3 ms·

What is the problem here exactly? Youtube recommends based on the stuff you watch...

tsumnia 6y ago
I 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 ago
  Thats 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?
  - tsumnia 6y ago
    > 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.) I wouldn't say that either and the current state of recommendation system research simply does not have an answer yet. Your proposed suggestion of basing suggestions by subscription and similar users is what they are doing. However, while you may not see it, I would argue that does not mean it does not exist, as evident by the article and the discussions people are having in this thread. > should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch? In my preference, yes, though not to the extreme of pure random. I would enjoy seeing options I only select once in a blue moon or not at all. To me that allows for a sense of exploration. However, that is only my preference and your's may be entirely different. Again, I'd say this highlights issues with recommendation systems that maybe one model does not work well for everyone.
    - cannedslime 6y ago
      Well I certainly wouldn't like that. I would probably rather see people being fed the media I like (mainly testosterone, history and science based). Do you see where I am going with this? Bubbles are what users want. I don't want political mainstream "satire" garbage tonight shows in my media feeds. I don't want "Muckbang". I don't want sony music gangster hip hop with autotune and minors rapping about how much p they slay. I don't want rich kid vbloggers talking about their sneakers. I use the subscriptions as much as youtube allows for, but they do their best to make that a thing of the past. If I want to explore I just hit the "Hot right now" section and loose a little faith in humanity. What absolute garbage. Should there be better ways to explore? Possibly. But I don't see how normalizing start pages across users would accomplish that.
      - tsumnia 6y ago
        > Bubbles are what users want. I disagree; however, I believe we have reached a point where we simply disagree with each other on foundational matters and no amount of discussion will sway the other. Please enjoy your content.

I 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 ago
Thats 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?
- tsumnia 6y ago
  > 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.) I wouldn't say that either and the current state of recommendation system research simply does not have an answer yet. Your proposed suggestion of basing suggestions by subscription and similar users is what they are doing. However, while you may not see it, I would argue that does not mean it does not exist, as evident by the article and the discussions people are having in this thread. > should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch? In my preference, yes, though not to the extreme of pure random. I would enjoy seeing options I only select once in a blue moon or not at all. To me that allows for a sense of exploration. However, that is only my preference and your's may be entirely different. Again, I'd say this highlights issues with recommendation systems that maybe one model does not work well for everyone.
  - cannedslime 6y ago
    Well I certainly wouldn't like that. I would probably rather see people being fed the media I like (mainly testosterone, history and science based). Do you see where I am going with this? Bubbles are what users want. I don't want political mainstream "satire" garbage tonight shows in my media feeds. I don't want "Muckbang". I don't want sony music gangster hip hop with autotune and minors rapping about how much p they slay. I don't want rich kid vbloggers talking about their sneakers. I use the subscriptions as much as youtube allows for, but they do their best to make that a thing of the past. If I want to explore I just hit the "Hot right now" section and loose a little faith in humanity. What absolute garbage. Should there be better ways to explore? Possibly. But I don't see how normalizing start pages across users would accomplish that.
    - tsumnia 6y ago
      > Bubbles are what users want. I disagree; however, I believe we have reached a point where we simply disagree with each other on foundational matters and no amount of discussion will sway the other. Please enjoy your content.