5 ms·

I wish I could explicitly tell YouTube “don’t ever recommend videos I’ve seen.”

by PopeDotNinja 6y ago

ChrisLovejoy 6y ago
amen! I wish you could crank up exploration cf. exploitation in your settings or something
- ma2rten 6y ago
  It would be cool in general if recommendation algorithms or search algorithms were more customizable. I would imagine you could put some code into your settings that controls which recommendations you see. The platform, like YouTube in this case, could compute features that enable different kind of recommendation algorithms. There could be communities of people who tinker with this and share their recommendation algorithms.
  - sincerely 6y ago
    Steam added this feature recently (https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/ https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/ lets you add weights for "niche/popular" and "older/newer") and I've never had so much fun browsing a store. I hope other platforms take note
amelius 6y ago
* Except for music.
rollingchunder 6y ago
Awhile back I started using a video's 'like' button simply as a mechanism by which I could tell if I had watched something before since I did get repeat recommendations. Then, if I clicked a recommended video again later, I'd know I had already seen it. Over time, as far as I could tell, YT stopped recommending videos I'd seen before as there were fewer and fewer videos I would check out that I had already seen. May also be attributed to something else, or I'm getting old, but it seems to have been a fortunate outcome.
JSavageOne 6y ago
This option would single-handedly fix their completely broken music recommendation algorithm that only seems to auto-play the same 5 or so songs that I recently listened to and thumbs-upped.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I get the same behavior, only I've never thumbs-upped anything.
gibolt 6y ago
They have two options under the triple dot menu (at least on Android feed) that you are not interested in this video or this channel. May help curate once you start getting those recommendations.
- ianbooker 6y ago
  Then you cut out videos you were interested in the first place.
  - Alphaeus 6y ago
    When it asks you why you're not interested, one of the options is "I've already watched this video".
    - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
      I used to do that, but it was a lot of work & I didn't notice an improvement to the search results.
      - etripe 6y ago
        I experienced exactly the same. I suspect that since they're optimising for engagement, already having watched a video is some indication that you'll engage with it again.
- TobTobXX 6y ago
  I once watched a few videos about US politics. After that YouTube just kept spanning half my recommendations with vids about USpol. While they were addicting, they didn't really interest me. I then took the effort to flag tem as 'not interesting' (about 3x, refreshing the browser) and it works, I have gotten very few recommendations about that since then.
powerapple 6y ago
Don't ever recommend videos from 9 years ago please. This is the part I don't understand, how is Google doing so bad at this. You get slightly better experience if you use Chrome. It (on purposely?) keeps asking you to click 3 buttons to play a video Edge, and won't even show comments.
- dancek 6y ago
  Our tastes are so different. I'd much rather watch a great video from 2005 than a good one from 2020. I'm irritated by the recommendation algorithms pushing new content. Why would I care whether the video was published last night or last year?
  - atoav 6y ago
    If e.g. you want political thinking in current events than you'd probably value recent videos more. If you wanna see a great video on some obscure implementation detail of some electronics gear from the soviet era it doesn't really matter if it was uploaded a year ago or 8 years ago.
  - powerapple 6y ago
    Yes, recommendation should be personalized anyway, so you can get videos from 9 years ago and I don't.
- powerapple 6y ago
  What I mean is it displays a button to click after I clicked play on video when I use Edge, which is my main drive nowadays. And the comments are not displaying. It cannot be only my experience I hope :S so I get downvoted because my taste not liking old videos :/
brylie 6y ago
Also, if a video thumbnail/title displays on my screen and I don't click it, it is a sign of disinterest. Stop suggesting videos I have repeatedly scrolled past. Use the lack of engagement as a feature.
- namrog84 6y ago
  Once I tried disliking or dismissing a video as enforced dislike. Then it said "ok disengaging the entire category" and I was like wtf no. That's not at all what I wanted. And there was no way to undo. So its frustrating trying to teach those algorithms things I don't like. It was on google somewhere. It was like I wanted to dislike a particular author or that particular programming language they were talking about, but took it as me not wanting to hear about anything technological ever again. It was frustrating as heck.
rasz 6y ago
inject those two styles into YT website: a #video-title { color: red !important;} a:visited #video-title { color: black !important;}

I wish I could explicitly tell YouTube “don’t ever recommend videos I’ve seen.”

ChrisLovejoy 6y ago

amen! I wish you could crank up exploration cf. exploitation in your settings or something

ma2rten 6y ago
It would be cool in general if recommendation algorithms or search algorithms were more customizable. I would imagine you could put some code into your settings that controls which recommendations you see. The platform, like YouTube in this case, could compute features that enable different kind of recommendation algorithms. There could be communities of people who tinker with this and share their recommendation algorithms.
- sincerely 6y ago
  Steam added this feature recently (https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/ https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/ lets you add weights for "niche/popular" and "older/newer") and I've never had so much fun browsing a store. I hope other platforms take note

amelius 6y ago

* Except for music.

rollingchunder 6y ago

Awhile back I started using a video's 'like' button simply as a mechanism by which I could tell if I had watched something before since I did get repeat recommendations. Then, if I clicked a recommended video again later, I'd know I had already seen it. Over time, as far as I could tell, YT stopped recommending videos I'd seen before as there were fewer and fewer videos I would check out that I had already seen. May also be attributed to something else, or I'm getting old, but it seems to have been a fortunate outcome.

JSavageOne 6y ago

This option would single-handedly fix their completely broken music recommendation algorithm that only seems to auto-play the same 5 or so songs that I recently listened to and thumbs-upped.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I get the same behavior, only I've never thumbs-upped anything.

gibolt 6y ago

They have two options under the triple dot menu (at least on Android feed) that you are not interested in this video or this channel. May help curate once you start getting those recommendations.

ianbooker 6y ago
Then you cut out videos you were interested in the first place.
- Alphaeus 6y ago
  When it asks you why you're not interested, one of the options is "I've already watched this video".
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    I used to do that, but it was a lot of work & I didn't notice an improvement to the search results.
    - etripe 6y ago
      I experienced exactly the same. I suspect that since they're optimising for engagement, already having watched a video is some indication that you'll engage with it again.
TobTobXX 6y ago
I once watched a few videos about US politics. After that YouTube just kept spanning half my recommendations with vids about USpol. While they were addicting, they didn't really interest me. I then took the effort to flag tem as 'not interesting' (about 3x, refreshing the browser) and it works, I have gotten very few recommendations about that since then.

powerapple 6y ago

Don't ever recommend videos from 9 years ago please. This is the part I don't understand, how is Google doing so bad at this. You get slightly better experience if you use Chrome. It (on purposely?) keeps asking you to click 3 buttons to play a video Edge, and won't even show comments.

dancek 6y ago
Our tastes are so different. I'd much rather watch a great video from 2005 than a good one from 2020. I'm irritated by the recommendation algorithms pushing new content. Why would I care whether the video was published last night or last year?
- atoav 6y ago
  If e.g. you want political thinking in current events than you'd probably value recent videos more. If you wanna see a great video on some obscure implementation detail of some electronics gear from the soviet era it doesn't really matter if it was uploaded a year ago or 8 years ago.
- powerapple 6y ago
  Yes, recommendation should be personalized anyway, so you can get videos from 9 years ago and I don't.
powerapple 6y ago
What I mean is it displays a button to click after I clicked play on video when I use Edge, which is my main drive nowadays. And the comments are not displaying. It cannot be only my experience I hope :S so I get downvoted because my taste not liking old videos :/

brylie 6y ago

Also, if a video thumbnail/title displays on my screen and I don't click it, it is a sign of disinterest. Stop suggesting videos I have repeatedly scrolled past. Use the lack of engagement as a feature.

namrog84 6y ago
Once I tried disliking or dismissing a video as enforced dislike. Then it said "ok disengaging the entire category" and I was like wtf no. That's not at all what I wanted. And there was no way to undo. So its frustrating trying to teach those algorithms things I don't like. It was on google somewhere. It was like I wanted to dislike a particular author or that particular programming language they were talking about, but took it as me not wanting to hear about anything technological ever again. It was frustrating as heck.

rasz 6y ago

inject those two styles into YT website: a #video-title { color: red !important;} a:visited #video-title { color: black !important;}