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Here's the secret sauce: "Using machine learning, the algorithm serves videos to users based on their proximity to other clusters of users and content that they
by Kednicma 6y ago
Here's the secret sauce: "Using machine learning, the algorithm serves videos to users based on their proximity to other clusters of users and content that they like." It's impressive how they arranged to be transparent for everything else, but kept this important part opaque.
Rumor is that the actual secret sauce here is human curation; people hand-select videos with high appeal and label them "viral", "popular", etc. in order to astroturf eyeballs and clicks. I suppose that admitting this directly would contrast sharply with the Chinese-harmonious-technocracy veneer that they work to project.
- mc32 6y agoIf this is true... then imagine if you had an unofficial business relationship with these curators to tag your videos over other similar videos. Obviously you don’t want them to be too obvious but when many with good viral quality just need a bump that could be enough to generate lots of revenue to split.
- albertshin 6y agoif that rumor holds any water, that would be an impressive team of curators who have a pretty extraordinary ability to spot* globally favorable trends. I remember reading when FB tried to employ human curators for their news section, bias creeped in and was scrapped away. wonder what TikTok did differently. * although with popularity of TikTok, one needs to wonder if that team have become THE trendsetters themselves...
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoYour recollection is a little bit faulty on Facebook. They had teams of editors for Trending. Then, in 2016, conservatives complained that there was a liberal bias (which I don't really think there was, except obvious lies were filtered out). The editors were then removed, with the result that Pope Francis endorsed Trump a few days before the 2016 election. Funny how things work out, I guess.
- simion314 6y agoIt mentions that it also serves you from time to time a video from a different cluster and analyzes your reaction so you are not stuck in one cluster without hope to get out.
- albertshin 6y agofeel like dating apps do something similar... but I wonder why I end up in YouTube holes with bottomless pits though until I hit the reset button.
- simion314 6y agoProbably YT algorithm fall into a local maximum where it detected that X is enraging enough, then creators notice that the X is popular and they start putting more X, then the algorithm is putting more weight behind X and you are now stuck here.
- anticensor 6y agoNot because of that, but because YouTube does not have human curators.
- simion314 6y agoCan you tell me a case where humans curators would help? IMO YT should put more humans to answer support issues, like you have an youtuber with 10 years of experience and a large number of viewers and you just stike him without a human looking? If the strike/block has a large impact then have a human check.
- fqye 6y agoIt is not possible to have a very large pool of curators that could 'hand-select' the 'right' content that could hook up people. Tictok and Toutiao in China often push irrelevant content or new content by new creator to users to give them potentially interesting things outside their usual sweet spot and also to give new creators chances to win followers. They are exceptionally good at this.