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YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so

YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic. The recent forcing of people (including me) to turn off their ad blockers was an eye opener. Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has abandoned any pretense of offering a good user experience. Worth digging around in the muck a little to watch something as great as this Dave Cutler interview, though.

brakmic 3y ago
How to circumvent youtube's anti-adblock mechanism: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/178yasm/youtube_antiadblock_and_ads_october_16_2023/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/178yasm/youtu...
- cronix 3y ago
  All I had to do was update the rules for Adblock Plus free version. I'd been getting the warnings for several days, then yesterday it would only let me watch 3 videos. I then updated AB+ rules and nothing pops up and things just play like "normal."
  - kreeben 3y ago
    All I had to do was nothing. Yesterday I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium, please dear self, find new hobby. Today my muscle memory took me once more to YT and there are no ads and no popups begging me for money. They pulled me back in. I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF.
    - formerly_proven 3y ago
      > I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF. uBO automatically updates filter lists by default.
    - NavinF 3y ago
      > I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium I see this kind of language all the time on HN. Reminds me of "This one hurts, it really hurts. I think this hurts worse than Musk buying/poisoning/killing Twitter. I've mentioned this before but a keyboard feels like an extension of your body". The context was Microsoft closing the support forum for some keyboard software they hadn't updated in years. The top comment from that thread seems relevant: People need to take a break. Being terminally online and complaining about everything is not a healthy way of life.
  - MaKey 3y ago
    You might consider switching to uBlock Origin as advertisers get onto the default whitelist of AdBlock Plus by forking over some cash.
    - cronix 3y ago
      I use both
naikrovek 3y ago
there is enough really great stuff on YouTube that I do not feel bad paying for YouTube Premium. I never see an ad on YouTube and I use ublock origin everywhere.
hcarvalhoalves 3y ago
The ads are awful on purpose, so people buy Premium. Then, once users pay for Premium, they can do the same as cable TV and _still_ sell ads. Easy 2x revenue.
- elf25 3y ago
  [dead]
- colejohnson66 3y ago
  Premium does not have ads. I know because I don’t see them. Sponsorships do not count because they’re placed by the creators themselves.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    > Premium does not have ads. Yet. The keyword of the times seems to be enshittification, and the only companies that take a step back from it seem to be doing so just to double down on it the moment the outrage calms down.
    - colejohnson66 3y ago
      Well, when/if they add ads, I’ll reconsider my subscription. As of now, I pay to sustain YouTube’s business model and creators I like, and I’m rewarded with no ads.
      - superq 3y ago
        > pay to sustain YouTube’s business model and creators I like How much of your subscription goes to "creators you like"? 10 cents? 20 cents? How would you know? > I’m rewarded with no ads How is paying being rewarded?
        foobazgt 3y ago
        Some creators have previously stated, here on HN, that they get a much bigger slice of YT premium. Sorry, I'm too lazy right now to Google a link for you.
sampo 3y ago
> Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage This probably depends on your country. Here in Finland they are almost nice.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  Thank you to share. This is genuinely interesting. Do you think this is due to Finnish advertising regulations or cultural differences?
freddref 3y ago
youtube as curated by HN https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html
ge96 3y ago
Idk how people can use the internet and get influenced by ads, I will stop using whatever it is the moment an ad comes on. I guess I am a bad person for that edit: also reminds me when you look at YouTube when not logged in, the home page tiles wow... it's like podcasts man... like good old ones and now they rattle off like 10 companies for 5 minutes straight before it even starts. I get it though, takes time to make, need to pay for it somehow
jorvi 3y ago
> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful This is what surprised me a lot. A friend of mine made me install TikTok (after me disparaging it a lot). I made an account for it with a dummy address, went off to the races, and after a couple of days I suddenly caught myself having been scrolling my feed for ~1h10m minutes without realizing it. I literally recoiled and dropped my phone, after which I uninstalled TikTok immediately. YouTube has never had that kind of grip on my dopamine receptors. There are a great many (longform) edifying videos on there. And sure, there are interesting videos, and it is good at recommending a few adjacent videos to those. But the algorithm is not nearly as good as TikTok, I can recognize that immediately. Aside from how horrifically good TikTok is at hooking your dopamine receptors, another thing I have to give it credit for is how egalitarian it is. YouTube is all about subscribers and network reach. On TikTok it’s the content that goes viral, not the creator.
- techphl 3y ago
  Totally agree - TikTok is the most addictive app on your phone. You can download the Unhook chrome extension which blocks related videos and shorts. That really helps to improve your youtube experience.
distract8901 3y ago
I've been using PeerTube recently. After spending a ridiculous amount of effort, I have a server that pulls down indexes from other servers and mirrors content both for me locally and to share bandwidth with other users. As absolutely awful as this experience has been, it's still less painful than dealing with google ads. The amount and variety of videos on there is much lower, but I've managed to federate with enough servers to curare a fairly interesting list. I just can't/won't tolerate ads anymore. It doesn't have to be this way, and I choose to simply not use these ad platforms wherever I can. It's much more pleasant online when you go to spaces that aren't constantly trying to sell you something or spy on you so they can sell you more stuff.
- walterbell 3y ago
  Do you whitelist videos or channels for mirroring? What's a good starting point for others to replicate this setup?
  - distract8901 3y ago
    Basically, you can have your server follow another instance as if it were a user account. Assuming the remote instance allows follows, their local feed gets duplicated to your federated feed. If they allow mirroring, you can configure the server to mirror in different ways. You can mirror the N most viewed videos, new videos, and 'trending'. Then you can set a disk capacity limit, and have videos fall off after so many days. Presently I'm sitting on 320GB of mirrored videos. 300 is automatic mirroring. Then of course you as a user can manually request a video be mirrored. I typically mirror everything I watch. I wish it had an option to automatically mirror your subscriptions, but it should be fairly trivial to write a script that does it.
throw0101a 3y ago
> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic. Right-click on the video in question and copy the URL, open a new private mode window, and then paste the link in. Your default viewing preferences won't be contaminated. A bit hoop-jump-y, but it works well for me.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  If you forget to do this going to "History" in the left pane and removing them from your watched list (seems to) have the same effect as not viewing it via your account in the first place. E.g. I'm not much of a car guy but once in a while a recommendation for a particularly unique car video will come across so I watch it and suddenly my recommendations are chock full of car videos like YouTube just discovered a new hobby I'd love to spend 100s of hours watching videos on - until I clear the video from my history and it's completely back to what it was before.
II2II 3y ago
> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic. I haven't had too many problems with their recommendations, then again I do not log in and have topic specific containers setup in Firefox. After a while, it pretty much limits videos to a specific topic within a given container. The results may not be things I want to watch, but at least I don't get much crazy stuff. As for controversial topics: yes, I avoid them. Then again, that has as much to do with avoiding agenda pushing dreck than anything else.
TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
> incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic Not that hard to work around frankly. Just delete the offending video that trigger the avalanche of recommendations from history - make sure you did not leave a comment or vote on the video; zero interaction apart from watching (which will be forgotten when you remove it from your history) > Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has abandoned any pretense of offering a good user experience. This I agree. YouTube (Google as a whole) has stopped trying to match eyeballs to relevant ads. Instead they have handed the reins to advertisers to bid for who they want to advertise to. So if advertisers was to be self-destructive and make your web experience crap, Google will happily let them as long as they get their check.

brakmic 3y ago

How to circumvent youtube's anti-adblock mechanism: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/178yasm/youtube_antiadblock_and_ads_october_16_2023/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/178yasm/youtu...

cronix 3y ago
All I had to do was update the rules for Adblock Plus free version. I'd been getting the warnings for several days, then yesterday it would only let me watch 3 videos. I then updated AB+ rules and nothing pops up and things just play like "normal."
- kreeben 3y ago
  All I had to do was nothing. Yesterday I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium, please dear self, find new hobby. Today my muscle memory took me once more to YT and there are no ads and no popups begging me for money. They pulled me back in. I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF.
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    > I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF. uBO automatically updates filter lists by default.
  - NavinF 3y ago
    > I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium I see this kind of language all the time on HN. Reminds me of "This one hurts, it really hurts. I think this hurts worse than Musk buying/poisoning/killing Twitter. I've mentioned this before but a keyboard feels like an extension of your body". The context was Microsoft closing the support forum for some keyboard software they hadn't updated in years. The top comment from that thread seems relevant: People need to take a break. Being terminally online and complaining about everything is not a healthy way of life.
- MaKey 3y ago
  You might consider switching to uBlock Origin as advertisers get onto the default whitelist of AdBlock Plus by forking over some cash.
  - cronix 3y ago
    I use both

naikrovek 3y ago

there is enough really great stuff on YouTube that I do not feel bad paying for YouTube Premium. I never see an ad on YouTube and I use ublock origin everywhere.

hcarvalhoalves 3y ago

The ads are awful on purpose, so people buy Premium. Then, once users pay for Premium, they can do the same as cable TV and _still_ sell ads. Easy 2x revenue.

elf25 3y ago
[dead]
colejohnson66 3y ago
Premium does not have ads. I know because I don’t see them. Sponsorships do not count because they’re placed by the creators themselves.
- rollcat 3y ago
  > Premium does not have ads. Yet. The keyword of the times seems to be enshittification, and the only companies that take a step back from it seem to be doing so just to double down on it the moment the outrage calms down.
  - colejohnson66 3y ago
    Well, when/if they add ads, I’ll reconsider my subscription. As of now, I pay to sustain YouTube’s business model and creators I like, and I’m rewarded with no ads.
    - superq 3y ago
      > pay to sustain YouTube’s business model and creators I like How much of your subscription goes to "creators you like"? 10 cents? 20 cents? How would you know? > I’m rewarded with no ads How is paying being rewarded?
      - foobazgt 3y ago
        Some creators have previously stated, here on HN, that they get a much bigger slice of YT premium. Sorry, I'm too lazy right now to Google a link for you.

sampo 3y ago

> Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage This probably depends on your country. Here in Finland they are almost nice.

throwaway2037 3y ago
Thank you to share. This is genuinely interesting. Do you think this is due to Finnish advertising regulations or cultural differences?

freddref 3y ago

youtube as curated by HN https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html https://xiliary.com/bck/hn-tv.html

ge96 3y ago

Idk how people can use the internet and get influenced by ads, I will stop using whatever it is the moment an ad comes on. I guess I am a bad person for that edit: also reminds me when you look at YouTube when not logged in, the home page tiles wow... it's like podcasts man... like good old ones and now they rattle off like 10 companies for 5 minutes straight before it even starts. I get it though, takes time to make, need to pay for it somehow

jorvi 3y ago

> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful This is what surprised me a lot. A friend of mine made me install TikTok (after me disparaging it a lot). I made an account for it with a dummy address, went off to the races, and after a couple of days I suddenly caught myself having been scrolling my feed for ~1h10m minutes without realizing it. I literally recoiled and dropped my phone, after which I uninstalled TikTok immediately. YouTube has never had that kind of grip on my dopamine receptors. There are a great many (longform) edifying videos on there. And sure, there are interesting videos, and it is good at recommending a few adjacent videos to those. But the algorithm is not nearly as good as TikTok, I can recognize that immediately. Aside from how horrifically good TikTok is at hooking your dopamine receptors, another thing I have to give it credit for is how egalitarian it is. YouTube is all about subscribers and network reach. On TikTok it’s the content that goes viral, not the creator.

techphl 3y ago
Totally agree - TikTok is the most addictive app on your phone. You can download the Unhook chrome extension which blocks related videos and shorts. That really helps to improve your youtube experience.

distract8901 3y ago

I've been using PeerTube recently. After spending a ridiculous amount of effort, I have a server that pulls down indexes from other servers and mirrors content both for me locally and to share bandwidth with other users. As absolutely awful as this experience has been, it's still less painful than dealing with google ads. The amount and variety of videos on there is much lower, but I've managed to federate with enough servers to curare a fairly interesting list. I just can't/won't tolerate ads anymore. It doesn't have to be this way, and I choose to simply not use these ad platforms wherever I can. It's much more pleasant online when you go to spaces that aren't constantly trying to sell you something or spy on you so they can sell you more stuff.

walterbell 3y ago
Do you whitelist videos or channels for mirroring? What's a good starting point for others to replicate this setup?
- distract8901 3y ago
  Basically, you can have your server follow another instance as if it were a user account. Assuming the remote instance allows follows, their local feed gets duplicated to your federated feed. If they allow mirroring, you can configure the server to mirror in different ways. You can mirror the N most viewed videos, new videos, and 'trending'. Then you can set a disk capacity limit, and have videos fall off after so many days. Presently I'm sitting on 320GB of mirrored videos. 300 is automatic mirroring. Then of course you as a user can manually request a video be mirrored. I typically mirror everything I watch. I wish it had an option to automatically mirror your subscriptions, but it should be fairly trivial to write a script that does it.

throw0101a 3y ago

> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic. Right-click on the video in question and copy the URL, open a new private mode window, and then paste the link in. Your default viewing preferences won't be contaminated. A bit hoop-jump-y, but it works well for me.

zamadatix 3y ago
If you forget to do this going to "History" in the left pane and removing them from your watched list (seems to) have the same effect as not viewing it via your account in the first place. E.g. I'm not much of a car guy but once in a while a recommendation for a particularly unique car video will come across so I watch it and suddenly my recommendations are chock full of car videos like YouTube just discovered a new hobby I'd love to spend 100s of hours watching videos on - until I clear the video from my history and it's completely back to what it was before.

II2II 3y ago

> YouTube recommendations have always been pretty awful, incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic. I haven't had too many problems with their recommendations, then again I do not log in and have topic specific containers setup in Firefox. After a while, it pretty much limits videos to a specific topic within a given container. The results may not be things I want to watch, but at least I don't get much crazy stuff. As for controversial topics: yes, I avoid them. Then again, that has as much to do with avoiding agenda pushing dreck than anything else.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago

> incentivizing people to avoid exploring videos on controversial topics once they learn that if they do so, they’ll be inundated with garbage on that topic Not that hard to work around frankly. Just delete the offending video that trigger the avalanche of recommendations from history - make sure you did not leave a comment or vote on the video; zero interaction apart from watching (which will be forgotten when you remove it from your history) > Holy crap, YouTube ads are hot garbage, and it’s embarrassing to think that any humans respond to them. YouTube has abandoned any pretense of offering a good user experience. This I agree. YouTube (Google as a whole) has stopped trying to match eyeballs to relevant ads. Instead they have handed the reins to advertisers to bid for who they want to advertise to. So if advertisers was to be self-destructive and make your web experience crap, Google will happily let them as long as they get their check.