[HN Gopher] YouTube's 'dislike' barely works according to new st... ___________________________________________________________________ YouTube's 'dislike' barely works according to new study on recommendations Author : dredmorbius Score : 38 points Date : 2022-09-20 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.engadget.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com) | PaulHoule wrote: | It's been a while since I've logged into YouTube but my | impression is that the experience including recommendations is | worse if you are logged in. | HeckFeck wrote: | Just don't try the YouTube search and scroll down by more than | six results, it will make you scream inside. | dr-detroit wrote: | dredmorbius wrote: | That was my experience years ago when I last did so. Logging in | offered no visible upsides and multiple downs. | | I learned _not_ to log in and use search wherever possible. | | Now I use Invidious (with JS disabled and/or uMatrix blocking | YouTube functionality in the browser as an additional nudge), | or youtube-dl / ytdl / mpv to play video directly. Usually | audio-only for talkpieces. | | I'll also disable recommendations and comments portions of the | website, for additional bonus (via Stylus). | okdood64 wrote: | If you actually subscribe to channels you like when logged | in, you'll get much better recommendations. I have over a | 100. (And no, all of the recommendations aren't from my | subscribed channels, it's a mix of them which have newer | videos and similar videos to my subscriptions.) | NegativeLatency wrote: | I've been using a cron job to watch/download my watch later | playlist so I can view the videos on plex at a later time: ht | tps://github.com/nburns/utilities/blob/master/youtube.fish... | | Theres another script that deletes watched videos from the | specific youtube plex library every night. | | It works great as long as you remember to remove the videos | from your watched later playlist before watching them on | plex. (Have yet to find out a simple way to automate playlist | removal) | eimrine wrote: | Best YT experience is to clear cookies then open a lot of YT | links from HN, but when our human nature drives us watching a | stupid video or two from YT recommendation then after that | session do clearing cookies and open YT links from HN again. | hombre_fatal wrote: | You can delete individual videos from your watch history in | the history tab to remove them from recommendation basis. | Unlike the "Don't show me videos like this" button, it works | well. | makosdv wrote: | I'm not surprised by this. I gave up on the YouTube Home page, | etc. years ago and I only look at the Subscriptions page. I've | just found new channels to subscribe to through word of mouth | over the years and I have more than enough content to choose | from. | kache_ wrote: | Which is actually quite a good way to find youtube channels! I | find them through twitter, 4ch, and friends. | jdmdmdmdmd wrote: | >twitter, 4ch, and friends | | I was under the impression that these three are mutually | exclusive to each other | HardwareLust wrote: | YouTube doesn't seem to understand my preferences, at all. It's | far, far too biased toward what you recently watched. It | basically doesn't work and certainly doesn't "learn" anything. | katbyte wrote: | this is my experience too, as well not showing videos from | people you've subscribed too but maybe haven't watched in a | while. | | the most shocking thing is they still have not managed to get a | decent recommendation engine after all this time. | duxup wrote: | Most preferences type systems don't seem to get the nuances | involved. | | I just watched a pleasant video about a particular video game. | | Youtube now wants me to watch the most obnoxious youtuber they | can find who also covers that video game. | | No, actually the reason I watched that other video was because | the person in it was nice and pleasant.... the recommendation | is the LAST thing I wanted. | beart wrote: | I feel like every recommendation service works this way - | YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, etc. Whatever the last thing you | looked at becomes your entire life's mission according to these | systems. When I think about all the buzz words around machine | learning, ai, and so on, it's completely incompatible with the | reality I see. What exactly are all these engineering teams | doing just to end up with this result? | | Amazon might be the worst example though. Buy something like a | bike rack for your vehicle and Amazon will recommend nothing | but other bike racks... as though I need dozens of them for one | car. | Arrath wrote: | Amazon really, really likes to recommend me a wide variety of | shower curtains after buying one, 4 years ago. | | Give it a rest already. | HeckFeck wrote: | > Buy something like a bike rack for your vehicle and Amazon | will recommend nothing but other bike racks... as though I | need dozens | | Perhaps they beta tested only with Jeff Bezos who had this | exact quandary. | jdgoesmarching wrote: | Unfortunately Tiktok is the only platform that nails it for | me. It regularly manages to find old hobbies or interests | back into the rotation, | | Youtube's recommendations are just matching my most recent | searches while occasionally throwing in Nazi crap I never | asked for. | hombre_fatal wrote: | Youtube does have a great escape latch though: go to the | History tab and delete your viewing history. Your | recommendations start from scratch and you'll get funneled | into a potentially new corner of videos. | | With that in mind, I think Youtube recommendations are quite | good. Just do it when your recommendations get stale, monthly | or so. | | I wish other platforms had that like Amazon. | piva00 wrote: | It'd be great if I didn't use my History to actually find | videos I've previously watched... | | I don't understand why recommendation engines just don't | provide a reset button. It'd be better for everyone | involved: content provider, content creators, users, ad | buyers. | joe_guy wrote: | Amazon actually has a pretty detailed page that lets you | control what feeds back into your recommendations. | | https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr/ | dr-detroit wrote: | notart666 wrote: | Well at least it doesn't work like Instagrams where it doesn't | do anything at all. I don't want to see hundreds of videos | making videos of street vendors all doing the exact same thing. | sph wrote: | YouTube absolutely IGNORES your preferences. | | I watch it daily, I have never listened to any hip hop, I don't | watch sports nor trending topics, yet every single day it | suggests football videos, MMA, the latest hiphop hit, and | celebrity crap (imagine the Kardashians) among my other | interests. | | I click "don't recommend this channel", or "I don't like this | video " every single day, I have an extension to make this | convenient so I train it dozens of times a day yet it doesn't | bloody care. | | I pay for Premium because I watch it on my iPad and smart TV, | but I'm planning on telling Apple to fuck off, buy Android | everything and sideload a system wide adblocker so I can stop | paying for that terrible service. | | This is the inconvenience it forces upon a paying customer. | What an abusive relationship. | skyyler wrote: | https://github.com/yattee/yattee | | This may be in your interests if you have an Apple TV. | | I think it supports iPad, as well. | sph wrote: | Thanks. I should really dedicate a weekend to setting | something like that up on all my devices. I'm willing to | put up with bad recommendations if I know they don't get a | cent out of my views. | | Sort yourself out, Google. | ars wrote: | For me it recommends _exactly_ what I watch - I 've never | seen any recommendation for stuff I don't watch. | | The trouble seems to be it can't seem to find anything new. | So if anything, I'd want it to branch out a bit and find | semi-related stuff, but it doesn't. | | You're not the first person to complain about YouTube | recommendations, and I don't know why my experience is so | different than yours. | [deleted] | [deleted] | notinfuriated wrote: | Somewhere in the middle for me, but what it recommends to me | are generally channels I am already interested in. I think | the only novel recommendation I've seen recently, that I | enjoyed, was of some kind of classical Chinese music. | Otherwise, I see a lot of absolute fucking garbage from the | likes of Mr. Beast. | fallingknife wrote: | It's insanely biased towards popularity. I watched this | series of like 40 videos on extremely large numbers. And not | one time did I ever see one in my recommendations. You would | think when you've watched 1-20 of something the algorithm | would be smart enough to suggest 21 but no. | amatecha wrote: | Yeah, on a non-logged-in system I watch YT on, I watched | exactly ONE gaming-related video, and now suddenly the "home" | view is full of Minecraft, Roblox, whatever FPS shooters, | etc... Like... I'm not suddenly absolutely obsessed with a | topic because I viewed one video, guys... | TheAceOfHearts wrote: | The trick to improving YouTube recommendations is to regularly | prune uninteresting videos and channels. Eventually this should | start surfacing videos you're more likely to find interesting. | | I've actually hit the end of my recommendation stream on the | mobile app after marking dozens of videos with Not Interested. | Once this happens it starts recommending videos you've already | watched or older videos from creators you've been watching | lately. | | Personally, I'd love it if you could curate the recommendation | system a bit more. I'm never interested in rewatching stuff I've | already seen. And the recency bias for recommendations means | you're always getting more if what you've recently consumed. I'd | like it if more older interests were mixed in. Finally, I'd love | to be able to blacklist certain topics and games entirely. | | There's so much missed potential with YouTube recommendations. | | Some might say that you can still use search, but that has been | crippled to include unrelated recommendations after one page of | results. Not only that, I want YouTube to help me discover new | content. When the recommendation system works and it shows me new | kinds of interesting stuff, it's superb. TikTok is eating | YouTube's lunch in this regard. | svnpenn wrote: | > I'm never interested in rewatching stuff I've already seen. | | thats a weird position. The whole point of YouTube (used to be | anyway) was long form content. YouTube is not new anymore. You | really have no interest in watching some good 10 minute video | you saw 9 years ago? | tus666 wrote: | But at least the "not interested" option works well, at least for | me. | behaveEc0n00 wrote: | The zeitgeist of our culture; of course you didn't MEAN to be | negative, here try again. | | No, no; I most certainly did mean to suggest you should stop | showing me this persons channel. Not because I hate the person | but because I don't want a shit "AI" that's feeding me what | Google makes the best margins on. | dredmorbius wrote: | This article is a discussion of a study Mozilla published ... | without a dateline, though the Wayback Machine suggests it | probably appeared 20 Sept. 2022 (today): | <https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/youtube/user-controls/> | | That was previously submitted to HN though there seems to be no | activity presently: | <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32910321> | operator-name wrote: | The linked report [0] is dated today and uses data from the | RegretsReporter extension [1] and additional surveys from | December 2021, which is basically when youtube removed the | dislike counter [2]. | | It's both suprising and not that suprising to see | quantitatively how little disliking or telling youtube to not | reccomend channels or content has an impact on the algorithm. | They also rightfully point out how much of a pain it is to try | to provide negative feedback to youtube's reccomendation | system. It's always been a chore to remove the hot new trending | clickbait from the reccomendations. | | I sadly doubt that this report will change much, but it's good | to finally have some statistical validation of what I've | frustrating subjectively experienced. | | [0]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/research/library/user- | cont... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en- | GB/firefox/addon/regretsreport... [2]: | https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/update-to-youtube/ | amatecha wrote: | This reminds me of how games ( _cough_ LeagueOfLegends _cough_ ) | match me up with a player that I literally just reported for | harassment, griefing etc. in the previous match. Like, there | weren't any other possible players to match me with out of the | many thousands? I don't mind waiting a few more seconds to match | up with someone else! | lupire wrote: | Did you Block or just report? | dannyw wrote: | It shouldn't matter. | judge2020 wrote: | Dota 2 added a (paid) "avoid player" option, where the | matchmaker will not match them with you no matter what. | | https://win.gg/news/dota-2-avoid-player-feature-improved-as-... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-20 23:00 UTC)