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YouTube doesn't seem to understand my preferences, at all. It's far, far too biased toward what you recently watched. It basically doesn't work and certainly do
by HardwareLust 4y ago
YouTube doesn't seem to understand my preferences, at all. It's far, far too biased toward what you recently watched. It basically doesn't work and certainly doesn't "learn" anything.
- beart 4y agoI feel like every recommendation service works this way - YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, etc. Whatever the last thing you looked at becomes your entire life's mission according to these systems. When I think about all the buzz words around machine learning, ai, and so on, it's completely incompatible with the reality I see. What exactly are all these engineering teams doing just to end up with this result? Amazon might be the worst example though. Buy something like a bike rack for your vehicle and Amazon will recommend nothing but other bike racks... as though I need dozens of them for one car.
- Arrath 4y agoAmazon really, really likes to recommend me a wide variety of shower curtains after buying one, 4 years ago. Give it a rest already.
- HeckFeck 4y ago> Buy something like a bike rack for your vehicle and Amazon will recommend nothing but other bike racks... as though I need dozens Perhaps they beta tested only with Jeff Bezos who had this exact quandary.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoYoutube does have a great escape latch though: go to the History tab and delete your viewing history. Your recommendations start from scratch and you’ll get funneled into a potentially new corner of videos. With that in mind, I think Youtube recommendations are quite good. Just do it when your recommendations get stale, monthly or so. I wish other platforms had that like Amazon.
- joe_guy 4y agoAmazon actually has a pretty detailed page that lets you control what feeds back into your recommendations. https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/yourstore/iyr/
- hombre_fatal 4y agoThanks, I had no idea. This is great.
- piva00 4y agoIt'd be great if I didn't use my History to actually find videos I've previously watched... I don't understand why recommendation engines just don't provide a reset button. It'd be better for everyone involved: content provider, content creators, users, ad buyers.
- JohnFen 4y ago> With that in mind, I think Youtube recommendations are quite good. Having to nuke a valuable reference like your history in order make the recommendations approach something useful is the opposite of "quite good".
- hombre_fatal 4y agoWell, I'm one to appreciate what we have available to us especially compared to the alternatives and temper my appreciation accordingly. I don't know if I use a single service that gives me particularly compelling control over recommendations. Though I also don't find myself deep-diving my history so often that clearing it every few months affects my life, but I suppose I can see how that could be a setback.
- jdgoesmarching 4y agoUnfortunately Tiktok is the only platform that nails it for me. It regularly manages to find old hobbies or interests back into the rotation, Youtube’s recommendations are just matching my most recent searches while occasionally throwing in Nazi crap I never asked for.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mattbrewsbytes 4y agoIt appears to any end user that knows some basic logic and looping concepts that the advanced AI/ML/whatever recommendation engine is no better than looping over the list of recent content (videos, products, etc.) and selecting more content that has same keywords. If you remove the volume and distributed systems elements for large systems its probably a single SQL query joining 2 tables, history and products (or videos or whatever). For the bike rack example, to make it "smarter" you could have a product type that is something like "one-time purchase" and have a linked product type that is accessories for the one-time product, like helmets, pumps, tire changing kits, inner tubes, water bottles, etc. This would be what a retail worker at a bike shop would do - ask if you need any accessories, maybe point out clearance/sale items. Thats it, no fancy engines/AI/ML needed. If the customer wants other stuff, there is a search bar they will likely use. I chalk it up to Resume Driven Development and just the innate tendency of engineers over-engineering things because that's how our brains work.
- duxup 4y agoMost preferences type systems don't seem to get the nuances involved. I just watched a pleasant video about a particular video game. Youtube now wants me to watch the most obnoxious youtuber they can find who also covers that video game. No, actually the reason I watched that other video was because the person in it was nice and pleasant.... the recommendation is the LAST thing I wanted.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- notart666 4y agoWell at least it doesn't work like Instagrams where it doesn't do anything at all. I don't want to see hundreds of videos making videos of street vendors all doing the exact same thing.
- sph 4y agoYouTube absolutely IGNORES your preferences. I watch it daily, I have never listened to any hip hop, I don't watch sports nor trending topics, yet every single day it suggests football videos, MMA, the latest hiphop hit, and celebrity crap (imagine the Kardashians) among my other interests. I click "don't recommend this channel", or "I don't like this video " every single day, I have an extension to make this convenient so I train it dozens of times a day yet it doesn't bloody care. I pay for Premium because I watch it on my iPad and smart TV, but I'm planning on telling Apple to fuck off, buy Android everything and sideload a system wide adblocker so I can stop paying for that terrible service. This is the inconvenience it forces upon a paying customer. What an abusive relationship.
- skyyler 4y agohttps://github.com/yattee/yattee https://github.com/yattee/yattee This may be in your interests if you have an Apple TV. I think it supports iPad, as well.
- sph 4y agoThanks. I should really dedicate a weekend to setting something like that up on all my devices. I'm willing to put up with bad recommendations if I know they don't get a cent out of my views. Sort yourself out, Google.
- ars 4y agoFor me it recommends exactly what I watch - I've never seen any recommendation for stuff I don't watch. The trouble seems to be it can't seem to find anything new. So if anything, I'd want it to branch out a bit and find semi-related stuff, but it doesn't. You're not the first person to complain about YouTube recommendations, and I don't know why my experience is so different than yours.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoMy experience is the same as yours. I wonder if there’s some giant A/B test going on.
- amatecha 4y agoYeah, on a non-logged-in system I watch YT on, I watched exactly ONE gaming-related video, and now suddenly the "home" view is full of Minecraft, Roblox, whatever FPS shooters, etc... Like... I'm not suddenly absolutely obsessed with a topic because I viewed one video, guys...
- mattbrewsbytes 4y agoIt operates similar to saying to a spouse or in-laws or other family that you like some <collectable item> and they are the type that runs with it until you have to awkwardly tell them "No more". Every holiday, birthday, random "oh I saw this and thought of you" type of thing.
- katbyte 4y agothis is my experience too, as well not showing videos from people you've subscribed too but maybe haven't watched in a while. the most shocking thing is they still have not managed to get a decent recommendation engine after all this time.
- cameldrv 4y agoYouTube doesn't care about your "preferences." It only cares about what it predicts your behavior will be. If you tell your drug dealer that you're trying to quit crack, he's still going to sell you more crack.