|
| - [1]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-
| vide...
| Avamander wrote:
| TikTok is a bad example. Claiming it's promoting "diverse
| content" is somehow rather funny.
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/03/tiktok-
| ow...
|
| * https://www.altpress.com/news/tiktok-censorship-black-
| lives-...
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-
| l...
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| TikTok may only allow 90% of videos, but its algorithm is
| biased toward exploration of random subjects.
|
| Youtube may allow 99.9%, but its algorithm is biased toward
| what the user has recently watched.
| Avamander wrote:
| I find diversity of opportunity more important than
| diversity of outcome and think of the first as actual
| diversity.
| throwayws wrote:
| I mean topics different from the usual exact matches. I had
| only that word in mind. Sorry for the confusion, I fixed
| it.
|
| I didn't know about this though. Thanks for mentioning it.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| A few years ago, i used to get youtube recommendations based only
| on the video i was watching at the time, and it was awesome! I
| could discover new videos/songs related to the video i was
| watching much more easily.
|
| Lately, most/all of the recommendations are based globally on
| every video i've ever watched, so the recommendations are almost
| the same no matter what video i watch, so it's tougher to
| discover new things. For some reason, it insists on constantly
| recommending videos i have watched before, which is annoying.
| Maybe it's because i use youtube as a music player often and i do
| repeat videos. It is amazing for video game OSTs, which i enjoy
| and are hard to find anywhere else.
|
| I could certainly see how this could lead people into isolated
| thought bubbles, especially with how the algorithm is lately
| compared to a few years ago, it has happened with myself to some
| extent.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > For some reason, it insists on constantly recommending videos
| i have watched before, which is annoying.
|
| The insanity is deeper than that:
|
| 1) YouTube recommends videos they _know_ you watched before
| (they're marked as watched).
|
| 2) YouTube forgets which videos you've watched after a few
| months. Google, of all companies, forgets what I've watched.
| WTF?
|
| 3) So even if YouTube didn't recommend videos you've watched
| before, they'll forget in a few months anyway and recommend it
| again.
|
| 4) And you can't mark videos as watched. Say you watched a
| video elsewhere. YouTube recommends it to you. But you've
| already seen it. Can't mark it as watched. Can't make Google
| not recommend it. Even if you could, they'll just forget in a
| few months.
|
| 5) Watched a video, but skipped the last 5 minutes because it's
| sponsorship content? YouTube: Better not mark that as watched
| and instead recommend that you finish it for the next few
| months.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| Some people, like me, will watch the same video multiple
| times, if not dozens.
|
| YouTube likely isn't forgetting that you've watched it. It is
| probably suggesting it again because it thinks it has been
| enough time you'd want to watch it again.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > YouTube likely isn't forgetting that you've watched it.
|
| No, they do. Videos that you've watched are marked as such.
| They have a red bar at the bottom of the video thumbnail
| that shows how much of the video you've watched. For ones
| you've watched all the way through, it's just a solid red
| bar.
|
| After a few months, YouTube just forgets. I can go to, say,
| Chubbyemu's channel
| (https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos), which
| I've watched most videos on, and it only shows that I've
| watched videos 6 months or newer. YouTube forgets
| everything past that.
|
| The point of my post was multi-fold. YouTube will recommend
| a video they _know_ you've watched; it's got the red bar at
| the bottom. But even if they didn't do that, they'll forget
| in six months anyway and recommend it anyway.
|
| > Some people, like me, will watch the same video multiple
| times, if not dozens.
|
| Hmmm, yeah, you're right. I do the same. Must be that their
| AI has learned that behavior, but hasn't quite figured out
| what makes a video "rewatchable" yet.
| paol wrote:
| Yes, that change in the right bar recommendations was very
| noticeable (though it happened quite some time ago). Like you I
| find the new system much less useful.
|
| This has all the hallmarks of one of those changes driven by
| single-minded metric chasing (engagement!) instead of
| principled reasoning on what the product should do and feel
| like to use.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| 100% Agree. The sad part is, at least for me, it works... i
| definitely waste more time on youtube now....
|
| That said, i also think production value in popular channels
| has really skyrocked the last few years. We've entered kind
| of a golden age for user generated content, for better or
| worse. It is very entertaining but very much more addicting.
|
| For example, i watched a guy for years who reviewed classic
| synthesizers and made silly songs. He has recently made an
| entire 2hr documentary on the history of ARP synthesizers
| with engineer interviews and everything! It is like some Ken
| Burns level stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31RXiVSI9s
| Nothing on youtube existed like this a few years ago. It is
| an amazing world we live in now.
| paol wrote:
| There's no question about the value of the content youtube
| has accumulated. It's their stewardship of it that worries
| me.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Google tends to let automation do most of the work and
| apply a heavy hand to issues. I lost an entire account a
| few years ago, gmail address and all, due to copyrighted
| music on video games i was streaming. I got hard locked
| out, I didn't have personal info tied to that account,
| and they wanted some crazy validation information like
| what month did i create the account, and i had no idea.
| Since i only had 300 followers or so, there was nothing i
| could do to get it back. It was a bad feeling. It really
| made me think twice about what you do with big G, because
| they can take everything all away in an instant.
|
| I can't imagine trying to administrate / police all of
| the people / content on youtube. It's an impossible task.
| There are hundreds of millions of users with thousands of
| hours of content being generated every second of every
| day. It also cost more to run than it generates, so it's
| practically a public service. I wish there were more
| customization for recommendations though.
| coldpie wrote:
| Alex Ball is freaking amazing. He did a short podcast about
| that video last week, which I found interesting.
| https://www.soundonsound.com/people/alex-ball-making-arp-
| syn...
| throwaway_kufu wrote:
| The only recommendations I enjoy are music playlists based on my
| history.
|
| Otherwise it always seems to ultimately lead to conspiracy style
| videos. I may start with some DIY videos, archeology, history,
| physics or even MMA...then a couple recommendations in its
| Basically "fail videos" and conspiracy videos. As of late I'm
| also loaded up with pizza reviews which is ironic because I'm
| generally following low carb or keto regimens.
| INTPenis wrote:
| This is just one of many aspects where Google shows that it
| doesn't really care about the UX. They only care about your data.
|
| I can think of a few other examples off the top of my head where
| their services could be improved easily but no one seems to care.
|
| Like for example the youtube autoplay algorithm, which is often
| useless. Here's a crazy idea Youtube, why not check which other
| videos are in the recent queue and play content based on all of
| them? Instead of just the last one.
|
| Usually when Autoplay takes over I've already queued up a few
| videos on my own, I've literally spoon fed them.
|
| The YT Music UI is pretty bad too but that's a new product so it
| might improve. As a long time Google play music user I
| complacently migrated my playlists over and decided to give YT
| Music a go.
|
| First week I only use it to play my Electro Work playlist,
| basically EDM and Psy/Goa.
|
| Every time I start the app I begin at the Home screen with their
| recommendations to me, and not one single time do they recommend
| anything from or related to that playlist.
|
| And every single time I browse away from the Home screen and
| start that same playlist.
|
| The recommendations of YT Music seem to be based on my YT
| history, not my MUSIC history.
| scoutt wrote:
| So YouTube feeds their users the things they want to consume.
| Interesting...
| dgellow wrote:
| FYI, the project they mention, "TheirTube", can be found here:
| https://www.their.tube/about
| KeytarHero wrote:
| Thanks. One of my biggest bad-internet-journalism pet peeves as
| of late is articles that talk about a thing that exists on the
| internet without linking to it. I mean, I know I can just
| search it, but it's a dark pattern designed to keep you on
| their site, disguised as lazy journalism.
| spyder wrote:
| Yea, so strange when they write about a website but don't link
| it. I can understand that maybe they want to keep users on
| their site so they're linking they two other articles, but then
| there is also an outside link to Youtube's blog, but not to the
| website the article is about...
| llimos wrote:
| Thanks. Before seeing this comment I tried theirtube.com and
| it's a porn site :(
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I find that every time I go to YouTube's homepage to look at the
| recommendations, I'm really just bored and expecting them to feed
| me something of low long term value that catches my attention for
| a split second with the YouTube face or something, and it doesn't
| particularly matter what it is so long as it's "interesting" in
| that vague superficial sense.
|
| This is in contrast to when I use YouTube as a library of videos
| that I walk up to in order to look something up in that I want to
| know about.
|
| Now even when it's some guy's hand made animation they did in
| college, I feel kind of guilty that the only reason I cared to
| see it was because YouTube gave it to me, and also that I didn't
| know what I was looking for to begin with so I essentially went
| "well, that will have to do."
|
| Maybe that will work for keeping me off YouTube until I start
| believing that I have absolutely nothing better to do with my
| time again.
| tmaly wrote:
| I purposely visit YouTube with Firefox in Private mode so I do
| not accidentally teach the algorithm that I am interested in how
| to fix garbage disposals.
| EverydayBalloon wrote:
| Interesting how many of these studies assume this kind of media
| changes people's minds. Are people really that maleable?
|
| It seems more likely they forward or "like" the media because it
| reinforces a belief they developed over time via multiple sources
| of data and experience.
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| I actually find myself curating my recommendation bubbles. One
| identity with clojure talks and embedded hacking, another with
| 70s progressive rock and Japanese Doujin trance music, and steak
| cooking videos primarily, etc..
| rland wrote:
| If you find the youtube algorithm interesting, you may like this
| interview with the guy in charge of the team who works on it
| (warning, hour plus video that will fill your recommendations
| with Lex Fridman!):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWmiNRPU-c
|
| I suspect that "sticky content" like conspiracy videos is just as
| difficult for Google as it is for us -- certain content is just
| magnetic, for one psychological reason or another.
|
| The big takeaway from that interview for me was that "time
| watched" is the biggest metric, not likes, clicks, subscriptions,
| etc. I guess that makes sense, given that time is a bit like
| currency. But sometimes what people think they like doesn't line
| up 1:1 with what they actually like.
| cannedslime wrote:
| What is the problem here exactly? Youtube recommends based on the
| stuff you watch...
| tsumnia wrote:
| I call it the toilet seat issue with recommendation engines. If
| I buy a toilet seat on Amazon, I'll find it annoying when it
| begins to recommend other toilet seats, plumbing valves, other
| bathroom accessories. This annoyance extends to other areas of
| curated content.
|
| Secondly, our interests and preferences are temporal in nature.
| Things I was interested in 6 months ago may not be things I'm
| interested in now. For example, today I clicked on my YouTube
| "Watch Later" list and now the engine is suggesting I watch A
| Garfield Christmas Special.
|
| Finally, some people enjoy variety. I want to know what new
| music or genres are going on, but musical recommendations seem
| to loop back to the same things. Google Play also always
| defaults to 90s alternative for me. While I enjoy the genre, I
| would never have developed my preferences for artists like Fela
| Kuti or Baby Metal by listening to a curated list of things an
| algorithm thinks I'll LIKE. Note, it only wants to suggest
| things it knows I'll like or things with close approximation to
| known liked things. There is no incentive to explore UNKNOWN
| things because of fear the user will UNLIKE it and stop using
| the product.
| akerro wrote:
| Alert: clicking on engadget.com redirects to
|
| https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...
|
| which tracks you transparently, my router is blocking it so I got
| "Hmm. We're having trouble finding that site." DNS resolution
| error in Firefox
| scrollaway wrote:
| YouTube recommendations is one of those filter bubbles which I've
| learned to use heavily to my advantage.
|
| I consume a lot of video content and I've learned to curate my
| watch history (what to watch/search for in incognito versus watch
| logged in; what to delete from my history etc) so that my youtube
| homepage actually consistently has a lot of high quality
| discovery.
|
| One thing I systematically do is avoid videos that are anywhere
| between 10m00s and 10m20s in length: those are almost always
| videos that have been arbitrarily lengthened to meet some ad
| length milestones. I've even seen videos _slowed down_ by some
| percentage just to fucking get to 10 mins.
|
| Also apparently youtube's changing the milestone to 8 minutes
| soon, so I'm going to watch out for those too...
| WmyEE0UsWAwC2i wrote:
| I had similar results following similar practices. I
| distinguish between stuff I want the algorithm to recommend and
| stuff that I only want to consume "on-demand" (that is when
| ever I search for it).
|
| The second category covers topics with lots of content so It
| would overwhelm the other interests.
|
| YouTube some times asks me how do I feel about my
| recommendations and some times all of them are interesting. But
| I can't watch them all (maybe I should add them to watch later,
| to tell the algorithm that I care)
|
| The turning point was when they allowed us to tell the
| algorithm which videos were not relevant.
| yndoendo wrote:
| Seems YouTube recommendations does not adjust for context of
| keywords. I click on a Sport video not because of the sport but
| want to hear what the person has to say about XYX and not sports.
| Then YouTube now thinks I wants sports and there is no way of
| stating to the algorithm "Do not show me sports" because it will
| take the keywords without context.
|
| They recommendations are fixated on YOU as in the last search or
| viewing instead of the sum of the content viewed. So a day of
| just looking at Cat videos equates to I want all Cat videos now
| and forever until I search for something else.
|
| Also, there is not degree of separation for showing new / thought
| of content. Or simply put, a meson to walk through the bookstore
| and see something you never though of looking for and become
| interested.
| graton wrote:
| I will watch things in a "private window" if I don't want it
| affecting my recommendation or later go and remove it from my
| watch history.
|
| This seems to help me. Also I will mark videos as not
| interested.
|
| But yeah I notice I watch one video and then I get a lot of
| recommendations related to it. Sometimes I like it and
| sometimes I don't.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Also note that the mobile app has an Incognito mode too.
| Avamander wrote:
| I'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets
| heavily personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years.
|
| Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has
| noticed how music playlists start looping the same songs and how
| recommendations start repeating.
|
| I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse
| train the suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking
| friends for video recommendations, refreshing page multiple times
| when recommendations are all too similar, marking suggestions of
| known topics as boring, clicking on new topics more than old ones
| and so on.
|
| It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a
| bubble and how hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works
| great for most users and that's why it is like that.
| grugagag wrote:
| I find that aggravating when I want to explore for new things
| especially when I don't know what I looking for. It used to be
| great to just explore around but it no longer working now.
|
| What I find good, in a way, is that I get bored quick and get
| off Youtube, otherwise it could be a serious time blackhole.
|
| I think the only way to escape their recommendation engine is
| to use an outside source to index youtube videos and
| control/randomize it better from there.
| cat199 wrote:
| Not sure if we can conclude what it actually does, but there's
| a difference between 'heavily personalized' and 'placing people
| into defined common defined categories with clear boundaries
| and content' in terms of societal impact
| emilecantin wrote:
| I don't go to Youtube for news / information, I go there for
| entertainment. In that regard, the "bubble" works well, because
| it recommends the type of content I find interesting.
|
| However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even
| if they seemed interesting in the moment, because I don't want
| to extend my "bubble" in that direction (I've gotten that
| before). So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy
| to extend.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Some topics seem stickier than others. Like clicking on one
| Jordan Peterson video seems like enough to change a third of
| the front page to other videos by him.
|
| At least that's how it works for my account even though I'm
| completely uninterested in the guy.
| Avamander wrote:
| It also works in the reverse, you click one video but
| ignore the rest and it doesn't suggest you more. Meaning
| that one video doesn't usually throw it entirely out of
| whack.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Aye. I fucked up once and clicked a link to a PragerU vid
| that was being discussed on reddit. Non-stop
| recommendations about OWNING LIBS for a few weeks.
|
| It's gotten to the point where I don't click links simply
| because I don't want to get spammed.
| coldpie wrote:
| At least on desktop, you can remove videos from your
| watch history, which I _think_ will drop them from the
| recommendations algorithm. Search here and click the X on
| the offending videos:
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/history
| godelski wrote:
| I clicked on one of his videos like a year back to try to
| figure out what all the hubbub was about. I have auto
| delete history after 3 months on. Only video I ever clicked
| on about him, I still occasionally get inundated with his
| videos every once in awhile. I can also confirm that using
| YouTube in this way does not lead to a lot of variety, even
| though I am subscribed to a large amount of things. The
| video recommendations do not seem to ever show me when
| people I'm subscribed to post videos.
| kanox wrote:
| > I don't go to Youtube for news / information
|
| In general it seems that social media regarding news and
| politics is almost always toxic and should be avoided.
|
| Twitter in particular is entirely awful because the format
| prohibits any intelligent discourse.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| You can just open the video in a private window to avoid
| influencing the recommendation engine.
| mperham wrote:
| Or remove the video from your Watch History after watching
| it.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| But then you have to pay for it with ads, and they're
| really cranking the thumbscrews with the ads these days.
|
| EDIT: on the other hand, a few days back I accidentally
| used private browsing on a technical video and got a few of
| those mythical good ads of the sort that inform you about a
| genuinely interesting and relevant product you didn't know
| about. So maybe it's not the worst thing ever.
| manquer wrote:
| There is always Ublock origin for the web and vanced for
| android .
| boznz wrote:
| if it comes from the same ip address at the same time i'm
| pretty sure it counts it too, as I sometimes get similar
| recomendations coming up from my other PC which has a
| different account, pretty sure I cant hide my porn browsing
| by using a VM for the same reason :-)
| touristtam wrote:
| > So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to
| extend.
|
| Yes to the point where looking for content on prehistory can
| lead to flat earther conspiracy theory rubbish.
| deelowe wrote:
| The thing that frustrates me is that I follow a lot youtubers
| who don't post frequently and then some that do. The infrequent
| posts are typically electrical engineering or computer science
| related. I enjoy these topics more than others, but watch less
| of them due to the frequency of posts. I also follow some
| gaming stuff and liberal librarian politics as well as a few
| other things related to medical science and a smattering of
| random other topics. Without fail, YouTube will stop
| recommending engineering topics to me and try to send me down
| the rabbit hole of clickbait gaming and political topics. It's
| infuriating b/c after a few weeks, I notice I've not seen any
| engineering related videos and then have to go back and search
| through the channels to see what I missed. YT even hides them
| the sub feed. WTH?
| ben174 wrote:
| "Don't forget to click that bell!"
| mfsch wrote:
| I think for those it's best to subscribe to the RSS feed of
| the channel. Feed readers are great for infrequently updated
| content!
| stallmanite wrote:
| I've had basically the identical experience. I swear it even
| seems to turn off notifications to some of the more obscure
| channels and I have to turn them back on again. The niche
| stuff (Engineering, Chemistry, Modular-synth stuff, demoscene
| stuff, Math, countless others) is YouTube's strength in my
| opinion. It's disappointing that they so strongly discourage
| that use.
| grugagag wrote:
| Yes, I have a similar experience. Youtube/Google is shoving
| down our throats content that is monetized (hence huge
| channels) and it makes everybody else disappear more or
| less. We need to index youtube from the outside and take
| back control. Basically a giant table with channels and
| last added video would solve that and the link to the last
| video.
|
| We have to take control back!
| bscphil wrote:
| > YT even hides them the sub feed.
|
| I see YouTubers claim that YT does this, but personally, I've
| never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm
| subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed.
| I've also never seen direct evidence, it's only YouTubers
| claiming that this is happening to their subscribers, as a
| way of explaining some downturn in the number of views. I
| suspect many of them are confused about the "notification"
| feature, which I don't know I've ever seen anyone actually
| use. (Also, sometimes a video can get stuck in "processing",
| in which case it won't show up in the feed until it's
| finished processing.)
|
| Do you have some examples of this happening? I'm almost
| certain if you could provide screenshots, e.g. of the channel
| and of your subscription feed, showing the missing video,
| that YouTube would consider this a bug. The subscription feed
| is supposed to show all the new videos from channels you're
| subscribed to.
| soupbowl wrote:
| > I've never encountered a single video on a channel that
| I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions
| feed.
|
| This is also my experience, I've even closely paid
| attention to the videos of YouTubers that claim this type
| of thing is happening and I still have always seen their
| videos appear in my feed.
| tw04 wrote:
| >how music playlists start looping the same songs
|
| This is one thing that infuriates me. They do SUCH a poor job
| of branching out compared to other services, including Google
| Music.
| powersnail wrote:
| Before I have an actual Youtube account, I had thought it would
| have some really smart recommendation algorithms.
|
| But now that I have my personalized "bubble", I'm utterly
| disappointed. At least from my observation, it mainly uses
| three strategies: 1) repeating what I've seen, 2) offering
| video from the same channels I've watched from, and 3)
| suggesting really popular videos.
|
| The repeat is the worst, especially since it seems to favor
| interviews, funny clips, etc. which are not really re-watch
| worthy, even if they were a good watch for the first time.
|
| Then, since I haven't subscribed to a lot of channels, 2) is
| melding into 1).
|
| At this point, I don't even look at the "Home" tab anymore. I
| do a refresh on my subscribed list, and if nothing is there, I
| just move on.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >I'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets
| heavily personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years
|
| It shows what the homepage looks like for someone in a variety
| of different bubbles. You knew it was happening, this exposes
| how it looks.
| spyder wrote:
| Also the recommendation are not so bad: for example in the
| conspiracy bubble I expected a lot worse, but they mix the few
| strange conspiracy videos with less "crazy" and more scientific
| ones like Buzzfeed Unsolved or the Kurzgesagt channels.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| They think there's a difference between a "conservative" and a
| "conspiracist"?
| swebs wrote:
| They look completely different to me. Most of the conspiracist
| videos aren't even political.
|
| https://www.their.tube/conservative
|
| https://www.their.tube/conspiracist
| bluGill wrote:
| We just learned a lot about you. Closed-minded is obvious, and
| there is a good chance you don't believe you are.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| You don't know much about the conservative media ecosystem,
| do you? (Don't try to pretend you know more than I do about
| it--I grew up immersed in it.)
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Also, I'm laughing about being called close-minded after my
| comment got killed by a mod.
| briga wrote:
| New ideologies have always formed as thought bubbles like this,
| but now they're forming fasting than ever. Question is: are
| thought bubbles OK, or should we try to pop them? This forum
| itself is a thought bubble, surely they can't all be bad.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| This has been a phenomenon for the better part of a decade. I
| can't even remember when it happened, but some day they decided
| that the channels one was subscribed to were less important than
| "hot videos". They also split and moved those subscriptions into
| some sidebar where you had to click on every subscription
| manually to see what was new.
|
| Their focus is ads. Top videos mean ads are watched more often so
| that's what they promote. Everything is geared that way and
| creating bigger, less heterogeneous groups means there are less
| "niche" videos. I'm sure their AI has worked out the smallest
| number of groups that spans the biggest amount of users and
| drives views upwards that way.
|
| If you don't want to get caught in the pooptube loop, don't
| subscribe, don't create an account and get recommendations
| offsite. They are more likely more diverse. In fact, if you want
| new stuff, don't go on youtube, go to vimeo, peertube, dtube, or
| whatever else has tube appended to its name.
| Steltek wrote:
| Fun fact: all six personas had beekeeping Youtube videos
| suggested to them.
|
| More seriously, I wonder if one could determine the "strength" of
| a bubble's wall and then check that against the expected time
| spent online by a group.
| kps wrote:
| Clearly YouTube senior management has determined that colony
| collapse disorder is an existential threat to their business.
| Steltek wrote:
| In-joke reference to a seemingly random beekeeping video that
| ran wild through a while ago due to a YT recommendation
| engine hiccup.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636177
| hugh4life wrote:
| One thing I noticed on music videos is that if I click on the Mix
| on the sidebar for that video it has a heavy bias for videos I've
| previously watched even if it has nothing to do with that song's
| genre.
|
| I have kind of weird tastes that go from old country to happy
| hardcore to synthwave to many different genres and it's just
| weird how I get songs in the youtube mixes that are extremely
| unrelated to one another. I could be wrong, but it seems like it
| used to be much better than it is now.
| 6510 wrote:
| Not a particular fan of the Donald during the election I thought
| I should watch one of his videos. I fell asleep half way then
| auto play played many hours of videos from him. For days all
| suggestion slots showed the same face. I've been convinced
| eversince that there is a grant CONSPIRACY where youtube is
| trying to turn us all into ufologists.
|
| THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!
| chris_wot wrote:
| So I neither follow nor enjoy conspiracy theory videos. Does this
| mean that I might soon be served up such videos because I am
| actively avoiding them?
|
| I sincerely hope they solve the issue of destructive fringe
| videos.
| fouc wrote:
| The means of filter bubbles should be in the users hands, and not
| in the hands of corporations. Corporations cannot be relied upon
| to have the user's best interests at heart. When users control
| their own filter bubbles the internet becomes a useful and
| productive place again.
|
| "The means of filter bubbles must be in the hands of the users!"
| as the latest rallying cry.
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