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

Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by raydev on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:02PM (#25520845)
> So for me YouTube is a fountain of knowledge, visual and musical aesthetics etc. Every day I get inspiration, healthy kind of fun and learn something cool, useful and healthy.

You must never be curious about things outside of your passions.

I play Fortnite with my kids casually. I looked up a howto a few weeks ago, and my recommendations are still 25% Fortnite related content, even though I only watched one video one time.

It's been happening for years. I looked up one old Norm Macdonald standup bit, and my recos changed immediately to Joe Rogan and adjacent talking heads. I watch one MKBHD video, and I'm overwhelmed with recos for unboxing and tech reviews.

The stuff I genuinely care about, music theory, is impossible to keep in my home page because YouTube doesn't value that engagement.

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Re:‘YouTube recommendations are toxic,’ says dev who worked ... by dr_zoidberg on Thursday December 24, 2020 @10:46AM (#25528467)
> I play Fortnite with my kids casually. I looked up a howto a few weeks ago, and my recommendations are still 25% Fortnite related content, even though I only watched one video one time.

In general I've noticed that YouTube favors your "newest outliers" (let's call them) over stuff you've historically looked at. Probably the rationale (optimization metric?) is trying to capture you into content that might add to your total watch time on the platform.

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