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Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'
- Kednicma 6y agoI've noticed that using youtube-dl seems to prevent my recommendations from changing much. Are there other tricks that one can use to avoid getting bubbled?
- kohtatsu 6y agoFlushing cookies, and watching specific videos in a private tab. If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's location, incognito is enough. Google isn't brazen enough to show you recommendations without cookies, despite them being capable of tying your sessions together. I don't use the app on iOS. If you need higher than 720p playback for a video you can request desktop site.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Google isn't brazen enough to show you recommendations without cookies, despite them being capable of tying your sessions together. Amazon is. I see pages show up in my products-viewed history (logged in) after viewing them incognito.
- Avamander 6y ago> If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's location, incognito is enough. I personally find that unpersonalized homepage rather offensive. It often considers small countries near a large one as a part of it as the borders are unclear for its algorithms. The same happens with things like Google Play.
- kohtatsu 6y agoYeah it's not great. It goes away after a few videos though. Then you can nuke it and start fresh on your own terms.
- vetinari 6y agoYoutube-dl doesn't have your Google account cookie, so Youtube doesn't know it is you. You can achieve the same effect by logging out Google account in your browser.
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe latter doesn't (or didn't?) work. I used to youtube from a box which had never had a google account, and it still bubbled.
- londons_explore 6y agoYouTube will make you a separate "signed out identity", which will be tracked
- vetinari 6y agoWhich is still based on cookies; if you drop them, you will start clean again.
- bzb3 6y agoI use YouTube while not logged in and I use an extension that removes all cookies whenever I close a tab. YouTube doesn't remember anything of what I've watched.
- Cactus2018 6y agohttps://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
- Zhyl 6y agoI subscribe to Youtube channel RSS feeds with newsboat, but you could also follow with any RSS reader.
- CyanBird 6y agoYou are already bubbled simply because you are not watching Sudanese music videos... There is a limited time, and within that limited time you will be in an informational bubble because of the opportunity cost of new information
- FreakyT 6y agoThis does seem like a problem, but at the same time, this would appear to be the expected result from a well-written recommendation engine. That is, if a user watches a bunch of videos about a specific topic, it makes sense that it would recommend more of that same topic, since that is clearly what that user is interested in. That said, I see how this is a problem, but what is the solution? Do away with recommendations altogether?
- throwayws 6y agoSee TikTok [1] as an example. The idea is to mix in different content. Making the goal not to match perfectly but to match different topics. - [1]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-you https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-vide...
- Avamander 6y agoTikTok is a bad example. Claiming it's promoting "diverse content" is somehow rather funny. * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/03/tiktok-owns-up-to-censoring-some-users-videos-to-stop-bullying https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/03/tiktok-ow... * https://www.altpress.com/news/tiktok-censorship-black-lives-matter-george-floyd-hashtags-error/ https://www.altpress.com/news/tiktok-censorship-black-lives-... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-local-moderation-guidelines-ban-pro-lgbt-content https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-l...
- bigpumpkin 6y agoTikTok may only allow 90% of videos, but its algorithm is biased toward exploration of random subjects. Youtube may allow 99.9%, but its algorithm is biased toward what the user has recently watched.
- Avamander 6y agoI find diversity of opportunity more important than diversity of outcome and think of the first as actual diversity.
- dgellow 6y agoFYI, the project they mention, "TheirTube", can be found here: https://www.their.tube/about https://www.their.tube/about
- spyder 6y agoYea, so strange when they write about a website but don't link it. I can understand that maybe they want to keep users on their site so they're linking they two other articles, but then there is also an outside link to Youtube's blog, but not to the website the article is about...
- KeytarHero 6y agoThanks. One of my biggest bad-internet-journalism pet peeves as of late is articles that talk about a thing that exists on the internet without linking to it. I mean, I know I can just search it, but it's a dark pattern designed to keep you on their site, disguised as lazy journalism.
- llimos 6y agoThanks. Before seeing this comment I tried theirtube.com and it's a porn site :(
- mrd_ 6y agoThe first link in the article is to TheirTube as well. This article from Mozilla's is even worse, burying the link in the third paragraph instead of the first: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/step-inside-someone-elses-youtube-bubble/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/step-inside-someone-e... But at least it goes to https://their.tube https://their.tube. Engadget links to http://their-tube.com http://their-tube.com instead.
- Steltek 6y agoFun fact: all six personas had beekeeping Youtube videos suggested to them. More seriously, I wonder if one could determine the "strength" of a bubble's wall and then check that against the expected time spent online by a group.
- kps 6y agoClearly YouTube senior management has determined that colony collapse disorder is an existential threat to their business.
- Steltek 6y agoIn-joke reference to a seemingly random beekeeping video that ran wild through a while ago due to a YT recommendation engine hiccup. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636177
- jamestimmins 6y ago'Videos for the prepper will “explore apocalyptic scenarios and how to “prepare” for them.”' Interesting that it seems to suggest that preppers aren't /truly/ prepping for these scenarios, or that the scenarios aren't real. If anything, it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of preppers right in some sense. It may not be a zombie situation where people need large stores of ammo, but the modern world can fall apart to such a degree that the ability to survive outside of dependence on normal systems is an advantage.
- mantap 6y agoI don't know. Most of the prepper material I read before the pandemic predicted a breakdown in civilisation type situation. Even through the stress of this pandemic, the world has remained remarkably intact. A pandemic was consistently predicted as one of the biggest risks to the world by people like Bill Gates. But the preppers were not super interested.
- kiba 6y agoWe would all probably be better off if we prepped a little bit for 'everyday' or 'common' emergency situation such ad adverse weathers, with the government prepping for outside-the-norm emergencies. Also, prepping channels seems to be a bit obsessed with things as opposed to skills.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoThings are easier to acquire than skills.
- dharmab 6y agoI disagree- the time and money spent on things could be spent on a weekend long (possibly free online) course in first aid, cooking, hygiene and other basic home skills.
- 6y ago
- scoutt 6y agoSo YouTube feeds their users the things they want to consume. Interesting...
- EverydayBalloon 6y agoInteresting how many of these studies assume this kind of media changes people's minds. Are people really that maleable? It seems more likely they forward or "like" the media because it reinforces a belief they developed over time via multiple sources of data and experience.
- yndoendo 6y agoSeems YouTube recommendations does not adjust for context of keywords. I click on a Sport video not because of the sport but want to hear what the person has to say about XYX and not sports. Then YouTube now thinks I wants sports and there is no way of stating to the algorithm "Do not show me sports" because it will take the keywords without context. They recommendations are fixated on YOU as in the last search or viewing instead of the sum of the content viewed. So a day of just looking at Cat videos equates to I want all Cat videos now and forever until I search for something else. Also, there is not degree of separation for showing new / thought of content. Or simply put, a meson to walk through the bookstore and see something you never though of looking for and become interested.
- graton 6y agoI will watch things in a "private window" if I don't want it affecting my recommendation or later go and remove it from my watch history. This seems to help me. Also I will mark videos as not interested. But yeah I notice I watch one video and then I get a lot of recommendations related to it. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't.
- deadmutex 6y agoAlso note that the mobile app has an Incognito mode too.
- thenickdude 6y agoYou can click the three dots next to the video in your feed, click "Not Interested", and then in the "tell us why" section it sometimes exposes a choice "not interested in recommendations based on X video".
- Eli_P 6y agoIt seems like the context is built with a simple bag of words model. One day I searched "how to make a mousetrap", the following day I got a recommended video about statistics, where the author explains something on a mouse population, and says "mouse" many many times.
- hedora 6y agoI use Duck Duck Go’s video search. Most results are from YouTube, but it completely solves this problem (to the point where I didn’t even know YouTube bubbling was a thing for most people).
- ausbah 6y agoI guess a question I have is how does a platform promote "truthful" content when only user actions are present (voting, viewing, subscribing, etc.) with resorting to an omnipresent, final "arbiter of truth" or "presenting all view points as equal"?
- Avamander 6y agoIt doesn't. It promotes the truth people want to see, a platform can only flag obvious false information but that will always piss people off. Imagine if all the creationism videos suddenly get flagged as false news, I'd cackle, but YouTube would be lynched.
- leppr 6y agoOr imagine they flagged videos showing how face masks help contain Covid-19 as fake news back when the official US government recommendation was still to not buy and wear masks because they are useless? That'd have pissed people off too.
- INTPenis 6y agoThis is just one of many aspects where Google shows that it doesn't really care about the UX. They only care about your data. I can think of a few other examples off the top of my head where their services could be improved easily but no one seems to care. Like for example the youtube autoplay algorithm, which is often useless. Here's a crazy idea Youtube, why not check which other videos are in the recent queue and play content based on all of them? Instead of just the last one. Usually when Autoplay takes over I've already queued up a few videos on my own, I've literally spoon fed them. The YT Music UI is pretty bad too but that's a new product so it might improve. As a long time Google play music user I complacently migrated my playlists over and decided to give YT Music a go. First week I only use it to play my Electro Work playlist, basically EDM and Psy/Goa. Every time I start the app I begin at the Home screen with their recommendations to me, and not one single time do they recommend anything from or related to that playlist. And every single time I browse away from the Home screen and start that same playlist. The recommendations of YT Music seem to be based on my YT history, not my MUSIC history.
- Nihilartikel 6y agoI actually find myself curating my recommendation bubbles. One identity with clojure talks and embedded hacking, another with 70s progressive rock and Japanese Doujin trance music, and steak cooking videos primarily, etc..
- Avamander 6y agoI'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets heavily personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years. Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has noticed how music playlists start looping the same songs and how recommendations start repeating. I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse train the suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking friends for video recommendations, refreshing page multiple times when recommendations are all too similar, marking suggestions of known topics as boring, clicking on new topics more than old ones and so on. It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a bubble and how hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works great for most users and that's why it is like that.
- emilecantin 6y agoI don't go to Youtube for news / information, I go there for entertainment. In that regard, the "bubble" works well, because it recommends the type of content I find interesting. However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even if they seemed interesting in the moment, because I don't want to extend my "bubble" in that direction (I've gotten that before). So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to extend.
- bobcostas55 6y agoYou can just open the video in a private window to avoid influencing the recommendation engine.
- jjoonathan 6y agoBut then you have to pay for it with ads, and they're really cranking the thumbscrews with the ads these days. EDIT: on the other hand, a few days back I accidentally used private browsing on a technical video and got a few of those mythical good ads of the sort that inform you about a genuinely interesting and relevant product you didn't know about. So maybe it's not the worst thing ever.
- 6y ago
- scrollaway 6y agoYouTube recommendations is one of those filter bubbles which I've learned to use heavily to my advantage. I consume a lot of video content and I've learned to curate my watch history (what to watch/search for in incognito versus watch logged in; what to delete from my history etc) so that my youtube homepage actually consistently has a lot of high quality discovery. One thing I systematically do is avoid videos that are anywhere between 10m00s and 10m20s in length: those are almost always videos that have been arbitrarily lengthened to meet some ad length milestones. I've even seen videos slowed down by some percentage just to fucking get to 10 mins. Also apparently youtube's changing the milestone to 8 minutes soon, so I'm going to watch out for those too…
- WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 6y agoI had similar results following similar practices. I distinguish between stuff I want the algorithm to recommend and stuff that I only want to consume "on-demand" (that is when ever I search for it). The second category covers topics with lots of content so It would overwhelm the other interests. YouTube some times asks me how do I feel about my recommendations and some times all of them are interesting. But I can't watch them all (maybe I should add them to watch later, to tell the algorithm that I care) The turning point was when they allowed us to tell the algorithm which videos were not relevant.
- chris_wot 6y agoSo I neither follow nor enjoy conspiracy theory videos. Does this mean that I might soon be served up such videos because I am actively avoiding them? I sincerely hope they solve the issue of destructive fringe videos.
- djaychela 6y agoIf you want a laugh, delete your YouTube watch history. I did this about 18 months ago as an experiment. It took YT a LONG time to get back to suggesting anything like worthwhile content, despite me spending time on YT deliberately watching things that I liked (and avoiding the initial suggestions it gave me after the deletion which were all generic videos with millions of views. There are some channels that I used to watch that I no longer see as a result of this, but then there are others I wasn't aware of that I now see. I'm careful now to not watch what I consider junk, and if I want to watch anything I don't want my suggestions to be influenced by, I do so in a private browsing window.
- throwaway_kufu 6y agoThe only recommendations I enjoy are music playlists based on my history. Otherwise it always seems to ultimately lead to conspiracy style videos. I may start with some DIY videos, archeology, history, physics or even MMA...then a couple recommendations in its Basically “fail videos” and conspiracy videos. As of late I’m also loaded up with pizza reviews which is ironic because I’m generally following low carb or keto regimens.
- briga 6y agoNew ideologies have always formed as thought bubbles like this, but now they're forming fasting than ever. Question is: are thought bubbles OK, or should we try to pop them? This forum itself is a thought bubble, surely they can't all be bad.
- SrslyJosh 6y agoThey think there's a difference between a "conservative" and a "conspiracist"?
- bluGill 6y agoWe just learned a lot about you. Closed-minded is obvious, and there is a good chance you don't believe you are.
- swebs 6y agoThey look completely different to me. Most of the conspiracist videos aren't even political. https://www.their.tube/conservative https://www.their.tube/conservative https://www.their.tube/conspiracist https://www.their.tube/conspiracist
- tmaly 6y agoI purposely visit YouTube with Firefox in Private mode so I do not accidentally teach the algorithm that I am interested in how to fix garbage disposals.
- cannedslime 6y agoWhat is the problem here exactly? Youtube recommends based on the stuff you watch...
- tsumnia 6y agoI call it the toilet seat issue with recommendation engines. If I buy a toilet seat on Amazon, I'll find it annoying when it begins to recommend other toilet seats, plumbing valves, other bathroom accessories. This annoyance extends to other areas of curated content. Secondly, our interests and preferences are temporal in nature. Things I was interested in 6 months ago may not be things I'm interested in now. For example, today I clicked on my YouTube "Watch Later" list and now the engine is suggesting I watch A Garfield Christmas Special. Finally, some people enjoy variety. I want to know what new music or genres are going on, but musical recommendations seem to loop back to the same things. Google Play also always defaults to 90s alternative for me. While I enjoy the genre, I would never have developed my preferences for artists like Fela Kuti or Baby Metal by listening to a curated list of things an algorithm thinks I'll LIKE. Note, it only wants to suggest things it knows I'll like or things with close approximation to known liked things. There is no incentive to explore UNKNOWN things because of fear the user will UNLIKE it and stop using the product.
- cannedslime 6y agoThats just not how it works for me. I have watched 20 reviews of air rifles a few days ago, and my YT start page doesn't really reflect that at all... I have used YT since 2006 and sure, the recommendations are shit, but thats because they are LESS personalized than they used to be. Sometimes you don't want a video view to count for anything in your personalization, and other times you probably will. Imo. It should be based on your subscriptions and what other who view those generally watch. But it seems like youtube is going away from subscriptions and channels and into a scheme where they pick the content they want to feed you with (Start page prioritizes "random" videos instead of your subscribed channels etc.) Again I don't understand what the big deal is here, should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch?
- fouc 6y agoThe means of filter bubbles should be in the users hands, and not in the hands of corporations. Corporations cannot be relied upon to have the user's best interests at heart. When users control their own filter bubbles the internet becomes a useful and productive place again. "The means of filter bubbles must be in the hands of the users!" as the latest rallying cry.
- 6510 6y agoNot a particular fan of the Donald during the election I thought I should watch one of his videos. I fell asleep half way then auto play played many hours of videos from him. For days all suggestion slots showed the same face. I've been convinced eversince that there is a grant CONSPIRACY where youtube is trying to turn us all into ufologists. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!
- nonbirithm 6y agoI find that every time I go to YouTube's homepage to look at the recommendations, I'm really just bored and expecting them to feed me something of low long term value that catches my attention for a split second with the YouTube face or something, and it doesn't particularly matter what it is so long as it's "interesting" in that vague superficial sense. This is in contrast to when I use YouTube as a library of videos that I walk up to in order to look something up in that I want to know about. Now even when it's some guy's hand made animation they did in college, I feel kind of guilty that the only reason I cared to see it was because YouTube gave it to me, and also that I didn't know what I was looking for to begin with so I essentially went "well, that will have to do." Maybe that will work for keeping me off YouTube until I start believing that I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time again.
- speedgoose 6y agoThis website redirects me to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId= https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId= I guess I have to stop browsing Engadget.
- black_puppydog 6y agothe big fat GDPR-circumvention is also kind of a give-away that they couldn't care less about your privacy.
- swebs 6y agoSame, and uBlock origin stops it from going further. Here's an archive link http://archive.is/k2gG7 http://archive.is/k2gG7 But it's mostly just blogspam. Here's the real project https://www.their.tube/ https://www.their.tube/
- nicetryguy 6y agoA few years ago, i used to get youtube recommendations based only on the video i was watching at the time, and it was awesome! I could discover new videos/songs related to the video i was watching much more easily. Lately, most/all of the recommendations are based globally on every video i've ever watched, so the recommendations are almost the same no matter what video i watch, so it's tougher to discover new things. For some reason, it insists on constantly recommending videos i have watched before, which is annoying. Maybe it's because i use youtube as a music player often and i do repeat videos. It is amazing for video game OSTs, which i enjoy and are hard to find anywhere else. I could certainly see how this could lead people into isolated thought bubbles, especially with how the algorithm is lately compared to a few years ago, it has happened with myself to some extent.
- paol 6y agoYes, that change in the right bar recommendations was very noticeable (though it happened quite some time ago). Like you I find the new system much less useful. This has all the hallmarks of one of those changes driven by single-minded metric chasing (engagement!) instead of principled reasoning on what the product should do and feel like to use.
- nicetryguy 6y ago100% Agree. The sad part is, at least for me, it works... i definitely waste more time on youtube now.... That said, i also think production value in popular channels has really skyrocked the last few years. We've entered kind of a golden age for user generated content, for better or worse. It is very entertaining but very much more addicting. For example, i watched a guy for years who reviewed classic synthesizers and made silly songs. He has recently made an entire 2hr documentary on the history of ARP synthesizers with engineer interviews and everything! It is like some Ken Burns level stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31RXiVSI9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31RXiVSI9s Nothing on youtube existed like this a few years ago. It is an amazing world we live in now.
- paol 6y ago
- rland 6y agoIf you find the youtube algorithm interesting, you may like this interview with the guy in charge of the team who works on it (warning, hour plus video that will fill your recommendations with Lex Fridman!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWmiNRPU-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWmiNRPU-c I suspect that "sticky content" like conspiracy videos is just as difficult for Google as it is for us -- certain content is just magnetic, for one psychological reason or another. The big takeaway from that interview for me was that "time watched" is the biggest metric, not likes, clicks, subscriptions, etc. I guess that makes sense, given that time is a bit like currency. But sometimes what people think they like doesn't line up 1:1 with what they actually like.
- akerro 6y agoAlert: clicking on engadget.com redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_78c826b5-3cdf-4c7b-ac44-4a178f0c3ccd https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_... which tracks you transparently, my router is blocking it so I got "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site." DNS resolution error in Firefox
- hugh4life 6y agoOne thing I noticed on music videos is that if I click on the Mix on the sidebar for that video it has a heavy bias for videos I've previously watched even if it has nothing to do with that song's genre. I have kind of weird tastes that go from old country to happy hardcore to synthwave to many different genres and it's just weird how I get songs in the youtube mixes that are extremely unrelated to one another. I could be wrong, but it seems like it used to be much better than it is now.
- kristopolous 6y agoThe recommendations on YouTube are endemic of Google's general design problem as of late. They appear to "go by the numbers" and effectively bucket all users together. So children, who almost all use YouTube and want to watch the same content repeatedly, get categorized the same as say, me. Then they look for the largest patterns without discriminating or partitioning and just cater to that. So for search, they'll ignore the focused queries and just return general results. They place amateur and sophisticated computer users in the same giant bag. This is why the order of the tabs on search (web/products/images/videos) just dance around and are totally inconsistent. It's also why they axe projects and strip features, replacing them with effectively the bubbly hazy shoppingmall version of the feature. Image sizes no longer have numbers in the toolbar. It's some amorphous icon, medium, and large. It doesn't even serve the ends they are looking for. If I was really unsophisticated, I'd look for an "icon" and then be frustrated because, say Apple, requires 1024x1024 icons, which I will absolutely not get with the "icon" size filter. So not only are we worse off, but the newer way doesn't even service the demographic they're targeting. Another example, same pattern: Recently all my android devices seem to have a much smaller dictionary on their gboard keyboard. Less common words are impossible to swype and perfectly valid, correctly spelled words are getting the red squiggly underneath them because apparently, using an uncommon word must have been an error. Almost every day I'm pulling up a dictionary to make sure I'm not making a mistake. I call this "design by dictator" syndrome: some person or group (called the design group) is given unlimited unilateral authority over all aspects of a product. It's the opposite extreme of "design by committee". Nobody else can question or change things. When nobody is allowed to say "that idea is stupid" then you end up getting stuff with lots of stupid ideas. There's a reason why the one word critical means "very important", "detailed", and "judgmental". Uncountable empires have fallen when it is ignored. Back in the 90s/early 2000s when I did windows development, Microsoft was really quite good at bucketing users. There were "channels of usage" available which facilitated many kinds of needs and many kinds of users. By ignoring the variation of sentiment, Google has lost its magic and in their quest to please everyone while assuming everyone is fundamentally the same, they end up leaving the majority minority dissatisfied.
- LockAndLol 6y agoThis has been a phenomenon for the better part of a decade. I can't even remember when it happened, but some day they decided that the channels one was subscribed to were less important than "hot videos". They also split and moved those subscriptions into some sidebar where you had to click on every subscription manually to see what was new. Their focus is ads. Top videos mean ads are watched more often so that's what they promote. Everything is geared that way and creating bigger, less heterogeneous groups means there are less "niche" videos. I'm sure their AI has worked out the smallest number of groups that spans the biggest amount of users and drives views upwards that way. If you don't want to get caught in the pooptube loop, don't subscribe, don't create an account and get recommendations offsite. They are more likely more diverse. In fact, if you want new stuff, don't go on youtube, go to vimeo, peertube, dtube, or whatever else has tube appended to its name.
- zeepzeep 6y agoCan't read this, leads to advertising.com which is blocked.