I've noticed that using youtube-dl seems to prevent my recommendations from changing much. Are there other tricks that one can use to avoid getting bubbled?
> If you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's location, incognito is enough.
I personally find that unpersonalized homepage rather offensive. It often considers small countries near a large one as a part of it as the borders are unclear for its algorithms. The same happens with things like Google Play.
I use YouTube while not logged in and I use an extension that removes all cookies whenever I close a tab. YouTube doesn't remember anything of what I've watched.
This does seem like a problem, but at the same time, this would appear to be the expected result from a well-written recommendation engine. That is, if a user watches a bunch of videos about a specific topic, it makes sense that it would recommend more of that same topic, since that is clearly what that user is interested in.
That said, I see how this is a problem, but what is the solution? Do away with recommendations altogether?
One thing I've seen lately is that YouTube will recommend a video that I've already watched all of it. And they know I've watched it because I leave the watch history on and it has the red bar showing how far through the video i watch.
I also don't know if it's because of other users behaviors or maybe channels pay for the exposure, but I've seen certain channels or topics take over the recommendation list more than other topics. Or there's the issue where the recommendation list beside a video is all "recommended for you" and not even related to the video. On mobile they had to add a button for showing videos actually related to the video you're watching, but it feels like sometimes even that's hit or miss.
I'm okay with a recommendation engine when it doesnt get stuck in this loop of recommending the same videos over and over. For now, I just delete my YouTube history about once a month to get new recommended videos.
Part of this may be youtubes fight to subvert people leaving keywords in the descriptions of videos so instead they're analyzing different things trying to build the heuristic. I know there's a lot that goes into the engine so it could be any number of things.
> And they know I've watched it because I leave the watch history on and it has the red bar showing how far through the video i watch.
Worse is when they wipe that red bar. It's amnesiac, just like Google Search and Chrome, those too forget older things. I personally find it very annoying.
> One thing I've seen lately is that YouTube will recommend a video that I've already watched all of it. And they know I've watched it because I leave the watch history on and it has the red bar showing how far through the video i watch.
This may surprise you, but if I like a video I'll watch it a few dozen times. I say this might surprise you since it certainly surprises my friends who make this complaint.
The accommodations the algorithms make for people like me is probably making it worse for people like you.
Platforms that create filter bubbles should show "opposite content"..perhaps with a heading that could have titles like "Videos we don't recommend"..."Videos you may disagree with".."break out of your filter bubble" or something to that effect.
Do you seriously think a lot of people would want to do that? I don't. I think conservatives will yell out loud that YouTube is promoting "gay propaganda/agenda" and vice versa from liberals.
People intentionally bubble themselves, Twitter with it's much weaker suggestion algorithm has netted the same result, it really takes a special type of person to fight that.
What is needed isn't the opposite view, it is the more moderate similar view. Liberals are evil isn't counter by liberal conspiracies. It is countered by conservatives who can see the point and a middle ground. Likewise liberal bubbles are popped by liberals who can understand conservative positions.
Somehow I've managed to avoid most political/argumentative content on YouTube and this solution wouldn't make sense for me.
Would I get videos about how bikes suck?
What people who complain about "filter bubbles" mean is that they're sad that traditional media's hold over what people watch is weakening but that's a good thing. I don't need more people telling me that "orange man bad".
I wouldn't strictly limit the term filter bubble to politics here. Sometimes its just "whoa that stuff exists!" moments. Unless YouTube decides to let some video/channel go viral, you'll never get recommended stuff that isn't very similar to the last couple videos you watched.
All the cool stuff that isn't related to IT stuff or retro computing I've found through comments on hn or elsewhere. Like that guy that restores matchbox cars, or the other one who builds dioramas.
But would that make much sense? I mean I guess if you have a simple metric you could just show whatever is at the other end of the spectrum, but after I watched 20 cat videos, what would even be opposite content of that?
I'd really like to know how their recommendations even work for starters. It currently just seems some simple "more of the same" stuff. Could they not just look at the last 100 videos I watched, then find 1000 users who watched as many of those as possible and look for common videos in their history that I haven't seen yet. Maybe even make sure those videos have as few tags in common with my 100 videos as possible to help discover really new content. Really I have so many ideas I'd try if I had such a huge source of information available, instead YouTube feels like the dumbest "more of the same" algorithm they could come up with.
Regardless of the merits of this idea, it seems a tricky thing to implement. What is the polar opposite of right wing political videos? It's tempting to say left wing political videos, but both are political videos and thus not opposite each other along that particular dimension. So obviously you have to pick and choose which dimensions you want flipped and which you don't. Otherwise the opposite of political videos might be... a documentary about marbles or something. That wouldn't be very useful.
Personally my problem is that it's not just the topic I'm interested in, it's also the presentation (therefore the channel), and sometimes I watch videos outside my usual channels because I have some specific interest. The recommendations then go ham for those one-off channels and other channels I've never heard of. I refuse to even watch the unheard of channels because I know there are videos on the channels I DO watch that I haven't watched yet and I want those recommended, 9/10 unknown channels I end up not liking and watching them makes even more noise. I don't watch anything politically sensitive but I can see how this system ends up in dangerous territory.
Two different recommendation engines. One optimizes for depth, the other for breadth. Combined results in the feed for a well balanced diet of content.
To make it even better for customers, Youtube could break the different types of content from the recommendation engines, instead of blending everything together under one list in a way that resembles a slot machine.
> That is, if a user watches a bunch of videos about a specific topic, it makes sense that it would recommend more of that same topic, since that is clearly what that user is interested in.
For how long though? In a short session it does make sense but having that trail you along for weeks to months is not only annoying but misguided as well, it diminishes the richness and the variety of the content and kills exploration.
This should come with a reset button or simply be based on your last search or something like that.
And there should be a way to block channels that you don't find interesting. There are some channels that I am not interested into their content that keep on showing on my recommednation list no matter what I am searching for. I want that to go away and without a plugin or some hacks that is not possible on youtube.
Yea, so strange when they write about a website but don't link it. I can understand that maybe they want to keep users on their site so they're linking they two other articles, but then there is also an outside link to Youtube's blog, but not to the website the article is about...
Thanks. One of my biggest bad-internet-journalism pet peeves as of late is articles that talk about a thing that exists on the internet without linking to it. I mean, I know I can just search it, but it's a dark pattern designed to keep you on their site, disguised as lazy journalism.
Fun fact: all six personas had beekeeping Youtube videos suggested to them.
More seriously, I wonder if one could determine the "strength" of a bubble's wall and then check that against the expected time spent online by a group.
'Videos for the prepper will “explore apocalyptic scenarios and how to “prepare” for them.”'
Interesting that it seems to suggest that preppers aren't /truly/ prepping for these scenarios, or that the scenarios aren't real. If anything, it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of preppers right in some sense.
It may not be a zombie situation where people need large stores of ammo, but the modern world can fall apart to such a degree that the ability to survive outside of dependence on normal systems is an advantage.
I don't know. Most of the prepper material I read before the pandemic predicted a breakdown in civilisation type situation. Even through the stress of this pandemic, the world has remained remarkably intact.
A pandemic was consistently predicted as one of the biggest risks to the world by people like Bill Gates. But the preppers were not super interested.
We would all probably be better off if we prepped a little bit for 'everyday' or 'common' emergency situation such ad adverse weathers, with the government prepping for outside-the-norm emergencies.
Also, prepping channels seems to be a bit obsessed with things as opposed to skills.
I disagree- the time and money spent on things could be spent on a weekend long (possibly free online) course in first aid, cooking, hygiene and other basic home skills.
First aid skills without bandaid isn't useful. Cooking skills without food isn't useful. Hygiene skills without soap isn't useful.
You need to prep by having the skills, and having the materials. It may be a good idea to know how to make the materials, but that assumes time which means you need a supply
You can stock a 2-year first aid kit and many months or years of food at your local grocery store very cheaply. If you want to last longer, befriend your local farmer's market where you can buy food and soap.
There was a great Cracked podcast about this recently. Preppers are basically preparing for some Hollywood doomsday scenario where the hero overcomes challenges by putting himself first and (sometimes violently) surviving by a series of physically demanding challenges that depends on his canny and his wits.
The real life pandemic scenario is 'solved' (in the same sense) by listening to Government advice, being considerate of others and staying at home and watching TV.
The Twitter account for the British Prime Minister said that you can both exercise in parks and that visiting parks put lives in danger on the same day. Of course this should be expected from a populist government that needs to put forward multiple ideas to gauge public opinion before implementing policy but then any advice from the (English) government just comes across as contradictory and hypocritical especially when the politicians themselves don't follow the advice.
We had the whole 'masks don't work' song and dance too and by all accounts England is one of the worst countries for mask adoption rates despite a decent majority of the country thinking that they work, adoption rates might change a little when masks become mandatory in shops in a little over a week but for most people it's after the strict lockdown has ended and well past the point of being necessary. So I'd agree with you here, it has been very hard to take the official advice seriously and it's a real shame that a government is muddying the waters for political reasons.
Sorry in advanced for a late reply to an already off-topic tangent. It has been reported on heavily that mask wearing rates in the UK are low compared to Europe [0] although I'll fully admit not doing my due diligence in examining whether the headlines match the claims, those stats don't even include countries like Iceland, or Belgium & Norway which would be interesting to see given the difference in lockdown strategies, but in my defence mask wearing rates in the UK are low compared to similarly sized countries like Italy, France, Spain, or Germany.
The Scandinavian results are interesting but they do seem to be outliers, Sweden is definitely an outlier but maybe if you look at all the Nordic countries and include Iceland the results won't be too interesting.
Many preppers just want to play soldier and imagine they will get to shoot up marauding neighbors.
The real preppers are Mormon families who follow LDS guidelines for keeping their pantry stocked with one-year's supply of food to provide for their family.
As someone who lives in Mormon country, most families here are incredibly well-prepared for emergencies. It's notable that the LDS-style emergency preparedness assumes that social structures will be available through the local wards and therefore individual preparedness can be planned more practically. For example, emergency food stores are standard groceries rotated through the household's regular diet rather than special emergency foods.
The ammo thing is strange. It's as if they estimate their probability of survival in a firefight by assuming their adversaries will be as accurate as storm troopers from Star Wars.
You can burn a lot of ammo in a single fight if you have any kind of fully or semi-auto gun. Human vs human is what these people prepare for the most.
A crossbow is a terrible idea as well. You need specialized machines in order to re-string it let alone if any other part fails. If your plans require zero reliability to civilization then traditional archery or an ~100lbs recurve bow modified with a trigger and a compound aim is your best bet.
You need to account for practice shots, and misses as well. Though that gets you to maybe 1000 rounds. Though if you are hunting rabbits you need a lot more ammo. Most preppers are hoarding ammo too light for deer hunting, though a good shot works I use more powerful ammo than a typical "assault rifle"
One of the underpinnings of many preppers' operating model was "we'll use the MREs to wait for law enforcement to collapse and then use ammo to become king of the hill in post-apocalyptic society". They weren't preparing for all apocalypses, just the ones that would let them use military strength to become unchallenged fief lords. In any scenario where law enforcement is still operating, their stashes are of little use.
There are commonalities. I had some N95 masks since 9/11 and bought more after California fires. I did not anticipate COVID-19, but that stash still turned out to be useful.
> If anything, it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of preppers right in some sense.
Most preppers I've run into are preparing for scenarios in which they finally get to shoot people that they don't like, and expect that people who don't like them will try to take their stuff and kill them, too. A lot of them are preparing for fantasy situations that they're strangely excited about. Through that lens, prepping isn't very different than live action role-playing.
> it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of preppers right in some sense
Right in some senses, wrong in others. The world went a little crazy, but there wasn't a total collapse of society. Grocery stores still have food in them, the world still turns.
Interesting how many of these studies assume this kind of media changes people's minds. Are people really that maleable?
It seems more likely they forward or "like" the media because it reinforces a belief they developed over time via multiple sources of data and experience.
Seems YouTube recommendations does not adjust for context of keywords. I click on a Sport video not because of the sport but want to hear what the person has to say about XYX and not sports. Then YouTube now thinks I wants sports and there is no way of stating to the algorithm "Do not show me sports" because it will take the keywords without context.
They recommendations are fixated on YOU as in the last search or viewing instead of the sum of the content viewed. So a day of just looking at Cat videos equates to I want all Cat videos now and forever until I search for something else.
Also, there is not degree of separation for showing new / thought of content. Or simply put, a meson to walk through the bookstore and see something you never though of looking for and become interested.
You can click the three dots next to the video in your feed, click "Not Interested", and then in the "tell us why" section it sometimes exposes a choice "not interested in recommendations based on X video".
It seems like the context is built with a simple bag of words model. One day I searched "how to make a mousetrap", the following day I got a recommended video about statistics, where the author explains something on a mouse population, and says "mouse" many many times.
I use Duck Duck Go’s video search. Most results are from YouTube, but it completely solves this problem (to the point where I didn’t even know YouTube bubbling was a thing for most people).
I guess a question I have is how does a platform promote "truthful" content when only user actions are present (voting, viewing, subscribing, etc.) with resorting to an omnipresent, final "arbiter of truth" or "presenting all view points as equal"?
It doesn't. It promotes the truth people want to see, a platform can only flag obvious false information but that will always piss people off. Imagine if all the creationism videos suddenly get flagged as false news, I'd cackle, but YouTube would be lynched.
Or imagine they flagged videos showing how face masks help contain Covid-19 as fake news back when the official US government recommendation was still to not buy and wear masks because they are useless? That'd have pissed people off too.
This is just one of many aspects where Google shows that it doesn't really care about the UX. They only care about your data.
I can think of a few other examples off the top of my head where their services could be improved easily but no one seems to care.
Like for example the youtube autoplay algorithm, which is often useless. Here's a crazy idea Youtube, why not check which other videos are in the recent queue and play content based on all of them? Instead of just the last one.
Usually when Autoplay takes over I've already queued up a few videos on my own, I've literally spoon fed them.
The YT Music UI is pretty bad too but that's a new product so it might improve. As a long time Google play music user I complacently migrated my playlists over and decided to give YT Music a go.
First week I only use it to play my Electro Work playlist, basically EDM and Psy/Goa.
Every time I start the app I begin at the Home screen with their recommendations to me, and not one single time do they recommend anything from or related to that playlist.
And every single time I browse away from the Home screen and start that same playlist.
The recommendations of YT Music seem to be based on my YT history, not my MUSIC history.
I actually find myself curating my recommendation bubbles. One identity with clojure talks and embedded hacking, another with 70s progressive rock and Japanese Doujin trance music, and steak cooking videos primarily, etc..
I'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets heavily personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years.
Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has noticed how music playlists start looping the same songs and how recommendations start repeating.
I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse train the suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking friends for video recommendations, refreshing page multiple times when recommendations are all too similar, marking suggestions of known topics as boring, clicking on new topics more than old ones and so on.
It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a bubble and how hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works great for most users and that's why it is like that.
I don't go to Youtube for news / information, I go there for entertainment. In that regard, the "bubble" works well, because it recommends the type of content I find interesting.
However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even if they seemed interesting in the moment, because I don't want to extend my "bubble" in that direction (I've gotten that before). So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to extend.
But then you have to pay for it with ads, and they're really cranking the thumbscrews with the ads these days.
EDIT: on the other hand, a few days back I accidentally used private browsing on a technical video and got a few of those mythical good ads of the sort that inform you about a genuinely interesting and relevant product you didn't know about. So maybe it's not the worst thing ever.
if it comes from the same ip address at the same time i'm pretty sure it counts it too, as I sometimes get similar recomendations coming up from my other PC which has a different account, pretty sure I cant hide my porn browsing by using a VM for the same reason :-)
Some topics seem stickier than others. Like clicking on one Jordan Peterson video seems like enough to change a third of the front page to other videos by him.
At least that's how it works for my account even though I'm completely uninterested in the guy.
It also works in the reverse, you click one video but ignore the rest and it doesn't suggest you more. Meaning that one video doesn't usually throw it entirely out of whack.
I clicked on one of his videos like a year back to try to figure out what all the hubbub was about. I have auto delete history after 3 months on. Only video I ever clicked on about him, I still occasionally get inundated with his videos every once in awhile. I can also confirm that using YouTube in this way does not lead to a lot of variety, even though I am subscribed to a large amount of things. The video recommendations do not seem to ever show me when people I'm subscribed to post videos.
Aye. I fucked up once and clicked a link to a PragerU vid that was being discussed on reddit. Non-stop recommendations about OWNING LIBS for a few weeks.
It's gotten to the point where I don't click links simply because I don't want to get spammed.
At least on desktop, you can remove videos from your watch history, which I think will drop them from the recommendations algorithm. Search here and click the X on the offending videos: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history
I have gotten similar behavior but for a more innocuous subject lately my youtube feed has been flooded with Warhammer40k videos after I made the mistake of clicking on a video on the subject.
> even though I'm completely uninterested in the guy
You are so not interested in him that you a) know his name and b) watch his videos?
If you want to get rid of something you only clicked once, click something you like 2-3 times and it will not be listed in the first results anymore. After some time it will disappear if you really do not watch this kind of content.
why do you think it's a good thing that you're in an entertainment bubble? The same criticism that applies to a news bubble applies to entertainment as well, it narrows people's scope.
Maybe if youtube did not keep you in an etertainment bubble you would find much more music you unexpectedly enjoy from artists or genres you haven't heard of.
> why do you think it's a good thing that you're in an entertainment bubble?
For example, when I'm in the mood to watch sailing videos, I don't want to get bombarded with Taylor Swift's latest concert (which I have absolutely no interest in) in the recommendations. My interests don't necessarily align with what's "popular", and anything bubble-less will necessarily have the popularity of something as one of its inputs.
Compare that with news, where some events are important enough that _everyone_ should know about them (COVID-19, for example), local events affect you more, etc. There, the bubble is a hindrance to your situation awareness.
As for music, I mostly use Google Play Music for that, through which I have discovered a lot of new artists.
Also the recommendation are not so bad: for example in the conspiracy bubble I expected a lot worse, but they mix the few strange conspiracy videos with less "crazy" and more scientific ones like Buzzfeed Unsolved or the Kurzgesagt channels.
Not sure if we can conclude what it actually does, but there's a difference between 'heavily personalized' and 'placing people into defined common defined categories with clear boundaries and content' in terms of societal impact
The thing that frustrates me is that I follow a lot youtubers who don't post frequently and then some that do. The infrequent posts are typically electrical engineering or computer science related. I enjoy these topics more than others, but watch less of them due to the frequency of posts. I also follow some gaming stuff and liberal librarian politics as well as a few other things related to medical science and a smattering of random other topics. Without fail, YouTube will stop recommending engineering topics to me and try to send me down the rabbit hole of clickbait gaming and political topics. It's infuriating b/c after a few weeks, I notice I've not seen any engineering related videos and then have to go back and search through the channels to see what I missed. YT even hides them the sub feed. WTH?
I’ve had basically the identical experience. I swear it even seems to turn off notifications to some of the more obscure channels and I have to turn them back on again. The niche stuff (Engineering, Chemistry, Modular-synth stuff, demoscene stuff, Math, countless others) is YouTube’s strength in my opinion. It’s disappointing that they so strongly discourage that use.
Yes, I have a similar experience. Youtube/Google is shoving down our throats content that is monetized (hence huge channels) and it makes everybody else disappear more or less. We need to index youtube from the outside and take back control. Basically a giant table with channels and last added video would solve that and the link to the last video.
Those small channels should enable monetization tbh and just recommend adblockers to their viewers. That way the algoritm doesn't punish them. I know Franlab does so and it works.
If people really listen to this, but do not click on recommended videos afterwards, this has a negative effect on the CTR which should turn out bad for the YTers.
I see YouTubers claim that YT does this, but personally, I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed. I've also never seen direct evidence, it's only YouTubers claiming that this is happening to their subscribers, as a way of explaining some downturn in the number of views. I suspect many of them are confused about the "notification" feature, which I don't know I've ever seen anyone actually use. (Also, sometimes a video can get stuck in "processing", in which case it won't show up in the feed until it's finished processing.)
Do you have some examples of this happening? I'm almost certain if you could provide screenshots, e.g. of the channel and of your subscription feed, showing the missing video, that YouTube would consider this a bug. The subscription feed is supposed to show all the new videos from channels you're subscribed to.
> I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed.
This is also my experience, I've even closely paid attention to the videos of YouTubers that claim this type of thing is happening and I still have always seen their videos appear in my feed.
> I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed […] Do you have some examples of this happening?
I find it rather drifts towards the mainstream, not even stuff I like or have seen before, but just stuff with more views. I start out on something with 100s or 1000s of views, the suggestions have 10k views, and the suggestions after moving there have 100k to 1M views, and before you know it, you're back in the mainstream again.
Weird my seems to go toward as niche a subject as it can then flood me with it. i am getting counterfactual/alt-history and wh40k videos filling my homepage this month.
I find that aggravating when I want to explore for new things especially when I don't know what I looking for. It used to be great to just explore around but it no longer working now.
What I find good, in a way, is that I get bored quick and get off Youtube, otherwise it could be a serious time blackhole.
I think the only way to escape their recommendation engine is to use an outside source to index youtube videos and control/randomize it better from there.
Before I have an actual Youtube account, I had thought it would have some really smart recommendation algorithms.
But now that I have my personalized "bubble", I'm utterly disappointed. At least from my observation, it mainly uses three strategies: 1) repeating what I've seen, 2) offering video from the same channels I've watched from, and 3) suggesting really popular videos.
The repeat is the worst, especially since it seems to favor interviews, funny clips, etc. which are not really re-watch worthy, even if they were a good watch for the first time.
Then, since I haven't subscribed to a lot of channels, 2) is melding into 1).
At this point, I don't even look at the "Home" tab anymore. I do a refresh on my subscribed list, and if nothing is there, I just move on.
YouTube recommendations is one of those filter bubbles which I've learned to use heavily to my advantage.
I consume a lot of video content and I've learned to curate my watch history (what to watch/search for in incognito versus watch logged in; what to delete from my history etc) so that my youtube homepage actually consistently has a lot of high quality discovery.
One thing I systematically do is avoid videos that are anywhere between 10m00s and 10m20s in length: those are almost always videos that have been arbitrarily lengthened to meet some ad length milestones. I've even seen videos slowed down by some percentage just to fucking get to 10 mins.
Also apparently youtube's changing the milestone to 8 minutes soon, so I'm going to watch out for those too…
I had similar results following similar practices. I distinguish between stuff I want the algorithm to recommend and stuff that I only want to consume "on-demand" (that is when ever I search for it).
The second category covers topics with lots of content so It would overwhelm the other interests.
YouTube some times asks me how do I feel about my recommendations and some times all of them are interesting. But I can't watch them all (maybe I should add them to watch later, to tell the algorithm that I care)
The turning point was when they allowed us to tell the algorithm which videos were not relevant.
If you want a laugh, delete your YouTube watch history. I did this about 18 months ago as an experiment. It took YT a LONG time to get back to suggesting anything like worthwhile content, despite me spending time on YT deliberately watching things that I liked (and avoiding the initial suggestions it gave me after the deletion which were all generic videos with millions of views.
There are some channels that I used to watch that I no longer see as a result of this, but then there are others I wasn't aware of that I now see.
I'm careful now to not watch what I consider junk, and if I want to watch anything I don't want my suggestions to be influenced by, I do so in a private browsing window.
The only recommendations I enjoy are music playlists based on my history.
Otherwise it always seems to ultimately lead to conspiracy style videos. I may start with some DIY videos, archeology, history, physics or even MMA...then a couple recommendations in its Basically “fail videos” and conspiracy videos. As of late I’m also loaded up with pizza reviews which is ironic because I’m generally following low carb or keto regimens.
New ideologies have always formed as thought bubbles like this, but now they're forming fasting than ever. Question is: are thought bubbles OK, or should we try to pop them? This forum itself is a thought bubble, surely they can't all be bad.
I purposely visit YouTube with Firefox in Private mode so I do not accidentally teach the algorithm that I am interested in how to fix garbage disposals.
I call it the toilet seat issue with recommendation engines. If I buy a toilet seat on Amazon, I'll find it annoying when it begins to recommend other toilet seats, plumbing valves, other bathroom accessories. This annoyance extends to other areas of curated content.
Secondly, our interests and preferences are temporal in nature. Things I was interested in 6 months ago may not be things I'm interested in now. For example, today I clicked on my YouTube "Watch Later" list and now the engine is suggesting I watch A Garfield Christmas Special.
Finally, some people enjoy variety. I want to know what new music or genres are going on, but musical recommendations seem to loop back to the same things. Google Play also always defaults to 90s alternative for me. While I enjoy the genre, I would never have developed my preferences for artists like Fela Kuti or Baby Metal by listening to a curated list of things an algorithm thinks I'll LIKE. Note, it only wants to suggest things it knows I'll like or things with close approximation to known liked things. There is no incentive to explore UNKNOWN things because of fear the user will UNLIKE it and stop using the product.
Thats just not how it works for me. I have watched 20 reviews of air rifles a few days ago, and my YT start page doesn't really reflect that at all...
I have used YT since 2006 and sure, the recommendations are shit, but thats because they are LESS personalized than they used to be.
Sometimes you don't want a video view to count for anything in your personalization, and other times you probably will.
Imo. It should be based on your subscriptions and what other who view those generally watch. But it seems like youtube is going away from subscriptions and channels and into a scheme where they pick the content they want to feed you with (Start page prioritizes "random" videos instead of your subscribed channels etc.)
Again I don't understand what the big deal is here, should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch?
> But it seems like youtube is going away from subscriptions and channels and into a scheme where they pick the content they want to feed you with (Start page prioritizes "random" videos instead of your subscribed channels etc.)
I wouldn't say that either and the current state of recommendation system research simply does not have an answer yet. Your proposed suggestion of basing suggestions by subscription and similar users is what they are doing. However, while you may not see it, I would argue that does not mean it does not exist, as evident by the article and the discussions people are having in this thread.
> should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch?
In my preference, yes, though not to the extreme of pure random. I would enjoy seeing options I only select once in a blue moon or not at all. To me that allows for a sense of exploration. However, that is only my preference and your's may be entirely different. Again, I'd say this highlights issues with recommendation systems that maybe one model does not work well for everyone.
Well I certainly wouldn't like that. I would probably rather see people being fed the media I like (mainly testosterone, history and science based). Do you see where I am going with this? Bubbles are what users want.
I don't want political mainstream "satire" garbage tonight shows in my media feeds.
I don't want "Muckbang".
I don't want sony music gangster hip hop with autotune and minors rapping about how much p they slay.
I don't want rich kid vbloggers talking about their sneakers.
I use the subscriptions as much as youtube allows for, but they do their best to make that a thing of the past.
If I want to explore I just hit the "Hot right now" section and loose a little faith in humanity. What absolute garbage.
Should there be better ways to explore? Possibly. But I don't see how normalizing start pages across users would accomplish that.
I disagree; however, I believe we have reached a point where we simply disagree with each other on foundational matters and no amount of discussion will sway the other. Please enjoy your content.
The means of filter bubbles should be in the users hands, and not in the hands of corporations. Corporations cannot be relied upon to have the user's best interests at heart. When users control their own filter bubbles the internet becomes a useful and productive place again.
"The means of filter bubbles must be in the hands of the users!" as the latest rallying cry.
Not a particular fan of the Donald during the election I thought I should watch one of his videos. I fell asleep half way then auto play played many hours of videos from him. For days all suggestion slots showed the same face. I've been convinced eversince that there is a grant CONSPIRACY where youtube is trying to turn us all into ufologists.
I find that every time I go to YouTube's homepage to look at the recommendations, I'm really just bored and expecting them to feed me something of low long term value that catches my attention for a split second with the YouTube face or something, and it doesn't particularly matter what it is so long as it's "interesting" in that vague superficial sense.
This is in contrast to when I use YouTube as a library of videos that I walk up to in order to look something up in that I want to know about.
Now even when it's some guy's hand made animation they did in college, I feel kind of guilty that the only reason I cared to see it was because YouTube gave it to me, and also that I didn't know what I was looking for to begin with so I essentially went "well, that will have to do."
Maybe that will work for keeping me off YouTube until I start believing that I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time again.
162 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadIf you want to see a "default" youtube homepage for your IP's location, incognito is enough.
Google isn't brazen enough to show you recommendations without cookies, despite them being capable of tying your sessions together.
I don't use the app on iOS. If you need higher than 720p playback for a video you can request desktop site.
Amazon is. I see pages show up in my products-viewed history (logged in) after viewing them incognito.
I personally find that unpersonalized homepage rather offensive. It often considers small countries near a large one as a part of it as the borders are unclear for its algorithms. The same happens with things like Google Play.
You can achieve the same effect by logging out Google account in your browser.
There is a limited time, and within that limited time you will be in an informational bubble because of the opportunity cost of new information
That said, I see how this is a problem, but what is the solution? Do away with recommendations altogether?
- [1]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-vide...
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/03/tiktok-ow...
* https://www.altpress.com/news/tiktok-censorship-black-lives-...
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-l...
Youtube may allow 99.9%, but its algorithm is biased toward what the user has recently watched.
I didn't know about this though. Thanks for mentioning it.
I also don't know if it's because of other users behaviors or maybe channels pay for the exposure, but I've seen certain channels or topics take over the recommendation list more than other topics. Or there's the issue where the recommendation list beside a video is all "recommended for you" and not even related to the video. On mobile they had to add a button for showing videos actually related to the video you're watching, but it feels like sometimes even that's hit or miss.
I'm okay with a recommendation engine when it doesnt get stuck in this loop of recommending the same videos over and over. For now, I just delete my YouTube history about once a month to get new recommended videos.
Part of this may be youtubes fight to subvert people leaving keywords in the descriptions of videos so instead they're analyzing different things trying to build the heuristic. I know there's a lot that goes into the engine so it could be any number of things.
Worse is when they wipe that red bar. It's amnesiac, just like Google Search and Chrome, those too forget older things. I personally find it very annoying.
This may surprise you, but if I like a video I'll watch it a few dozen times. I say this might surprise you since it certainly surprises my friends who make this complaint.
The accommodations the algorithms make for people like me is probably making it worse for people like you.
I'm the kind of person that can never watch a film twice within the same year (normally longer), same with series
More enjoyment than anything else I can think to watch? All the time.
Funnily, for feature length films I can only watch them once every few years as well.
People intentionally bubble themselves, Twitter with it's much weaker suggestion algorithm has netted the same result, it really takes a special type of person to fight that.
Would I get videos about how bikes suck?
What people who complain about "filter bubbles" mean is that they're sad that traditional media's hold over what people watch is weakening but that's a good thing. I don't need more people telling me that "orange man bad".
All the cool stuff that isn't related to IT stuff or retro computing I've found through comments on hn or elsewhere. Like that guy that restores matchbox cars, or the other one who builds dioramas.
I'd really like to know how their recommendations even work for starters. It currently just seems some simple "more of the same" stuff. Could they not just look at the last 100 videos I watched, then find 1000 users who watched as many of those as possible and look for common videos in their history that I haven't seen yet. Maybe even make sure those videos have as few tags in common with my 100 videos as possible to help discover really new content. Really I have so many ideas I'd try if I had such a huge source of information available, instead YouTube feels like the dumbest "more of the same" algorithm they could come up with.
For how long though? In a short session it does make sense but having that trail you along for weeks to months is not only annoying but misguided as well, it diminishes the richness and the variety of the content and kills exploration.
This should come with a reset button or simply be based on your last search or something like that.
And there should be a way to block channels that you don't find interesting. There are some channels that I am not interested into their content that keep on showing on my recommednation list no matter what I am searching for. I want that to go away and without a plugin or some hacks that is not possible on youtube.
This article from Mozilla's is even worse, burying the link in the third paragraph instead of the first: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/step-inside-someone-e...
But at least it goes to https://their.tube. Engadget links to http://their-tube.com instead.
More seriously, I wonder if one could determine the "strength" of a bubble's wall and then check that against the expected time spent online by a group.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23636177
Interesting that it seems to suggest that preppers aren't /truly/ prepping for these scenarios, or that the scenarios aren't real. If anything, it seems like Covid-19 has proved a surprising number of preppers right in some sense.
It may not be a zombie situation where people need large stores of ammo, but the modern world can fall apart to such a degree that the ability to survive outside of dependence on normal systems is an advantage.
A pandemic was consistently predicted as one of the biggest risks to the world by people like Bill Gates. But the preppers were not super interested.
Also, prepping channels seems to be a bit obsessed with things as opposed to skills.
You need to prep by having the skills, and having the materials. It may be a good idea to know how to make the materials, but that assumes time which means you need a supply
The real life pandemic scenario is 'solved' (in the same sense) by listening to Government advice, being considerate of others and staying at home and watching TV.
I beg to differ. The CDC insisted masks don't work until April, the WHO until June.
We had the whole 'masks don't work' song and dance too and by all accounts England is one of the worst countries for mask adoption rates despite a decent majority of the country thinking that they work, adoption rates might change a little when masks become mandatory in shops in a little over a week but for most people it's after the strict lockdown has ended and well past the point of being necessary. So I'd agree with you here, it has been very hard to take the official advice seriously and it's a real shame that a government is muddying the waters for political reasons.
https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/12467792104101437...
https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/12468073039756206...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1114375/wearing-a-face-m...
The Scandinavian results are interesting but they do seem to be outliers, Sweden is definitely an outlier but maybe if you look at all the Nordic countries and include Iceland the results won't be too interesting.
[0] https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1281638035462004739
The real preppers are Mormon families who follow LDS guidelines for keeping their pantry stocked with one-year's supply of food to provide for their family.
How they survive the end of civilization is something I've never understood. If the world population is in the thousands odds are you are dead.
If you want to be sustainable, get a crossbow instead.
A crossbow is a terrible idea as well. You need specialized machines in order to re-string it let alone if any other part fails. If your plans require zero reliability to civilization then traditional archery or an ~100lbs recurve bow modified with a trigger and a compound aim is your best bet.
Most preppers I've run into are preparing for scenarios in which they finally get to shoot people that they don't like, and expect that people who don't like them will try to take their stuff and kill them, too. A lot of them are preparing for fantasy situations that they're strangely excited about. Through that lens, prepping isn't very different than live action role-playing.
Right in some senses, wrong in others. The world went a little crazy, but there wasn't a total collapse of society. Grocery stores still have food in them, the world still turns.
It seems more likely they forward or "like" the media because it reinforces a belief they developed over time via multiple sources of data and experience.
They recommendations are fixated on YOU as in the last search or viewing instead of the sum of the content viewed. So a day of just looking at Cat videos equates to I want all Cat videos now and forever until I search for something else.
Also, there is not degree of separation for showing new / thought of content. Or simply put, a meson to walk through the bookstore and see something you never though of looking for and become interested.
This seems to help me. Also I will mark videos as not interested.
But yeah I notice I watch one video and then I get a lot of recommendations related to it. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't.
I can think of a few other examples off the top of my head where their services could be improved easily but no one seems to care.
Like for example the youtube autoplay algorithm, which is often useless. Here's a crazy idea Youtube, why not check which other videos are in the recent queue and play content based on all of them? Instead of just the last one.
Usually when Autoplay takes over I've already queued up a few videos on my own, I've literally spoon fed them.
The YT Music UI is pretty bad too but that's a new product so it might improve. As a long time Google play music user I complacently migrated my playlists over and decided to give YT Music a go.
First week I only use it to play my Electro Work playlist, basically EDM and Psy/Goa.
Every time I start the app I begin at the Home screen with their recommendations to me, and not one single time do they recommend anything from or related to that playlist.
And every single time I browse away from the Home screen and start that same playlist.
The recommendations of YT Music seem to be based on my YT history, not my MUSIC history.
Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has noticed how music playlists start looping the same songs and how recommendations start repeating.
I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse train the suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking friends for video recommendations, refreshing page multiple times when recommendations are all too similar, marking suggestions of known topics as boring, clicking on new topics more than old ones and so on.
It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a bubble and how hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works great for most users and that's why it is like that.
However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even if they seemed interesting in the moment, because I don't want to extend my "bubble" in that direction (I've gotten that before). So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to extend.
EDIT: on the other hand, a few days back I accidentally used private browsing on a technical video and got a few of those mythical good ads of the sort that inform you about a genuinely interesting and relevant product you didn't know about. So maybe it's not the worst thing ever.
It's not been blocking youtube ads for me for a week or two.
At least that's how it works for my account even though I'm completely uninterested in the guy.
It's gotten to the point where I don't click links simply because I don't want to get spammed.
You are so not interested in him that you a) know his name and b) watch his videos?
If you want to get rid of something you only clicked once, click something you like 2-3 times and it will not be listed in the first results anymore. After some time it will disappear if you really do not watch this kind of content.
This works with and without account.
In general it seems that social media regarding news and politics is almost always toxic and should be avoided.
Twitter in particular is entirely awful because the format prohibits any intelligent discourse.
Yes to the point where looking for content on prehistory can lead to flat earther conspiracy theory rubbish.
Maybe if youtube did not keep you in an etertainment bubble you would find much more music you unexpectedly enjoy from artists or genres you haven't heard of.
For example, when I'm in the mood to watch sailing videos, I don't want to get bombarded with Taylor Swift's latest concert (which I have absolutely no interest in) in the recommendations. My interests don't necessarily align with what's "popular", and anything bubble-less will necessarily have the popularity of something as one of its inputs.
Compare that with news, where some events are important enough that _everyone_ should know about them (COVID-19, for example), local events affect you more, etc. There, the bubble is a hindrance to your situation awareness.
As for music, I mostly use Google Play Music for that, through which I have discovered a lot of new artists.
It shows what the homepage looks like for someone in a variety of different bubbles. You knew it was happening, this exposes how it looks.
We have to take control back!
I see YouTubers claim that YT does this, but personally, I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed. I've also never seen direct evidence, it's only YouTubers claiming that this is happening to their subscribers, as a way of explaining some downturn in the number of views. I suspect many of them are confused about the "notification" feature, which I don't know I've ever seen anyone actually use. (Also, sometimes a video can get stuck in "processing", in which case it won't show up in the feed until it's finished processing.)
Do you have some examples of this happening? I'm almost certain if you could provide screenshots, e.g. of the channel and of your subscription feed, showing the missing video, that YouTube would consider this a bug. The subscription feed is supposed to show all the new videos from channels you're subscribed to.
This is also my experience, I've even closely paid attention to the videos of YouTubers that claim this type of thing is happening and I still have always seen their videos appear in my feed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3lnEJVuGA
See comments, this was definitely happening to several subscribers.
What I find good, in a way, is that I get bored quick and get off Youtube, otherwise it could be a serious time blackhole.
I think the only way to escape their recommendation engine is to use an outside source to index youtube videos and control/randomize it better from there.
This is one thing that infuriates me. They do SUCH a poor job of branching out compared to other services, including Google Music.
But now that I have my personalized "bubble", I'm utterly disappointed. At least from my observation, it mainly uses three strategies: 1) repeating what I've seen, 2) offering video from the same channels I've watched from, and 3) suggesting really popular videos.
The repeat is the worst, especially since it seems to favor interviews, funny clips, etc. which are not really re-watch worthy, even if they were a good watch for the first time.
Then, since I haven't subscribed to a lot of channels, 2) is melding into 1).
At this point, I don't even look at the "Home" tab anymore. I do a refresh on my subscribed list, and if nothing is there, I just move on.
I consume a lot of video content and I've learned to curate my watch history (what to watch/search for in incognito versus watch logged in; what to delete from my history etc) so that my youtube homepage actually consistently has a lot of high quality discovery.
One thing I systematically do is avoid videos that are anywhere between 10m00s and 10m20s in length: those are almost always videos that have been arbitrarily lengthened to meet some ad length milestones. I've even seen videos slowed down by some percentage just to fucking get to 10 mins.
Also apparently youtube's changing the milestone to 8 minutes soon, so I'm going to watch out for those too…
The second category covers topics with lots of content so It would overwhelm the other interests.
YouTube some times asks me how do I feel about my recommendations and some times all of them are interesting. But I can't watch them all (maybe I should add them to watch later, to tell the algorithm that I care)
The turning point was when they allowed us to tell the algorithm which videos were not relevant.
I sincerely hope they solve the issue of destructive fringe videos.
There are some channels that I used to watch that I no longer see as a result of this, but then there are others I wasn't aware of that I now see.
I'm careful now to not watch what I consider junk, and if I want to watch anything I don't want my suggestions to be influenced by, I do so in a private browsing window.
Otherwise it always seems to ultimately lead to conspiracy style videos. I may start with some DIY videos, archeology, history, physics or even MMA...then a couple recommendations in its Basically “fail videos” and conspiracy videos. As of late I’m also loaded up with pizza reviews which is ironic because I’m generally following low carb or keto regimens.
https://www.their.tube/conservative
https://www.their.tube/conspiracist
Secondly, our interests and preferences are temporal in nature. Things I was interested in 6 months ago may not be things I'm interested in now. For example, today I clicked on my YouTube "Watch Later" list and now the engine is suggesting I watch A Garfield Christmas Special.
Finally, some people enjoy variety. I want to know what new music or genres are going on, but musical recommendations seem to loop back to the same things. Google Play also always defaults to 90s alternative for me. While I enjoy the genre, I would never have developed my preferences for artists like Fela Kuti or Baby Metal by listening to a curated list of things an algorithm thinks I'll LIKE. Note, it only wants to suggest things it knows I'll like or things with close approximation to known liked things. There is no incentive to explore UNKNOWN things because of fear the user will UNLIKE it and stop using the product.
I have used YT since 2006 and sure, the recommendations are shit, but thats because they are LESS personalized than they used to be. Sometimes you don't want a video view to count for anything in your personalization, and other times you probably will. Imo. It should be based on your subscriptions and what other who view those generally watch. But it seems like youtube is going away from subscriptions and channels and into a scheme where they pick the content they want to feed you with (Start page prioritizes "random" videos instead of your subscribed channels etc.)
Again I don't understand what the big deal is here, should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch?
I wouldn't say that either and the current state of recommendation system research simply does not have an answer yet. Your proposed suggestion of basing suggestions by subscription and similar users is what they are doing. However, while you may not see it, I would argue that does not mean it does not exist, as evident by the article and the discussions people are having in this thread.
> should youtube plaster my start page with pop music and make up tutorials that they know I will never watch?
In my preference, yes, though not to the extreme of pure random. I would enjoy seeing options I only select once in a blue moon or not at all. To me that allows for a sense of exploration. However, that is only my preference and your's may be entirely different. Again, I'd say this highlights issues with recommendation systems that maybe one model does not work well for everyone.
I don't want political mainstream "satire" garbage tonight shows in my media feeds.
I don't want "Muckbang".
I don't want sony music gangster hip hop with autotune and minors rapping about how much p they slay.
I don't want rich kid vbloggers talking about their sneakers.
I use the subscriptions as much as youtube allows for, but they do their best to make that a thing of the past.
If I want to explore I just hit the "Hot right now" section and loose a little faith in humanity. What absolute garbage.
Should there be better ways to explore? Possibly. But I don't see how normalizing start pages across users would accomplish that.
I disagree; however, I believe we have reached a point where we simply disagree with each other on foundational matters and no amount of discussion will sway the other. Please enjoy your content.
"The means of filter bubbles must be in the hands of the users!" as the latest rallying cry.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!
This is in contrast to when I use YouTube as a library of videos that I walk up to in order to look something up in that I want to know about.
Now even when it's some guy's hand made animation they did in college, I feel kind of guilty that the only reason I cared to see it was because YouTube gave it to me, and also that I didn't know what I was looking for to begin with so I essentially went "well, that will have to do."
Maybe that will work for keeping me off YouTube until I start believing that I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time again.
I guess I have to stop browsing Engadget.
http://archive.is/k2gG7
But it's mostly just blogspam. Here's the real project
https://www.their.tube/