4 ms·

Essentially with all that data, YouTube still hold a bad recommendation engine.

by gryffin 7y ago

NegativeLatency 7y ago
Or potentially the recommendations are tuned more towards ad revenue than your personal interests?
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  Which from the user's perspective may be equivalent to "bad recommendation engine".
- Applejinx 7y ago
  Or otherwise paid for (which I think still counts as 'ads'), or tuned towards engagement. I think quite a lot has to do with machine learning working out that if you panic the human animal they pay attention to threats, and therefore to maximize engagement 'if it bleeds, it leads' (old newspaper maxim). Newspaper editors can (and might not) automatically apply a social-benefit heuristic or sense of social shame (not wanting to be a 'muckraker' or troublemaker), and machine learning may not even start with such a concept. If engagement was maximized by turning viewers into cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers (CHUDs), machine learning would simply make note of that and run as hard as it could in that direction, since it doesn't have a larger context in mind unless programmed to do so. (Such a larger context is actually sort of controversial: lot of people demonize the very concept of social justice, and without it you get these hacks to maximize engagement by tapping into really unmanageable human/animal behaviors)
Avamander 7y ago
I disagree from my own experience.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
I find that it's pretty good.
setr 7y ago
I'm currently unaware of any recommendation engine that's worth acknowledging. Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, PornHub, etc... they're all accomplishing little more than "similar to the one, and only one item you last saw", with dramatic shifts in "profiling" from one or two videos. Actually, Netflix acknowledges this and splits the recommendation into "because you watched X..", so at least it covers a greater range (eg last 5 things seen) I'm damned sure they could be much more useful if they would let me tell them what I like, by implementing rating systems that are worth using (e.g. the ability to browse and edit previous ratings in a sane fashion) but user-useful recommendation is not the actual goal, so really its just that our metrics are wrong. It's probably great according to view counts.
- komali2 7y ago
  The only one I think is good is when I build radio stations off custom playlists on Google play music. Generally speaking, most of the songs are good, and like 40% will get added to the playlist as well.
  - setr 7y ago
    I don’t use this, or Spotify, but those are the only two systems I’ve heard people give praise for the recommendation engine — I suspect that its because music playlists are almost equivalent to a rating system. That is, the user is capable of efficiently informing the engine of their taste, and there’s significant incentive for the user to consistently re-evaluate their ratings (playlists), so it can be trusted as up to date. Another very important aspect is that playlists are useful enough to the user that they actually want to maintain it. For example, amazon, netflix and pornhub all have rating systems, but they’re not at all useful. The interface isn’t useful enough for reviewing and reflecting on, its not comprehensive enough to keep as a primary list (because it only covers what they offer, which is very limited) and there’s of course no impact on the recommendation engine (because the rating systems are not worth using; chicken and egg). No sane person would touch the things (beyond “upvoting”, which isn’t significantly related to taste) Imo ratings are absolutely vital to useful reccomendation, but they’ve been totally neglected
  - 7y ago
pjc50 7y ago
On this subject, clicking through to some of these videos in incognito gave me what I guess must be the "default" suggestions - which included not just beauty tips spam but far-right speakers and loyalist marches in Belfast. I'm guessing the latter is related to the date but it's not something I'd expect to be the default! Watching even one video then made it more normal, even when trying to generate recommendations based on the no view videos.
ubercow13 7y ago
I like YouTube's recommendation engine, it is the only good one I've used.

Essentially with all that data, YouTube still hold a bad recommendation engine.

NegativeLatency 7y ago

Or potentially the recommendations are tuned more towards ad revenue than your personal interests?

JoshTriplett 7y ago
Which from the user's perspective may be equivalent to "bad recommendation engine".
Applejinx 7y ago
Or otherwise paid for (which I think still counts as 'ads'), or tuned towards engagement. I think quite a lot has to do with machine learning working out that if you panic the human animal they pay attention to threats, and therefore to maximize engagement 'if it bleeds, it leads' (old newspaper maxim). Newspaper editors can (and might not) automatically apply a social-benefit heuristic or sense of social shame (not wanting to be a 'muckraker' or troublemaker), and machine learning may not even start with such a concept. If engagement was maximized by turning viewers into cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers (CHUDs), machine learning would simply make note of that and run as hard as it could in that direction, since it doesn't have a larger context in mind unless programmed to do so. (Such a larger context is actually sort of controversial: lot of people demonize the very concept of social justice, and without it you get these hacks to maximize engagement by tapping into really unmanageable human/animal behaviors)

Avamander 7y ago

I disagree from my own experience.

hombre_fatal 7y ago

I find that it's pretty good.

setr 7y ago

I'm currently unaware of any recommendation engine that's worth acknowledging. Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, PornHub, etc... they're all accomplishing little more than "similar to the one, and only one item you last saw", with dramatic shifts in "profiling" from one or two videos. Actually, Netflix acknowledges this and splits the recommendation into "because you watched X..", so at least it covers a greater range (eg last 5 things seen) I'm damned sure they could be much more useful if they would let me tell them what I like, by implementing rating systems that are worth using (e.g. the ability to browse and edit previous ratings in a sane fashion) but user-useful recommendation is not the actual goal, so really its just that our metrics are wrong. It's probably great according to view counts.

komali2 7y ago
The only one I think is good is when I build radio stations off custom playlists on Google play music. Generally speaking, most of the songs are good, and like 40% will get added to the playlist as well.
- setr 7y ago
  I don’t use this, or Spotify, but those are the only two systems I’ve heard people give praise for the recommendation engine — I suspect that its because music playlists are almost equivalent to a rating system. That is, the user is capable of efficiently informing the engine of their taste, and there’s significant incentive for the user to consistently re-evaluate their ratings (playlists), so it can be trusted as up to date. Another very important aspect is that playlists are useful enough to the user that they actually want to maintain it. For example, amazon, netflix and pornhub all have rating systems, but they’re not at all useful. The interface isn’t useful enough for reviewing and reflecting on, its not comprehensive enough to keep as a primary list (because it only covers what they offer, which is very limited) and there’s of course no impact on the recommendation engine (because the rating systems are not worth using; chicken and egg). No sane person would touch the things (beyond “upvoting”, which isn’t significantly related to taste) Imo ratings are absolutely vital to useful reccomendation, but they’ve been totally neglected
- 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

On this subject, clicking through to some of these videos in incognito gave me what I guess must be the "default" suggestions - which included not just beauty tips spam but far-right speakers and loyalist marches in Belfast. I'm guessing the latter is related to the date but it's not something I'd expect to be the default! Watching even one video then made it more normal, even when trying to generate recommendations based on the no view videos.

ubercow13 7y ago

I like YouTube's recommendation engine, it is the only good one I've used.