4 ms·

You have to work on them a little bit but once you do, the recommendations are incredibly high quality. Just make sure to hide the stuff you don’t want to see

You have to work on them a little bit but once you do, the recommendations are incredibly high quality. Just make sure to hide the stuff you don’t want to see on your homepage. I go as far as removing dumb videos from my watch history (or watching them in incognito in the first place). I find that most people who complain about the YouTube algorithm expect it to just work out of the box with zero tuning. It’s not that good and to be honest I personally don’t want it to be that good. But if you put in a LITTLE effort I promise you it’s an absolute recommendation beast. I have hundreds of hours of content in my watch later list just because of it. It’s all super high quality and I’m rarely disappointed hitting random videos in my homepage.

stickfigure 5y ago
This. My youtube recommendations are incredible. I've spent a lot of time liking and subscribing to things that interest me, and now my feed is full of videos about history and trains and machining and woodworking and science and all kinds of stuff that I could watch for days.
Laforet 5y ago
I tried something similar and the results are a mixed bag at best. When the algorithm decides to recommend a video from a creator that I don't follow, it is usually something worth my time. However I cannot seem to stop getting recommendations for videos I have already watched despite diligently clicking the "not interested because already watched" boxes. A lesser issue is that if I don't watch the videos from a certain channel or genre for a while, the algorithm decides that I must have lost interest and stops recommending those content altogether when that's not really the case. And the "related videos" on the side bar never goes beyond a list of videos from the same channel.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I get that issue as well, i think YouTube has a high emphasis on rewatching stuff which is not usually something i do there.. but it's easy to ignore and the rest of the recs are stellar so I'm not sure it's a problem. Plus the videos it recommends rewatching are still excellent and sometimes i even do rewatch them.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
Yes. In particular, the single most important thing to do is to click the three dots next to a video and then click "Not interested": https://i.imgur.com/1CQzOy6.png https://i.imgur.com/1CQzOy6.png Literally any time you see a video you don't like, do this. It only takes one or two "Not interested"'s to dramatically improve your feed.
garyfirestorm 5y ago
That’s exactly I was thinking. Why do people on HN keep hating YouTube recommendations. I want to learn electronics and now YouTube is recommending some amazing stuff. I’m absolutely amazed by the quality of content it recommends. Then again my echo chamber is mostly gaining new skills. I avoid watching trash on YouTube.
mavsman 5y ago
This is super helpful but also very interesting. When technology fails to adapt to people and meet their needs, people must adapt to technology and meet its needs.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I think the level of expectation is just far too high. It's an ML algorithm, feed it some high quality training data and it'll give you some good results. Out of the box it'll give you some very default generic crap.

stickfigure 5y ago

This. My youtube recommendations are incredible. I've spent a lot of time liking and subscribing to things that interest me, and now my feed is full of videos about history and trains and machining and woodworking and science and all kinds of stuff that I could watch for days.

Laforet 5y ago

I tried something similar and the results are a mixed bag at best. When the algorithm decides to recommend a video from a creator that I don't follow, it is usually something worth my time. However I cannot seem to stop getting recommendations for videos I have already watched despite diligently clicking the "not interested because already watched" boxes. A lesser issue is that if I don't watch the videos from a certain channel or genre for a while, the algorithm decides that I must have lost interest and stops recommending those content altogether when that's not really the case. And the "related videos" on the side bar never goes beyond a list of videos from the same channel.

scrollaway 5y ago
I get that issue as well, i think YouTube has a high emphasis on rewatching stuff which is not usually something i do there.. but it's easy to ignore and the rest of the recs are stellar so I'm not sure it's a problem. Plus the videos it recommends rewatching are still excellent and sometimes i even do rewatch them.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

Yes. In particular, the single most important thing to do is to click the three dots next to a video and then click "Not interested": https://i.imgur.com/1CQzOy6.png https://i.imgur.com/1CQzOy6.png Literally any time you see a video you don't like, do this. It only takes one or two "Not interested"'s to dramatically improve your feed.

garyfirestorm 5y ago

That’s exactly I was thinking. Why do people on HN keep hating YouTube recommendations. I want to learn electronics and now YouTube is recommending some amazing stuff. I’m absolutely amazed by the quality of content it recommends. Then again my echo chamber is mostly gaining new skills. I avoid watching trash on YouTube.

mavsman 5y ago

This is super helpful but also very interesting. When technology fails to adapt to people and meet their needs, people must adapt to technology and meet its needs.

scrollaway 5y ago
I think the level of expectation is just far too high. It's an ML algorithm, feed it some high quality training data and it'll give you some good results. Out of the box it'll give you some very default generic crap.