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This seems pretty tautological. What you watch will reflect your reccomendations because there is a causal relationship there, unless you never use youtube for

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).
srcreigh 5y ago
Personal experience sharing time. I use YouTube heavily, and even pay for YT Premium. The other day a little modal appeared on the side of youtube.com desktop saying something like, "Curious for new stuff? Explore content that isn't what you usually watch." It ended up being sorta like an alternate reality. It was all the topics I usually watch, but with different channels I don't normally see at all. In other words, it was as if all the channels I normally watch don't exist, what else would exist to fill the void.
- bigmattystyles 5y ago
  YouTube premium is the best streaming service. There’s so much content of high quality content that’s relatively niche. I recently stumbled on SummoningSalt’s videos about speed runners and I can’t imagine any other medium that would create incentives for that type of content. Of course you don’t need premium, but no ads is great! I’ve gone on to support people on patreon from YouTube, from cgp grey to stuffmadehere. I can’t imagine finding that kind of content on Hulu, Netflix, et al. It’s possible there are YouTube alternatives as I’m quite old compared to a teenager.
  - deadbyte 5y ago
    SummoningSalt's material is always reliably great.
kenjackson 5y ago
What they watch is shaped by recommendations, but I think most are also aware of it. For example, when I want to watch something about basketball I typically go to YouTube and there are recommendations of what to watch. There are probably millions of basketball videos, but YouTube is going to show me a handful based on previous videos I've watched and liked. I'm not surprised to see certain content creators more than others. But at the same time if they did a poor job of recommendation (like Spotify) then I'd probably just go and search through channels that I know I like.

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).

srcreigh 5y ago

Personal experience sharing time. I use YouTube heavily, and even pay for YT Premium. The other day a little modal appeared on the side of youtube.com desktop saying something like, "Curious for new stuff? Explore content that isn't what you usually watch." It ended up being sorta like an alternate reality. It was all the topics I usually watch, but with different channels I don't normally see at all. In other words, it was as if all the channels I normally watch don't exist, what else would exist to fill the void.

bigmattystyles 5y ago
YouTube premium is the best streaming service. There’s so much content of high quality content that’s relatively niche. I recently stumbled on SummoningSalt’s videos about speed runners and I can’t imagine any other medium that would create incentives for that type of content. Of course you don’t need premium, but no ads is great! I’ve gone on to support people on patreon from YouTube, from cgp grey to stuffmadehere. I can’t imagine finding that kind of content on Hulu, Netflix, et al. It’s possible there are YouTube alternatives as I’m quite old compared to a teenager.
- deadbyte 5y ago
  SummoningSalt's material is always reliably great.

kenjackson 5y ago

What they watch is shaped by recommendations, but I think most are also aware of it. For example, when I want to watch something about basketball I typically go to YouTube and there are recommendations of what to watch. There are probably millions of basketball videos, but YouTube is going to show me a handful based on previous videos I've watched and liked. I'm not surprised to see certain content creators more than others. But at the same time if they did a poor job of recommendation (like Spotify) then I'd probably just go and search through channels that I know I like.