
Continuing our work to improve recommendations on YouTube - minimaxir
https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.html
======
mindcrime
My biggest problem with YT recommendations is that they _dramatically_
overweight recent videos when generating the recommendations. I mean, I can
spend a week doing nothing but watching (well, listening) to videos of
classical music performances, and my recommendations will be full of classical
music, exactly as you'd expect. Then I watch one random one-off thing, like
"15 funny pitbull fails" and suddenly ALL of my recommendations are animal
videos. Then I have to go manually edit my feed history and remove "15 funny
pitbull fails" to get my recommendations back to normal.

~~~
maxxxxx
All the AI stuff is really still incredibly dumb. Same for Amazon: Buy a mixer
and suddenly you will be haunted everywhere by ads offering more mixers.

~~~
paulddraper
You think that's dumb, but I bet the marketing data behind that says
otherwise.

You think "I already have a mixer, idiot!" but in reality the chance that you
are interested in buying a mixer just went from 1% to 2%. (Because you want
another one, because you want to gift one, because you returned yours, etc.)

~~~
thaumasiotes
This has been discussed on HN before.

The last time I saw an Amazon employee weigh in, he said the ads are in fact
not effective but the ad team isn't measuring it well. In particular, he
claimed that he showed them that _after adjusting for returns_ , the order-
again rate for a particular expensive item was effectively zero, they asked
him to repeat his study for another product, and he wandered off and found
work to do for his own team.

~~~
paulddraper
My skepticism level remains high. This is billions of dollars, with easy
access to tons of data.

I'm not sure if put more stock in the government successfully hiding a fake
moon landing, or analysts in one of history's most successful companies not
running the numbers.

------
wlesieutre
What really bugs me is when a video literally has "Episode 18" in the name,
but somehow the recommendation list on the right side fails to find the one
with "Episode 19".

But if I want to go watch Episode 5 again or jump ahead to Episode 26, it's
happy to help. Awesome.

~~~
gothroach
As I remember at least some series videos used to be recommended in order, but
I haven't seen that in a while.

The behavior that really gets me now is having the top recommended videos on
my YT homepage ones I've watched... Recently. I can watch a video from my
notifications, and then have it stay at the top of my homepage until I hide it
manually. Refreshing the page changes some videos, but rarely the top few.

Of course, hiding the video helps but I get tired of having to do it
constantly. I think I'm resigned to my YT homepage being useless at this
point.

~~~
beart
It's possible your adblocker is preventing YouTube from tracking your watched
video history. I know pi-hole does this by default unless you whitelist
certain domains.

~~~
rasz
user agent hits Google random-string.googlevideo.com/videoplayback with
referrer, ip, signature and several other parameters coding your individual
user id, Google knows every single time who, why and when requested particular
resource.

~~~
oh_sigh
Just because they have the data doesn't necessarily mean that they use it.
They might rely on some javascript XHR to tell them when a video is really
watched. Just guessing here.

------
atonse
We currently don't allow our son to watch anything on youtube, simply because
it's a cesspool of horrible videos for children. You're always almost one
click away from some violent video where cartoon characters are getting their
limbs chopped off, etc. And it's sickening that Google's done nothing about
it.

Secondly, I can't watch any video without it taking over my recommendations.
Alex Jones for example. I still haven't watched an Alex Jones video (I was
curious about what rubbish he spews), without worrying that I'll get a bunch
of delusional hyper-conservative drivel taking over my recommendations.

There should be a way to watch a video once and not have it take over your
recommendations.

On the one hand, we find that we're making great strides in certain areas with
ML. On the other hand, recommendation systems are still just so, so, so naive
and bad.

~~~
brianpgordon
What do you want them to do? I'm an adult who uses YouTube and I don't want
sanitized kid-friendly recommendations just so that you can protect your son's
eyes from cartoon violence. In fact, several of the creators I like have been
pinched hard by changes to the All-Powerful Algorithm which seem to be
deliberately de-emphasizing anything that could be remotely considered
offensive, and it's not fair to them at all.

~~~
mactrey
There should be a "parental controls" toggle.

~~~
mcrittenden
YouTube Kids is a separate app. Does that not suffice?

~~~
sincerely
No, YouTube Kids has the same problem. Content on it isn't really vetted in
any way.

~~~
gundmc
Have you used YouTube Kids recently? You can set it to "Approved Only Mode"
which only allows kids to view human-vetted videos.

~~~
sincerely
That's good to hear!

------
minimaxir
It's worth noting that this blog post appeared less than 24 hours after
BuzzFeed News posted an article explicitly highlighting the conspiracy
theories in the recommended section:
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-y...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/down-
youtubes-recommendation-rabbithole)

I helped contribute to that article, feel free to ask any questions!

~~~
webwanderings
Have you investigated their rabbit hole for children? YT for Kids simply needs
to die. They are evil.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Tangent: I'm expecting a kid, and time will come in couple years, when I'll
want to show them kid videos. I fully intend to set this up as streaming from
a library curated by my wife & me, populated with youtube-dl and through other
means.

I know some people on HN have such setups; could you share recommendations for
hardware and software stack? I suspect a Raspberry Pi may not be enough
(having network and USB sharing capacity), especially if we want to
simultaneously stream movies for ourselves. But I also don't want to turn it
into some $1k+ server build, the way they do on /r/plex and elsewhere. Could
anyone recommend a "compromise" setup, that would allow to comfortably stream
HD videos to 2-3 devices simultaneously?

~~~
reaperducer
If you're in the United States, 90% of the population can receive the 24/7 PBS
Kids channel over the air for free.

If you're worried about the quality of content from YouTube, or the chances
that someone gaming the system dumps questionable content into your stream,
it's worth spending ten bucks on an antenna. It's also good for supplementing
your child's YouTube viewing when YT starts showing the same stuff over and
over.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not in the US; unfortunately, I don't think Poland has a dedicated government
channel for kids.

Still, I want to make it video-on-demand, but with content fully curated by us
- to avoid age-inappropriate content, ads and recommendations. There's no way
I'm going to let my kid touch raw YouTube in the next decade.

~~~
rasz
We do, tv-trwam.pl

~~~
TeMPOraL
Hahaha, no.

------
Causality1
YouTube suggestions are worthless now. Used to be if you were watching "Jack
cooks a 4 course meal part 2" the recommended videos would be "Jack cooks a 4
course meal part 3", Part 1, and some other videos by the same user. Now it's
a host of other unrelated bullshit.

~~~
endofcapital
A few weeks back I got a weird fan biopic of Himmler created by some account
with the SS logo in their picture recommended to me after watching a video on
some obscure DNS features. I reported it but it's still there.

Google is beyond broken. Chasing those engagement numbers on a forever
treadmill, just hoping they inch up a little more at any cost.

------
bengale
It does seem to be getting better, for a long while I had to make sure to
clear my history of any conservative leaning videos or I'd end up down a
rabbit hole. Too many and all of a sudden its bloody flat earth videos and
other insane conspiracies. Made it very difficult to try and watch a balanced
set of videos.

~~~
jlawson
This doesn't match reality. I've watched lots of conservative videos and I've
never seen anything about flat Earth or "insane conspiracy theories".

Honestly this comment thread seems like trying to build a narrative bridge
between straightforward right-leaning content and bizarre conspiracies. The
goal is to use censorship of bizarre conspiracies to justify censoring right-
leaning content by conflating the two.

I'm very suspicious of YouTube's intent here. Given how vicious Google is
towards conservatives inside their organization (see Damore) it's pretty
obvious to suspect that they'll use their power to reduce the spread of right-
wing ideas of all stripes. Put simply, after that display, nobody can trust
them to be even-handed. Most of them are good people but they're totally
dominated by the intransigent minority [0] of high-and-righteous recreational
witch-hunters in their midst.

The first excuse will be they're insane conspiracies. Truly crazy videos will
be censored. But that's just the bait, setting the narrative for the switch,
where they narrative becomes about "racism" and they start censoring the
right-most 10%, 20%, 30%, of the opinion spectrum. Criticism of Islam, support
for Western culture, statements against anti-white bigotry, arguments for
reduced immigration (even illegal immigration), arguments for equal legal
treatment for men, arguments about biological differences between sexes or
population groups, arguments about deep differences between religions will all
be censored under this ever-expanding umbrella.

Even the notion that "conspiracy theories" are a right-wing thing is part of
this - there are lots of left-wing "conspiracy theories" and always have been.
Some openly racist and sexist ones are quite widespread right now.

[0]
[http://fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf](http://fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf)

~~~
fzeroracer
Conspiracy theories are, for the most part, a right-wing thing.

Unless you can give me examples of conspiracy theories and their peddlers on
level of Alex Jones for the far left.

~~~
JaimeThompson
The anti-vaxers are from all over the political spectrum I am sad to say.

~~~
fzeroracer
From my personal experience they've always tended to be further right, since
often the anti-vaccine fear comes as a result of government mistrust as well
as not trusting scientists. Very similar to the people against climate change
in my opinion.

Though it's true that the anti-GMO and even anti-Nuclear sentiments I see
accross the spectrum but those differ a bit from conspiracy theories in that
it stems from junk science, rather than a belief in a hidden government or
group wanting to personally change you.

~~~
filoleg
My experience couldn’t have been further from yours. Most of the anti-vaxxers
I encountered both irl and online were of the kind that is all about natural
remedies and distrusting of GMOs and such (as opposed to those distrusting of
government and believing in conspiracies; that kind i mostly encountered
online only).

Just google for outbreaks in the US that are linked to anti-vaxxing and take a
note of their locations. Most will start in heavily left-leaning areas. To
clarify my point, I personally believe that anti-vaxxing is about evenly
distributed between left and right wing, just for different reasons.

P.S. As I was trying to find an article about an outbreak in Seattle that I
remembered from a few years ago, I realized there is another one happening
right this moment [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/an-anti-
vaccinatio...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/an-anti-vaccination-
hotspot-near-portland-declares-an-emergency-over-measles-outbreak/?amp=1)

------
petermcneeley
If they could simply make the "Not interested" feature work that would be
great.

~~~
amdanil
Seems to work fine for me. You just have to click "not interested" on every
video of the topic that you don't like and after 5 times or so it stops
recommending that topic.

Let's say you watched a video called "Top 10 most amazing things you never
knew until today" and now the youtube algo recommends you a bunch of
clickbait. Just hit "not interested" on every single clickbait video you see
and eventually it stops showing you those videos unless you watch more of
them.

~~~
colejohnson66
Or delete the video from your watch history. Your watch history is built based
on your history

------
elektor
Long overdue. Maybe in a few months I can watch a Joe Rogan podcast video
without tainting my YouTube recommendations for the next year with Ben
Shapiro-style clickbait.

~~~
FiveSquared
However, who determines what is a conspaircy? The government might be deciding
that Iraq has WMDs and any evidence to the contrary is a conspiracy. While
some measures are needed to be taken, who decides what is? No one is truly
impartial. The censorship (while required due to how much crap is in YouTube)
might devolve to 1984 without comple transparency, which we all know google
isn’t providing.

~~~
Elitroness
Who determines when daytime is? is 7AM daytime? is 7AM in Alaska in the middle
of winter daytime?

There is a discussion to be had about some topics at the edge...but 2PM
everyone agrees is part of daytime; the flat earth 'conspiracy' should never
be recommended to anybody.

And sadly, in the current climate, this also has to be said: This does not
mean Google is picking sides. If you on your own reflections decide that for
some strange reason the earth is flat, that is your right, and no one is
infringing on it by not giving you a platform.

~~~
FiveSquared
Truth, but however, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

------
jalgos_eminator
Say what you want about YouTube recommended political videos, but I have found
some absolutely _great_ music because it showed up in my recommended.

A small Canadian band showed up in my recommended and that first song
captivated me. Then I listened to their other singles and two albums, and now
I'm going to their show next month.

Also, I just found an artist from Belarus that makes fantastic synthpop. The
weird thing is that all his videos use cyrillic characters, so I don't know
how google even matched it. I am thankful though.

~~~
hateful
I also recommend going to
[https://www.youtube.com/feed/music](https://www.youtube.com/feed/music) .
It's a landing page that used to be behind a "Music" button on the youtube
homepage, but has since been removed. But luckily the page still exists. It
gives you a bunch of different playlists, including "Recommended" and "Latest
Videos". I like the Latest Videos because it allows me to see what's "current"
at a glance, even if I choose not to view any of them, I can see what' going
on in the mainstream.

~~~
FiveSquared
Also, I discovered awesome electro music and house music along with the Seven
nation Army Remix by Glitch Mob. That’s song is now in my main playlist.

------
thrusong
Why do they recommend the same five videos of a series (like Barefoot
Contessa) over-and-over when I've watched them already?

I don't want to say "not interested" because I don't know what that means... I
want a feature where it's like "more like this, but not this one in
particular."

It's surprising they've been under Google's control for a very long time and
yet their main recommendation algorithm still leaves a lot to be desired.

~~~
NoodleIncident
If I remember correctly, the "not interested" UI has an option for "I've
already seen the video"

~~~
thrusong
That just makes it seem like their algorithm is powered by bad code or bad
management, or both. They know what I've watched. They should know if a video
is likely to be watched repeatedly (ie. classifying songs/music videos
differently from other content).

------
white-flame
I _love_ watching crackpot conspiracy videos on YouTube, _especially_ flat
earth & moon landing denier stuff. Beyond just the curiosity to dissect their
weird contrived explanations, there's tons of interesting scientific &
historical context to be learned from the counterpoint experiments and such. I
hope it will still be generally available & in the sidebar if you're already
watching such content.

Also, generally speaking, you really should block youtube cookies. The
recommender doesn't seem to track your history then, and the entire experience
is FAR better, simply recommending associations from that single video,
instead of always trying to railroad you back into where you've historically
spent more time.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
YouTube recommendations are so terrible I consider any suggestion of a channel
I don't already watch as a warning. "We see you watched an informative video
on topic X, would you also like to watch DudeWhoHatesEverything rant
incessantly about X, or BaityMcClickface's Top 10 Ys about X? Don't worry if
you don't, we'll keep bringing them up every time you watch anything even
tangentially related to X."

------
IggleSniggle
For some insane reason, no matter what video I watch, I almost always get
recommendations for Penn & Teller. Doesn’t matter that I don’t care about that
even a little bit, and haven’t watched one of their bits for years. Doesn’t
matter that I was just watching a technical tutorial. Doesn’t matter that I
was just listening to a music video. Doesn’t matter if I just played a Thomas
and Friends video for my kid. I mean, wtf? I want a “why am I seeing this
recommendation” button at this point, because my curiosity has gotten the
better of me and I want to see how this magic trick is done. Oh, hey, wait a
minute...

~~~
munificent
I too watched a couple of "Fool Us" videos and now YouTube believes I am
training full-time to be a professional magician.

------
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
My expectations are very low, and I generally only browse my sub feed, but I
have noticed that some recommendations are getting better.

Specifically, I notice more of:

* Subjects I haven't watched in a while, but went through a period of watching. This is especially useful if it's a recent update or revival of a particular topic.

* Content from channels that are actually similar to what I often watch, and not just clickbait stuff. Occasionally there's actual valuable discovery in the recs.

* Videos that I very much would normally watch from sub'd channels, but missed for whatever reason. The recs are actually helping remind me to watch things I want to watch.

It's still the minority of recommendations, but I have to agree that the
system _is_ actually improving.

------
buboard
They should introduce some features that allow better search or a hierarchical
directory for ppl who like to pick and choose. Perhaps allow a more
descriptive presentation of the creators themselves. Not everything needs to
be a flat feed.

------
commandlinefan
Hm - I was hoping to read a little bit about the algorithms behind YouTube's
recommendation engine but instead got a few paragraphs informing me that
YouTube was going to implement (even more) arbitrary censorship and claim it
was in the spirit of "protecting" us.

------
drcode
...I hate that feeling when I browse youtube and want to watch a trashy video,
but then have to stop myself because of the negative effects on the
recommendation engine. (yes, if I'm in browser youtube I have the option to
open an anonymous tab)

------
natch
My YouTube suggestions list is filled with videos I _just_ watched in the last
few weeks or months. Along with the some new videos, but remarkably many
already watched ones. They are not labeled as such.

I suspect I blocked some cookie or changed some setting they didn't want me to
change, and this behavior is deliberately calculated to be punitive. It's not
very user friendly.

Or, the YouTube developers are just not very smart. Either way, it doesn't
look good for them. This would be so easy to fix. If they don't know how, they
are welcome to reach out to me and I can give them some ideas.

Yes it did occur to me that some users might like this. But they way they have
it set up is very confusing and suboptimal for my needs as a user. I will
admit though it may be serving some business need that they have, like saving
their bandwidth by re-serving me old videos from my cache.

------
icsllaf
I have always had the idea that there should be a law requiring any
recommended item anywhere on the internet to be accompanied with a reason of
why the item has been recommended. Youtube already does this with certain
videos but I would much like it to be expanded completely.

------
aphextron
I don't want YouTube to reccomend anything for me. I don't want Facebook to
show me the news stories they think I should see. I don't want Google to show
me the ads they think are more relevant to me. None of this improves my life
in any way whatsoever, and in fact is leading to the dumbing down of society.
We have completely handed over individual taste, interest, and curiosity to
algorithms that do nothing but optimize for engagement. I'm done. I want the
old internet back. A place where you were presented with a variety of
information, indexed by it's content, from which _I_ am able to pick and
choose, and then discuss with other human beings.

~~~
AgentME
The users of YouTube, Facebook, and Google generally like a feed of things
recommended to them. I feel like if this were an article about too many people
pissing in a pool, your comment is saying no one should want to swim. That's
one way to not get urine on you, but plenty of people clearly want to swim and
it doesn't help much to blame them.

------
shdh
Let me block channels from appearing in my recommendations. Obviously I don't
like that channels content, so I don't want to see it.

~~~
ddebernardy
Should be "block this channel and very similar ones" IMHO.

------
throw7
For a short time, you could actually hide a video in your subscriptions by
just clicking one button (an "X" overlayed in top-right). Best feature ever.
Now it takes two clicks and mouse movement to hide.

------
AnaniasAnanas
It would be great if Youtube actually stopped recommending irrelevant videos
that I do not care about (the recommended for you videos) and instead only
showed videos in the sidebar that are relevant to what I am watching at that
very moment. If I am watching a conspiracy video then I would prefer it if I
got another conspiracy video as a suggestion rather than a random cooking
video - and it actually goes the other way too! Every time that I go to watch
a gaming or a programming video at least one of the suggestions is some lame
political or conspiracy-related video.

------
alan_n
I think the problem is they're using machine learning on something where it's
hard to know when to reward the AI. Do you reward it for max minutes the users
watch, max clicks, etc? None of them imo really measure whether the _users are
satisfied with the recommendations_ which even if that means less watch time
for them, it's good for youtube as a brand.

I just ignore them completely now except for when browsing music. They often
don't even help when watching serial things (e.g. part 1, 2, 3), I'll often
make the effort to look up a playlist instead. I have also always ignored the
front page, so can't say anything about it.

I do wish youtube would let you pick areas of interest and whether you wanted
to be recommended based on those areas. If a video fits in an excluded area,
you would just get random recs, otherwise you would get recs from around that
area. Preferably a mix of recent + old + really old videos that still have
good ratings / watch time.

Also they would have less to sort through, etc, if they allowed creators to
"archive" a video (because its outdated and maybe some other newer one
replaced it). This happens to me all the time. And as a user it would be nice
if for example, when some video's audio was bad and then a newer fixed one
uploaded, if I was prompted to go to the new one. Similar thing with serial
content. It would be nice if creators could establish one video follows
another or is related.

------
AltruisticGap
Manual selection doesn't bode well.

I like to watch spiritual and metaphysical talks, Papaji, Eckhart Tolle,
Conscious TV, Rupert Spira and the like.

I don't want someone to tell me what's "true" or what's "real" by refering me
to the so called "facts".

Sounds like a slippery slope to me...

There sure is a lot of drivel on YouTube.. much of it like content farms
playing search engines, is driven by the ad revenue. I find this empty /
mindless content far more distracting than "false claims".

~~~
gotocake
_I don 't want someone to tell me what's "true" or what's "real" by refering
me to the so called "facts". Sounds like a slippery slope to me..._

It sounds at a first reading as though you’d feel everything since the
Enlightenment has been a slippery slope. To be fair to YouTube though, if you
want an environment devoid of “what’s ‘true’ or ‘what’s real’ by referring
[you] to the so-called ‘facts,’” then YouTube seems like it should be your
paradise. I watch mostly technical, science, and history videos, but
apparently YouTube interprets that as a preference for ranting conspiracists
and people who make Joe Rogan look like a gentleman and a scholar. I can only
imagine the trash it throws up if you actually seek it out!

If you want to create a bubble of people saying things totally divorced from
anything like reality, what more could you ask for than YouTube?

~~~
AltruisticGap
Garbage content in my opinion is mindless, soulless content created by content
farms. Which in a way is what YouTube encourages through their advertising
business. Same issue with low quality results in search engines due to all the
content farms.

Any content that makes me question things is good in my opinion.

I had a period when I was into UFOs and whatnot.. and it led to an interesting
realization about what I actually know. So in my view everything has its
place. For example a video about flat earth may very well engage the viewer to
wonder WHY the earth wouldn't be flat?

You can't force people to ask questions. Some people will get into the deep
end and lose themselves. So be it. You can never force someone else to wake up
out of their dreams. It's each individual's choice. At best it is only through
the heart, and not rationality, that you can help someone see more clearly.
Everyone believes n one thing or another, in order to feel safe.

And yes you are right. YouTube is absolutely perfect right now in some funny
ways. Through the limitation of their own business model, they allow everyone
to express themselves. And this is better for everybody.

I think they're going to stick to moderation politics and whatnot anyway, so
who cares.

------
FrozenVoid
It would be much cheaper to use user feedback instead of "human evaluators"
who represent a tiny segment of audience. Just try adding some sort of rating
system for reccomendation like 10 is Perfect Reccomendation and 0 is
Completely Irrelevant and adjust the algorithm accordingly. I think the
current one use something like network analysis that feeds its own
reccomendations back to itself.

------
izzydata
In the last year the videos recommending on the right margin have always been
the same videos regardless of what video I was on. Which are the same videos
at the top of my home page recommended videos. What ever happened to video
specific recommendations? That was what allowed me to discover new things
related to what I was watching and not just some total aggregate of everything
I've ever watched.

------
simula67
> To that end, we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and
> content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting
> a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or
> making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.

Instead, why not just include videos that thoroughly debunks these ideas in
the recommendation section of these videos ?

~~~
curiousgal
I am only 24 years old and hearing 9/11 being referred to as a historic event
makes me feel old.

------
microcolonel
YouTube keeps showing me videos I have already seen, while not sending
notifications for videos on channels I'm subscribed to (yes, with the bell!).
In order to find videos from people I am subscribed to, I have to go to their
Twitter/Discord/Minds so that I don't miss out on at least one video per day,
it's nuts.

------
amdanil
I would love to see youtube add more videos to the recommended section. Right
now I believe the limit is 18. When you load the homepage it shows you 12
tiles and you can click "show more" to display 6 more for a total of 18.

~~~
falcor84
Yeah, this is the most annoying thing for me too. They have an endless stream
of recommendations if you go to www.youtube.com/feed/recommended , so why not
put it in the main page?

I can only assume that it's an intentional marketing thing to get people to
watch other things.

------
taude
I wish YouTube kept better tabs on what I've watched and not re-recommend
them. I especially wish they wouldn't automatically add to the automatic play
list videos I've already seen.

------
magicalhippo
> We now pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics—on any given day,
> more than 200 million videos are recommended on the homepage alone.

What does the first part (wider set of topics) have to do with the second part
(number of videos recommended)?

Anyway, YouTube recommendations are generally quite poor I find, though
sometimes a few gems come along. I also made the mistake of watching YouTube
on my Android TV box. Holy cow, an ad _every single minute_. And the same 4
ads, rotating.

~~~
TravisDick
Just guessing, but it could be that they are claiming that 200 million unique
videos are recommended on a given day, with the number of unique videos being
a proxy for how diverse they are. Perhaps before some of their recent changes,
the number of unique videos was smaller. (Who can say for sure, though)

------
dilap
honestly, i'd like to be the judge of if a theory is crackpot or not. i'm not
a kid, i don't need youtube to save me from "bad information".

hopefully the change is mild. i've discovered a ton of great stuff through
youtube recommendations (especially music! youtube blows everything else away
for music discovery).

~~~
AgentME
>honestly, i'd like to be the judge of if a theory is crackpot or not. i'm not
a kid, i don't need youtube to save me from "bad information".

If your local library or city center decided to prohibit a local white
supremacy group from putting up flyers on their billboards recommending
Holocaust conspiracy theory materials, would you criticize them the same way?
I'm curious about why people seem to have very different standards for public
spaces and websites moderating themselves.

~~~
dilap
not a perfect analogy, because (1) billboard space is limited (2) this is
restricting thingd that otherwise specifically would be recommended for me.

anyway, i, personally, would still give them (and every1) the space on the
billboard. let every1 talk, even the crazy and the hateful.

more generally, i dont think any institution should be privilged over the
individual to decide which ideas they get to hear.

just one possible philosophical position, one choice on a spectrum of
tradeoffs.

------
jaredtn
Recommendation systems are often too specific, full of recency bias. I use
YouTube for classical music while I'm working, so I play several hours of
video every day. My feed is full of similar videos that are all the same!
YouTube can step it up by offering a wider variety of potential interesting
videos.

------
subliminalpanda
I wish they would provide to turn off recommendations on the home page when
you're logged in. Far too many click-baity channels show up and it becomes
cumbersome to wade through all of it to find the channels that I follow.

------
makosdv
This is why I never look at the recommendations on YouTube. I just go straight
to my Subscription feed; there is usually something worth watching there and
if not, I find my entertainment elsewhere.

------
contravariant
I'd be happy if they just stopped trying to recommend videos to me personally
and just tried to keep the video suggestion remotely relevant to what I'm
watching.

------
lolc
Too late, I installed the "Distraction Free Youtube" extension. No more
sidebar: No more clickbait.

Youtube got so much more pleasant.

------
odiroot
Until they'll get PewDiePie's videos back on Trending I'll consider completely
dishonest and unethical. They follow the same path Facebook paved before:
closing people in bubbles.

------
highstep
Using uBlock Origin to hide the youtube recommendations sidebar was a
fantastic UX improvement. Now I don't have withstand youtube's persistent
recommendations to watch Jordan Peterson.

------
sdfasdslk
Nowhere to go but up, really.

------
imoverclocked
I knew it!

------
v_lisivka
I banned thousands of channels in Russian language, but Youtube never stop
attempts to convince me to watch an another video about Putin or mighty
Russia.

How to ban all videos per country of origin or/and per language?

edit:

Moreover, how to bless my native language in Youtube and Google?

------
bodski
Just please, for the love of god stop trying to show me Jordan Peterson
videos!

------
porpoisely
Improving recommendations? All I'm seeing is a complete deterioration of
youtube's recommends since the glory days of the early 2010s.

How about stop spamming me CNN, SNL, Late Night Show ( kimmel, john oliver,
etc )? I've yet to accidentally click on these links/channels in all my years
using youtube and yet, I still see them every day? Why?

I've pretty much given up on recommendations and just directly go to the
channels I want to watch. There was a time ( early 2010s ) when youtube
recommends was great and it was actually fun going down the youtube recommends
rabbit hole. Now it's just corporate shilling. Just like google search and its
incredible decline.

You guys aren't going to improve anything because you don't have competition.

------
nononotnot
User control is completely lacking in youtube. It's a tradeoff between
marginal quality content and tolerating the UI and search.

Their creativity in thinking up new annoyances (e.g. undesired playing of
videos if you merely hover the selection to a video) is infinite.

------
throwawaysea
In this thread, in social media, and in recent articles that critique
YouTube's recommendations, it seems like the anecdotal examples all try to
support a claim that YouTube's recommendation algorithm radicalizes viewers
towards the far right side of the US political spectrum. This to me seems like
a naive, self-serving perspective channeled by those who are on the US
political left. Somehow, the same algorithm might help channel viewers to
content from say Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but no complaints are made in that
instance, since that content aligns with the views of those who are
complaining.

These algorithms are based on what people watch based on prior history. As
outsiders, we can't know exactly how it works, but it seems like it would be
some mix of the video you are currently watching and other videos in your
watch/search history, which then feed into a model that considers all users'
behaviors and produces probabilistic relationships between videos. This is a
fairly standard way for how recommendations work, and it is reasonable. As
others have pointed out, there are also many anecdotes of YouTube
recommendations working great - for example with discovery of music. But we
should keep in mind that the same recommendations engine supports those same
positive anecdotes.

For a lot of users, the recommendations some are labeling as incorrect,
radicalizing, etcetera are actually the recommendations they want and enjoy.
Why should other users or YouTube intervene if that's what user behavior
supports? Clearly, the reason is that these other users want to constrain
access to views they don't share - which is just another way of saying they
support censorship when it applies to others. There is a dangerous concept
creep in Google's blog post:

> We’ll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we
> can reduce the spread of content that comes close to—but doesn’t quite cross
> the line of—violating our Community Guidelines.

This is really the first step in expanding their guidelines, and if they cave
to either internal political activism or the complaints coming from the
outside (a group with very uniform views aligning with the political left), it
is a risk for public discourse. This is in part because there are very few
alternatives to Google in general, and that applies to YouTube as well. As
others have pointed out, BitChute was blackballed by payment processors. Any
constraint on free exchange of information on YouTube is dangerous because so
much of online discourse is under Google's control, on their platforms.

I can't help but think that the BuzzFeed article and others are basically
cherry-picked hitjobs to create a false narrative that something more
nefarious is going on beyond YouTube simply respecting user behaviors. The
impetus to say something is wrong here seems to be based entirely on personal
political biases. For example, some people here are bemoaning the fact that
watching Joe Rogan's podcasts (which are less political) lead you to watch
Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro. If that's the behavior other users who watch a
Joe Rogan video are exhibiting, I don't see anything wrong with that
recommendation. And if you dislike it, consider that this might be the
exposure to different views that people often pay lip service to.

Some of the other annoyances outlined by commenters are less related to
specific content and more like general usability concerns. A summary:

\- It is no longer possible to see recommendations based on just the current
video. I agree this is poor design. It seems at some point YouTube switched
the recommendations feed from being centered on whatever content you are
currently seeking (which the currently playing video would be an input for),
to just showing recommendations based on everything you've ever done. I think
there is a place for the current set of recommendations but it should not be
the sole set. Having a "Based on this video" section of recommendations and a
"More for you" section of recommendations would solve this problem.

\- User feedback saying you don't want to watch something is not immediately
respected. Other users say that it is respected, if you provide the feedback
multiple times. The latter may be appropriate, since a single dislike is
likely best interpreted not as an absolute, but a signal that gets ingested
into the algorithm and weighted appropriately.

\- People want to be able to watch a video and not have it feed into their
recommendations. This is currently possible by pausing watch history or search
history, but that's deep in the settings and much harder to find. I agree,
YOuTube should make a privacy mode toggle that is available right next to the
video.

\- Sometimes videos that were already watched are recommended. I'm split on
this one - I've certainly seen times they recommend a previously-watched video
where I don't think it would make sense to rewatch it. But that is likely
based on user behavior as well. And if there are enough users watching some
video repeatedly, it might be a fair and correct prediction to suggest it to
me. When you click the 'Not Interested' link beneath a video, you can also
click 'Tell Us Why' and select the option 'I already watched it' to give them
that hint. But the interface is a bit cumbersome, certainly.

------
bdz
We have always been at war with Eastasia

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Did you accidentally comment on the wrong story? Or is this a joke that I'm
not getting?

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
They're making a reference to the novel 1984, in which governments routinely
recast history such that the current status quo "has always been this way".

~~~
tivert
> They're making a reference to the novel 1984, in which governments routinely
> recast history such that the current status quo "has always been this way".

Though the reference they're making is so irrelevant to this story that it
verges on a non sequitur. This action is more akin to developing a spam filter
for your email service than a government totally rewriting history for
political reasons.

If you're going to reference a work as well-known as 1984, make sure it's a
_very apt_ reference.

------
quotemstr
But who gets to decide what counts as a "conspiracy"? It's very easy to
suppress true and inconvenient information by attaching some vague and
undesirable label to it, e.g., the Soviets abusing mental health diagnoses to
silence dissidents.

I'd rather have conspiracy videos in my feed than give the YouTube content
moderation people the power to decide what counts as conspiracy.

~~~
falcor84
I know what you mean, not I can't think of any other way I would fully trust.
What committee would l trust? I suppose the only thing we can do is to require
more transparency.

------
crankylinuxuser
I know this is about Youtube suggestions, but let me share another google
property with suggestions: Google Mail.

[https://twitter.com/300_lines/status/1088288289042415617](https://twitter.com/300_lines/status/1088288289042415617)

\------------------------

Tweet: "Ugh. G-mail's suggested responses to an update from my aunt about my
uncle's fight with cancer.

Google Mail suggests: Will do! So cute! Love it!"

\------------------------

If this is the quality of AI and their suggestions machine learning, then I
have serious doubts. I'd figure the word "cancer" would be enough for basic
sentiment calculators to go 'give somber sad answer', not "Love it!"

~~~
Retra
Don't have google write your reply emails then? Sometimes you get a crappy
solution because the problem being solved is just not worth the effort.

------
kajumix
"To that end, we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and
content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a
phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or
making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11."

Why take moral positions on the content of the videos? Why be the arbiter of
what people should watch? Why censor?

~~~
nightski
I agree this is annoying. Personally I enjoyed watching the conspiracy theory
9/11 videos even if I didn't believe it for a second.

~~~
AgentME
Maybe they should be there for people who seek them out, but YouTube shouldn't
be recommending them onto people who didn't previously want them and who might
not be approaching it skeptically.

~~~
throwawaysea
Why is it YouTube's business to judge truth and falsehoods and provide a
manicured walled garden? That seems like an avenue for all sorts of
manipulation, censorship, etc.

~~~
AgentME
YouTube is already an avenue for all sorts of manipulation. They recommend
harmful crazy conspiracy videos to unsuspecting people all the time right now.
(9/11 conspiracy theory videos might just sound silly, but I'm also thinking
of stuff like racially-charged holocaust conspiracy theories and baseless
anti-vaccine stuff.) I think you're way too optimistic if you don't think
those are likely converting many people at YouTube's scale.

Just because this is the result of non-action by YouTube doesn't make it okay.
YouTube becoming a moral arbiter isn't a perfect situation, but it can easily
be better than the status quo.

~~~
nightski
I don't find this true at all. Youtube is pretty biased in recommending videos
closely related to what is in your history. It's pretty rare I get something
that is not directly related to a recently watched video (this is clear
because if I delete said video from my history the recommendations go away).

