Comment by magicalhippo
5 days ago
While I do agree it has a very strong focus on suggesting more of what you've recently watched, I feel it's also managing to suggest new and interesting unrelated stuff from time to time.
Some habits I have is to subscribe to channels which I truly enjoy, instead of marking as "not interested" I select "do not suggest channel", and be cautious of click-bait titles. If I get lured in, I remove them from my history.
So for me it's mostly great, though I get your frustration as well. For example I recently watched a couple of informative videos on the LA fires as I have some relatives living in the area, and suddenly my feed is tons of that and little else.
I've found sometime in the last year or so YouTube has been suggesting random videos from very small channels much more, which I like a lot. Most of the videos are garbage, but every once in a while I'll find a gem that entertains me and my friends.
Recently I found a video of a young kid doing a taste test of a sour soda, and then demanding his dad come over from the other room to try it too. At one point the kid does a really loud burp that I found funny. Obviously not something that will do numbers, but it satisfies my people-watching itch.
You’ll get a kick out of this if you haven’t already seen it - a collection of random slice of life videos uploaded during the time when iPhones had a built in “send to YouTube” button. So many fascinating moments that would otherwise be lost to time. https://walzr.com/IMG_0001
While I cherish other kinds of videos, I too have noticed smaller creators getting recommended, and few large ones. Perhaps because most of the channels I subscribe to are smaller channels?
I too liked to prime my own algorithm but Yanis Varoufakis book Technofeudalism kind of ruined it for me. On a individual level it's nice to get good recommendations, but on a societal level I think it's starting to get a bit scary to the point of me wanting to opt out and instead curate my own feeds based on first hand sources.
Yeah I get your point, though I almost exclusively use YouTube as an alternative to TV entertainment. That is, rather than watching Mythbusters, I'm watching Numberphile, FarmCraft101 and such.
I specifically do not normally view "pure" news or similar. I might make the rare exception, like in case of the LA fire where I saw a clip from PBS. That is a very conscious choice, for reasons similar to what you express.