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Whenever I went to YouTube I would get suggested videos that were either interesting and related to stuff I had watched, or not interesting to me, but no proble
by rikkus 8y ago
Whenever I went to YouTube I would get suggested videos that were either interesting and related to stuff I had watched, or not interesting to me, but no problem. The algorithm just didn’t quite judge what I might be interested in as well as it could.
Occasionally I would try dismissing one of the suggestions in the hope I wouldn’t see similar again, but then I’d still see it’s kind repeated and was just disappointed it wasn’t taking my request into account.
Suggestions are hard though. No problem.
One day, though, I made the mistake of following a link to YouTube which turned out to be to a video of an American political figure (not even sure if he is a politician) whose views were of the sort that court controversy - on purpose, I guessed.
What I didn’t expect was that YouTube would then offer me videos featuring the same person - or people with similar ultra-polarising messages - every time I returned to YouTube.
I hadn’t realised that not only does YT take into account what you have watched a _lot_ of, it also seems to massively favour what you have watched once - if that is something especially controversial or perhaps otherwise ‘special’.
While I don’t mind pointless suggestions I will ignore, it’s very concerning that without ‘liking’ or repeatedly watching such material, people are being suggested it time after time, even when they ask to have it taken away.
- harrumph 8y ago> it also seems to massively favour what you have watched once - if that is something especially controversial or perhaps otherwise ‘special’. This is my experience as well. YT thinks I love Jordan Peterson. Four or so months ago, I didn't know who he was, and clicked one clip, found it ridiculous and never clicked another one. But my recommendations are lousy with the guy.
- kristiandupont 8y agoYou are the second comment here stating this specifically about Jordan Peterson. Weirdly enough, I had that same experience. I saw one video, didn't like it and yet YT keeps recommending this and that video of him or more right-wing people DESTROYING someone. It's frustrating to say the least, not only because I don't want to see it but because I showed a video once when giving a talk, and after it had finished, all those garbage recommendations showed up for everyone to see, making it look like I am secretly some lunatic.
- harrumph 8y ago> after it had finished, all those garbage recommendations showed up for everyone to see, making it look like I am secretly some lunatic. This is kind of my nightmare! Condolences. YT, wtf.
- dwaltrip 8y agoIf one isn't sure if they want recommendations related to a video (that they haven't even watched yet!), the only safe approach is to watch the video in incognito mode.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoYouTube is not trying to provide a service to you, it's trying to sell you the ad consumer, to their actual customers: advertisers. And they have it in their head that the best way to do that is to increase engagement. And the algorithms they use to try to do that analyze the habits of the most "engaged" viewers which includes a fair helping of crazy people with unlimited time on their hands and when the platform thinks it has some sort of opening to turn you into one of those folks, it tries as hard as possible to shove you in that direction. All this is just silly algorithms under the hood without enough human oversight, but that doesn't make it any less sinister. Imagine this translated to print media, imagine YouPaper: a publisher of magazines. Going by these same engagement metric driven algorithmic based systems such a platform would rapidly spiral toward pushing tabloid content to the detriment of everything else.