Comment by ud_0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ud_0 | Hacker News Reader

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> I tried disliking

Don't do that! The algorithm counts that as an engagement action.

What you need to do is click on the three dots symbol next to the video title and select "don't recommend this channel". This absolutely fixes it. You may have to do this a lot. There is also a general "don't recommend this" option that, anecdotally, doesn't work as well.

Also, disable autoplay. It doesn't seem like YT can distinguish between clicking on a video and it just playing on autoqueue.

The YT algorithm is not fundamentally different from the other social media algorithms out there: it tries to serve you up with controversial content that "engages" you. You are most likely to be "engaged" by content you either directly disagree with, or by second-source channels that report on content you disagree with. As a fallback, the algorithm will also try to serve you content based on your cohorts, which can in of itself be pretty radical and disagreeable.

Get a YT Premium account if you can, sending a very small message that you vote against ads and all the algorithmic baggage that comes with them.

> Get a YT Premium account if you can, sending a very small message that you vote against ads and all the algorithmic baggage that comes with them.

YT premium users are still presented with the same recommendations as normal users, are they not? That's kinda my problem with the service. Sure you don't actually see the ads, but you're still using an advertising-based platform with all the user-hostile design that model encourages.

Oh absolutely, I'm recommending this because of the second part of my sentence above. I believe the ad model is bad for both consumers and companies, in ways that are not immediately obvious. Ad models tend to generate perverse incentives in my opinion. I also think it's important to signal a willingness to be a reasonable consumer, and to me it's also about ethics: I watch a lot of Youtube, I can afford to pay for YT Premium, and I run an adblocker.

I'm actually not sure that it works that way.

I watch a lot of YouTube content that's outright demonetized, and demonetization consistently correlates with recommendations and views plummeting as well. Yet this same content still shows up in my recommendations. My theory is that for free users, YouTube prefers to recommend videos that are monetized, because obviously they have a vested interest in doing so. For premium users, YouTube doesn't care about ad revenue--in fact, they may even have a slight incentive to recommend demonetized videos because then they don't have to pay a share of my premium subscription revenue to the creator. Instead, they're optimizing for keeping me interested enough to maintain my subscription.

I see this even with Netflix: the movies look like they are designed for optimizing for the longest view time instead of also taking account people who are older, willing to pay for shorter view time, but well written and produced content and storyline. The last example was Brave New World where my girlfriend also read the book, and even she wasn't able to explain me the series, because it just didn't make sense (although the visuals were beautiful).

Yes, a view is a view and a dislike is engagement. If you really don't want to see people or content, use the triple dot menu and click 'not recommended' or 'don't recommend this channel' (which actually straight filters it out).

> Don't do that! The algorithm counts that as an engagement action.

Do you have a source for that? Though it does sound plausible in a world where "we want to keep people viewing our ads for as long as possible" is the _only_ goal of the developers, I find it hard to be _so_ cynical about Google that I believe that "let's show people more videos they have told us they dislike!" would get past the idea stage.

> they have told us they dislike!

if they feel passionate enough about it to watch, then dislike it, the video would trigger other people for more engagements.

The opposite of like is not hate - it's apathy. You want to be apathetic towards clickbait. You want to be apathetic towards those sorts of videos.

> Do you have a source for that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx9Jv5uxfac

Here you go. :)

The "don't recommend this" notably has two reasons on the "tell us more" dialog: "I've already seen this video", and "I don't like this video".

I often use the former, after watching stuff via mpv (chromium has tearing, but more notably, high enough CPU usage to annoy me with a half-broken fan that's quite loud).

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