4 ms·

I’m actually surprised at how bad their ML model is. Funny to see someone else mention how overfit their model is. There’s literally no content discovery, it’s

I’m actually surprised at how bad their ML model is. Funny to see someone else mention how overfit their model is. There’s literally no content discovery, it’s the same extremely specific topic. But you know what? I’ve also noticed this phenomenon on YouTube, maybe there’s something to it from an advertising revenue perspective.

robjan 8y ago
Probably, for the majority of users, it's best to show content which aligns with their opinions and interests to increase engagement. It's similar to the Google "Filter Bubble".
- alpaca128 8y ago
  Filter bubble is one thing. It's another thing to filter content so aggressively that over 50% of the site's content stays the same from one day to the next while still showing content you already upvoted. That's the reason I stopped using it a few weeks ago - it got so bad I had to scroll down multiple pages of collapsed answers in order to find a single question/answer that I hadn't seen yet. Which is exactly the opposite of what should happen.
busterarm 8y ago
A coworker of mine was recently sharing an encounter with an engineer at Quora to me. The gist of it was that the Quora engineer was saying that they've built the best engineering team in the entire industry -- that they're the 'smartest guys in the room'. Both my coworker and I were impressed by the gall of such a suggestion and then began to wonder how much self-deception and double-think must be occurring, culturally, within a company for its employees to be suggesting such a thing to others.
- aaronbrethorst 8y ago
  At least they didn't decide to create their own programming language in order to build their website, unlike another company founded by early Facebook employees (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2191800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2191800)
- dasil003 8y ago
  If you were an early employee at Facebook it takes significant self-awareness to realize that that success may not be directly linked to your formidable brain power. Especially if you that was your formative professional experience in your 20s.
sevensor 8y ago
Despite the fact that I use YouTube only for music videos and technical content and have never watched a Jordan Peterson video, YouTube recommends only Jordan Peterson videos to me.
- vntok 8y ago
  Have you tried watching one or two? You might be the type of person prone to find them interesting, that's what the machine thinks of you anyway.
  - sevensor 8y ago
    I tell computers what to do, not the other way around :)

robjan 8y ago

Probably, for the majority of users, it's best to show content which aligns with their opinions and interests to increase engagement. It's similar to the Google "Filter Bubble".

alpaca128 8y ago
Filter bubble is one thing. It's another thing to filter content so aggressively that over 50% of the site's content stays the same from one day to the next while still showing content you already upvoted. That's the reason I stopped using it a few weeks ago - it got so bad I had to scroll down multiple pages of collapsed answers in order to find a single question/answer that I hadn't seen yet. Which is exactly the opposite of what should happen.

busterarm 8y ago

A coworker of mine was recently sharing an encounter with an engineer at Quora to me. The gist of it was that the Quora engineer was saying that they've built the best engineering team in the entire industry -- that they're the 'smartest guys in the room'. Both my coworker and I were impressed by the gall of such a suggestion and then began to wonder how much self-deception and double-think must be occurring, culturally, within a company for its employees to be suggesting such a thing to others.

aaronbrethorst 8y ago
At least they didn't decide to create their own programming language in order to build their website, unlike another company founded by early Facebook employees (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2191800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2191800)
dasil003 8y ago
If you were an early employee at Facebook it takes significant self-awareness to realize that that success may not be directly linked to your formidable brain power. Especially if you that was your formative professional experience in your 20s.

sevensor 8y ago

Despite the fact that I use YouTube only for music videos and technical content and have never watched a Jordan Peterson video, YouTube recommends only Jordan Peterson videos to me.

vntok 8y ago
Have you tried watching one or two? You might be the type of person prone to find them interesting, that's what the machine thinks of you anyway.
- sevensor 8y ago
  I tell computers what to do, not the other way around :)