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I've been loading the Youtube homepage every 15 minutes for the past week (I've been sick). It's the same videos over and over again. If I scrolled past it the

I've been loading the Youtube homepage every 15 minutes for the past week (I've been sick). It's the same videos over and over again. If I scrolled past it the first time, I'm still going to scroll past it the 100th time I see it.

kenniskrag 6y ago
get well soon. May you want watching some TED talks instead. :)
3131s 6y ago
That's actually what prompted me to post this. I don't know how Youtube's algorithms work internally, but lately the front page is just so broken that it's baffling. The sidebar recommendations are another discussion -- those are possibly more pernicious but at least not as obviously dysfunctional. How is it possible to have the largest repository of video content in the world, yet Youtube is only able to recommend me the same videos over and over again (half of which I seen already or quickly clicked out of). There is also a simplistic list of recommended categories, which I would change if I could, and those never change either. If the front page were just completely random, it would be better than it is now. If I could actually tell Youtube to show me videos with a low-to-moderate view count and a high upvote ratio, then that would be fabulous and I probably would encounter new subjects and ideas rather than getting stuck watching the same garbage over and over. I'll never let my future children spend even a second on Youtube, because the stuff that it recommends to kids is so asinine that it just makes me mad. I really believe that collectively we are all much dumber because of the Youtube's pathetically bad algorithms.
- visarga 6y ago
  You're probably right about the recommender but kid videos are not crap. In fact there's a Cambrian explosion of kid videos, some are amazing.
zo1 6y ago
You know it's bad when one of the reasons for dismissing a video is "I've watched this before". If I didn't know any better, I'd say it's a separate sub-system(gasp, microservice) that doesn't integrate nicely with the service that stores/holds your previous viewing history.
combatentropy 6y ago
Agreed. This tweak to their formula would improve it for me masssively: show the video on my Home page just once. If I click reload, show me an entirely new set. Someone may say, this would bother others, who saw something interesting but didn't click it this time. For me, it would train me to open those in a new tab or save them to my Watch Later list. Or just make it an opt-in feature, this aggressive renewal of the home page.

kenniskrag 6y ago

get well soon. May you want watching some TED talks instead. :)

3131s 6y ago

That's actually what prompted me to post this. I don't know how Youtube's algorithms work internally, but lately the front page is just so broken that it's baffling. The sidebar recommendations are another discussion -- those are possibly more pernicious but at least not as obviously dysfunctional. How is it possible to have the largest repository of video content in the world, yet Youtube is only able to recommend me the same videos over and over again (half of which I seen already or quickly clicked out of). There is also a simplistic list of recommended categories, which I would change if I could, and those never change either. If the front page were just completely random, it would be better than it is now. If I could actually tell Youtube to show me videos with a low-to-moderate view count and a high upvote ratio, then that would be fabulous and I probably would encounter new subjects and ideas rather than getting stuck watching the same garbage over and over. I'll never let my future children spend even a second on Youtube, because the stuff that it recommends to kids is so asinine that it just makes me mad. I really believe that collectively we are all much dumber because of the Youtube's pathetically bad algorithms.

visarga 6y ago
You're probably right about the recommender but kid videos are not crap. In fact there's a Cambrian explosion of kid videos, some are amazing.

zo1 6y ago

You know it's bad when one of the reasons for dismissing a video is "I've watched this before". If I didn't know any better, I'd say it's a separate sub-system(gasp, microservice) that doesn't integrate nicely with the service that stores/holds your previous viewing history.

combatentropy 6y ago

Agreed. This tweak to their formula would improve it for me masssively: show the video on my Home page just once. If I click reload, show me an entirely new set. Someone may say, this would bother others, who saw something interesting but didn't click it this time. For me, it would train me to open those in a new tab or save them to my Watch Later list. Or just make it an opt-in feature, this aggressive renewal of the home page.