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Youtube is also pretty boring though. I mean, there are ton of interesting content and quality content too, but the stuff that gets recommended, the "hype stuff
by TheRoque 6mo ago
Youtube is also pretty boring though. I mean, there are ton of interesting content and quality content too, but the stuff that gets recommended, the "hype stuff" is full of false information, clickbait, tweaked reality to conform some narrative...
- jasondigitized 6mo agoThis is the only downside. You really need to curate good content.
- krapp 6mo agoI don't know about everyone else's experience but I find Youtube to be pretty good at finding interesting content, especially for music. Curation is necessary but it does work.
- magicalhippo 6mo agoWorks fine for me recommending interesting educational and edutainment content. I'm quite aggressively removing videos I don't like from my watch history, or flag "don't recommend" channels I know won't be for me. If I'm not careful it'll recommend crap for a while.
- slumberlust 6mo agoInteresting. One of my many many complaints with YTMusic is that it does discovery very poorly. It fills any radio/discovery queue with one or two new songs followed by all the songs already on my playlists. Other big complaints include no ability to prevent it from substantially using my cell data despite telling it to do everything over wifi. I've taken to just removing network permissions from the app unless I want to add something.
- krapp 6mo agoI'm not using Youtube Music, just regular free Youtube with an ad blocker.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoIMO you don’t need curation/algo - you need social network effect where you follow people who repost similar content you like. Your graph grows and if you don’t like something - cut them off. This is how soundcloud works.
- 0x80h 6mo agoAgree, their algorithm sucks, I wish I could have more freedom to customize it
- csantini 6mo agoAgree! So many great genuine creators, but the algo keeps pushing only clickbaity shit
- Gualdrapo 6mo agoEveryone was a genuine creator but was corrupted at some point. It will happen to your favorite creator too.
- eudamoniac 6mo agoEthosLab is immune to this
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo agoI have a friend that sends me lunatic fringe videos every day that youtube recommends. It's tiring
- glimshe 6mo agoYouTube is as good as you make it. If you watch a lot of a type of content, it does a great job at finding similar content, including relevant things that you didn't know existed. If you just watch random popular stuff, then yeah, it's pretty trashy.
- fragmede 6mo agoUnfortunately, it'll pick up recommendations from watching one thing one time, so watching that one video your weird uncle sent you is enough to pollute your algorithm with his weirdo shit.
- shalmanese 6mo agoYou can mark a video as not to influence your recommendations or delete it from your YouTube history.
- ryandrake 6mo ago[dead]
- fragmede 6mo agoYes but you have to go and do that. GP was making it sound like GGP was watching crazy uncle videos to make the algorithm do that, when in reality, one errant click will pollute your suggestions unless you know to go and delete it. New prank on someone that left their laptop unlocked. Open YouTube to something they hate and then close it before they get back.
- johnnyanmac 6mo agoYou do need to take care in pruning videos you don't normally watch. Either remove from watch history, mark as not interested, or just thumbs downing the video. But at least you still have that ability compared to most platforms.
- 6mo ago
- techjamie 6mo agoI highly recommend using the "Not interested" button on anything you don't want to see. It's actually pretty effective at pruning unwanted things from your recommendations. If I get anything political or slop related, it gets the not interested button. I also have a second channel for language learning where I used it to prune out any videos in English. It's not perfect and recommends a few still, but they get more rare as time passes.
- scoofy 6mo agoI will try this. I have no idea what is wrong with the algo, but I've honestly thought youtube has gone way downhill since the pandemic.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo agoImagine this option: [x] Turn off recommendations Or this option: [ ] Turn on recommendations On the internet before YouTube existed, I remember there were no "recommendations" by default. Methods for finding "similar" content existed and were being improved, but it was not assumed that _every_ computer user was _always_ seeking "recommendations", i.e., recommendations by default One problem with an internet where people expect, accept and rely on "recommendations" from so-called "tech" companies is that it ignores and disincentivises people who know how to search and find good stuff. Often these people want to tell others about, and share, what they find. Before so-called "tech" companies existed, these people could be excellent sources of recommendations. IMHO, they still are Other HN comments have suggested recommendations should be an exception to Section 230 (cf. publishing user-generated content without commercially-motivated favoritism)
- Henchman21 6mo agoWhat I do is keep history off and just keep up with my subscriptions. That way, no recommendations. No junk. No "home" page on the site either, but I am willing to pay that price.