‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked on the algorithm (2019)

Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by murgindrag on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @08:35AM (#25517469)

I want Youtube to recommend educational videos, a la Extra History and 3B1B. That's most of what I watch on Youtube.

Youtube recommends stupid crap based on what other people like.

If I watch one stupid video not in incognito, ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content.

Even within educational videos, if I click on a click-baity channel once, that channel dominates things I've watched MANY more time. It seems to all be about click-through metrics.

I've never had Youtube recommend really upscale educational content like Zach Star before. It's quality stuff, but you gotta find it yourself.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by qwerty456127 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @08:44AM (#25517554)

> ALL of the recommendations become stupid videos because those videos have better metrics. Youtube actively guides me away from educational content.

Back when I was not particularly into YouTube and hadn't had many great recommendations YouTube insisted I should watch Sapolsky's Harvard lectures - these probably had particularly good metrics. Once I started to watch them (and was very satisfied) more and more great recommendations started to appear.

> It's quality stuff, but you gotta find it yourself.

People should start sharing curated lists of high-quality no-bullish YouTube videos/channels. Kind of like those awesome-everything on GitHub.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by minkowski on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @07:16PM (#25523843)

Conversely, at some point I decided to watch Sapolsky lectures based on human recommenders, but this caused YouTube to recommend not only other science lectures but also sensational videos purporting to be about quantum mechanics, medicine, etc. but which were obviously total pseudoscience.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by freebuju on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @10:02AM (#25518248)

Not saying YouTube's recommendation algorithm is perfect but you could try to interact with the feedback popups. That seems to clear up stuff I don't need on my 1st page.

If all else fails, create a new Google account for separate exclusive use should do the trick.

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