Comment by alecco
5 days ago
Watching YouTube anonymously with different browsers and cycling VPNs frequently, I see it quickly ends up suggesting the same videos during the same week. Not similar videos but the same ones. Many of those videos are below 1M and not particularly notable. This is after only watching a couple of videos and those videos are different every session. Either it has some magic fingerprinting I am not aware of (and I go to lengths to avoid this) or it quickly puts me in a bin of generic results.
It feels like the YouTube algorithm is either way more manual than we think or it has rules that end up showing the same things. Or both. Or something more sinister.
I've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in skimpy clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying to hook me up on those. Even after clicking around very different videos (infosec, low level code, workshop). It's like it refuses to learn what I want to watch.
When watching with my account on YouTube mobile app it keeps trying to push dumber content. I wasted years giving it feedback with "not interested" and "Don't recommend channel". It only keeps pushing videos of channels I liked 1 video 1 time long ago. If I like a DefCon video the algo will pester me with garbage shock content for infosec.
Recently, I liked a cppcon wait free programming presentation and then YouTube started pestering me (again) with the Indian programming 101 videos with terrible sound and rushed video. I had to give it like 10 "not interested" / "Don't recommend channel" for it to stop.
Ironicaly, about a year ago, I started watching a really good ML channel by an Indian guy with great animations an in-depth explanations. Top level. And YouTube rarely suggested his content. I had to go to his channel to look for things or search the channel name and some keywords. It feels like YouTube punishes sophisticated content.
I think there is no true algorithm. Or that it has rules to never suggest me the content I actually want to watch.
And don't get me started with YouTube search.
Sadly most of the content I want to watch is hidden deeply in the garbage pile of YouTube.
> I've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in skimpy clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying to hook me up on those.
There was another post on HN recently about "multi-armed bandit" problems and an algorithm which occasionally retries previously nonperforming choices on purpose to "test" if their performance has changed.
I wonder if YouTube's algorithm works similarly, i.e. occasionally suggesting a video that has nothing to do with your preferences, to see if it can hook you.
This seems logical to me, there have been times when I wanted to hop off a deep dive after watching enough and wanted to move to something else. But I was probably immune to suggestion before getting to that point.
That satisfaction threshold is probably understood for someone like me who doesn't browse anonymously
Also, it might hook other people who watch similar videos to you. So the algorithm, thinks it might work on you based on the profile it has on you, based off the videos you watch.
I find that going into your history and removing offending videos that seem to be driving the algorithm is more effective than using the "not interested" option on newly recommended videos
Yes. Forgot about it. I keep the history clean, too. But it's only fractionally better.
> I've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in skimpy clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying to hook me up on those. Even after clicking around very different videos (infosec, low level code, workshop). It's like it refuses to learn what I want to watch.
This has made me realize that YouTube is like the leading platform for piracy and porn. If you have any interest in sports the frontpage will be littered with pirated livestreams from channels like ESPN, and while they may not be explicitly pornography, the skimpy girl content is basically that.