I genuinely don’t understand why Google got it right with Circles, realizing we have different orthogonal interests… but all my YouTube subscriptions go in a giant pile, as if advanced math, news, and rap videos are fungible content.

I want some ability to create sets of channels with a focus and only access that when I want to.

I think the problem is that YouTube has always been a manipulative and exploitative platform — targeting your psychology with algorithms. Now, it’s ratcheted that to the point it’s creepy and unlikeable.

On the mobile app, they show "pill buttons" for your detected interests across the top and you can click on them to filter those topics specifically. So they have put some nominal work into supporting orthogonal interests.

The problem for me is that it just doesn't work very well. First, it's hidden deeply in the UI. Second, the topics are self-detected (poorly) and you have no way to edit them. Third, they seem to act as simple filters of your feed, not a way to access different subsets of content.

I'm sure the root of the problem is that lots of smart people at YouTube probably understand this frustration and want to make this better, but building filtering tools doesn't improve overall user engagement metrics and doesn't get anyone promoted, so no one does. But what does improve overall engagement? Recommending streamer bro meme videos in the chance that a kid might get hooked and watch thousands more of them.

Those also exist in the web app but suffer from the same issues you report.

The 1% smartest people in the userbase, who often are also relative ad resistant, aren't an audience YouTube (or any other large publisher) is going to cater to with active effort. At best they'll tolerate it benignly or as a reputation booster.

Agreed, it seems most of these changes to the recommendation system are for the masses who don't really care or just let autoplay choose everything for them, and not the kind of people who browse HN

It's a problem with evidence based product design. It's in almost all big products nowadays. The way Google axes products, the way Netflix axes series, the way Facebook populates the timeline. They're throwing away the intrinsic value of the product, for positive graphics in their monthly user engagement presentations.

Facebook's user engagement is probably higher than it ever was. I have a friend who's one of those conspiracy nuts and he's on there all day everyday posting dozens of media links to questionable content. His behaviour is their dream. At the same time almost none of my "normal" friends or family are still there. But they never had much engagement anyway even at the peak they maybe checked Facebook once a day for a couple minutes and maybe post something once per month.

Probably these platforms are all approximating the optimal amount of crappiness they need to be maximally profitable.

I've never owned an iPhone, but Apple's approach is the long term one, where they come up with a product that they believe in and they think the customer should use, regardless of whether they actually want. It let's them always carefully control the quality and resists the temptation to make a quick extra buck. In the end it makes them basically unbeatable, where Facebook has to buy competitors to remain relevant.

> Facebook's user engagement is probably higher than it ever was. I have a friend who's one of those conspiracy nuts and he's on there all day everyday posting dozens of media links to questionable content. His behaviour is their dream. At the same time almost none of my "normal" friends or family are still there.

This matches my experience, the family members still very active are all politically involved, posting rants from either side of the spectrum. The conspiracy stuff is unhinged and getting worse.

Apple's model leads to computer with keyboards whose keys fall off, because they design for surface-lecel appeal and disregard customer desires for the product.

No, but every hardware manufacturer, big or small, will have design or production problems from time to time...

> I genuinely don’t understand why Google got it right with Circles

Do you mean on google plus? (Or did that feature make it to other parts of the gooverse?)

The feature on Plus that I desperately wanted was "squares", or facets of your online presence that people could individually subscribe to. Just for instance, if Noam Chomsky had been an active poster on all kinds of topics on Plus, I would not subscribe to his updates because I only care about his work in linguistics, not any of his political activism.

But, the way all the current social properties are set up, the poster either has to have multiple accounts and log in / log out or keep separate browser profiles etc, or just posts everything under one account.

It could be better. It could be pretty seamless: allow the author to tag the post with a click or two just before posting, encourage them to tag posts that aren't tagged before posting, learn what tags they use most and analyze the content of each post to prominently feature in the UI the tags that look like they apply. Allow subscribers to subscribe to author+tag pairs instead of just authors. Done.

Twitter and Instagram allow you switch between multiple accounts without entering the password again. So it's not hard to post and browser about different interest using different accounts

Maybe it's finding some connection like math<->rap-focused music theory (lots of triplets)<->rap. I like an eclectic timeline, and YouTube could be optimizing for that, but I can see how it would be annoying if you don't dig that.

The problem is more fundamental:

Those are all things I like, but I don’t want most of them most of the time — and YouTube gives me no way to signal what state I’m in. And because it shoves them all in a large pile, I get very few if any recommendations related to what Im looking for right now.

People are faceted, but YouTube fails to design UX to accommodate that reality — instead trying to be everything at once and so failing to be anything, ever.

I don't know about in the apps, but the web page has a row of tags above the videos that let you filter by topic. They're personalized, so you might have tags for those topics.

You might try the PocketTube extension to categorize your subscriptions:

https://yousub.info/

> Also, subscribe to a channel, get recommended their entire repertoire of the last decade. I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss.

I fear that there is a very big group (that is usually not on HN) that actually likes this. People who get absolutely hyped on some new channel and just have to watch everything on that channel. Not because it’s interesting content, but because for those few hours/days/weeks they feel that they “belong” to the community of that channel (even if they don’t meaningfully interact or discuss with the other people in that community or even the creator). This also gives them social status with friends. Then after a few hours/days/weeks, repeat the cycle (multiple cycles can run in parallel but not too much as it would affect your social status of being part of the hip cult-of-the-day). Obviously those people also watch stuff outside that channel, but they don’t mind being presented with videos of the same channel all the time, because again bragging rights that come with “oh I’ve really seen everything, look at this: seen it, seen it, …”).

(Seems a bit similar to some other demographic that is extremely into watching sports…)

There's nothing wrong with old content per-se. A true crime channel, for example, can have a lot of old content that's still interesting to watch. And thing for science and comedy. No need for any strange community feelings or bragging rights.

Now, this doesn't make sense for all types of content, of course, but definitely for some.

YouTube actually makes it quite hard to "completely watch" a channel; there's some channels that I just "discovered" and published interesting content over the years and ideally I'd just like to start at the start and watch stuff from their backlog that looks interesting. But with the stupid non-pagination "infinite scroll" it's pretty hard.

This recently happened to me. I discovered someone's channel and it turned out to be a gold mine of content that I had somehow never heard of. I didn't even have to subscribe and it would recommend me banger videos from the guy.

The same happened to me with Tom Cardy.

> I have stopped subscribing, and I'm actively unsubscribing from most channels except the very small ones that post twice a year and I don't want to miss.

Don't know if you knew this, you can use RSS to get feeds of the channels you want without subscribing or even having a Google account.

Good in-browser add-on for following, organizing etc. of RSS feeds: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/feedbroreader...

I use the RSS feeds with Elfeed for Emacs which allows me to search, filter, and modify feed entries as they are fetched. Additionally, you can use an https://invidious.io instance - which also provides RSS feeds - to avoid sharing any personally identifiable info to YouTube. I've setup elfeed to provide a keystroke to watch the videos ad-free using mpv. All together, this is a much more privacy and attention respecting way of consuming videos.

Interesting! That's the first project written in Crystal I've encountered in the wild.

https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

The feedbro extension can also filter with a bunch of criteria, set off by configurable triggers and a decent set of actions.

No need for a plugin. Just add the channel ID to this link:

  https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

And add that to your RSS reader.

I get everything in perfect chronological order, including livestream schedules.

IMO mass unsubbing is the wrong response to take if you want a good YouTube experience. The best way is the opposite: subscribe to EVERYTHING you like even a little bit, and then use the Subscriptions page as your home page. Ignore the real home page, ignore the algorithm entirely. I've done this and the irritation is gone.

I stay logged out, and use a private session when I go to YT. I keep a home page of bookmarks to content creators I enjoy content from, linking to their main page, and either follow one of those links in to see what they've posted lately or go to the home page for YT, ignore everything, and search for something specific. If I run into a new content creator I like, I add them to my bookmarks.

I started this for privacy reasons, but I really like it now because they don't know enough about you in a private session to mess with you, and their search is usually good enough to find what I'm looking for. There is then a golden period where the recommendations are actually useful that lasts for maybe a dozen videos or so after which they try to psychoanalyze you too much and then it's time to kill the old private session and start a new one.

I've gone from being anti-privacy to being anti-privacy and anti-algorithm both.

Mmm, this looks like it could also work for me. Thanks!

> What the hell is wrong with modern AI-driven recommendation engines

No idea but it's been an issue ever since I've used Amazon. In a way it's kind of reassuring that their AI is not smart enough to know that after buying a vaccuum cleaner, I am probably not going to immediately buy another one.

You are more likely to buy a vacuum cleaner just after you bought one than any other random point in time. Reason is that a percentage return their first buy for whatever reason. If you are going to target someone with ads for whatever product, the ROI is actually just after you bought something …

A better recommender system would suggest items that show off the capabilities of my shiny new vacuum: cat food, thumbtacks, coarse dirt, feathers...

I hate to admit it but the older videos proper work on me.

YouTube suggested Casey Neistat's first vlog for whatever reason[0]. A week or so later I've consumed the entire channel. Very decent recommend on YouTube's part if they're optimising for session duration that one.

[0]: I was in a bit of a "I might be a YouTuber as it turns out" moment at one point and I think I caught his How to vlog like Casey Neistat video or maybe Do What You Can't

Algo fail: I will see the same videos recommended visit after visit.

Just give me a "Not Interested" button over each recommended video so at the very least the pool is refreshed.

Click the dots and a submenu with a “not interested” button appears. You can even follow up with a reason.

I think your critique is misplaced though. Just because I don’t want to see a particular video right now, doesn’t mean I never want to see it.

Quite often there are two videos I wanna watch on the front page. Luckily I get recommended the other video later.

Thank you.

They arent recommendation engines. In the sense that recommendation is not the formal problem of showing someone content with a non-zero probability of their watching it. Recommendation, as we understanding it, means understanding our interests first.

Recommendations systems use average expressed preferences (ie., on-average watch frequency) in others to "recommend" you something.

If we didnt opt for such metaphorical naming things would be clearer. Recommendation should, mostly, just be called "Popularity Ranking".

But it does recommend videos to you. It is absolutely not just "Popularity Ranking".

On my youtube front page the first row of videos are: a recent Scott Manley video about some SpaceX thing (which is in my interests), a DnD game (which I have already seen on twitch, youtube of course has no way knowing that), a song from a band I'm listening to since a few days, and a video documenting a glider airplane adventure. All in my areas of interest and I highly doubt that these are the 4 most popular videos on youtube right now.

> Recommendation, as we understanding it, means understanding our interests first.

Yes. And that's what they try to do. Sometimes they fail. For a hypothetical lets say that I recommend to my friend that they should see the new superhero movie in cinemas. They go and watch it and they don't like it. Clearly that means that my recommendation was a bad one, but does it stop being a recommendation? Only perfect recommenders are worth that name?

It is just selecting users based on the videos you have watched. It isnt global popularity ranking, rather its ranking amongst users who also watch your videos.

Your watching a video is only a weak correlate of your preference. If I were recomemnding you something, I wouldnt ask you -- literally -- what specific videos you watch. I'd ask for your (real) preferences: are you bored right now? Do you want somerthing exiting? What's your mood? etc. etc.

The solution i find about subscribing channels;

I am selecting "Don't recommend channel" for subscribed channels so i see them only in Subscriptions page, i am afraid that Youtube can see it as i am not interested these channels and topics but i didn't see any downside with this method.

I am also unsubscribing frequently posting channels and bookmark them if i want to visit them later so my Subscription page don't have spam videos.

Also removing one time watched uninterested-topic videos from history may help algorithm.

I'm the opposite, I subscribed to lots of channels so that I always have new content from creators I like -- and never have to look at the recommendations.

Are you giving enough 'input' to the engine? Topics that you like or comment will be ranked higher.