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Comment by Avamander | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets heavily personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years.

Anyone who has used YouTube enough while logged in probably has noticed how music playlists start looping the same songs and how recommendations start repeating.

I've found that the best method to avoid that is actively reverse train the suggestion "neural net" or whatever they use. Asking friends for video recommendations, refreshing page multiple times when recommendations are all too similar, marking suggestions of known topics as boring, clicking on new topics more than old ones and so on.

It's really rather fascinating how easy it is to fall into a bubble and how hard is it to extend it. I do suspect it works great for most users and that's why it is like that.

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The thing that frustrates me is that I follow a lot youtubers who don't post frequently and then some that do. The infrequent posts are typically electrical engineering or computer science related. I enjoy these topics more than others, but watch less of them due to the frequency of posts. I also follow some gaming stuff and liberal librarian politics as well as a few other things related to medical science and a smattering of random other topics. Without fail, YouTube will stop recommending engineering topics to me and try to send me down the rabbit hole of clickbait gaming and political topics. It's infuriating b/c after a few weeks, I notice I've not seen any engineering related videos and then have to go back and search through the channels to see what I missed. YT even hides them the sub feed. WTH?

> YT even hides them the sub feed.

I see YouTubers claim that YT does this, but personally, I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed. I've also never seen direct evidence, it's only YouTubers claiming that this is happening to their subscribers, as a way of explaining some downturn in the number of views. I suspect many of them are confused about the "notification" feature, which I don't know I've ever seen anyone actually use. (Also, sometimes a video can get stuck in "processing", in which case it won't show up in the feed until it's finished processing.)

Do you have some examples of this happening? I'm almost certain if you could provide screenshots, e.g. of the channel and of your subscription feed, showing the missing video, that YouTube would consider this a bug. The subscription feed is supposed to show all the new videos from channels you're subscribed to.

> I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed […] Do you have some examples of this happening?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3lnEJVuGA

See comments, this was definitely happening to several subscribers.

> I've never encountered a single video on a channel that I'm subscribed to that didn't show up in my subscriptions feed.

This is also my experience, I've even closely paid attention to the videos of YouTubers that claim this type of thing is happening and I still have always seen their videos appear in my feed.

I’ve had basically the identical experience. I swear it even seems to turn off notifications to some of the more obscure channels and I have to turn them back on again. The niche stuff (Engineering, Chemistry, Modular-synth stuff, demoscene stuff, Math, countless others) is YouTube’s strength in my opinion. It’s disappointing that they so strongly discourage that use.

Yes, I have a similar experience. Youtube/Google is shoving down our throats content that is monetized (hence huge channels) and it makes everybody else disappear more or less. We need to index youtube from the outside and take back control. Basically a giant table with channels and last added video would solve that and the link to the last video.

We have to take control back!

Those small channels should enable monetization tbh and just recommend adblockers to their viewers. That way the algoritm doesn't punish them. I know Franlab does so and it works.

"Don't forget to click that bell!"

If people really listen to this, but do not click on recommended videos afterwards, this has a negative effect on the CTR which should turn out bad for the YTers.

I think for those it’s best to subscribe to the RSS feed of the channel. Feed readers are great for infrequently updated content!

I don't go to Youtube for news / information, I go there for entertainment. In that regard, the "bubble" works well, because it recommends the type of content I find interesting.

However, I have refrained from clicking on videos before even if they seemed interesting in the moment, because I don't want to extend my "bubble" in that direction (I've gotten that before). So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to extend.

Some topics seem stickier than others. Like clicking on one Jordan Peterson video seems like enough to change a third of the front page to other videos by him.

At least that's how it works for my account even though I'm completely uninterested in the guy.

Aye. I fucked up once and clicked a link to a PragerU vid that was being discussed on reddit. Non-stop recommendations about OWNING LIBS for a few weeks.

It's gotten to the point where I don't click links simply because I don't want to get spammed.

At least on desktop, you can remove videos from your watch history, which I think will drop them from the recommendations algorithm. Search here and click the X on the offending videos: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

I have gotten similar behavior but for a more innocuous subject lately my youtube feed has been flooded with Warhammer40k videos after I made the mistake of clicking on a video on the subject.

I clicked on one of his videos like a year back to try to figure out what all the hubbub was about. I have auto delete history after 3 months on. Only video I ever clicked on about him, I still occasionally get inundated with his videos every once in awhile. I can also confirm that using YouTube in this way does not lead to a lot of variety, even though I am subscribed to a large amount of things. The video recommendations do not seem to ever show me when people I'm subscribed to post videos.

It also works in the reverse, you click one video but ignore the rest and it doesn't suggest you more. Meaning that one video doesn't usually throw it entirely out of whack.

> even though I'm completely uninterested in the guy

You are so not interested in him that you a) know his name and b) watch his videos?

If you want to get rid of something you only clicked once, click something you like 2-3 times and it will not be listed in the first results anymore. After some time it will disappear if you really do not watch this kind of content.

This works with and without account.

You can just open the video in a private window to avoid influencing the recommendation engine.

if it comes from the same ip address at the same time i'm pretty sure it counts it too, as I sometimes get similar recomendations coming up from my other PC which has a different account, pretty sure I cant hide my porn browsing by using a VM for the same reason :-)

But then you have to pay for it with ads, and they're really cranking the thumbscrews with the ads these days.

EDIT: on the other hand, a few days back I accidentally used private browsing on a technical video and got a few of those mythical good ads of the sort that inform you about a genuinely interesting and relevant product you didn't know about. So maybe it's not the worst thing ever.

There is always Ublock origin for the web and vanced for android .

> Ublock origin

It's not been blocking youtube ads for me for a week or two.

Or remove the video from your Watch History after watching it.

> So in my experience, the bubble is actually too easy to extend.

Yes to the point where looking for content on prehistory can lead to flat earther conspiracy theory rubbish.

why do you think it's a good thing that you're in an entertainment bubble? The same criticism that applies to a news bubble applies to entertainment as well, it narrows people's scope.

Maybe if youtube did not keep you in an etertainment bubble you would find much more music you unexpectedly enjoy from artists or genres you haven't heard of.

> why do you think it's a good thing that you're in an entertainment bubble?

For example, when I'm in the mood to watch sailing videos, I don't want to get bombarded with Taylor Swift's latest concert (which I have absolutely no interest in) in the recommendations. My interests don't necessarily align with what's "popular", and anything bubble-less will necessarily have the popularity of something as one of its inputs.

Compare that with news, where some events are important enough that _everyone_ should know about them (COVID-19, for example), local events affect you more, etc. There, the bubble is a hindrance to your situation awareness.

As for music, I mostly use Google Play Music for that, through which I have discovered a lot of new artists.

> I don't go to Youtube for news / information

In general it seems that social media regarding news and politics is almost always toxic and should be avoided.

Twitter in particular is entirely awful because the format prohibits any intelligent discourse.

Before I have an actual Youtube account, I had thought it would have some really smart recommendation algorithms.

But now that I have my personalized "bubble", I'm utterly disappointed. At least from my observation, it mainly uses three strategies: 1) repeating what I've seen, 2) offering video from the same channels I've watched from, and 3) suggesting really popular videos.

The repeat is the worst, especially since it seems to favor interviews, funny clips, etc. which are not really re-watch worthy, even if they were a good watch for the first time.

Then, since I haven't subscribed to a lot of channels, 2) is melding into 1).

At this point, I don't even look at the "Home" tab anymore. I do a refresh on my subscribed list, and if nothing is there, I just move on.

>I'm not sure how it "exposes", was it not known that it gets heavily personalized? I've certainly noticed it for years

It shows what the homepage looks like for someone in a variety of different bubbles. You knew it was happening, this exposes how it looks.

I find that aggravating when I want to explore for new things especially when I don't know what I looking for. It used to be great to just explore around but it no longer working now.

What I find good, in a way, is that I get bored quick and get off Youtube, otherwise it could be a serious time blackhole.

I think the only way to escape their recommendation engine is to use an outside source to index youtube videos and control/randomize it better from there.

Also the recommendation are not so bad: for example in the conspiracy bubble I expected a lot worse, but they mix the few strange conspiracy videos with less "crazy" and more scientific ones like Buzzfeed Unsolved or the Kurzgesagt channels.

>how music playlists start looping the same songs

This is one thing that infuriates me. They do SUCH a poor job of branching out compared to other services, including Google Music.

I find it rather drifts towards the mainstream, not even stuff I like or have seen before, but just stuff with more views. I start out on something with 100s or 1000s of views, the suggestions have 10k views, and the suggestions after moving there have 100k to 1M views, and before you know it, you're back in the mainstream again.

Weird my seems to go toward as niche a subject as it can then flood me with it. i am getting counterfactual/alt-history and wh40k videos filling my homepage this month.

Not sure if we can conclude what it actually does, but there's a difference between 'heavily personalized' and 'placing people into defined common defined categories with clear boundaries and content' in terms of societal impact

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