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

Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by _0ffh on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @08:53AM (#25517619)

I don't use the "watch later" feature anymore. It's always a bit irritating when you want to catch up on the list only to find that a video has been removed in the mean time. So I switched to archiving using youtube-dl. Also nice to have a few backup videos in case of an internet outage.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by scrollaway on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @09:10AM (#25517761)

I rarely have that problem with watch later, but it does happen. When I want to ensure a video is available down the line, i send the url to the web archive; they have a special archiver for youtube videos.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by wolco2 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @09:26AM (#25517895)

What's the link?

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by scrollaway on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @10:53AM (#25518857)

Just prefix any URL with this exactly: https://web.archive.org/save/

Example: https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

If it's already saved, it'll do a new snapshot, but I believe the archive is smart enough not to duplicate saved youtube videos.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by wintermutestwin on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @12:41PM (#25520017)

I tried this and it keeps saying job failed.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by scrollaway on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:17PM (#25521017)

Looks like the Archive is having some trouble today, but it's also getting throttled because the link is getting clicked a lot. the /save/ link will redirect you to a saved snapshot of the page; it basically tells the archive "capture this page right now".

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by wolco2 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @12:59PM (#25520204)

Same issue. Love the concept of saving through a GET link.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by beepboop43 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @09:26PM (#25524525)

Just curious, do you download them one at a time or do you have a "system" for handling them?

I ask because this seems like a great idea. I've already written a script to read from a list and download and now I'm wondering if I don't just use use that instead of "watch later" going forward. Curious if you do anything beyond adding them one at a time I should consider before changing my approach.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by scrollaway on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @10:45PM (#25524861)

FYI youtube-dl can download playlists. I heavily suspect you can even use --continue to download missing updated bits in a playlist you previously downloaded

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by beepboop43 on Thursday December 24, 2020 @01:56AM (#25525565)

Good point on the playlists, it hadn't dawned on me that 'watch later' is a playlist. Haven't tried continue, in the past I've created a 'downloaded.txt' file which gets updated as files download and then checked before it runs again so it doesn't try to re-download them.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by scrollaway on Thursday December 24, 2020 @11:43AM (#25529015)

Yeah you don't need that downloaded.txt, youtube-dl can do that all on its own with the right flags :)

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by jessriedel on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @11:30AM (#25519286)

This is conceivable to me, bit I've never had this happen. What sort of videos would be removed that you actually wanted to watch?

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by _0ffh on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @05:12PM (#25522872)

Apart from what has already been mentioned, stuff also gets copyright-struck. Sometimes for ridiculously minor infractions. Sometimes for no real infraction at all.

Additionally, there are the vague and ever-changing terms of service.

Also, people sometimes take stuff down themselves. Take the JRE, for a recent and rather prominent example.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by beepboop43 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @09:56PM (#25524657)

Happens to me often. I don't think it even tells you what videos are gone. I know I've seen channels say they removed a video themselves because it didn't do well with views so they wanted to re-tweak it in the hope it lands better.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by nitrogen on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @04:45PM (#25522599)

Cody's Lab had a video about refining metal ores removed, as one example.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by OJFord on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @12:27PM (#25519871)

People remove and re-upload (or not) their videos sometimes, so if you could even find it that'd be an annoying extra step.

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