3 ms·

I work at Google but not on anything related to YouTube. This opinion is my own: that was very disappointing to read. I use YouTube, I don't browse it. I sea

by habosa 8y ago

I work at Google but not on anything related to YouTube. This opinion is my own: that was very disappointing to read. I use YouTube, I don't browse it. I search for what I want, and then I watch it. Yet YouTube seems absolutely determined to send me down rabbit holes for some reason. For instance my friend sent me a video by some cable news neo-philosopher (a Jordan Peterson type) and since then I can't get rid of low-quality vids in my recommendations that are trying to make me angry. "{Person} totally EVISCERATES {other person}" being the calmest of them. The recommendation algorithm is also just not even good at its job. I am Jewish and the number of videos I have seen recommended to me that are thinly-veiled anti-semitism is pathetic. Do they really think I am going to watch those? The one thing from the article I do believe is that these extremist videos (mostly) don't monetize. So why do they dominate? Honestly I think we just suck at building recommendation systems. I am not a big fan of Facebook, but I applaud their recent ban of white supremacist content. Freedom of speech is one thing, freedom to use someone else's site to speak to millions is another thing. YouTube should just take a harder stance on all of this dangerous crap. The Sandy Hook deniers and the Antivaxxers will have a hard time finding a new home. </rant>

fossuser 8y ago
From the outside it seems like they don't actually design YouTube with features their users would like. I pay for YouTube to avoid ads and wish I didn't have to use their home view which shows me a lot of content I don't care about. I want my homescreen to be my subscriptions (instead I have to manually switch to this every time). I would entirely turn off recommended content if I could, in favor of channels suggesting other channels or something more human curated (like Spotify discovery which in part uses other user's playlists). People are vulnerable to bad information delivered in a manipulative way - especially when this is reinforced by a bunch of recommended videos.
Avamander 8y ago
Press three dots - not interested in recommendations based on: [video name], works great for me.

by habosa 8y ago

fossuser 8y ago

From the outside it seems like they don't actually design YouTube with features their users would like. I pay for YouTube to avoid ads and wish I didn't have to use their home view which shows me a lot of content I don't care about. I want my homescreen to be my subscriptions (instead I have to manually switch to this every time). I would entirely turn off recommended content if I could, in favor of channels suggesting other channels or something more human curated (like Spotify discovery which in part uses other user's playlists). People are vulnerable to bad information delivered in a manipulative way - especially when this is reinforced by a bunch of recommended videos.

Avamander 8y ago

Press three dots - not interested in recommendations based on: [video name], works great for me.