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1) Someone says "look at this idiot" and sends me a link to a video. I watch it, and reply to the person "yep, the person in the video is an idiot". The video w

by DanBC 6y ago

1) Someone says "look at this idiot" and sends me a link to a video. I watch it, and reply to the person "yep, the person in the video is an idiot". The video website has no option for me to say "don't show me any more of this kind of stuff". 2) COPPA means youtube doesn't allow under 13s to have an account. But those children want to use the like and subscribe and notification bell. This means that youtube gets all of my viewing and all of my child's view, but can't tell the difference. 3) There's no way to tell youtube what I like. I watch tiny channels doing original songs and covers. Youtube thinks that's music, and so pushes general chart shit at me. Or it thinks it's some genre of music and pushes huge channels that are roughly that genre at me. I have no way of telling YT that it's the small channels with fewer than 1000 / 10000 subs that I want to see.

Jabbles 6y ago
You can give feedback by clicking thumbs up/down or selecting "not interested".
- DanBC 6y ago
  Thumbs up / down has no impact on what videos Youtube pushes. Not interested and don't recommend channel only removes that channel. It doesn't do anything to remove all the other similar content, and it doesn't do anything to add more relevant content.
  - Jabbles 6y ago
    Please cite a source. It seems like it would be an obvious signal to use in recommendations.
jsnell 6y ago
For point one, give a thumbs down to the video? One would imagine that is used as a negative recommendation signal. Or delete the video from your watch history. For point two, I don't think you're correct. Kids under 13 can have accounts, but only with parental approval. For point three, you're totally right. But if you think through the implications, every aspect of that seems like an incredibly hard problem to solve. And at least my expectation is that you wouldn't get most users to actually interact with that system, since it is too complex. The perfect example of a power user feature that would get killed a few years later as expensive to maintain and little usage.
- mooreds 6y ago
  > For point two, I don't think you're correct. Kids under 13 can have accounts, but only with parental approval. Sure, but how many parents are going to go to the trouble of setting up a separate account? Much more likely they'll just let the kid use their account.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Can you show me where on Youtube I can set up an account for an under 13 year old? https://support.google.com/families/answer/7124142?hl=en https://support.google.com/families/answer/7124142?hl=en > When you use Family Link to create a Google Account for your child under 13, your child can use the YouTube Kids app where it’s available. However, they can't use any other YouTube apps, websites, or features until they turn 13 and manage their own Google Account. Your child will be able to use YouTube if you added supervision to their previously existing Google Account.
  - jsnell 6y ago
    It seems to me that the last sentence you quoted (on accounts that had supervision added to them) has to be talking about use of YouTube generally, not just YouTube Kids. If they did behave the same way, why list this as a special case but with totally different langauge.
sabellito 6y ago
You can also click on the vertical ellipsis menu -> Not Interested, and tell them the reason. My recommendations on youtube are extremely on point.
pwython 6y ago
> The video website has no option for me to say "don't show me any more of this kind of stuff". There are actually two different actions you can take on recommended videos that help. Just click the 3 vertical dots under a thumbnail: "Not Interested" or "Don't recommend channel." > There's no way to tell youtube what I like. I can't imagine a scenario where there's a feasible way to "tell" YouTube exactly what recommended videos you want other than what it's doing now unless the content creators themselves were all on board to properly title & tag their videos. Bigger channels use clickbaity titles (eg. "I was shook when I heard this"). And smaller channels don't know how to utilize keywords. I personally have never had an issue with YouTube recommendations, especially after using the above method to filter out things I don't want to see.
- lelandbatey 6y ago
  Additionally, you can go to your history and choose "Remove from Watch History". I've found this can do a good job keeping certain "highly 'viral' videos" from infecting your recommendations.
- ManlyBread 6y ago
  Both features are broken. "Not interested" does nothing aside from temporarily hiding the video. It's not a signal for "I'm not interested in this category of videos". These videos keep coming back anyway and the problem gets much worse if the same content is uploaded to multiple channels. There are videos I've blocked at least five times "Don't recommend channel" is a cruel joke. It works at first but it gets reversed when you view a single video from that channel. There's no way to enable it pernamently. Sometimes I like certain videos from a particular author but dislike the others and don't want them recommended to me and I can't click on a video added to my favourites without reversing the channel block.
  - JCoder58 6y ago
    If you want a channel gone from your recommendations, subscribe to it, then watch a video, then unsubscribe. At least for me, that makes the channel never show up even if you watch videos from that channel later.

by DanBC 6y ago

Jabbles 6y ago

You can give feedback by clicking thumbs up/down or selecting "not interested".

DanBC 6y ago
Thumbs up / down has no impact on what videos Youtube pushes. Not interested and don't recommend channel only removes that channel. It doesn't do anything to remove all the other similar content, and it doesn't do anything to add more relevant content.
- Jabbles 6y ago
  Please cite a source. It seems like it would be an obvious signal to use in recommendations.

jsnell 6y ago

For point one, give a thumbs down to the video? One would imagine that is used as a negative recommendation signal. Or delete the video from your watch history. For point two, I don't think you're correct. Kids under 13 can have accounts, but only with parental approval. For point three, you're totally right. But if you think through the implications, every aspect of that seems like an incredibly hard problem to solve. And at least my expectation is that you wouldn't get most users to actually interact with that system, since it is too complex. The perfect example of a power user feature that would get killed a few years later as expensive to maintain and little usage.

mooreds 6y ago
> For point two, I don't think you're correct. Kids under 13 can have accounts, but only with parental approval. Sure, but how many parents are going to go to the trouble of setting up a separate account? Much more likely they'll just let the kid use their account.
DanBC 6y ago
Can you show me where on Youtube I can set up an account for an under 13 year old? https://support.google.com/families/answer/7124142?hl=en https://support.google.com/families/answer/7124142?hl=en > When you use Family Link to create a Google Account for your child under 13, your child can use the YouTube Kids app where it’s available. However, they can't use any other YouTube apps, websites, or features until they turn 13 and manage their own Google Account. Your child will be able to use YouTube if you added supervision to their previously existing Google Account.
- jsnell 6y ago
  It seems to me that the last sentence you quoted (on accounts that had supervision added to them) has to be talking about use of YouTube generally, not just YouTube Kids. If they did behave the same way, why list this as a special case but with totally different langauge.

sabellito 6y ago

You can also click on the vertical ellipsis menu -> Not Interested, and tell them the reason. My recommendations on youtube are extremely on point.

pwython 6y ago

> The video website has no option for me to say "don't show me any more of this kind of stuff". There are actually two different actions you can take on recommended videos that help. Just click the 3 vertical dots under a thumbnail: "Not Interested" or "Don't recommend channel." > There's no way to tell youtube what I like. I can't imagine a scenario where there's a feasible way to "tell" YouTube exactly what recommended videos you want other than what it's doing now unless the content creators themselves were all on board to properly title & tag their videos. Bigger channels use clickbaity titles (eg. "I was shook when I heard this"). And smaller channels don't know how to utilize keywords. I personally have never had an issue with YouTube recommendations, especially after using the above method to filter out things I don't want to see.

lelandbatey 6y ago
Additionally, you can go to your history and choose "Remove from Watch History". I've found this can do a good job keeping certain "highly 'viral' videos" from infecting your recommendations.
ManlyBread 6y ago
Both features are broken. "Not interested" does nothing aside from temporarily hiding the video. It's not a signal for "I'm not interested in this category of videos". These videos keep coming back anyway and the problem gets much worse if the same content is uploaded to multiple channels. There are videos I've blocked at least five times "Don't recommend channel" is a cruel joke. It works at first but it gets reversed when you view a single video from that channel. There's no way to enable it pernamently. Sometimes I like certain videos from a particular author but dislike the others and don't want them recommended to me and I can't click on a video added to my favourites without reversing the channel block.
- JCoder58 6y ago
  If you want a channel gone from your recommendations, subscribe to it, then watch a video, then unsubscribe. At least for me, that makes the channel never show up even if you watch videos from that channel later.