None of these systems are for the people. It's either about YouTube's bottom dollar or some influencer's ego. It is really amazing to me when I come across old YouTube videos that are just people filming or discussing something interesting without fanfare. You can find newer people doing this these days as well, but it's hard. These types of videos are so refreshing because it's what YouTube should be about: people being creative in honest ways, people talking about or showing something they're interested in, etc.

This so much. I feel the same way, I remember when people would just make creative videos or goofy animations.

This is it. Exactly.

I've been working on a small team to tackle this problem. We have a working prototype if anyone is interested in checking it out. Look up a channel to get a list of channels in the same niche or related niches. It is specifically designed to surface smaller creators.

Here is our list for 3Blue1Brown, which seems to be popular around here:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw/

The icons are crawlable links, so you can click the channels in a given list to go to the list for that channel.

We also have mapped the channels to provide a new way to explore. The map clusters similar channels so you can get a spatial sense of where your interests are and what interests and niches are very far away, ones you may not consider or even be aware exist. For the curious, here is a short blog post explaining the map and how to use it:

https://channelgalaxy.com/blog/article0/

I hope this isn't too self-promotional. I think there is a need for this kind of thing and it is hard to resist the many, many cries of frustration about user exploration on YouTube and the narrowness of their recommendations that I frequently see around here.

Cheers!

It used to do that, though! They should at least allow it up to a limit or something rather than making it just that stupid.

My other biggest complaint really is the recommendation system in general. It's so bad that I can guarantee you that I can fall asleep to something innocuous like Spongebob Squarepants and in the morning I'll wake up and it's playing Jordan Peterson. EVERY. STINKING. TIME. It was like that before with Lex Fridman, and I totally had to unsubscribe and unlike a lot of Lex content before it would stop autoplaying it. I can't keep playing that game, but at least I can tolerate Peterson's voice more than Lex's.

Funny thing is I was never crazy about either one. They clearly profiled me as being the kind of person who watches that stuff. No, surely the fact I watch a lot of videos about theme park rides can't mean I want to see similar content. Obviously, I want to watch Jordan Peterson!!! :D /s

Without the market dominance, YouTube would be marginally better than its competitors.

YouTube disabled my entire feed a few weeks ago (https://i.imgur.com/Q78FqLQ.png) and is bullying with a big prompt to turn on tracking to restore it. What's funny is that recommendations have worked perfectly well for the last few years with history turned off (Just show me the stuff I subscribed to) but now I have to click on each subscription one-by-one to see content. Good riddance since I've pretty much stopped using Youtube at this point.

I don't get it.