Comment by xg15
5 days ago
> 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.