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It doesn't seem that hard to get out of a pit, even with the account. It just takes a couple of days of browsing of the new type of content, along with maybe cl

It doesn't seem that hard to get out of a pit, even with the account. It just takes a couple of days of browsing of the new type of content, along with maybe clicking "don't recommend this channel"/"not interested" 3-4 times, and the algorithm switches to the new things... The algorithm doesn't care, it just recommends.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
murgindrag 6y ago
I want Youtube to recommend educational videos, a la Extra History and 3B1B. That's most of what I watch on Youtube. Youtube recommends stupid crap based on what other people like. If I watch one stupid video not in incognito, ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content. Even within educational videos, if I click on a click-baity channel once, that channel dominates things I've watched MANY more time. It seems to all be about click-through metrics. I've never had Youtube recommend really upscale educational content like Zach Star before. It's quality stuff, but you gotta find it yourself.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  > ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content. Back when I was not particularly into YouTube and hadn't had many great recommendations YouTube insisted I should watch Sapolsky's Harvard lectures - these probably had particularly good metrics. Once I started to watch them (and was very satisfied) more and more great recommendations started to appear. > It's quality stuff, but you gotta find it yourself. People should start sharing curated lists of high-quality no-bullish YouTube videos/channels. Kind of like those awesome-everything on GitHub.
  - minkowski 6y ago
    Conversely, at some point I decided to watch Sapolsky lectures based on human recommenders, but this caused YouTube to recommend not only other science lectures but also sensational videos purporting to be about quantum mechanics, medicine, etc. but which were obviously total pseudoscience.
- freebuju 6y ago
  Not saying YouTube's recommendation algorithm is perfect but you could try to interact with the feedback popups. That seems to clear up stuff I don't need on my 1st page. If all else fails, create a new Google account for separate exclusive use should do the trick.
vl 6y ago
The most simple way to adjust recommendations is to delete videos you didn’t like from your watch history.
monkeypizza 6y ago
I have this problem too occasionally; but if you spend 2 minutes hitting "do not recommend videos like this" + "do not recommend this channel", all the good content beneath will rise to the top.
floatrock 6y ago
> The algorithm doesn't care, it just recommends. And isn't that terrifying, in the Parable of the Paperclip Maximizer kinda way? We can make the well-its-your-individual-responsibility bootstraps argument, but that kinda works only if you believe in the supremacy of an individual's autonomy and that the mind can't be hacked or hijacked. Everything from addictive products to the marketing industry shows that isn't the case. The youtube paperclip maximizer is maximizing for your mind's engagement. We can say "well, it's just feeding people what they want!" But you can say the same thing about airdropping crates of opium onto the streets.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  It is only terrifying if you assume people are mindless spiritless bots. In which case (if you truly believe that), we are all fucked anyway. Then who cares? Is youtube really your biggest problem? > is maximizing for your mind's engagement. So has media been doing for a long time, also all writers and poets, etc. Mind's engagement is not the only meaning of life, and most people act out this deep knowledge. I don't see a problem.
  - floatrock 6y ago
    Yes, it was called "yellow journalism" before it was called "clickbait". I agree, that's not new. What's new and disturbing is 1) the degree of algorithmic personalization, and 2) that personalization goes to the highest bidder. Put together, we've built a marketplace for population-scale behavioral nudges, and the people who play that game have war-chests, not human-sized wallets. The Facebook/Myanmar genocide is the Godwin's Law reference of the social media debate, but you don't need to look any further than the politicization of what should be neutral medical facts being fueled by recommendation-hole conspiracy theories to see the danger of all this. I don't believe people are mindless spiritless bots, but I do believe our industry thrives on engineering ways to hack people's attention circuits. And what's terrifying is we've put a paperclip maximizing machine at the helm of all this.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

murgindrag 6y ago

I want Youtube to recommend educational videos, a la Extra History and 3B1B. That's most of what I watch on Youtube. Youtube recommends stupid crap based on what other people like. If I watch one stupid video not in incognito, ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content. Even within educational videos, if I click on a click-baity channel once, that channel dominates things I've watched MANY more time. It seems to all be about click-through metrics. I've never had Youtube recommend really upscale educational content like Zach Star before. It's quality stuff, but you gotta find it yourself.

qwerty456127 6y ago
> ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content. Back when I was not particularly into YouTube and hadn't had many great recommendations YouTube insisted I should watch Sapolsky's Harvard lectures - these probably had particularly good metrics. Once I started to watch them (and was very satisfied) more and more great recommendations started to appear. > It's quality stuff, but you gotta find it yourself. People should start sharing curated lists of high-quality no-bullish YouTube videos/channels. Kind of like those awesome-everything on GitHub.
- minkowski 6y ago
  Conversely, at some point I decided to watch Sapolsky lectures based on human recommenders, but this caused YouTube to recommend not only other science lectures but also sensational videos purporting to be about quantum mechanics, medicine, etc. but which were obviously total pseudoscience.
freebuju 6y ago
Not saying YouTube's recommendation algorithm is perfect but you could try to interact with the feedback popups. That seems to clear up stuff I don't need on my 1st page. If all else fails, create a new Google account for separate exclusive use should do the trick.

vl 6y ago

The most simple way to adjust recommendations is to delete videos you didn’t like from your watch history.

monkeypizza 6y ago

I have this problem too occasionally; but if you spend 2 minutes hitting "do not recommend videos like this" + "do not recommend this channel", all the good content beneath will rise to the top.

floatrock 6y ago

> The algorithm doesn't care, it just recommends. And isn't that terrifying, in the Parable of the Paperclip Maximizer kinda way? We can make the well-its-your-individual-responsibility bootstraps argument, but that kinda works only if you believe in the supremacy of an individual's autonomy and that the mind can't be hacked or hijacked. Everything from addictive products to the marketing industry shows that isn't the case. The youtube paperclip maximizer is maximizing for your mind's engagement. We can say "well, it's just feeding people what they want!" But you can say the same thing about airdropping crates of opium onto the streets.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
It is only terrifying if you assume people are mindless spiritless bots. In which case (if you truly believe that), we are all fucked anyway. Then who cares? Is youtube really your biggest problem? > is maximizing for your mind's engagement. So has media been doing for a long time, also all writers and poets, etc. Mind's engagement is not the only meaning of life, and most people act out this deep knowledge. I don't see a problem.
- floatrock 6y ago
  Yes, it was called "yellow journalism" before it was called "clickbait". I agree, that's not new. What's new and disturbing is 1) the degree of algorithmic personalization, and 2) that personalization goes to the highest bidder. Put together, we've built a marketplace for population-scale behavioral nudges, and the people who play that game have war-chests, not human-sized wallets. The Facebook/Myanmar genocide is the Godwin's Law reference of the social media debate, but you don't need to look any further than the politicization of what should be neutral medical facts being fueled by recommendation-hole conspiracy theories to see the danger of all this. I don't believe people are mindless spiritless bots, but I do believe our industry thrives on engineering ways to hack people's attention circuits. And what's terrifying is we've put a paperclip maximizing machine at the helm of all this.