Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'

Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by deelowe on Thursday July 16, 2020 @03:32PM (#23862912)

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?

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by bscphil on Thursday July 16, 2020 @05:30PM (#23864037)

> YT even hides them the sub feed.

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.

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by bmn__ on Friday July 17, 2020 @08:42AM (#23869865)

> 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?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3lnEJVuGA

See comments, this was definitely happening to several subscribers.

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by soupbowl on Thursday July 16, 2020 @06:05PM (#23864335)

> 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.

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by stallmanite on Thursday July 16, 2020 @04:00PM (#23863204)

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.

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by grugagag on Thursday July 16, 2020 @04:18PM (#23863373)

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.

We have to take control back!

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by Avamander on Friday July 17, 2020 @03:14PM (#23874289)

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.

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by ben174 on Thursday July 16, 2020 @04:13PM (#23863333)

"Don't forget to click that bell!"

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by zeepzeep on Friday July 17, 2020 @07:26AM (#23869407)

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.

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Re:Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles' by mfsch on Thursday July 16, 2020 @05:16PM (#23863908)

I think for those it’s best to subscribe to the RSS feed of the channel. Feed readers are great for infrequently updated content!

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