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Comment by rorykoehler | Hacker News Reader

YouTube recommendations are awful. I watch one video out of curiosity and am then flooded with similar videos. There is no nuance just a deluge of shit. Even stuff I am interested in is annoying to see day in day out. It pares the world down into a few niches in turn stopping you from discovering new and interesting things outside of what you already know.

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Do you mostly watch videos from people you already subscribe to?

YouTube behaves the same way for me, and I am wondering if it's just a perception thing. If I watch an MTB video, it's mostly MTB recommendations, but they're all people I am subscribed to so it's not notable. But if I watch a video about metalworking, it probably shows the same kind of spread just for a topic and channels I'm not familiar with, making it feel like it's lost it's way.

I also wonder if they don't weight subscriptions that highly for the recommendations, and because I mostly watch subscriptions, if I watch a new topic it's heavily weighted because there's not much other data.

Yes I do and I also think this may be part of the issue.

That is a very interesting perspective. Maybe that is why I don't mind watching clips from Apples yearly shows, which are 100% commercials, but loath youtube ads/sponsorships. They are both advertising, but one is really high quality, the other is squarespace.

YouTube refs are great for music, but awful for any kind of ‘content’

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