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Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these cr

Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these creators make. So that means I want the new stuff from the frequented ones on my front page ASAP. Yet, it's a hit and miss. From the remaining 90 channels I never get anything recommended. Why? If I subscribe to a new channel it gets recommended like hell, then it forgets about it. BUT! Totally irrelevant things that I never watch, is kept on my front page for weeks. Like it wants me to check it or wants me to mute it, but fuck them I'm not giving them any more metrics. If I clear the fingerprints and block the acquiring of these metrics the front page gets filled with new, interesting content. Who the hell understands this? I have also observed that if you have an adblocker enabled it gives you trash all the time. When the absolutely disgusting, braindead, bottomfeeding "depp vs amber" nightmare was ongoing I had to "mute" the same channels multiple times and then 55 others, because it just slams it into my face. Watch it, watch it, you must see this muck. The topic of my fav channels represent... I get nothing relevant from them. :DDD The shorts... was the pinnacle of YTs innovation. :DDDD Goog is all about control now. Look innovation for somewhere else... well... if you can find any, lemme know........ You can't do shit with godzilla and now he does whatever he wants.

Tarq0n 4y ago
That's not what the recommendations are for. There's a separate page that list all posts by your subscriptions in chronological order, you can find it in the sidebar, IMO it's the only way to use YouTube.
- antioppressor 4y ago
  Which is also nonfunctional, useless, not for human consumption. You can't filter those in any way. It looks like a relic from the 90s :DDD. Anything else you want to add?
  - dwild 4y ago
    > You can't filter those in any way. You can easily filter it, by unsubscribing to content you don't actually want. If you watch so little content of a channel that it annoys you to see it on the subscriptions pages, then you shouldn't be subscribed to them. I can't see how adding a filter system would be less annoying at that point, you would take more time by selecting some filter than just ignoring that specific content. Out of my 352 subscriptions, I got 22 videos yesterday, quite fast to skip them.
    - antioppressor 4y ago
      If you allow several hundred subscriptions, then make sure you can filter through various ways too. So easy. There are channels who create good content, but on rare occasions. So if you unsubscribe you have to manually view their channel.
mcv 4y ago
I'm not subscribed to a lot of channels, and mostly relied on recommendations, which served me reasonably well for a time, but over time I noticed that some of my interests completely vanished, while others keep repeating old stuff I've already seen. And even channels I'm subscribed to, the recommendations are often old stuff and not the most recent. But click one recommendation outside my interests just to check it out, and that's going to dominate for the next couple of weeks even if I decide I don't like it. Maybe I should downvote that more aggressively.
andsoitis 4y ago
It sounds like you find near-zero value from YouTube, so you might as well stop using it?
- aninteger 4y ago
  Maybe near-zero but not zero. They said that they watch content from 10 (out of the 100) creators they are subscribed to. I'm in a similar position. I'm subscribed to 78 channels but typically will only watch content from a fraction of these due to preferences on quality and time (some creators have good content but end up putting up an hour video, which I am less likely to view).
  - antioppressor 4y ago
    ^^^ mil has arrived :D
  - kazinator 4y ago
    > I'm subscribed to 78 channels but typically will only watch content from a fraction of these Statement indistinguishable from classic cable TV user.
- antioppressor 4y ago
  I find value, but at what cost? When you are info hungry you don't like your precious time being wasted bc of inefficient systems hindering your work. Do I have to write API helper scripts and scrapers in 2022 for a top10 visited internet site? BUT, BUT, BUT THE PINNACLE OF INNOVATION IS YOUTUBE/GOOGLE, RIGHT? And they host these nice and trendy videos about how advanced they are, and how you should do your coding, how you should organize your work, your life, your team, whatever. And the terrible libraries... gimme a fn break. Too bad for the end consumer, it's all about pain. I mean even porn sites have finer grained control on content filtering than YT :DDD. I'm wondering why they are not opening their code base and let the coding done by individuals, OF COURSE, FOR FREE! ha ha ha
- metadat 4y ago
  I have stopped.
josemando 4y ago
> If I clear the fingerprints and block the acquiring of these metrics Honesty question here, but how do you do that?
- eks391 4y ago
  I'm not sure what he means by 'clearing' his fingerprint, but if you visit EFF[0], you can check if your fingerprint is at least random. I've only been able to achieve a random fingerprint on Brave browser. Even clearing all cookies/cache on your browser will not reset the fingerprint. To prevent metric collection, you can't be logged in and you need your browser settings set to block cookies for YouTube. [0] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
ChrisRR 4y ago
If you're not looking for recommendations and just your subscriptions, then you should be checking the subscriptions tab, not the home page. You'll always have all uploads from subscribed channels listed there
- jfoster 4y ago
  Shouldn't they be able to detect your preferred behaviour and put that on the homepage? They seem to be focused so much on creating magical AI that they're missing some fundamental easy stuff.
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
If you know what you want to watch why rely on Google recommending it to you? I only visit my subscriptions page: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions I don't have notifications on and when I visit YouTube I'll check to see what videos I want to watch since I last visited. I usually check the up next to see if anything similar/interesting is recommended and very rarely go to the home page to get recommendations.
- antioppressor 4y ago
  Because I want new and fresh content from the topics I frequently watch. I want to be entertained, stimulated in various, unexpected ways. YT is sitting atop a goldmine and they offer only morsels.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > I only visit my subscriptions page: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions Reminder that you don't have to have an account to subscribe: * https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=THE_CHANNEL_ID_HERE https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=THE_CHAN... * https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOURPLAYLISTIDHERE https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOURPLA... (Though an 'official' subscription with-in the system may help the creator.)
dereg 4y ago
The best part of YouTube recommendations - side bar recommendations - have been broken for at least 7-9 years. I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed, 2) videos about topics that I've recently searched for or watched that are unrelated to the current video, 3) videos trending across all of YouTube, and etc. There are other things that drive me nuts about YouTube's recommendations, like the fact that they will never recommend me the next part of a n-part video. If I'm watching part 2/3 of something, please show 3/3 in the side bar, YouTube! YouTube's iterative degeneration into its current state points to the folly of A/B-maximalism. In the pursuit of getting more base hits, it seems like YouTube forgot that the goal of baseball is to win games and keep fans entertained. YouTube has been bad for a while. I suppose that some part of that is good – YT effectively killed the addictive loops that made their website irresistible. However, there is a lot that sucks about it. The utility of YouTube has gone down. Furthermore, I think YT blew open a hole in the video space for services like TikTok to emerge. TikTok may be crack, but YouTube used to be cocaine.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  > There are other things that drive me nuts about YouTube's recommendations, like the fact that they will never recommend me the next part of a n-part video. If I'm watching part 2/3 of something, please show 3/3 in the side bar, YouTube! It used to do that, though! They should at least allow it up to a limit or something rather than making it just that stupid. My other biggest complaint really is the recommendation system in general. It's so bad that I can guarantee you that I can fall asleep to something innocuous like Spongebob Squarepants and in the morning I'll wake up and it's playing Jordan Peterson. EVERY. STINKING. TIME. It was like that before with Lex Fridman, and I totally had to unsubscribe and unlike a lot of Lex content before it would stop autoplaying it. I can't keep playing that game, but at least I can tolerate Peterson's voice more than Lex's. Funny thing is I was never crazy about either one. They clearly profiled me as being the kind of person who watches that stuff. No, surely the fact I watch a lot of videos about theme park rides can't mean I want to see similar content. Obviously, I want to watch Jordan Peterson!!! :D /s Without the market dominance, YouTube would be marginally better than its competitors.
shrx 4y ago
What's worse, the "not interested" button is broken. I get a couple of music albums recommended fairly often and I click on "not interested" every time I see them, only to have them pop up again a few days later.
rasz 4y ago
> on my front page dont, bookmark https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
lsaferite 4y ago
Do you also get an endless stream of shuffle dance shorts being shoved down your throat? I think I made the mistake of clicking on one months and months ago and now YT won't stop trying to force feed me those shorts. They are 100% not like anything I watch on a regular basis. So Bad. Edit: For clarity, I had no idea WTF a shuffle dance was and curiosity got the better of me. Super great way to make me NOT curious about my non-core interests.
ncr100 4y ago
I suspect YouTube is weighting incorrectly. I miss Human Curation of content. I am looking for other sources. It's annoying, more often than joyful, to use YouTube for me. It feels like a half-baked project. I miss Human Curation. My story: paying long-term YT user (no ads), watched many multi-hour "calm stream / quiet cafe" videos, Recommended list became 75% polluted w/these and un-cleanable regardless of many "Don't Like" actions by me, nuked history, still seeing some.
snarf21 4y ago
Or it is working exactly as intended. We forget sometimes that we have misaligned incentives: We want the most interesting content and Google wants the most ad $$$.

Tarq0n 4y ago

That's not what the recommendations are for. There's a separate page that list all posts by your subscriptions in chronological order, you can find it in the sidebar, IMO it's the only way to use YouTube.

antioppressor 4y ago
Which is also nonfunctional, useless, not for human consumption. You can't filter those in any way. It looks like a relic from the 90s :DDD. Anything else you want to add?
- dwild 4y ago
  > You can't filter those in any way. You can easily filter it, by unsubscribing to content you don't actually want. If you watch so little content of a channel that it annoys you to see it on the subscriptions pages, then you shouldn't be subscribed to them. I can't see how adding a filter system would be less annoying at that point, you would take more time by selecting some filter than just ignoring that specific content. Out of my 352 subscriptions, I got 22 videos yesterday, quite fast to skip them.
  - antioppressor 4y ago
    If you allow several hundred subscriptions, then make sure you can filter through various ways too. So easy. There are channels who create good content, but on rare occasions. So if you unsubscribe you have to manually view their channel.

mcv 4y ago

I'm not subscribed to a lot of channels, and mostly relied on recommendations, which served me reasonably well for a time, but over time I noticed that some of my interests completely vanished, while others keep repeating old stuff I've already seen. And even channels I'm subscribed to, the recommendations are often old stuff and not the most recent. But click one recommendation outside my interests just to check it out, and that's going to dominate for the next couple of weeks even if I decide I don't like it. Maybe I should downvote that more aggressively.

andsoitis 4y ago

It sounds like you find near-zero value from YouTube, so you might as well stop using it?

aninteger 4y ago
Maybe near-zero but not zero. They said that they watch content from 10 (out of the 100) creators they are subscribed to. I'm in a similar position. I'm subscribed to 78 channels but typically will only watch content from a fraction of these due to preferences on quality and time (some creators have good content but end up putting up an hour video, which I am less likely to view).
- antioppressor 4y ago
  ^^^ mil has arrived :D
- kazinator 4y ago
  > I'm subscribed to 78 channels but typically will only watch content from a fraction of these Statement indistinguishable from classic cable TV user.
antioppressor 4y ago
I find value, but at what cost? When you are info hungry you don't like your precious time being wasted bc of inefficient systems hindering your work. Do I have to write API helper scripts and scrapers in 2022 for a top10 visited internet site? BUT, BUT, BUT THE PINNACLE OF INNOVATION IS YOUTUBE/GOOGLE, RIGHT? And they host these nice and trendy videos about how advanced they are, and how you should do your coding, how you should organize your work, your life, your team, whatever. And the terrible libraries... gimme a fn break. Too bad for the end consumer, it's all about pain. I mean even porn sites have finer grained control on content filtering than YT :DDD. I'm wondering why they are not opening their code base and let the coding done by individuals, OF COURSE, FOR FREE! ha ha ha
metadat 4y ago
I have stopped.

josemando 4y ago

> If I clear the fingerprints and block the acquiring of these metrics Honesty question here, but how do you do that?

eks391 4y ago
I'm not sure what he means by 'clearing' his fingerprint, but if you visit EFF[0], you can check if your fingerprint is at least random. I've only been able to achieve a random fingerprint on Brave browser. Even clearing all cookies/cache on your browser will not reset the fingerprint. To prevent metric collection, you can't be logged in and you need your browser settings set to block cookies for YouTube. [0] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

ChrisRR 4y ago

If you're not looking for recommendations and just your subscriptions, then you should be checking the subscriptions tab, not the home page. You'll always have all uploads from subscribed channels listed there

jfoster 4y ago
Shouldn't they be able to detect your preferred behaviour and put that on the homepage? They seem to be focused so much on creating magical AI that they're missing some fundamental easy stuff.

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

If you know what you want to watch why rely on Google recommending it to you? I only visit my subscriptions page: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions I don't have notifications on and when I visit YouTube I'll check to see what videos I want to watch since I last visited. I usually check the up next to see if anything similar/interesting is recommended and very rarely go to the home page to get recommendations.

antioppressor 4y ago
Because I want new and fresh content from the topics I frequently watch. I want to be entertained, stimulated in various, unexpected ways. YT is sitting atop a goldmine and they offer only morsels.
throw0101a 4y ago
> I only visit my subscriptions page: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions Reminder that you don't have to have an account to subscribe: * https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=THE_CHANNEL_ID_HERE https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=THE_CHAN... * https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOURPLAYLISTIDHERE https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOURPLA... (Though an 'official' subscription with-in the system may help the creator.)

dereg 4y ago

The best part of YouTube recommendations - side bar recommendations - have been broken for at least 7-9 years. I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed, 2) videos about topics that I've recently searched for or watched that are unrelated to the current video, 3) videos trending across all of YouTube, and etc. There are other things that drive me nuts about YouTube's recommendations, like the fact that they will never recommend me the next part of a n-part video. If I'm watching part 2/3 of something, please show 3/3 in the side bar, YouTube! YouTube's iterative degeneration into its current state points to the folly of A/B-maximalism. In the pursuit of getting more base hits, it seems like YouTube forgot that the goal of baseball is to win games and keep fans entertained. YouTube has been bad for a while. I suppose that some part of that is good – YT effectively killed the addictive loops that made their website irresistible. However, there is a lot that sucks about it. The utility of YouTube has gone down. Furthermore, I think YT blew open a hole in the video space for services like TikTok to emerge. TikTok may be crack, but YouTube used to be cocaine.

ravenstine 4y ago
> There are other things that drive me nuts about YouTube's recommendations, like the fact that they will never recommend me the next part of a n-part video. If I'm watching part 2/3 of something, please show 3/3 in the side bar, YouTube! It used to do that, though! They should at least allow it up to a limit or something rather than making it just that stupid. My other biggest complaint really is the recommendation system in general. It's so bad that I can guarantee you that I can fall asleep to something innocuous like Spongebob Squarepants and in the morning I'll wake up and it's playing Jordan Peterson. EVERY. STINKING. TIME. It was like that before with Lex Fridman, and I totally had to unsubscribe and unlike a lot of Lex content before it would stop autoplaying it. I can't keep playing that game, but at least I can tolerate Peterson's voice more than Lex's. Funny thing is I was never crazy about either one. They clearly profiled me as being the kind of person who watches that stuff. No, surely the fact I watch a lot of videos about theme park rides can't mean I want to see similar content. Obviously, I want to watch Jordan Peterson!!! :D /s Without the market dominance, YouTube would be marginally better than its competitors.

shrx 4y ago

What's worse, the "not interested" button is broken. I get a couple of music albums recommended fairly often and I click on "not interested" every time I see them, only to have them pop up again a few days later.

rasz 4y ago

> on my front page dont, bookmark https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

lsaferite 4y ago

Do you also get an endless stream of shuffle dance shorts being shoved down your throat? I think I made the mistake of clicking on one months and months ago and now YT won't stop trying to force feed me those shorts. They are 100% not like anything I watch on a regular basis. So Bad. Edit: For clarity, I had no idea WTF a shuffle dance was and curiosity got the better of me. Super great way to make me NOT curious about my non-core interests.

ncr100 4y ago

I suspect YouTube is weighting incorrectly. I miss Human Curation of content. I am looking for other sources. It's annoying, more often than joyful, to use YouTube for me. It feels like a half-baked project. I miss Human Curation. My story: paying long-term YT user (no ads), watched many multi-hour "calm stream / quiet cafe" videos, Recommended list became 75% polluted w/these and un-cleanable regardless of many "Don't Like" actions by me, nuked history, still seeing some.

snarf21 4y ago

Or it is working exactly as intended. We forget sometimes that we have misaligned incentives: We want the most interesting content and Google wants the most ad $$$.