13 ms·

How YouTube perfected the feed

39 points by danijelb 9y ago

PeachPlum 9y ago
Just wait until Thursday 31st Aug, the day of the YouTube Purge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-rolls-out-its-biggest-crackdown-on-youtube-hate-speech https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-ro...
gnicholas 9y ago
Is there a way to turn off the watch-this-next feature? I sometimes show educational videos to my toddler, and if she sees the tiles of other videos, she always wants to watch them (and will often throw a fit if she's not allowed). I would literally pay money to turn off this "feature".
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  http://fixyt.com http://fixyt.com is one interface that avoids that. Though its search features seem broken currently. The other option is to use a downloader (yt-download, mps-youtube -- seem my comment elsewhere) to specify only what you want to watch, without YouTube's "helpful" drug-pusher suggestions.
derekp7 9y ago
I really wish there was a way to exclude certain videos from their feed recommendation engine. Or at least put them in a different category. If someone sends me a particularly funny cat video, because it is their cat, I really don't want to get a deluge of cat videos. Also, if you are playing videos for your 2-year-old, those shouldn't influence the playlists that come up when you are driving to work (the Gummy Bears videos keep popping up in my 80's playlists).
- freetonik 9y ago
  You can click on three dots and select "Not interested". This works for videos, playlists and topics in your feed.
  - EJTH 9y ago
    I have done that countless of times and I still get The John Oliver Show queued up after the most unrelated videos like videos about retro computing etc.
  - derekp7 9y ago
    Except that I am interested, if I happen to be playing videos for the kid. I could create another account, but I'm not sure how to tie additional youtube accounts to the youtube red service. And I'd have to remember to switch accounts before playing videos for him (they should introduce "listening profiles", and have the ability to move certain instances of watching a video to a specific profile).
- DiThi 9y ago
  I do that by right clicking a video -> open in private window. Works wonders for click baity videos that you're likely to regret if it affected recomendations.
dekhn 9y ago
The mention of sibyl, which is rarely discussed outside of Google (https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~niejiazhong/slides/chandra.pdf https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~niejiazhong/slides/chandra.pdf) is interesting. Most people really do not understand how effective simple, straightforward linear and logistic regression done on large scale data is. The Brain stuff and deep learning is nice, but the meat and potatos is still basic regression.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
Why do I have an image of "feed" as in cows being fed corn mush? In light of recent transgressions against speech on their platform, I wouldn't use the word "perfect" to describe YouTube feed.
CM30 9y ago
Perfected the feed? As a YouTube user, 'perfected' is probably the last word I'd use for it. Instead, it seems to either: 1. Hide stuff I actually wanted to see from channels I'm subscribed to 2. Show me videos I've already seen before. 3. Show completely irrelevant videos 4. Mix up subscriptions and recommendations by recommending videos I'd already have seen if they showed me the bloody subscriptions in the first place. And watch later... oh boy, their idea of videos to show there seems to be stuff I've either seen years ago and didn't like enough to finish, or that I've seen multiple times and didn't finish once or twice because I saw something new to watch.
- lucky_cloud 9y ago
  Watch Later is just a playlist. You control what's there. Otherwise I agree completely.
- Navarr 9y ago
  I'm fairly sure that "Watch Later" is just a special playlist full of videos where you click the "Watch Later" button on...
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    It is. Which leads me to question the OPs comment.
    - Raphmedia 9y ago
      I think he got mixed up with the playlist where it's video you left without finishing ("continue watching") and the playlist where it's "watch again".
      - CM30 9y ago
        Yep, mixed it up with continue watching.
- ballenf 9y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. Feels like a generational difference. I'm from the generation that prided itself on its ability to selectively craft one's own "feed" (RSS originally) by spending time finding the highest quality, most relevant sources of trusted content. The author of this piece doesn't take that approach. And YouTube caters to such. [edited to be less judgmental] I'm constantly annoyed that the YouTube homepage requires several clicks for me to find new videos posted by channels I subscribe to. The organization on the home page is different every single day. My only options are to delete suggested channels (to see them reappear a week later!!). But in small print on the side, YouTube taunts me that it actually does remember all the channels I've subscribed to. It just thinks that it knows better what I want to be watching. And you know what? I probably do spend more time on the site because of this shitty design. But what their algorithms don't tell them is the slowly simmering resentment I have toward the site and my feeling of being in an increasingly adversarial role with Google as a whole. Maybe that feeling will never have any monetary impact on anyone, but it seems dangerous to ignore.
gallerdude 9y ago
Yeah, I don’t know when, but sometime in the past few months I’ve basically been exclusively using YouTube’s recommendation engine. While before it was kind of blunt (“you like video games, so here’s some more video game videos”), now it’s very sharp (“you’ve been interested in half life recently, and you like the video essay format, so we’ll give you half life video essays”). It’s honestly amazing how easy it makes it to reach good content. A giant feed of neurally recommended videos, created by average people with passion in topics really feels like the future.
- DiThi 9y ago
  That has been my experience except that at some point it forgets what videos you have watched last year, becoming super annoying and useless.
bicubic 9y ago
Perfected the feed? Uh. My biggest complaint with youtube is that the feed is awful. It doesn't help me discover new stuff I like, it doesn't even help me discover obvious stuff like new uploads from posters I like. I don't know what the hell they're doing, but I've caught myself resorting to google searches to find Youtube content that I like on more than one occasion. Maybe I'm a minority, but the entire front page of youtube is a huge miss for me. The feed seems to be incredibly biased towards recently watched videos, to the point where clicking a single weird link on reddit is enough to fuck up my top suggested videos for a while.
aethertron 9y ago
What are the qualities of a good feed? 1. it shows me cool new stuff 2. it keeps me on the site 1 is obvious. 2 is questionable. It could be a consequence of point 1. Or it could be a matter of sneaky manipulative tactics. I am suspicious of platforms' recommendation algorithms. They are working for the interests of the platform, not necessarily mine. (But that isn't the way it needs to be. Recommendation bots independent of platforms could resolve this conflict-of-interest issue.)
intoverflow2 9y ago
Watch one video about graphics cards and then have YouTube recommend you Linus Tech Tips every day, till the end of time completely ignoring how many times you click "Not Interested" completely ignoring you have blocked his account. Noticed several other scenarios like this where you watch a part of one video on a topic and YT's algorithm will try and force a certain YouTuber on you for the rest of the time you use that account. This isn't perfecting this is force feeding. Respect my blocks.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  "Not interested" sadly send like a point block rather than having any kind of semantic intelligence behind it.
- FTA 9y ago
  I've had luck stopping suggestions I don't want by deleting the video that triggered them in my watch history.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  If you do insist on logging in to YouTube, purging your history with high frequency is actually quite useful.
dredmorbius 9y ago
The tool that's "perfected the feed" for me is mps-youtube. This is a console-based audio- and video-playing tool which allows me to: 1. Search for content. 2. View detailed information. 3. Search by user or YouTube playlist. 4. Selective add or remove items from a current playlist. 5. Save and manage multiple named playlists. 6. Queue up large sets of content to be accessed. Including audio-only, in background (my preferred mode). 7. Works on Android via Termux. 8. Keyboard playback controls to skip, jump, play, pause, speed, or slow playback. (Similar to mplayer's if you're familiar with those.) 9. No ads. 10. No comments. 11. No recommended "fail", "dash-cam", or "blackhead" crap. That corner of YouTube. It's everything I've wished YouTube was, and that it isn't. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube
wjoe 9y ago
The example at the top of the article is actually an example of what makes me dislike the YouTube feed. I watch one video review of a game, and now I'm getting 20 videos suggested about the same game which I only had a passing interest in. Sure, show me a few related videos, but often it can be a large percentage of the home page taken up by a section like this. The same over-personalisation is an issue in a lot of Google platforms. On the Google news feed in Android, when I enabled personalisation it became dominated by unimportant articles about games, films, or TV shows I'd looked up recently, and hardly any general news. Not to mention the filter bubble of Google searches in general. I find this trend of over personalisation inconvenient, and not to mention a bit creepy.
TACIXAT 9y ago
YouTube and Amazon both have an awful recommendation system. Both sites have a wealth of data, a wealth of consumables, and yet if I go to them without something specific in mind I'm pretty much only offered things I've previously viewed.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
The YouTube RSS feeds are pretty much perfect, aside from being hidden or, sometimes, non-existent.
- CrystalGamma 9y ago
  Yeah I use those, too. Turns out you can use some url hacking to get them, even if they don't have a <link rel=alternate>. The URL is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= followed by the channel ID (if your channel URL is https://www.youtube.com/channel/something https://www.youtube.com/channel/something, then you can just take that 'something', if it's https://www.youtube.com/user/something https://www.youtube.com/user/something, you may need to search for the ID a little). EDIT: Oops, that last one actually exists :S
RandyRanderson 9y ago
They need to change their objective fn from "increasing minutes played" to "increasing overall service satisfaction".
EJTH 9y ago
Perfected the feed? its worse than ever. And the new reskin of youtube is also the most lazy hack job I ever saw from Alphabet, its quirky even in chrome.

39 points by danijelb 9y ago

Just wait until Thursday 31st Aug, the day of the YouTube Purge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-rolls-out-its-biggest-crackdown-on-youtube-hate-speech https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-ro...

gnicholas 9y ago

Is there a way to turn off the watch-this-next feature? I sometimes show educational videos to my toddler, and if she sees the tiles of other videos, she always wants to watch them (and will often throw a fit if she's not allowed). I would literally pay money to turn off this "feature".

dredmorbius 9y ago
http://fixyt.com http://fixyt.com is one interface that avoids that. Though its search features seem broken currently. The other option is to use a downloader (yt-download, mps-youtube -- seem my comment elsewhere) to specify only what you want to watch, without YouTube's "helpful" drug-pusher suggestions.

derekp7 9y ago

I really wish there was a way to exclude certain videos from their feed recommendation engine. Or at least put them in a different category. If someone sends me a particularly funny cat video, because it is their cat, I really don't want to get a deluge of cat videos. Also, if you are playing videos for your 2-year-old, those shouldn't influence the playlists that come up when you are driving to work (the Gummy Bears videos keep popping up in my 80's playlists).

freetonik 9y ago
You can click on three dots and select "Not interested". This works for videos, playlists and topics in your feed.
- EJTH 9y ago
  I have done that countless of times and I still get The John Oliver Show queued up after the most unrelated videos like videos about retro computing etc.
- derekp7 9y ago
  Except that I am interested, if I happen to be playing videos for the kid. I could create another account, but I'm not sure how to tie additional youtube accounts to the youtube red service. And I'd have to remember to switch accounts before playing videos for him (they should introduce "listening profiles", and have the ability to move certain instances of watching a video to a specific profile).
DiThi 9y ago
I do that by right clicking a video -> open in private window. Works wonders for click baity videos that you're likely to regret if it affected recomendations.

dekhn 9y ago

The mention of sibyl, which is rarely discussed outside of Google (https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~niejiazhong/slides/chandra.pdf https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~niejiazhong/slides/chandra.pdf) is interesting. Most people really do not understand how effective simple, straightforward linear and logistic regression done on large scale data is. The Brain stuff and deep learning is nice, but the meat and potatos is still basic regression.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

Why do I have an image of "feed" as in cows being fed corn mush? In light of recent transgressions against speech on their platform, I wouldn't use the word "perfect" to describe YouTube feed.

CM30 9y ago

Perfected the feed? As a YouTube user, 'perfected' is probably the last word I'd use for it. Instead, it seems to either: 1. Hide stuff I actually wanted to see from channels I'm subscribed to 2. Show me videos I've already seen before. 3. Show completely irrelevant videos 4. Mix up subscriptions and recommendations by recommending videos I'd already have seen if they showed me the bloody subscriptions in the first place. And watch later... oh boy, their idea of videos to show there seems to be stuff I've either seen years ago and didn't like enough to finish, or that I've seen multiple times and didn't finish once or twice because I saw something new to watch.

lucky_cloud 9y ago
Watch Later is just a playlist. You control what's there. Otherwise I agree completely.
Navarr 9y ago
I'm fairly sure that "Watch Later" is just a special playlist full of videos where you click the "Watch Later" button on...
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  It is. Which leads me to question the OPs comment.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    I think he got mixed up with the playlist where it's video you left without finishing ("continue watching") and the playlist where it's "watch again".
    - CM30 9y ago
      Yep, mixed it up with continue watching.
ballenf 9y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. Feels like a generational difference. I'm from the generation that prided itself on its ability to selectively craft one's own "feed" (RSS originally) by spending time finding the highest quality, most relevant sources of trusted content. The author of this piece doesn't take that approach. And YouTube caters to such. [edited to be less judgmental] I'm constantly annoyed that the YouTube homepage requires several clicks for me to find new videos posted by channels I subscribe to. The organization on the home page is different every single day. My only options are to delete suggested channels (to see them reappear a week later!!). But in small print on the side, YouTube taunts me that it actually does remember all the channels I've subscribed to. It just thinks that it knows better what I want to be watching. And you know what? I probably do spend more time on the site because of this shitty design. But what their algorithms don't tell them is the slowly simmering resentment I have toward the site and my feeling of being in an increasingly adversarial role with Google as a whole. Maybe that feeling will never have any monetary impact on anyone, but it seems dangerous to ignore.

gallerdude 9y ago

Yeah, I don’t know when, but sometime in the past few months I’ve basically been exclusively using YouTube’s recommendation engine. While before it was kind of blunt (“you like video games, so here’s some more video game videos”), now it’s very sharp (“you’ve been interested in half life recently, and you like the video essay format, so we’ll give you half life video essays”). It’s honestly amazing how easy it makes it to reach good content. A giant feed of neurally recommended videos, created by average people with passion in topics really feels like the future.

DiThi 9y ago
That has been my experience except that at some point it forgets what videos you have watched last year, becoming super annoying and useless.

bicubic 9y ago

Perfected the feed? Uh. My biggest complaint with youtube is that the feed is awful. It doesn't help me discover new stuff I like, it doesn't even help me discover obvious stuff like new uploads from posters I like. I don't know what the hell they're doing, but I've caught myself resorting to google searches to find Youtube content that I like on more than one occasion. Maybe I'm a minority, but the entire front page of youtube is a huge miss for me. The feed seems to be incredibly biased towards recently watched videos, to the point where clicking a single weird link on reddit is enough to fuck up my top suggested videos for a while.

aethertron 9y ago

What are the qualities of a good feed? 1. it shows me cool new stuff 2. it keeps me on the site 1 is obvious. 2 is questionable. It could be a consequence of point 1. Or it could be a matter of sneaky manipulative tactics. I am suspicious of platforms' recommendation algorithms. They are working for the interests of the platform, not necessarily mine. (But that isn't the way it needs to be. Recommendation bots independent of platforms could resolve this conflict-of-interest issue.)

intoverflow2 9y ago

Watch one video about graphics cards and then have YouTube recommend you Linus Tech Tips every day, till the end of time completely ignoring how many times you click "Not Interested" completely ignoring you have blocked his account. Noticed several other scenarios like this where you watch a part of one video on a topic and YT's algorithm will try and force a certain YouTuber on you for the rest of the time you use that account. This isn't perfecting this is force feeding. Respect my blocks.

hkmurakami 9y ago
"Not interested" sadly send like a point block rather than having any kind of semantic intelligence behind it.
FTA 9y ago
I've had luck stopping suggestions I don't want by deleting the video that triggered them in my watch history.
dredmorbius 9y ago
If you do insist on logging in to YouTube, purging your history with high frequency is actually quite useful.

dredmorbius 9y ago

The tool that's "perfected the feed" for me is mps-youtube. This is a console-based audio- and video-playing tool which allows me to: 1. Search for content. 2. View detailed information. 3. Search by user or YouTube playlist. 4. Selective add or remove items from a current playlist. 5. Save and manage multiple named playlists. 6. Queue up large sets of content to be accessed. Including audio-only, in background (my preferred mode). 7. Works on Android via Termux. 8. Keyboard playback controls to skip, jump, play, pause, speed, or slow playback. (Similar to mplayer's if you're familiar with those.) 9. No ads. 10. No comments. 11. No recommended "fail", "dash-cam", or "blackhead" crap. That corner of YouTube. It's everything I've wished YouTube was, and that it isn't. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube

wjoe 9y ago

The example at the top of the article is actually an example of what makes me dislike the YouTube feed. I watch one video review of a game, and now I'm getting 20 videos suggested about the same game which I only had a passing interest in. Sure, show me a few related videos, but often it can be a large percentage of the home page taken up by a section like this. The same over-personalisation is an issue in a lot of Google platforms. On the Google news feed in Android, when I enabled personalisation it became dominated by unimportant articles about games, films, or TV shows I'd looked up recently, and hardly any general news. Not to mention the filter bubble of Google searches in general. I find this trend of over personalisation inconvenient, and not to mention a bit creepy.

TACIXAT 9y ago

YouTube and Amazon both have an awful recommendation system. Both sites have a wealth of data, a wealth of consumables, and yet if I go to them without something specific in mind I'm pretty much only offered things I've previously viewed.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

The YouTube RSS feeds are pretty much perfect, aside from being hidden or, sometimes, non-existent.

CrystalGamma 9y ago
Yeah I use those, too. Turns out you can use some url hacking to get them, even if they don't have a <link rel=alternate>. The URL is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= followed by the channel ID (if your channel URL is https://www.youtube.com/channel/something https://www.youtube.com/channel/something, then you can just take that 'something', if it's https://www.youtube.com/user/something https://www.youtube.com/user/something, you may need to search for the ID a little). EDIT: Oops, that last one actually exists :S

RandyRanderson 9y ago

They need to change their objective fn from "increasing minutes played" to "increasing overall service satisfaction".

EJTH 9y ago

Perfected the feed? its worse than ever. And the new reskin of youtube is also the most lazy hack job I ever saw from Alphabet, its quirky even in chrome.