Comment by NAHWheatCracker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NAHWheatCracker | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

NAHWheatCracker

I've been asking this myself specifically about Youtube lately. Sure, if I watch a poker/snooker/aoe2 video once, my home page will be plastered with videos on the same topic, but I barely ever click those videos and they remain there for weeks or months.

But the stuff that I really like I hardly ever get suggestions for related videos. Eg. h3h3, idubbbz, ozzy man reviews.

In particular, I wish that I could discover more channels that I want to subscribe to.

I'm thinking it's a multifaceted problem:

- a lack of content creators that are like these

- difficulty in drawing connections between channels

- overwhelming amounts "easy" content for simple suggestions

I have trouble believing they can't draw connections between channels, and I also have trouble believing they can't filter out low quality "easy" content suggestions when I basically never go there.

However; I feel like Google is ignoring my most watched content for suggestions, possibly because they've demonetized a lot of the content that I enjoy, which means they can't profit by suggesting those videos.

It feels like Youtube's recommendations are extremely overfitted. Just because I watched 10 episodes of a series yesterday doesn't mean that I'm interested in watching episode 31 of that series.

It also seems like the recommendation system is ridiculously sensitive to recent activity. Sometimes I feel like learning about swords, then I watch like six youtube videos on swords, and then my entire recommended feed is filled with youtube videos on swords. Maybe one in twenty is actually interesting enough that I feel like watching it, but I don't want to click through because I don't want to teach youtube that I want to view lots more videos about swords.

The content recommendation is just really terrible at surfacing videos on niche topics in general without greedily diving into the niche and just showing that particular subject. I want to get recommended videos that nerd out about swords, bridge design, psychology and personality, cinematography, economics, and all sorts of other topics. I don't want to watch five videos about swords and get recommendations for another hundred sword videos.

I think the fundamental problem, really, is that Youtube's core user-base is really young. Like, really young. Think six, not sixteen. The recommendation algorithm has to do a good job of tablet-as-daycare.

I can't stand that about Youtube and FB, which is one of the reason I gave up on FB. The algorithms create a self-imposed echo chamber. My workaround has been opening Youtube in a private window in the browser so I can see all the stuff I'm missing.

It works well for me. For example, my top suggestion right now is a video called 'Dairy Lovers Try Different Types of Milk.' That is exactly the kind of content I’m into.

"However; I feel like Google is ignoring my most watched content for suggestions, possibly because they've demonetized a lot of the content that I enjoy, which means they can't profit by suggesting those videos."

The suggestions are not for your benefit but for the ad buyers'. That's where their money comes from. If you keep that in mind most weird behavior from companies like Facebook or Google makes sense. Of course there is sometimes also the element of stupidity.

I remember reading an article about youtube suggestions always suggesting the worst stuff for reasons of keeping the user attention captive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com