11 ms·

YouTube Regrets

153 points by edwinjm 7y ago

phs318u 7y ago
I do believe that “something needs to be done”, about the various internet dis-info machines [0]. However, while the link shows a bunch of relatable stories, all it offers in response is a “sign up to Mozilla” button. That’s it. A newsletter. A bit disappointing and anti-climactic. [0]. I have no idea what. EDIT: I signed up to the newsletter.
- rolph 7y ago
  try veiwing with page style [css], turned off
- input_sh 7y ago
  This is a more informative link about why they've done this: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/our-recommendation-youtube/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/our-recommendation-yo...
  - phs318u 7y ago
    Ah! Didn’t see that (was viewing in a phone and requesting desktop site made no difference). Maybe the link was there and I missed it. In any case, thanks!
- fl0wenol 7y ago
  I like the conclusions they come to in their letter to social media, where they are requesting allowing researchers more insight and control, essentially enabling them to sample/simulate the recommendation engine and get more insight into how it clusters or relates contents. Furthermore they want to reduce limits on API keys so that more comprehensive academic research can be performed. They know the issue isn't so much the algorithm as those that are gaming it to empty extraction of peoples attention (== money), extreme, or harmful ends. In doing so we might better understand the problem and then provide tools or recommendation to social media and the public on the topic.
  - hootbootscoot 7y ago
    interesting!
WC3w6pXxgGd 7y ago
Don't log in to youtube. Clear your cache. Problem solved.
ronilan 7y ago
Dunno about regrets but this clearly shows that neither of those two institutions aged well.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Was hoping Mozilla was working on a free video hosting alternative. Would also love a free webmail alternative.
- sp332 7y ago
  Free video hosting loses huge amounts of money.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Less every year.
  - minton 7y ago
    I don’t see how. Popular videos show ads what feels like every other minute. I find myself zoning out staring at the bottom right where the Skip Ad button shows up and I can’t even recall a single ad I’ve ever seen on YouTube.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > free This is the issue. I'm starting to believe the only options are free ad-supported generic platforms or direct creator-to-fan relationships. Totally free without ads is impossible.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    I’d be happy if Mozilla ran video hosting and just targeted ads based on the video itself (and maybe broad geographic area and language) and not what the user browsed last week and is on the fence about. At least that’s been a viable model since the beginning of TV and radio. Dunno why it can’t be done now.
    - 7y ago
badrequest 7y ago
I had many of these problems until I straight-up turned off viewing history. Now my recommendations are trash because they're too generic, which is precisely how I like them. Not to say that for some folks a complete abolition of YouTube might be well in order.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Same. I have been able to completely depersonalize Youtube for myself. I don't remember the exact steps I took in Google's privacy dashboard—turning off history and removing all liked and disliked videos were among them—but it absolutely worked. I don't think this discounts the larger problem though... P.S. I'm quite frustrated that I can't "depersonalize" Amazon.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  > Now my recommendations are trash because they're too generic, which is precisely how I like them. Do one better: Consider NewPipe [0] instead, if you're on Android. [0] https://newpipe.schabi.org/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/
  - badrequest 7y ago
    I am not an Android user, nor would I like to have [my Google account suspended](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723).
    - commoner 7y ago
      The user who created that issue refused to provide any evidence of their Google account being suspended for using NewPipe.
- chimi 7y ago
  That's almost worse because the videos they are showing you are ones the general masses have clicked on and gotten sucked into.
- 7y ago
baxtr 7y ago
Meh. Pretty lame. Feels like someone is generally not happy with a large share of videos on YouTube. There is also not solution proposed. Censorship is one that comes to mind, and which of course won’t work well. I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies.
- mooman219 7y ago
  I agree. People have shown that the content that gets watch time and appeals to the widest demographic is "low quality". The author of this appears to have allowed their child to freely browse the collection of videos, regrets it, and is now passing blame. In the case of his father, the author is blaming YouTube for not curating proper content. Why didn't the author curate content for his father or spend more time with them to see what they were watching? It sounds like the premise of these points is that the author didn't appreciate the bubbles their family members fell into, and instead wanted them to be in different bubbles.
- charlesism 7y ago
  > YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies. Youtube hasn’t affected the world? That seems like an extraordinary claim to me.
- jxramos 7y ago
  I agree about the mirror facet to this. Sometimes I'm even meta-aware of being sucked in to a new demographic when I start charting new video territory. I often pause and think to myself, "Wow, here's a whole batch of content targeting demographic XYZ, no thank you." I've often detected video suggestions going off my mental road barriers and I put a stop to it early before it pollutes my feed. The trouble is when you give in to temptation and let curiosity get the best of you.
- fortran77 7y ago
  That's exactly what they want! I expected to scroll down and see a new alternative YouTube being launched. I was puzzled when I didn't see it. What's their point? That they don't like one of their competitor's products?
crazypyro 7y ago
A lot of these stories read as overly dramatic and it often feels like the author is begging for sympathy in situations that don't seem to be very regrettable...
chance_state 7y ago
The stories highlighted seem to be split between "content I don't like exists on YouTube" and "content I don't like is recommended to me." I think adding tools to help users address the latter is worthwhile, but I don't think the former is actually a problem.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > "content I don't like exists on YouTube" "... and YouTube irresponsibly recommends that content to people who are likely to be negatively affected by it".
  - chance_state 7y ago
    I think there's a big difference between YouTube actively recommending things vs. people searching for things and not liking the results they get. The latter is what I meant by "content I don't like exists on YouTube". From the article: >I started searching for “fail videos” where people fall or get a little hurt. >My 10-year-old sweet daughter innocently searched for “tap dance videos”[...]
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      In both of those cases, the videos that showed up from the search weren't the problem. The problem was the videos which were recommended based on a history of having viewed the videos in the search results. The same pattern applies to many of the other stories in the article. (There's more than just the ten on the first page. Click "load more stories" at the bottom of the page.)
      - chance_state 7y ago
        Oh, I think you're right. I misread those. Also didn't know there were more than the first 10 because I browse with js off by default, which hides the "more" button.
have_faith 7y ago
The first example about the guy looking for "fail videos where people get a little hurt" is a strange anecdote to open with for this campaign. > Let’s send a message to YouTube that they need to recommend responsibly... I don't think there's such a thing as responsible recommendation at the scale YouTube operates at. At least not in the way people think by responsible anyway.
- Relys 7y ago
  I think he phrased it weirdly. Should have made a comparison to Americas Funniest Home Videos.
- jxramos 7y ago
  I think it was a neutral opening to the matter they want to bring up that should hold recognizable substance in pattern to folks who've experienced the YouTube recommendation blackholes. Things get more "controversial" the further along in their examples, which would probably turn off people from reading further if hit with that stuff right off the bat.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  Sure there is: Recommend videos with topics related to previously viewed videos. Ratings. While there will be borderline cases, it's pretty clear that "death and dismemberment" content should not follow a childrens train cartoon. Oh I know, "censorship!" etc... but at Googles scale, as you point out, what else shall we do? I do rather throw that ball back into your court. At that scale, they are regulatable :D
  - michannne 7y ago
    This is what they are already doing.. The key to your statement is the word "related". How do you determine whether two pieces of content are related? Because Youtube has found a way which works for them and seems to work in the majority of cases.
    - spion 7y ago
whamlastxmas 7y ago
>” I don’t know how I can undo the damage that’s been done to her impressionable mind. Here's an idea: Don't give your children unsupervised access to the internet. Yeah she might still access this stuff at school, but when I was in middle and highschool pre-2007 there's no way I'd ever get away with watching videos on a school computer during class. It's hard to imagine teachers are somehow more relaxed about this in 2019 and I'd be amazed if youtube wasn't blocked on school networks anyway. There's nothing a 10 year old NEEDS internet access for on private computer or phone.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  While I agree that parenting would suggest some consideration of the material accessible, perhaps the number one video sharing website could put some effort into what clearly is a funnel towards evil: it's recommendation engine. I routinely get wacko right wing nonsense in my recommendation feed and I'm rather left wing and never once searched for such content. I It's probably time to lean on the Goog a bit and get them to stop feeding Alex Jones and his ilk with unsolicited "recommendations" that run counter to previously viewed videos messaging. I get it. They think that people should leave their filter bubbles, but they equate all points of view as equally educational, when common sense would point out that some points of view on some topics should be considered off-limits. If I say "I want to live" and your point of view is "die mofo die!" do we really need to compromise on merely mutilating me? perhaps your point of view can be entirely dismissed in such a case, as situationally wrongful. Morality has social functionality, gasp. But I reckon that 1) there's likely no state actor with sufficient power to control the goog by now, accumulated dirt being accumulated dirt, pols having browsing histories, money having value, and all... 2) there's likely to be no such reaction here on Hacker News due to this malicious algorithm being considered a form of "free speech" I suppose. Here I always figured on tech being a liberalizing social force, but between FB and the G, it's going downhill rather swiftly...
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Per the second sentence of the paragraph you pulled that quote from, they are restricting her internet. It's not helping. > I’ve tried to go in and manually delete all recommended videos, put in parental controls, everything (including blocking the app) — but she’s finding ways to log on using browsers and school computers.
eeniemeenie 7y ago
.
- zmarty 7y ago
  #1 yes, but explain #2.
  - graphememes 7y ago
    I can't respond to the original poster, but I can respond here. 1. UFOs are definitely real, the definition is merely Unidentified Foreign Object. Same for UAP, which is Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. The Navy, confirmed, that the videos are real and they haven't figured out what caused the images or what the object was. This doesn't mean it's confirmed outer terrestrial, however. Or, that there is a huge cover-up. They are interested in figuring out what they are. 2. I believe he is referring to the recent Jeffrey Epstein investigations.
ajxs 7y ago
This was a terrible article. The fact that Mozilla endorses this content is extremely disappointing.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  Agreed - this isn't a Youtube problem. It's a people problem. If you don't want to watch this stuff and have it recommended to you, put down your phone and do something else. Or use the limitless other streaming video services out there. Youtube doesn't owe us anything and relying on them to do anything other than maximize use is a waste of time.
  - everythingswan 7y ago
    There's shared responsibility with any product/consumer relationship so I think the point is that YouTube is not owning up to theirs. IMO, pretty fair argument to make when you think about people who are not in tech. We hold cigarette companies responsible for letting us know their products may cause harm. We hold food and beverage companies responsible for what they put on their labels. We label coffee cups with a "Hot!" warning. I hear you on personal responsibility, however, I think that comes from a place where you have or had time and space to educate yourself on this (apologies: using "you" very generally here and don't mean to imply you specifically). Most readers here have deep experience with YouTube and the consumer web--I've been on the web since Compuserve in the mid 90s and a hundred people who read this thread can one-up me. Think about how many people are coming onto the web for the first time. YouTube is a source of truth to them. They're told that Facebook has a "News" feed--and that's what they think is in their feed: literal and true news. I'm trying to consider it from that perspective. My first reaction is to say: if you don't like it, just ignore it. If you don't want to get addicted to something, don't try it. It's up to you, as an individual, to own your life. I still feel that to be true, however... I'm still considering how I feel but I think it's more complex than that my gut reaction indicates. We're not making decisions just for the informed 10% and I do think there is ground to be given up by the platforms.
saas_sam 7y ago
It's interesting to me how Bay Area companies believe it is acceptable to demonize anything "right-wing" as is indicated by this page. The employees of Mozilla, and indeed many of those who are reading this very comment, do not know the difference between right-wing, far-right, and so on. Left-wing is simply "good" and right-wing is simply "evil" to them. The underlying motives are hard to overlook here.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  but you are stating the truth here. right wing IS evil, left wing IS good. leaders often say anything to gain power, including lots of stuff about "the people, the people" stalin was a right wing monarch (tell me which part of the leaders eating caviar while the people starve is communism?) and it IS cut and dried. they outline the 2 tendencies: utopianism, and selfishness. utopianism is easy to quote and hard to follow. selfishness makes for lousy social policy but is what is required for individual survival. there, I solved it for you. but hey, actually I noticed that this topic isn't about right-wing content being "bad" it's about extreme content being recommended in situationally inappropriate contexts. Thomas the Train should not segue into "bloody train crashes volume 5" under any circumstances unless you search for it.
  - saas_sam 7y ago
    I believe your comment is fairly representative of mainstream political ignorance so I appreciate your writing it out.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  In a nutshell, the topic is about "why does the Youtube algorithm appear to have no other axis than the topic/subject matter?" I hear "some ratings or flags would be appropriate" While I often scoffed at the cinema ratings systems, they do serve a role: in that you don't likely take your 5 year old to an X-rated film. Since we are on the topic, you will note that sexually explicit content seems easy enough to keep off youtube, and yet they cannot understand that violence is worse than watching some people reproduce? hmmm I smell a double standard here... "no nipples, but you can show all the head-cutting and slashing you want"
someperson 7y ago
I've started using a large number of separate web browser profiles (and a different Google account) on a per-subject basis. It's really nice having one account used purely for music (with all the associated music recommendations), another for consuming news etc. Bypassing soft paywalls becomes easier as they're different sessions (that aren't incognito, so don't trigger incognito detection). Having a 'no.JS' profile is the fastest way to skip soft paywalls.
parsimo2010 7y ago
Some of these complaints are because many people don’t realize that their YouTube watch history is separate from your browser history (watch history is stored on their servers, associated with your Google account). If you want to fully reset your recommendations you need to use Google’s privacy tools to clear your watch history and also unsubscribe to all channels. Google/YouTube could be more clear about this but it’s not a totally broken system. If you realize that you are getting weird recs due to a particular video you watched, you can delete that singular video from your history. I’m not particularly concerned about this aspect of Google/YouTube’s behavior. Finally, if you’re upset about your dad watching conspiracy videos, consider that maybe he’s always been a nut job and you are just now realizing it. People don’t keep watching videos that they don’t like, they started down the rabbit hole by clicking on videos that looked interesting (maybe the rabbit hole got deeper because they feel asleep, but they did start it on their own).
- friendlybus 7y ago
  People do watch videos they don't like. Most addictions are a whole process where the addictee feels negative the majority of the time and then gets a high that reinforces the cycle. My mum gets paranoid about burglars. If I introduced her to a constant drip feed of robbery videos her fear would escalate disproportionate to her normal life. That's not a revealed character flaw.
- rasz 7y ago
  You can Not disable recommendation learning algorithm despite whatever Google claims in their documentation. Deleting/disabling watch history does nothing.
  - parsimo2010 7y ago
    It most certainly does something. I do it on a regular basis whenever I feel that the recommendations are getting too "fine tuned" and I want to have more broad recommendations. If you are not seeing fully refreshed recommendations it's probably because you are still subscribed to channels or have liked videos or the other pieces of information that goes into recommendations.
XCSme 7y ago
You can click "Not interested" on each of the videos recommended to you and you will get fewer videos of that kind or from that channel. Half of those stories are about helpless people or people having mental health issues, in which case unrestricted internet access will always be a problem. I personally don't get the point or suggested solution of the article, could anyone explain what their suggested solution is?
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  regulate the corporate monopoly that has taken over some significant percentage of terrestrial tv eyeball time with a video sharing website?
- michannne 7y ago
  There is no proposed solution, the article exists solely to bring attention to a perceived issue while applying pressure upon greater forces to enact some form of subjectively positive change.
- eqdw 7y ago
  I don't know what OP's suggested solution is, but if I had my way, I'd just eliminate recommendations entirely, in favour of perhaps some kind of category- or tag-based search (eg "give me more cute puppy videos"). Especially since so many people seem to have so many problems with recommendations, it's clearly not bringing value to life, so just get rid of it. Of course Google won't, because it would dramatically reduce watch time and their advertisers wouldn't like that. But a man can dream
  - cheald 7y ago
    > in favour of perhaps some kind of category- or tag-based search Because the people looking for visibility on their conspiracy video would never tag their video with high-visibility keywords like "cute" and "puppies"! Dumb metadata-based search and content recommendation is not the way forward. Google's original contribution to the web was pulling us out of that tarpit - SEO prior to PageRank was a wreck.
- 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
readams 7y ago
You can clear your watch history: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Pla... You can also configure it to automatically clear anything older than 3 or 18 months. Or follow this link to go straight there: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/youtube https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/youtube
- kayza 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, this doesn’t reset the algorithm for YT recommendations for your account.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Or do not login to YouTube and use containers so you get a new profile often, or clean your cookies. It’s not that easy yet but proper browser support for regaining control is coming.
- chimi 7y ago
  I get similar videos recommended to me on computers I've never watched similar videos on before. They track you by more than your computer. I've had videos recommended to me on my computer that were interests of friends who had visited me at my house and watched youtube on their phones and the same has happened when I went to their house. I would be recommended videos within their set of interests. You really have no control over what google knows about you or who they think you are. you can't change browsers, computers, or even your location to get away from them.
- rasz 7y ago
  Does Not Work. Its all smoke and mirrors. You can create new account, disable YT history altogether and it will still keep learning and recommending garbage based on a milder version of what you previously watched.
gruez 7y ago
Off topic: is the intro animation designed for trackpads or something? It's advanced by you scrolling, and since I'm using my scrollwheel and it's a stuttery mess. This design seems to be pretty widespread as well. Are all these designers assuming that everyone uses touchpads for scrolling?
- kps 7y ago
  Keyboard is even worse; advancing by page with Space, as I normally read, skips half the text (perhaps a blessing in disguise).
- bobobob420 7y ago
  Seemed to work quite well on mobile. Using safari
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  oh you should try it in Lynx... lousy as all getup... but then so is youtube :D
somada141 7y ago
I gotta say this is terrifying. Not because Mozilla is trying to hold YouTube responsible for not doing a better job fine-tuning their addiction-machine (who hasn't found themselves sucked into the one-more-video vortex) but because we're now happy to blame some algorithm for our shortcomings and take no personal responsibility for our actions. I personally went through a 3-month journey starting from travel videos to getting sucked into the "look how awesome mirrorless cameras are and all the beautiful content I can create with them" and ended up spending about 15k on camera gear (body, lenses, gimbals, lights, etc). I eventually managed to reign myself in but I didn't think I can now turn around and blame Google or some algorithm for spending far more than I should have. Shouldn't I be accountable for my own actions and lack of impulse control instead of expecting a corporation with an ad-revenue business-model to do it for me?
- sysbin 7y ago
  Free will is an illusion but you can continue to postulate otherwise. You can feel like you’re responsible while not really being true in both situations.
  - tomc1985 7y ago
    Ok. How? And are we talking predestination or simply external locii of control lack of free will?
    - kayza 7y ago
      There is the narrating self and the experiencing self. The narrating self makes up stories from the information that the experiencing self feeds to it. The important thing being that the experiencing self cannot judge, it just... experiences. Takes in every bit of sensory information and let’s the narrating self make up the story it thinks matches the experience one goes through. Now, imagine the sensory overload you get when stuck on YouTube, showing those reviews, unboxing videos, whatever to you - or more precisely, to your experiencing self. At some point your narrating self will make up the story and then you end up paying 15k for camera equipment... of course, it’s your choice, right? EDIT: https://medium.theuxblog.com/the-peak-end-rule-ff7246115248 https://medium.theuxblog.com/the-peak-end-rule-ff7246115248
situational87 7y ago
One time I clicked on a silly animated music video about how Mussolini screwed up invading Greece, and watching this whole 60 second clip flipped my entire youtube into alt-right mode. It was like night and day and it happened immediately. I started getting suggested things like "Biggest Hillary Fails" and "Jordan Peterson DESTROYS WHOEVER" over and over and over, and it got quickly got darker with things about how problematic immigration was and weird fan "documentaries" about senior SS leaders. I'm way too suspicious (to a fault) of everything I take in, but I can imagine other people going down real holes if they were served the same terrible suggestions.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Unfortunately watching any videos related to father's rights in custody battles leads down the same path. I'm guessing it's not just a case of "people who watch x also watch y" but rather "video y is sticky and increases total daily watch time for those who watch video x".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
kazinator 7y ago
Another kind of YT regret is finding a great video that YT then removed, which you will never see again. No chance of contacting the channel author (deleted). A YT user must develop the habit of downloading anything that appears valuable.
uses 7y ago
I feel like a large part of where we are in the world now is because in 2015 or so, YouTube mindlessly and singlehandedly funneled millions of apolitical young male gamers into gamergate extremism. It took forever for YouTube to stop giving me personal recommendations for various alt-right content no how many times I told it I wasn't interested.
aasasd 7y ago
Well, until now YouTube had broken autogenerated subtitles in Firefox on Android and no playback on thumbnails in FF on desktop (at least I don't think my plugin setup is at fault). Gotta watch out for what will be broken tomorrow.
shmageggy 7y ago
I'm glad there's beginning to be a wider conversation about this. We are what we consume, and it's incredibly easy to consume via the YouTube sidebar. I think most of us derive some portion of our beliefs and values from things the see and learn on the internet, whether it be here, reddit, YouTube, etc. When you consider how many thoughts are shaped by that algorithm that has virtually no human oversight, driven purely by engagement metrics, it's humbling and frightening. I think entities like Google that have become so influential are going to have to start taking more responsibility for the effects their algorithms
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
I understand that some people are more sensitive than me, and they want to feel protected from the things that trigger them. But sometimes they ask things without taking into consideration how their demands would affect those that aren't like them. In the same way that each one of your (positive) rights is just someone else's obligation, every case of censorship is someone else's lack of freedom. While YouTube is not a state institution (hence they're not morally obligated to cater to anyone's needs, or be a platform for any kind of video), they want to make money, and if their best way to make money is through automatic recommendations, then I'm afraid that YouTube is not for people that don't like automatic recommendations.
kristoff_it 7y ago
YouTube has far bigger issues in how it handles copyright claims. Right now a firm can unilaterally shutdown any channel and abuse of the system is a daily occurrence. Another issue is in how they're now demonetizing any piece of content that mentions anything remotely controversial, making it even less profitable to do any kind of journalism. Want to talk about the Kurds in Syria? Be prepared for having the video be immediately demonetized. The recommender system comes far third in this list, in my opinion.
graphememes 7y ago
I really don't have "Youtube Regrets", I do have lack of content syndrome though.
alibaba_x 7y ago
Mozilla is just so consistently off the mark with every new product offering they make. They have top-tier engineering talent but leadership seems completely out of touch and irrelevant.
rgovostes 7y ago
I know an older couple, good people who are the kindest, most thoughtful neighbors one could ask for. I've been called over to help with various technical issues, and when I see their YouTube recommendations my heart sinks. The entire feed is conspiracy theory videos which have led them to believe some really awful things. Virtually any tragedy in the news has some conspiratorial take; the victims are actors, it was a false flag operation, the school doesn't exist. Over time the viewer builds up the impression that every news story is meant to deceive them, and then completely loses their ability to judge truthfulness or apply skepticism. I've even heard them talk about leaving their idyllic home because of misplaced fears. For the rest of their lives they will believe the awful lies that YouTube has served them.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  > The entire feed is conspiracy theory videos which have led them to believe some really awful things. > the victims are actors, it was a false flag operation You don't know what led them to believe what. And false flag operations are common, so is staging photos, videos for war propaganda. Those are not conspiracy theories, but our terrifying reality. Truth doesn't exist in wars. One big problem with your story though, just like with every story on this Mozilla page, is that it's impossible to verify. And when it's impossible to verify things are often made up. Furthermore, emotional propaganda of such stories is pushing people to take some rumors, change them and claim them as their own, creating this "me too" movement of fake stories. Another problem, is that the stories are so poor, that there is no perspective, baseline or any room to make any conclusions of supposed negative effects on people. Just fallacies. Do some strange things get recommended to some people? Of course they do. Do they even have enough reach to even theoretically be able to affect people? Certainly not nearly as much as a family friendly content of a girl living in a van with a snake.
  - rgovostes 7y ago
    Are you suggesting that these stories of my friends’ and others’ corruption through conspiracy videos are themselves part of a conspiracy? I don’t even know what to say to that.
- 7y ago
bvinc 7y ago
These are my uBlock filters that I use to block all of Youtube's recommendations. I think it makes the site much cleaner. ##.ytp-pause-overlay ##.ytp-suggestion-set ##.ytp-endscreen-content youtube.com###related I personally try to hide all recommendations everywhere.
- chimi 7y ago
  i did the same! I had to explicitly search for videos and click from there. I also fixed the video in place so I could scroll through comments of howto videos to see if any of the commenters had corrections or improvements to the methodologies without losing the video content itself. It does that on mobile by default, but not on a desktop.
deft 7y ago
Some of these are incredibly dehumanizing. "my dad believes weird things now its all youtubes fault!" Your dad was and still is allowed to believe whatever he wants regardless of whether someone told him it was true. The next one, a guy is upset his EX is paranoid. Why are people no longer allowed to believe what they want regardless of how others feel about it? You only liked him as your dad when he agreed with you. I honestly find this whole thing disgusting, it's one thing to be upset that you got deceived but to assume someone else has been and to demand the freedom (to be deceived, to choose what you believe) be removed from another is insane. Youtube is full of plenty of shit, if someone wants to believe it or if someone accidentally "falls for it" that's their problem and theirs alone.
- jeron 7y ago
  the same feeling I got after reading the page, maybe not disgusting but rather a little silly for blaming youtube for it when it's clear some of these people are either mentally ill on their own or just way too gullible.
  - deft 7y ago
    It's disgusting because they're trying to force others to conform with their beliefs and assuming things are wrong simply because they've been told so. The teacher is upset because there's "anti-American propaganda" on youtube. Is everyone the world over supposed to love america and is dissent no longer allowed? It's disgusting because despite essentially claiming to be standing against what one would call brainwashing, they're actually calling for MORE of it, as long as it's the right kind.
- traderjane 7y ago
  Would you say the same for Doterra and other "multi-level marketing" schemes? I wish there was energy to discuss marketing for the elderly.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
As a free speech absolutist, these soyberpunk-wannabe thought-police screeds just make my blood boil. edit: I'm not alone. This will backfire.
- jpindar 7y ago
  Looks like you're very engaged! Here's some more soyberpunk-wannabe thought-police screeds we recommend for you!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  Maybe not watching as much youtube would help with your problem of seeing every issue through the lens of a culture war requiring you to dehumanise others with lame insults?
  - jstewartmobile 7y ago
    It is not just youtube. It's everywhere! - Too much violence! The vidya' games did it! - Can't say anything negative about the drag queens. - Can't question the tranny operations. - Can't object to unlimited immigration. - Everything outside of mainstream-approved dogma is a "conspiracy theory" And we double-down on these things, and not out of any deep-seated belief! We double-down because we are tired of being told what to say and what to think by the usual suspects, and we know just how much saying these things pisses them off.
throwaway_bad 7y ago
This is more or less an instance of the "paperclip maximizer" problem[1]. Complicated systems optimizing for simple goals often have unintended consequences. Surely the billions we threw at safe AI must be paying off anytime now right? [1] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
dathinab 7y ago
Just as a side note, YouTube removed the "Not Interested" functionality if you are not logged in from mobile (web) and I can't find it either on the desktop web version. Sure it's still there if you are logged in, but if you aren't you can only clear the browser (cookies) etc. To get ride of annoyances, but this isn't a feature a less technical versed use is aware about, especially because they are "annoyed about youtube not their browser, right?". Well anyway the main problem doesn't lie with youtube specifically but the idea that this kind of systems are a good idea. ---- This kind of systems ==> in the sense of very complex, opaque interwinded systems of targeted advertisement and recommendation system which are not meant to give you the best experience but keep you as long as possible on the platform. Which also through constant change of rules try their best to prevent people from gaming the system but in the end only end up hurting quality content providers through constant changing rules, and their recommendation system _still_ gets hijack frequently by all kind of people (from stupid annoying hidden advertisements, over *phobic hate propaganda, subtle political propaganda to cults like thinks). Anyway in the end this is not only a technical problem but also a social one one more than one layer. Also tbh. I would be more worried about many of the other modern user provided multimedia platforms then youtube. But well, one problem is that many people have the misconception that youtube (and others) are safe. It isn't especially not for young kids, even if it doesn't contain porn or other "obvious" adult stuff.
danmg 7y ago
All I get are car repair videos and lawyers.
bittercynic 7y ago
Adding these lines to uBlock Origin filters helps me waste less time on youtube: www.youtube.com##.html5-endscreen ##.ytp-pause-overlay www.youtube.com###secondary
diegof79 7y ago
I'm not sure what Mozilla Foundation is trying to accomplish with this page. Maybe make people more conscious about Internet content consumption habits. Maybe sparking discussions like this in online forums and other media. It's a little bit odd that they choose YouTube ignoring other social networks with the same addictive effect (it's ironic to have Twitter and Facebook share buttons at the side). On the YouTube topic. As a product designer, I think that YouTube product managers and designers have a lot of responsibility. Video recommendations are designed to be addictive. They don't stop, and while there are options to turn auto-play off they are not the default. It's not a problem of the "uninformed user". It's by design. People in the comments mention creating playlists and curating content. But there are many design gaps there too. For example, YT Kids has some time controls, but the content curation options are minimal. “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral” - Melvin Kranzberg
eqdw 7y ago
I fundamentally do not understand people who watch recommended videos. They are almost never relevant to me. I watch videos on youtube either if they come from channels I have chosen to subscribe to, or specific videos I have been linked to from outside (friends, reddit, hn, etc). The idea that I would watch, say, anti-LGBT videos that were auto-recommended after watching a drag queen's channel just seems silly. Why would I just click into those hateful videos? I didn't want them! So I don't watch them! I'm sympathetic to the idea that borked recommendations algorithms can be frustrating and obnoxious but at the end of the day, every video I watch is a video I _chose_ to watch, and I just choose not to watch garbage. I don't understand why other people seem to find making this choice to be so difficult
- spion 7y ago
  There is a thing called auto-play and it's on by default.
spion 7y ago
Gotta wonder how a story that gained 100 points in 1 hour managed to fall off the front page. Hope that the irony of a story like this getting pushed away from the front page by an algorithm isn't lost on people :)
wpq0 7y ago
There's a similar effort tracking the bias in Youtube's recommendation algorithmn: https://algotransparency.org/ https://algotransparency.org/
zelly 7y ago
If people weren't doing this with YouTube/TikTok/Netflix, they'd be doing with television. The difference is you actually get to choose what type of garbage you are addicted to watching. I consider that a huge improvement.
DoctorOetker 7y ago
We think our temperature perception is strictly temperature, while a large component of our temperature perception is not temperature but change of temperature. (We have both really...) Similarily our experience of sadness and happiness tends to be a comparative assessment (compared to 5 seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks ... ago). So if you are a platform that generates income from advertisement, and if advertisements must be felt as positive, you optimize for negative background (content) videos, such that the advertisements are relatively positive as a result. Now is that a reflection of the consuming individual's character flaws? I think not
jerome-jh 7y ago
It is not a matter of free-speech vs individual responsibility as I read it in most of the comments. It is a matter of big money vs the people. Everybody knows deep pockets buy fake views to promote their content. Youtube in turn favors them to promote virality, and people are exposed with uninteresting or unwanted content, but still addictive. The more addictive, the more profitable. They do have a responsibility, unless you think a company can make money selling weapons. Oh wait!
haolez 7y ago
I watch a lot of YouTube content and sometimes I refrain myself from watching a video because I know that it's going to mess up my recommendations in a way beyond repair :)
taauji 7y ago
YouTube never forces you to watch the videos, True but Youtube and several other companies have designed their algorithms to keep you engaged with it for long duration of time. It is built by people who understand how the human brain works and how to take advantages of the shortcomings of the human brain. That is why so many people inspite of knowing that it is bad for you are still unable to get rid of their habits. Sure people can quit watching those recommended videos anytime they want, but the feed is carefuly curated to make you keep watching and watching and potentially also altering your beliefs. That is I believe YouTube crosses the line. It has to remain responsible.

153 points by edwinjm 7y ago

I do believe that “something needs to be done”, about the various internet dis-info machines [0]. However, while the link shows a bunch of relatable stories, all it offers in response is a “sign up to Mozilla” button. That’s it. A newsletter. A bit disappointing and anti-climactic. [0]. I have no idea what. EDIT: I signed up to the newsletter.

rolph 7y ago
try veiwing with page style [css], turned off
input_sh 7y ago
This is a more informative link about why they've done this: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/our-recommendation-youtube/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/our-recommendation-yo...
- phs318u 7y ago
  Ah! Didn’t see that (was viewing in a phone and requesting desktop site made no difference). Maybe the link was there and I missed it. In any case, thanks!
fl0wenol 7y ago
I like the conclusions they come to in their letter to social media, where they are requesting allowing researchers more insight and control, essentially enabling them to sample/simulate the recommendation engine and get more insight into how it clusters or relates contents. Furthermore they want to reduce limits on API keys so that more comprehensive academic research can be performed. They know the issue isn't so much the algorithm as those that are gaming it to empty extraction of peoples attention (== money), extreme, or harmful ends. In doing so we might better understand the problem and then provide tools or recommendation to social media and the public on the topic.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  interesting!

WC3w6pXxgGd 7y ago

Don't log in to youtube. Clear your cache. Problem solved.

ronilan 7y ago

Dunno about regrets but this clearly shows that neither of those two institutions aged well.

Scoundreller 7y ago

Was hoping Mozilla was working on a free video hosting alternative. Would also love a free webmail alternative.

sp332 7y ago
Free video hosting loses huge amounts of money.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Less every year.
- minton 7y ago
  I don’t see how. Popular videos show ads what feels like every other minute. I find myself zoning out staring at the bottom right where the Skip Ad button shows up and I can’t even recall a single ad I’ve ever seen on YouTube.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
cameronbrown 7y ago
> free This is the issue. I'm starting to believe the only options are free ad-supported generic platforms or direct creator-to-fan relationships. Totally free without ads is impossible.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  I’d be happy if Mozilla ran video hosting and just targeted ads based on the video itself (and maybe broad geographic area and language) and not what the user browsed last week and is on the fence about. At least that’s been a viable model since the beginning of TV and radio. Dunno why it can’t be done now.
  - 7y ago

badrequest 7y ago

I had many of these problems until I straight-up turned off viewing history. Now my recommendations are trash because they're too generic, which is precisely how I like them. Not to say that for some folks a complete abolition of YouTube might be well in order.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Same. I have been able to completely depersonalize Youtube for myself. I don't remember the exact steps I took in Google's privacy dashboard—turning off history and removing all liked and disliked videos were among them—but it absolutely worked. I don't think this discounts the larger problem though... P.S. I'm quite frustrated that I can't "depersonalize" Amazon.
ignoramous 7y ago
> Now my recommendations are trash because they're too generic, which is precisely how I like them. Do one better: Consider NewPipe [0] instead, if you're on Android. [0] https://newpipe.schabi.org/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/
- badrequest 7y ago
  I am not an Android user, nor would I like to have [my Google account suspended](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2723).
  - commoner 7y ago
    The user who created that issue refused to provide any evidence of their Google account being suspended for using NewPipe.
chimi 7y ago
That's almost worse because the videos they are showing you are ones the general masses have clicked on and gotten sucked into.
7y ago

baxtr 7y ago

Meh. Pretty lame. Feels like someone is generally not happy with a large share of videos on YouTube. There is also not solution proposed. Censorship is one that comes to mind, and which of course won’t work well. I think it is important to realize that YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies.

mooman219 7y ago
I agree. People have shown that the content that gets watch time and appeals to the widest demographic is "low quality". The author of this appears to have allowed their child to freely browse the collection of videos, regrets it, and is now passing blame. In the case of his father, the author is blaming YouTube for not curating proper content. Why didn't the author curate content for his father or spend more time with them to see what they were watching? It sounds like the premise of these points is that the author didn't appreciate the bubbles their family members fell into, and instead wanted them to be in different bubbles.
charlesism 7y ago
> YouTube is merely a mirror of our societies. Youtube hasn’t affected the world? That seems like an extraordinary claim to me.
jxramos 7y ago
I agree about the mirror facet to this. Sometimes I'm even meta-aware of being sucked in to a new demographic when I start charting new video territory. I often pause and think to myself, "Wow, here's a whole batch of content targeting demographic XYZ, no thank you." I've often detected video suggestions going off my mental road barriers and I put a stop to it early before it pollutes my feed. The trouble is when you give in to temptation and let curiosity get the best of you.
fortran77 7y ago
That's exactly what they want! I expected to scroll down and see a new alternative YouTube being launched. I was puzzled when I didn't see it. What's their point? That they don't like one of their competitor's products?

crazypyro 7y ago

A lot of these stories read as overly dramatic and it often feels like the author is begging for sympathy in situations that don't seem to be very regrettable...

chance_state 7y ago

The stories highlighted seem to be split between "content I don't like exists on YouTube" and "content I don't like is recommended to me." I think adding tools to help users address the latter is worthwhile, but I don't think the former is actually a problem.

duskwuff 7y ago
> "content I don't like exists on YouTube" "... and YouTube irresponsibly recommends that content to people who are likely to be negatively affected by it".
- chance_state 7y ago
  I think there's a big difference between YouTube actively recommending things vs. people searching for things and not liking the results they get. The latter is what I meant by "content I don't like exists on YouTube". From the article: >I started searching for “fail videos” where people fall or get a little hurt. >My 10-year-old sweet daughter innocently searched for “tap dance videos”[...]
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    In both of those cases, the videos that showed up from the search weren't the problem. The problem was the videos which were recommended based on a history of having viewed the videos in the search results. The same pattern applies to many of the other stories in the article. (There's more than just the ten on the first page. Click "load more stories" at the bottom of the page.)
    - chance_state 7y ago
      Oh, I think you're right. I misread those. Also didn't know there were more than the first 10 because I browse with js off by default, which hides the "more" button.

have_faith 7y ago

The first example about the guy looking for "fail videos where people get a little hurt" is a strange anecdote to open with for this campaign. > Let’s send a message to YouTube that they need to recommend responsibly... I don't think there's such a thing as responsible recommendation at the scale YouTube operates at. At least not in the way people think by responsible anyway.

Relys 7y ago
I think he phrased it weirdly. Should have made a comparison to Americas Funniest Home Videos.
jxramos 7y ago
I think it was a neutral opening to the matter they want to bring up that should hold recognizable substance in pattern to folks who've experienced the YouTube recommendation blackholes. Things get more "controversial" the further along in their examples, which would probably turn off people from reading further if hit with that stuff right off the bat.
hootbootscoot 7y ago
Sure there is: Recommend videos with topics related to previously viewed videos. Ratings. While there will be borderline cases, it's pretty clear that "death and dismemberment" content should not follow a childrens train cartoon. Oh I know, "censorship!" etc... but at Googles scale, as you point out, what else shall we do? I do rather throw that ball back into your court. At that scale, they are regulatable :D
- michannne 7y ago
  This is what they are already doing.. The key to your statement is the word "related". How do you determine whether two pieces of content are related? Because Youtube has found a way which works for them and seems to work in the majority of cases.
  - spion 7y ago

whamlastxmas 7y ago

>” I don’t know how I can undo the damage that’s been done to her impressionable mind. Here's an idea: Don't give your children unsupervised access to the internet. Yeah she might still access this stuff at school, but when I was in middle and highschool pre-2007 there's no way I'd ever get away with watching videos on a school computer during class. It's hard to imagine teachers are somehow more relaxed about this in 2019 and I'd be amazed if youtube wasn't blocked on school networks anyway. There's nothing a 10 year old NEEDS internet access for on private computer or phone.

hootbootscoot 7y ago
While I agree that parenting would suggest some consideration of the material accessible, perhaps the number one video sharing website could put some effort into what clearly is a funnel towards evil: it's recommendation engine. I routinely get wacko right wing nonsense in my recommendation feed and I'm rather left wing and never once searched for such content. I It's probably time to lean on the Goog a bit and get them to stop feeding Alex Jones and his ilk with unsolicited "recommendations" that run counter to previously viewed videos messaging. I get it. They think that people should leave their filter bubbles, but they equate all points of view as equally educational, when common sense would point out that some points of view on some topics should be considered off-limits. If I say "I want to live" and your point of view is "die mofo die!" do we really need to compromise on merely mutilating me? perhaps your point of view can be entirely dismissed in such a case, as situationally wrongful. Morality has social functionality, gasp. But I reckon that 1) there's likely no state actor with sufficient power to control the goog by now, accumulated dirt being accumulated dirt, pols having browsing histories, money having value, and all... 2) there's likely to be no such reaction here on Hacker News due to this malicious algorithm being considered a form of "free speech" I suppose. Here I always figured on tech being a liberalizing social force, but between FB and the G, it's going downhill rather swiftly...
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
Per the second sentence of the paragraph you pulled that quote from, they are restricting her internet. It's not helping. > I’ve tried to go in and manually delete all recommended videos, put in parental controls, everything (including blocking the app) — but she’s finding ways to log on using browsers and school computers.

eeniemeenie 7y ago

zmarty 7y ago
#1 yes, but explain #2.
- graphememes 7y ago
  I can't respond to the original poster, but I can respond here. 1. UFOs are definitely real, the definition is merely Unidentified Foreign Object. Same for UAP, which is Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. The Navy, confirmed, that the videos are real and they haven't figured out what caused the images or what the object was. This doesn't mean it's confirmed outer terrestrial, however. Or, that there is a huge cover-up. They are interested in figuring out what they are. 2. I believe he is referring to the recent Jeffrey Epstein investigations.

ajxs 7y ago

This was a terrible article. The fact that Mozilla endorses this content is extremely disappointing.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
Agreed - this isn't a Youtube problem. It's a people problem. If you don't want to watch this stuff and have it recommended to you, put down your phone and do something else. Or use the limitless other streaming video services out there. Youtube doesn't owe us anything and relying on them to do anything other than maximize use is a waste of time.
- everythingswan 7y ago
  There's shared responsibility with any product/consumer relationship so I think the point is that YouTube is not owning up to theirs. IMO, pretty fair argument to make when you think about people who are not in tech. We hold cigarette companies responsible for letting us know their products may cause harm. We hold food and beverage companies responsible for what they put on their labels. We label coffee cups with a "Hot!" warning. I hear you on personal responsibility, however, I think that comes from a place where you have or had time and space to educate yourself on this (apologies: using "you" very generally here and don't mean to imply you specifically). Most readers here have deep experience with YouTube and the consumer web--I've been on the web since Compuserve in the mid 90s and a hundred people who read this thread can one-up me. Think about how many people are coming onto the web for the first time. YouTube is a source of truth to them. They're told that Facebook has a "News" feed--and that's what they think is in their feed: literal and true news. I'm trying to consider it from that perspective. My first reaction is to say: if you don't like it, just ignore it. If you don't want to get addicted to something, don't try it. It's up to you, as an individual, to own your life. I still feel that to be true, however... I'm still considering how I feel but I think it's more complex than that my gut reaction indicates. We're not making decisions just for the informed 10% and I do think there is ground to be given up by the platforms.

saas_sam 7y ago

It's interesting to me how Bay Area companies believe it is acceptable to demonize anything "right-wing" as is indicated by this page. The employees of Mozilla, and indeed many of those who are reading this very comment, do not know the difference between right-wing, far-right, and so on. Left-wing is simply "good" and right-wing is simply "evil" to them. The underlying motives are hard to overlook here.

hootbootscoot 7y ago
but you are stating the truth here. right wing IS evil, left wing IS good. leaders often say anything to gain power, including lots of stuff about "the people, the people" stalin was a right wing monarch (tell me which part of the leaders eating caviar while the people starve is communism?) and it IS cut and dried. they outline the 2 tendencies: utopianism, and selfishness. utopianism is easy to quote and hard to follow. selfishness makes for lousy social policy but is what is required for individual survival. there, I solved it for you. but hey, actually I noticed that this topic isn't about right-wing content being "bad" it's about extreme content being recommended in situationally inappropriate contexts. Thomas the Train should not segue into "bloody train crashes volume 5" under any circumstances unless you search for it.
- saas_sam 7y ago
  I believe your comment is fairly representative of mainstream political ignorance so I appreciate your writing it out.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hootbootscoot 7y ago
In a nutshell, the topic is about "why does the Youtube algorithm appear to have no other axis than the topic/subject matter?" I hear "some ratings or flags would be appropriate" While I often scoffed at the cinema ratings systems, they do serve a role: in that you don't likely take your 5 year old to an X-rated film. Since we are on the topic, you will note that sexually explicit content seems easy enough to keep off youtube, and yet they cannot understand that violence is worse than watching some people reproduce? hmmm I smell a double standard here... "no nipples, but you can show all the head-cutting and slashing you want"

someperson 7y ago

I've started using a large number of separate web browser profiles (and a different Google account) on a per-subject basis. It's really nice having one account used purely for music (with all the associated music recommendations), another for consuming news etc. Bypassing soft paywalls becomes easier as they're different sessions (that aren't incognito, so don't trigger incognito detection). Having a 'no.JS' profile is the fastest way to skip soft paywalls.

parsimo2010 7y ago

Some of these complaints are because many people don’t realize that their YouTube watch history is separate from your browser history (watch history is stored on their servers, associated with your Google account). If you want to fully reset your recommendations you need to use Google’s privacy tools to clear your watch history and also unsubscribe to all channels. Google/YouTube could be more clear about this but it’s not a totally broken system. If you realize that you are getting weird recs due to a particular video you watched, you can delete that singular video from your history. I’m not particularly concerned about this aspect of Google/YouTube’s behavior. Finally, if you’re upset about your dad watching conspiracy videos, consider that maybe he’s always been a nut job and you are just now realizing it. People don’t keep watching videos that they don’t like, they started down the rabbit hole by clicking on videos that looked interesting (maybe the rabbit hole got deeper because they feel asleep, but they did start it on their own).

friendlybus 7y ago
People do watch videos they don't like. Most addictions are a whole process where the addictee feels negative the majority of the time and then gets a high that reinforces the cycle. My mum gets paranoid about burglars. If I introduced her to a constant drip feed of robbery videos her fear would escalate disproportionate to her normal life. That's not a revealed character flaw.
rasz 7y ago
You can Not disable recommendation learning algorithm despite whatever Google claims in their documentation. Deleting/disabling watch history does nothing.
- parsimo2010 7y ago
  It most certainly does something. I do it on a regular basis whenever I feel that the recommendations are getting too "fine tuned" and I want to have more broad recommendations. If you are not seeing fully refreshed recommendations it's probably because you are still subscribed to channels or have liked videos or the other pieces of information that goes into recommendations.

XCSme 7y ago

You can click "Not interested" on each of the videos recommended to you and you will get fewer videos of that kind or from that channel. Half of those stories are about helpless people or people having mental health issues, in which case unrestricted internet access will always be a problem. I personally don't get the point or suggested solution of the article, could anyone explain what their suggested solution is?

hootbootscoot 7y ago
regulate the corporate monopoly that has taken over some significant percentage of terrestrial tv eyeball time with a video sharing website?
michannne 7y ago
There is no proposed solution, the article exists solely to bring attention to a perceived issue while applying pressure upon greater forces to enact some form of subjectively positive change.
eqdw 7y ago
I don't know what OP's suggested solution is, but if I had my way, I'd just eliminate recommendations entirely, in favour of perhaps some kind of category- or tag-based search (eg "give me more cute puppy videos"). Especially since so many people seem to have so many problems with recommendations, it's clearly not bringing value to life, so just get rid of it. Of course Google won't, because it would dramatically reduce watch time and their advertisers wouldn't like that. But a man can dream
- cheald 7y ago
  > in favour of perhaps some kind of category- or tag-based search Because the people looking for visibility on their conspiracy video would never tag their video with high-visibility keywords like "cute" and "puppies"! Dumb metadata-based search and content recommendation is not the way forward. Google's original contribution to the web was pulling us out of that tarpit - SEO prior to PageRank was a wreck.
7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

readams 7y ago

You can clear your watch history: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Pla... You can also configure it to automatically clear anything older than 3 or 18 months. Or follow this link to go straight there: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/youtube https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/youtube

kayza 7y ago
As far as I can tell, this doesn’t reset the algorithm for YT recommendations for your account.
tinus_hn 7y ago
Or do not login to YouTube and use containers so you get a new profile often, or clean your cookies. It’s not that easy yet but proper browser support for regaining control is coming.
chimi 7y ago
I get similar videos recommended to me on computers I've never watched similar videos on before. They track you by more than your computer. I've had videos recommended to me on my computer that were interests of friends who had visited me at my house and watched youtube on their phones and the same has happened when I went to their house. I would be recommended videos within their set of interests. You really have no control over what google knows about you or who they think you are. you can't change browsers, computers, or even your location to get away from them.
rasz 7y ago
Does Not Work. Its all smoke and mirrors. You can create new account, disable YT history altogether and it will still keep learning and recommending garbage based on a milder version of what you previously watched.

gruez 7y ago

Off topic: is the intro animation designed for trackpads or something? It's advanced by you scrolling, and since I'm using my scrollwheel and it's a stuttery mess. This design seems to be pretty widespread as well. Are all these designers assuming that everyone uses touchpads for scrolling?

kps 7y ago
Keyboard is even worse; advancing by page with Space, as I normally read, skips half the text (perhaps a blessing in disguise).
bobobob420 7y ago
Seemed to work quite well on mobile. Using safari
hootbootscoot 7y ago
oh you should try it in Lynx... lousy as all getup... but then so is youtube :D

somada141 7y ago

I gotta say this is terrifying. Not because Mozilla is trying to hold YouTube responsible for not doing a better job fine-tuning their addiction-machine (who hasn't found themselves sucked into the one-more-video vortex) but because we're now happy to blame some algorithm for our shortcomings and take no personal responsibility for our actions. I personally went through a 3-month journey starting from travel videos to getting sucked into the "look how awesome mirrorless cameras are and all the beautiful content I can create with them" and ended up spending about 15k on camera gear (body, lenses, gimbals, lights, etc). I eventually managed to reign myself in but I didn't think I can now turn around and blame Google or some algorithm for spending far more than I should have. Shouldn't I be accountable for my own actions and lack of impulse control instead of expecting a corporation with an ad-revenue business-model to do it for me?

sysbin 7y ago
Free will is an illusion but you can continue to postulate otherwise. You can feel like you’re responsible while not really being true in both situations.
- tomc1985 7y ago
  Ok. How? And are we talking predestination or simply external locii of control lack of free will?
  - kayza 7y ago
    There is the narrating self and the experiencing self. The narrating self makes up stories from the information that the experiencing self feeds to it. The important thing being that the experiencing self cannot judge, it just... experiences. Takes in every bit of sensory information and let’s the narrating self make up the story it thinks matches the experience one goes through. Now, imagine the sensory overload you get when stuck on YouTube, showing those reviews, unboxing videos, whatever to you - or more precisely, to your experiencing self. At some point your narrating self will make up the story and then you end up paying 15k for camera equipment... of course, it’s your choice, right? EDIT: https://medium.theuxblog.com/the-peak-end-rule-ff7246115248 https://medium.theuxblog.com/the-peak-end-rule-ff7246115248

situational87 7y ago

One time I clicked on a silly animated music video about how Mussolini screwed up invading Greece, and watching this whole 60 second clip flipped my entire youtube into alt-right mode. It was like night and day and it happened immediately. I started getting suggested things like "Biggest Hillary Fails" and "Jordan Peterson DESTROYS WHOEVER" over and over and over, and it got quickly got darker with things about how problematic immigration was and weird fan "documentaries" about senior SS leaders. I'm way too suspicious (to a fault) of everything I take in, but I can imagine other people going down real holes if they were served the same terrible suggestions.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Unfortunately watching any videos related to father's rights in custody battles leads down the same path. I'm guessing it's not just a case of "people who watch x also watch y" but rather "video y is sticky and increases total daily watch time for those who watch video x".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

kazinator 7y ago

Another kind of YT regret is finding a great video that YT then removed, which you will never see again. No chance of contacting the channel author (deleted). A YT user must develop the habit of downloading anything that appears valuable.

uses 7y ago

I feel like a large part of where we are in the world now is because in 2015 or so, YouTube mindlessly and singlehandedly funneled millions of apolitical young male gamers into gamergate extremism. It took forever for YouTube to stop giving me personal recommendations for various alt-right content no how many times I told it I wasn't interested.

aasasd 7y ago

Well, until now YouTube had broken autogenerated subtitles in Firefox on Android and no playback on thumbnails in FF on desktop (at least I don't think my plugin setup is at fault). Gotta watch out for what will be broken tomorrow.

shmageggy 7y ago

I'm glad there's beginning to be a wider conversation about this. We are what we consume, and it's incredibly easy to consume via the YouTube sidebar. I think most of us derive some portion of our beliefs and values from things the see and learn on the internet, whether it be here, reddit, YouTube, etc. When you consider how many thoughts are shaped by that algorithm that has virtually no human oversight, driven purely by engagement metrics, it's humbling and frightening. I think entities like Google that have become so influential are going to have to start taking more responsibility for the effects their algorithms

deleted 7y ago

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lone_haxx0r 7y ago

I understand that some people are more sensitive than me, and they want to feel protected from the things that trigger them. But sometimes they ask things without taking into consideration how their demands would affect those that aren't like them. In the same way that each one of your (positive) rights is just someone else's obligation, every case of censorship is someone else's lack of freedom. While YouTube is not a state institution (hence they're not morally obligated to cater to anyone's needs, or be a platform for any kind of video), they want to make money, and if their best way to make money is through automatic recommendations, then I'm afraid that YouTube is not for people that don't like automatic recommendations.

kristoff_it 7y ago

YouTube has far bigger issues in how it handles copyright claims. Right now a firm can unilaterally shutdown any channel and abuse of the system is a daily occurrence. Another issue is in how they're now demonetizing any piece of content that mentions anything remotely controversial, making it even less profitable to do any kind of journalism. Want to talk about the Kurds in Syria? Be prepared for having the video be immediately demonetized. The recommender system comes far third in this list, in my opinion.

graphememes 7y ago

I really don't have "Youtube Regrets", I do have lack of content syndrome though.

alibaba_x 7y ago

Mozilla is just so consistently off the mark with every new product offering they make. They have top-tier engineering talent but leadership seems completely out of touch and irrelevant.

rgovostes 7y ago

I know an older couple, good people who are the kindest, most thoughtful neighbors one could ask for. I've been called over to help with various technical issues, and when I see their YouTube recommendations my heart sinks. The entire feed is conspiracy theory videos which have led them to believe some really awful things. Virtually any tragedy in the news has some conspiratorial take; the victims are actors, it was a false flag operation, the school doesn't exist. Over time the viewer builds up the impression that every news story is meant to deceive them, and then completely loses their ability to judge truthfulness or apply skepticism. I've even heard them talk about leaving their idyllic home because of misplaced fears. For the rest of their lives they will believe the awful lies that YouTube has served them.

zzzcpan 7y ago
> The entire feed is conspiracy theory videos which have led them to believe some really awful things. > the victims are actors, it was a false flag operation You don't know what led them to believe what. And false flag operations are common, so is staging photos, videos for war propaganda. Those are not conspiracy theories, but our terrifying reality. Truth doesn't exist in wars. One big problem with your story though, just like with every story on this Mozilla page, is that it's impossible to verify. And when it's impossible to verify things are often made up. Furthermore, emotional propaganda of such stories is pushing people to take some rumors, change them and claim them as their own, creating this "me too" movement of fake stories. Another problem, is that the stories are so poor, that there is no perspective, baseline or any room to make any conclusions of supposed negative effects on people. Just fallacies. Do some strange things get recommended to some people? Of course they do. Do they even have enough reach to even theoretically be able to affect people? Certainly not nearly as much as a family friendly content of a girl living in a van with a snake.
- rgovostes 7y ago
  Are you suggesting that these stories of my friends’ and others’ corruption through conspiracy videos are themselves part of a conspiracy? I don’t even know what to say to that.
7y ago

bvinc 7y ago

These are my uBlock filters that I use to block all of Youtube's recommendations. I think it makes the site much cleaner. ##.ytp-pause-overlay ##.ytp-suggestion-set ##.ytp-endscreen-content youtube.com###related I personally try to hide all recommendations everywhere.

chimi 7y ago
i did the same! I had to explicitly search for videos and click from there. I also fixed the video in place so I could scroll through comments of howto videos to see if any of the commenters had corrections or improvements to the methodologies without losing the video content itself. It does that on mobile by default, but not on a desktop.

deft 7y ago

Some of these are incredibly dehumanizing. "my dad believes weird things now its all youtubes fault!" Your dad was and still is allowed to believe whatever he wants regardless of whether someone told him it was true. The next one, a guy is upset his EX is paranoid. Why are people no longer allowed to believe what they want regardless of how others feel about it? You only liked him as your dad when he agreed with you. I honestly find this whole thing disgusting, it's one thing to be upset that you got deceived but to assume someone else has been and to demand the freedom (to be deceived, to choose what you believe) be removed from another is insane. Youtube is full of plenty of shit, if someone wants to believe it or if someone accidentally "falls for it" that's their problem and theirs alone.

jeron 7y ago
the same feeling I got after reading the page, maybe not disgusting but rather a little silly for blaming youtube for it when it's clear some of these people are either mentally ill on their own or just way too gullible.
- deft 7y ago
  It's disgusting because they're trying to force others to conform with their beliefs and assuming things are wrong simply because they've been told so. The teacher is upset because there's "anti-American propaganda" on youtube. Is everyone the world over supposed to love america and is dissent no longer allowed? It's disgusting because despite essentially claiming to be standing against what one would call brainwashing, they're actually calling for MORE of it, as long as it's the right kind.
traderjane 7y ago
Would you say the same for Doterra and other "multi-level marketing" schemes? I wish there was energy to discuss marketing for the elderly.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

As a free speech absolutist, these soyberpunk-wannabe thought-police screeds just make my blood boil. edit: I'm not alone. This will backfire.

jpindar 7y ago
Looks like you're very engaged! Here's some more soyberpunk-wannabe thought-police screeds we recommend for you!
deleted 7y ago
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IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
Maybe not watching as much youtube would help with your problem of seeing every issue through the lens of a culture war requiring you to dehumanise others with lame insults?
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  It is not just youtube. It's everywhere! - Too much violence! The vidya' games did it! - Can't say anything negative about the drag queens. - Can't question the tranny operations. - Can't object to unlimited immigration. - Everything outside of mainstream-approved dogma is a "conspiracy theory" And we double-down on these things, and not out of any deep-seated belief! We double-down because we are tired of being told what to say and what to think by the usual suspects, and we know just how much saying these things pisses them off.

throwaway_bad 7y ago

This is more or less an instance of the "paperclip maximizer" problem[1]. Complicated systems optimizing for simple goals often have unintended consequences. Surely the billions we threw at safe AI must be paying off anytime now right? [1] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

dathinab 7y ago

Just as a side note, YouTube removed the "Not Interested" functionality if you are not logged in from mobile (web) and I can't find it either on the desktop web version. Sure it's still there if you are logged in, but if you aren't you can only clear the browser (cookies) etc. To get ride of annoyances, but this isn't a feature a less technical versed use is aware about, especially because they are "annoyed about youtube not their browser, right?". Well anyway the main problem doesn't lie with youtube specifically but the idea that this kind of systems are a good idea. ---- This kind of systems ==> in the sense of very complex, opaque interwinded systems of targeted advertisement and recommendation system which are not meant to give you the best experience but keep you as long as possible on the platform. Which also through constant change of rules try their best to prevent people from gaming the system but in the end only end up hurting quality content providers through constant changing rules, and their recommendation system _still_ gets hijack frequently by all kind of people (from stupid annoying hidden advertisements, over *phobic hate propaganda, subtle political propaganda to cults like thinks). Anyway in the end this is not only a technical problem but also a social one one more than one layer. Also tbh. I would be more worried about many of the other modern user provided multimedia platforms then youtube. But well, one problem is that many people have the misconception that youtube (and others) are safe. It isn't especially not for young kids, even if it doesn't contain porn or other "obvious" adult stuff.

danmg 7y ago

All I get are car repair videos and lawyers.

bittercynic 7y ago

Adding these lines to uBlock Origin filters helps me waste less time on youtube: www.youtube.com##.html5-endscreen ##.ytp-pause-overlay www.youtube.com###secondary

diegof79 7y ago

I'm not sure what Mozilla Foundation is trying to accomplish with this page. Maybe make people more conscious about Internet content consumption habits. Maybe sparking discussions like this in online forums and other media. It's a little bit odd that they choose YouTube ignoring other social networks with the same addictive effect (it's ironic to have Twitter and Facebook share buttons at the side). On the YouTube topic. As a product designer, I think that YouTube product managers and designers have a lot of responsibility. Video recommendations are designed to be addictive. They don't stop, and while there are options to turn auto-play off they are not the default. It's not a problem of the "uninformed user". It's by design. People in the comments mention creating playlists and curating content. But there are many design gaps there too. For example, YT Kids has some time controls, but the content curation options are minimal. “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral” - Melvin Kranzberg

eqdw 7y ago

I fundamentally do not understand people who watch recommended videos. They are almost never relevant to me. I watch videos on youtube either if they come from channels I have chosen to subscribe to, or specific videos I have been linked to from outside (friends, reddit, hn, etc). The idea that I would watch, say, anti-LGBT videos that were auto-recommended after watching a drag queen's channel just seems silly. Why would I just click into those hateful videos? I didn't want them! So I don't watch them! I'm sympathetic to the idea that borked recommendations algorithms can be frustrating and obnoxious but at the end of the day, every video I watch is a video I _chose_ to watch, and I just choose not to watch garbage. I don't understand why other people seem to find making this choice to be so difficult

spion 7y ago
There is a thing called auto-play and it's on by default.

spion 7y ago

Gotta wonder how a story that gained 100 points in 1 hour managed to fall off the front page. Hope that the irony of a story like this getting pushed away from the front page by an algorithm isn't lost on people :)

wpq0 7y ago

There's a similar effort tracking the bias in Youtube's recommendation algorithmn: https://algotransparency.org/ https://algotransparency.org/

zelly 7y ago

If people weren't doing this with YouTube/TikTok/Netflix, they'd be doing with television. The difference is you actually get to choose what type of garbage you are addicted to watching. I consider that a huge improvement.

DoctorOetker 7y ago

We think our temperature perception is strictly temperature, while a large component of our temperature perception is not temperature but change of temperature. (We have both really...) Similarily our experience of sadness and happiness tends to be a comparative assessment (compared to 5 seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks ... ago). So if you are a platform that generates income from advertisement, and if advertisements must be felt as positive, you optimize for negative background (content) videos, such that the advertisements are relatively positive as a result. Now is that a reflection of the consuming individual's character flaws? I think not

jerome-jh 7y ago

It is not a matter of free-speech vs individual responsibility as I read it in most of the comments. It is a matter of big money vs the people. Everybody knows deep pockets buy fake views to promote their content. Youtube in turn favors them to promote virality, and people are exposed with uninteresting or unwanted content, but still addictive. The more addictive, the more profitable. They do have a responsibility, unless you think a company can make money selling weapons. Oh wait!

haolez 7y ago

I watch a lot of YouTube content and sometimes I refrain myself from watching a video because I know that it's going to mess up my recommendations in a way beyond repair :)

taauji 7y ago

YouTube never forces you to watch the videos, True but Youtube and several other companies have designed their algorithms to keep you engaged with it for long duration of time. It is built by people who understand how the human brain works and how to take advantages of the shortcomings of the human brain. That is why so many people inspite of knowing that it is bad for you are still unable to get rid of their habits. Sure people can quit watching those recommended videos anytime they want, but the feed is carefuly curated to make you keep watching and watching and potentially also altering your beliefs. That is I believe YouTube crosses the line. It has to remain responsible.