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It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We

It's sad because I remember being able to find new and interesting creators passively. Now the main page is all corporate BS and the algorithm locks you in. We played a bit of WOW Classic last year and all of a sudden I was just flooded with Asmongold videos and videos of people clipping and replaying Asmongold. It took a day of "never show this again" to make it stop.

steveklabnik 5y ago
As someone who had a bit of a YouTube hobby and is trying to get back into it, I've generally found that the algorithm brings me a larger audience than I would have otherwise. I've published three videos in the last 28 days, and my analytics says I've gotten 5200 views across all my content in that time. I have about a hundred subscribers. Search is still king, but 15% of those views have come from suggested. I've got a 7.8% CTR so it's suggesting it to quite a few people.
- cma 5y ago
  Like Facebook now does for "boosting" post shares, I wonder when the YT algorithm will start incorporating pay to win mechanics.
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    It seems like YouTube has realized that winner-takes-all is bad for the health of the platform, and is trying to grow smaller creators. I suspect they won't do this, because they realize that it ultimately strangles growth. Mr. Beast (for example) is already spending about $4MM/month on making videos; if they allowed this kind of stuff, well... not many people could compete. We'll see though!
    - cma 5y ago
      After I made the post I remembered they already do it. Brands can pay to sponsor existing videos that put them in a good light. These recomendations do have an [Ad] tag, but the extra views and impressions are allow to feed into the algorithm which then doesn't have to maintain the [Ad] tag going forward: https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/10007177/using-someone-else-s-youtube-video-as-my-youtube-ad https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/10007177/using-...
    - frosted-flakes 5y ago
      Occasionally I will see a "Rising Creator" section on the Explore/Trending page showcasing a single channel. This channel typically has less than 5k subscribers and posts regularly.
DocEasyE 5y ago
check yolo comics on youtube, they are korean but have subtitles and make amazing prank videos not like US pranks
kenjackson 5y ago
What corporate stuff do you have on your main page? Mine is all pretty much filled with content that matches what I watch.
- yummypaint 5y ago
  This seems pretty tautological. What you watch will reflect your reccomendations because there is a causal relationship there, unless you never use youtube for discovery. I alledge that what people spend time watching is more heavily shaped by reccomendations than they are aware of.
  - dkarl 5y ago
    When you depart from your usual intake, some departures are a lot more powerful than others. Sometimes you watch something new and YouTube spends days pushing similar stuff into your face. Other times you watch something new and only see one or two relevant recommendations mixed into your usual fare. My hypothesis is that YouTube knows that particular topics and particular content are associated with usage patterns that make money for them, and the algorithm is alert to any possibility of pushing users into those patterns.
  - kroltan 5y ago
    I'm not who you're replying to, but at least for me, I've found a way of keeping the recommendations on check. https://i.imgur.com/XIRW4U2.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/XIRW4U2.jpeg When opening videos that are sent to me by others, I always use a private window, so my main account is pretty low "variance". When I find a creator I like, I do a "fake binge", by queuing all their recent videos and some old ones too and playing them unattended. I also try to minimize my use of the recommendation sidebar, since it usually shows content related to the current video rather than the more general recommendations of the home page. When something foreign sneaks its way to my home page, I immediately click "not interested", paying attention to not hover the thumbnail. Overall, Youtube has got me trained pretty well, but at least I get some nice recommendations out of it, so much so in fact that over half the recommendations I get are usually videos I have already watched (even if Youtube thinks I haven't yet for whatever reason).
Asmod4n 5y ago
I’m hitting never show this again on one type of content all the time. There are days where my feed consists of like 33% of that stuff and it happens all the time. I’m at the point where it only recommends me my subscribed channels or the stuff I tell it not to show at all some days too. It’s so frustrating.
- dkarl 5y ago
  I think there are some intersections of interest that make the algorithm hypothesize that you're a certain kind of person. Like if you watch a lot of strength training content, and then you watch one lecture on Heidegger, YouTube is like, oh, we finally figured this guy out, he's a white supremacist or at the very least a gun nut. But if I watch a video about cupcakes, I'll only get a few suggestions about baking, not any associated interests, because cupcakes don't combine with any of my other interests to trigger a stereotype.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  I always get those "calming meditation" music videos in recommendations, or "5 Powerful Psalms to Help You Sleep" which is on my homepage right now. Every video is from a different channel named something like "Calming Truth", and I can tell at one glance of the thumbnail that it's one of "those" videos. I have never, ever watched one, and I always click Not Interested, or Don't Recommend Channel. But they keep on coming. There seems to be an endless supply of them.
grumbel 5y ago
That's why I started using multiple accounts, makes it a lot easier to keep the algorithm on topic and not get side tracked just because you searched for a song or game once. In the end the core problem with the recommendation system is simply that there is only one list of recommendations, which makes it damn near impossible to switch to a different topic unless you start account hopping. The new topic-bar helps a little, but still offers no way to get rid of an unwanted topic completely.
- jeffwask 5y ago
  I did this till I started paying for premium then it sucked.
  - FalconSensei 5y ago
    If you use different channels, premium should work for all, right?
  - Uupis 5y ago
    I use the family plan for multiple accounts. Might not fit if you actually use it as a family plan, but it's working out for me so far.
- quakeguy 5y ago
  „Using multiple accounts“ „Makes it easier“ That may work indeed, but i wouldnt call it easy in any way, or convenient. Instead try to subscribe to as many channels you find interesting as possible. Thats what worked for me in the end getting rid of the clutter that is suggested.
  - grumbel 5y ago
    I find subscriptions completely useless when it comes to recommendation, as the recommendations seem to be build up of what I watched in the last week, while my subscriptions have little to no visible impact at all. There are numerous channels I am subscribe to that I haven't seen in months or years, just because I didn't watch them for a week or two and they fell out of the recommendation cycle.
stevofolife 5y ago
You started playing WoW Classic and it was able to recommend WoW-related videos. It did its job. What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? That's not recommendation, that's mass surveillance and psychological manipulation. But on a useful note, maybe YouTube needs to provide a function to see a list of random videos that are unexplored or new.
- dgritsko 5y ago
  > What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? Actually, I think they kind of are trying to do this (in a sense), if you read the article: > Our system then compares your viewing habits with those that are similar to you and uses that information to suggest other content you may want to watch. So if you like tennis videos and our system notices that others who like the same tennis videos as you also enjoy jazz videos, you may be recommended jazz videos, even if you’ve never watched a single one before.
  - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
    This is probably how both I and many of my friends who share interests managed to fall down the same city planning YouTube rabbit hole this summer.
  - stevofolife 5y ago
    That is true. But the word “next” makes all the difference in the world. If you know what I mean.
- matttb 5y ago
  I want it to diversify a lot more. There's a lot of room between 'WoW related videos' and 98% of your sidebar is one particular creator (asmon).
- jeffwask 5y ago
  It's a matter of degrees... Imagine if I went to church for the first time in a decade and the next day three monks show up at my door with a cassock and vows. ...that's the YouTube algorithm in my experience. I show a passing interest in one thing so it floods me with every drop of content they have on the subject to the exclusion of things that I have watched every week for years. There are creators I watch every week or every drop. Somehow the algorithm chooses to not surface their videos regularly and surface 46,123 videos on Terraform because I watched a quick tutorial.
gremloni 5y ago
This is not my experience at all. Everything on my page is from independent creators.

steveklabnik 5y ago

As someone who had a bit of a YouTube hobby and is trying to get back into it, I've generally found that the algorithm brings me a larger audience than I would have otherwise. I've published three videos in the last 28 days, and my analytics says I've gotten 5200 views across all my content in that time. I have about a hundred subscribers. Search is still king, but 15% of those views have come from suggested. I've got a 7.8% CTR so it's suggesting it to quite a few people.

cma 5y ago
Like Facebook now does for "boosting" post shares, I wonder when the YT algorithm will start incorporating pay to win mechanics.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  It seems like YouTube has realized that winner-takes-all is bad for the health of the platform, and is trying to grow smaller creators. I suspect they won't do this, because they realize that it ultimately strangles growth. Mr. Beast (for example) is already spending about $4MM/month on making videos; if they allowed this kind of stuff, well... not many people could compete. We'll see though!
  - cma 5y ago
    After I made the post I remembered they already do it. Brands can pay to sponsor existing videos that put them in a good light. These recomendations do have an [Ad] tag, but the extra views and impressions are allow to feed into the algorithm which then doesn't have to maintain the [Ad] tag going forward: https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/10007177/using-someone-else-s-youtube-video-as-my-youtube-ad https://support.google.com/google-ads/thread/10007177/using-...
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Occasionally I will see a "Rising Creator" section on the Explore/Trending page showcasing a single channel. This channel typically has less than 5k subscribers and posts regularly.

DocEasyE 5y ago

check yolo comics on youtube, they are korean but have subtitles and make amazing prank videos not like US pranks

kenjackson 5y ago

What corporate stuff do you have on your main page? Mine is all pretty much filled with content that matches what I watch.

yummypaint 5y ago
This seems pretty tautological. What you watch will reflect your reccomendations because there is a causal relationship there, unless you never use youtube for discovery. I alledge that what people spend time watching is more heavily shaped by reccomendations than they are aware of.
- dkarl 5y ago
  When you depart from your usual intake, some departures are a lot more powerful than others. Sometimes you watch something new and YouTube spends days pushing similar stuff into your face. Other times you watch something new and only see one or two relevant recommendations mixed into your usual fare. My hypothesis is that YouTube knows that particular topics and particular content are associated with usage patterns that make money for them, and the algorithm is alert to any possibility of pushing users into those patterns.
- kroltan 5y ago
  I'm not who you're replying to, but at least for me, I've found a way of keeping the recommendations on check. https://i.imgur.com/XIRW4U2.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/XIRW4U2.jpeg When opening videos that are sent to me by others, I always use a private window, so my main account is pretty low "variance". When I find a creator I like, I do a "fake binge", by queuing all their recent videos and some old ones too and playing them unattended. I also try to minimize my use of the recommendation sidebar, since it usually shows content related to the current video rather than the more general recommendations of the home page. When something foreign sneaks its way to my home page, I immediately click "not interested", paying attention to not hover the thumbnail. Overall, Youtube has got me trained pretty well, but at least I get some nice recommendations out of it, so much so in fact that over half the recommendations I get are usually videos I have already watched (even if Youtube thinks I haven't yet for whatever reason).

Asmod4n 5y ago

I’m hitting never show this again on one type of content all the time. There are days where my feed consists of like 33% of that stuff and it happens all the time. I’m at the point where it only recommends me my subscribed channels or the stuff I tell it not to show at all some days too. It’s so frustrating.

dkarl 5y ago
I think there are some intersections of interest that make the algorithm hypothesize that you're a certain kind of person. Like if you watch a lot of strength training content, and then you watch one lecture on Heidegger, YouTube is like, oh, we finally figured this guy out, he's a white supremacist or at the very least a gun nut. But if I watch a video about cupcakes, I'll only get a few suggestions about baking, not any associated interests, because cupcakes don't combine with any of my other interests to trigger a stereotype.
frosted-flakes 5y ago
I always get those "calming meditation" music videos in recommendations, or "5 Powerful Psalms to Help You Sleep" which is on my homepage right now. Every video is from a different channel named something like "Calming Truth", and I can tell at one glance of the thumbnail that it's one of "those" videos. I have never, ever watched one, and I always click Not Interested, or Don't Recommend Channel. But they keep on coming. There seems to be an endless supply of them.

grumbel 5y ago

That's why I started using multiple accounts, makes it a lot easier to keep the algorithm on topic and not get side tracked just because you searched for a song or game once. In the end the core problem with the recommendation system is simply that there is only one list of recommendations, which makes it damn near impossible to switch to a different topic unless you start account hopping. The new topic-bar helps a little, but still offers no way to get rid of an unwanted topic completely.

jeffwask 5y ago
I did this till I started paying for premium then it sucked.
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  If you use different channels, premium should work for all, right?
- Uupis 5y ago
  I use the family plan for multiple accounts. Might not fit if you actually use it as a family plan, but it's working out for me so far.
quakeguy 5y ago
„Using multiple accounts“ „Makes it easier“ That may work indeed, but i wouldnt call it easy in any way, or convenient. Instead try to subscribe to as many channels you find interesting as possible. Thats what worked for me in the end getting rid of the clutter that is suggested.
- grumbel 5y ago
  I find subscriptions completely useless when it comes to recommendation, as the recommendations seem to be build up of what I watched in the last week, while my subscriptions have little to no visible impact at all. There are numerous channels I am subscribe to that I haven't seen in months or years, just because I didn't watch them for a week or two and they fell out of the recommendation cycle.

stevofolife 5y ago

You started playing WoW Classic and it was able to recommend WoW-related videos. It did its job. What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? That's not recommendation, that's mass surveillance and psychological manipulation. But on a useful note, maybe YouTube needs to provide a function to see a list of random videos that are unexplored or new.

dgritsko 5y ago
> What else do you expect from a recommendation system? Predict what you're interested next or what you're going to do tomorrow? Actually, I think they kind of are trying to do this (in a sense), if you read the article: > Our system then compares your viewing habits with those that are similar to you and uses that information to suggest other content you may want to watch. So if you like tennis videos and our system notices that others who like the same tennis videos as you also enjoy jazz videos, you may be recommended jazz videos, even if you’ve never watched a single one before.
- brendoelfrendo 5y ago
  This is probably how both I and many of my friends who share interests managed to fall down the same city planning YouTube rabbit hole this summer.
- stevofolife 5y ago
  That is true. But the word “next” makes all the difference in the world. If you know what I mean.
matttb 5y ago
I want it to diversify a lot more. There's a lot of room between 'WoW related videos' and 98% of your sidebar is one particular creator (asmon).
jeffwask 5y ago
It's a matter of degrees... Imagine if I went to church for the first time in a decade and the next day three monks show up at my door with a cassock and vows. ...that's the YouTube algorithm in my experience. I show a passing interest in one thing so it floods me with every drop of content they have on the subject to the exclusion of things that I have watched every week for years. There are creators I watch every week or every drop. Somehow the algorithm chooses to not surface their videos regularly and surface 46,123 videos on Terraform because I watched a quick tutorial.

gremloni 5y ago

This is not my experience at all. Everything on my page is from independent creators.