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I hope the /s at the end of the last comment was loud enough to not be stated. But I read the article. Yeah, it was dumb. Specifically: > If recommendation al

I hope the /s at the end of the last comment was loud enough to not be stated. But I read the article. Yeah, it was dumb. Specifically: > If recommendation algos aren’t shared then we need - by legislation, if necessary - a switch that turns the recommendation engine off. This is... baffling. On YouTube - the case-in-point of the article - you already have access to a non-algorithmic feed of videos: namely, your Subscriptions feed. And if you don't want a recommendation algorithm, good luck finding new content that you like. And if you "turn off" the recommendation algorithm, you want... what, exactly? The latest videos uploaded to the platform? Still a recommendation algorithm. Videos with words in titles similar to the last video you watched? Still a recommendation algorithm. Videos that the creators of your favorite channel watched? STILL A RECOMMENDATION ALGORITHM. I was wrong. The desire of the author is far dumber than I originally gave credit for.

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
I don't see the problem with someone not wanting recommendations on their front page, having a chronological feed somewhere else is nice but it's not the same thing. Videos that get popular, and are therefore recommended, are those that prey on the basest components of our human nature (even if you curate your feed as best as possible), I don't see why we should put up with it. Your list of recommendation algorithms is inaccurate, a chronological feed is not a recommendation algorithm in any sense of the term, as for the rest you can't compare the deeply complicated and often abusive recommendation algorithms that are deployed on social media to the simple heuristics you listed.
- distortedsignal 4y ago
  > ... I don't see why we should put up with it. I mean, you don't have to. Don't want to see YouTube's algorithmic feed? That's cool - just HTTP 3xx your youtube.com to the subscriptions page. There are some good browser addons to do just that[1][2]. Granted, that doesn't remove the recommendation algorithm from your YouTube experience. You would have to use some kind of content blocker to remove the algorithmic feeds from the video pages. I find that uBlockOrigin works well for that. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenflpmgnfapjedencafcfakcekcd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenf...
alexvoda 4y ago
This is a failure of imagination. On a federated network where you can have your own server/pod (think PeerTube or Diaspora) you absolutely can have a custom recommendation algorithm. And for news you can have custom filters in your RSS reader that trim the feeds you are subscribed to to only the desired articles and apply a custom order. And even in a Cloud/SaaS scenario like Youtube, one can imagine a settings page where you can configure each recommend view in some domain specific programming language using an API. Imagine something like IFTTT but for configuring your preffered recommendations views. Notice that something you do not want is beeing recommended to you? Just open settings and tweak the algo. This is just like feeding a custom comparator function to a built-in sorting function using dependency injection. Of course, this would not be in the platforms interest and will probably never happen. It really is not that hard to imagine if you have the mindset that you should be able to control your own computation instead of being at the whims of a corporation.

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago

I don't see the problem with someone not wanting recommendations on their front page, having a chronological feed somewhere else is nice but it's not the same thing. Videos that get popular, and are therefore recommended, are those that prey on the basest components of our human nature (even if you curate your feed as best as possible), I don't see why we should put up with it. Your list of recommendation algorithms is inaccurate, a chronological feed is not a recommendation algorithm in any sense of the term, as for the rest you can't compare the deeply complicated and often abusive recommendation algorithms that are deployed on social media to the simple heuristics you listed.

distortedsignal 4y ago
> ... I don't see why we should put up with it. I mean, you don't have to. Don't want to see YouTube's algorithmic feed? That's cool - just HTTP 3xx your youtube.com to the subscriptions page. There are some good browser addons to do just that[1][2]. Granted, that doesn't remove the recommendation algorithm from your YouTube experience. You would have to use some kind of content blocker to remove the algorithmic feeds from the video pages. I find that uBlockOrigin works well for that. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenflpmgnfapjedencafcfakcekcd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenf...

alexvoda 4y ago

This is a failure of imagination. On a federated network where you can have your own server/pod (think PeerTube or Diaspora) you absolutely can have a custom recommendation algorithm. And for news you can have custom filters in your RSS reader that trim the feeds you are subscribed to to only the desired articles and apply a custom order. And even in a Cloud/SaaS scenario like Youtube, one can imagine a settings page where you can configure each recommend view in some domain specific programming language using an API. Imagine something like IFTTT but for configuring your preffered recommendations views. Notice that something you do not want is beeing recommended to you? Just open settings and tweak the algo. This is just like feeding a custom comparator function to a built-in sorting function using dependency injection. Of course, this would not be in the platforms interest and will probably never happen. It really is not that hard to imagine if you have the mindset that you should be able to control your own computation instead of being at the whims of a corporation.