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>How else do you think the "up next" and "recommended videos for you" feature works? Did you think they were serving up relevant videos purely out of chance? I
by slg 2y ago
>How else do you think the "up next" and "recommended videos for you" feature works? Did you think they were serving up relevant videos purely out of chance?
It is absolutely possible to serve recommendations in a content agnostic way based on other user behavior. That is how the Youtube's recommendations worked at least initially. It should be obvious that they didn't have this ability to analyze content when Youtube started almost 20 years ago.
And even in a content aware system, there is a difference between matching up keywords and understanding what those words mean. That is why an automatic transcript feels more neutral. That just transcribes what is being said. There is no implication of any analysis on the meaning of what is being said.
>If anything a dumb rule like "highlight the subscribe button if the transcript mentions it" is much more benign then a recommendation engine that can somehow always serve you a relevant video.
I'm not saying this feature is scarier than the recommendation engine. I'm saying Google revealing how much they know about the content of the video makes everything they do, including their recommendation engine, a little scarier.
- 8note 2y agoaround 20 years ago mark all kinds of things would happen at different times of a video, with the tool tips, and end cards and what have you. CSS animations werent there I guess, but given a manual transcription, either by the submitter, or by a person watching, youtube definitely had the capability to do exactly this, maybe with the button being some flash animation.
- slg 2y ago>...but given a manual transcription... youtube definitely had the capability to do exactly this... I mean the "given a manual transcription" condition means the very much didn't have "the capability to do exactly this". The animation itself isn't the interesting part here.
- fragmede 2y agoGoogle owned YouTube'a ability to analyze content at scale for copyrighted music is the only reason YouTube is still around today. That the engine that does that analysis might be doing more seems like not a stretch at all. How much easier is it to detect "smash that subscribe button" that "the > 30 seconds of music is possibly a copyrighted song of all the known songs"?
- xcv123 2y ago> It is absolutely possible to serve recommendations in a content agnostic way based on other user behavior. Yes but the quality and accuracy of that system would be inferior, with a long delay until it gathers enough collaborative filtering information to be useful.
- ben_w 2y ago> It is absolutely possible to serve recommendations in a content agnostic way based on other user behavior Indeed, and I assume that's why the home page is full of sports and music when I'm not logged in. (Or was recently, it now shows a blank page). I'm a very strange person: I don't have any interest in sports, and will listen to perhaps 2 or 3 bits of music every week — if I've heard a piece before, I generally find it predictable and by extension dull, unless some prior association of positive feelings can override that.