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This is why I browse incognito, clear my cookies, use a VPN, and don't participate in the phenomenon of recommended content. I don't want some algorithm telling
by ZinniaZirconium 6y ago
This is why I browse incognito, clear my cookies, use a VPN, and don't participate in the phenomenon of recommended content. I don't want some algorithm telling me what I should want.
- aerovistae 6y agoSo you don't have an account on any website?
- ziddoap 6y agoNo, they just use a VPN, incognito, clear cookies, etc. as they stated. This isn't an either/or situation.
- spuz 6y agoYou realise that the Hacker News front page is an algorithm that predicts what you should want?
- mongol 6y agoDoes it? Is it personal?
- IAmEveryone 6y agoYes, by self-selection of visitors.
- ZinniaZirconium 6y agoHaha! Hacker News is a notoriety contest. Obscure doesn't make it to the front page.
- dimitrios1 6y agoI never feel like I am in this group, but maybe it's because I frequently search out opinions, views, and beliefs I may not agree with, and add them to my algorithmic considerations.
- _fat_santa 6y agoHonestly I really like Youtube's recommendation algorithm. I'm a car guy and so most of my Youtube consumption is in car culture. I think the key to living with it is not to block it and avoid it at all costs, but rather to understand what the underlying algorithm is doing (broadly speaking). It's funny that once I became a software developer (frontend specifically), things like dark patterns and other UI features that try to keep users on the app is very interesting to me. I will never put something like that in my own code but it's still interesting to pick up dark patterns out of every day apps we use (Instagrams "slot machine of dopamine" is one that comes to mind)
- masswerk 6y agoMy experience is completely to the contrary. It's just the same videos over and over again. (Apparently, there are just two new videos published on YT over an average week. I wonder, how they are still thriving.) Discoverability is only by text search. If I watch a video, it gets added to the recommendations (as I ought to re-watch it instantly.) It's even worse with the new interface and the "recently added" section gone. – Apparently, my very own bubble is my own past, exclusively. Completely broken. I've been experiencing this for years and it's worse to a critical point with the notion of recentness gone.
- abraxas 6y agosame here. Complete shit show. The videos I watch a lot of relate to retro-computing and programming retro machines. You'd think that's a pretty broad topic to base recommendations on. Nope. It's the same dozen videos over and over in my recommendation list from the same handful of youtubers. It's pathetic and seemingly getting worse.
- arkitaip 6y agoYou can also use a very basic rule in, say, uBlock Origin to hide the sidebar completely: youtube.com###related
- metafunctor 6y agoEven if you do that, whatever YouTube recommends to you will still be selected by an algorithm.
- ZinniaZirconium 6y agoYes but recommendations will be limited to what's generally popular at my perceived geolocation instead of personalized to search history.
- metafunctor 6y agoExactly. And you prefer that? All I see is generic teen pop culture vlog drivel, nothing interesting to me at all. I get trying to be private and disclosing as little information to Google as possible. However, I've found YouTube unearths interesting content pretty well if you create an account and let it track your preferences a little bit. Especially don't turn off the viewing history, otherwise you'll get the same recommendations over and over and YouTube is kind of useless.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mendelmaleh 6y agoI just use a shortcut straight to the subscriptions feed, and curate my own content