Show HN: Unofficial YouTube Wrapped 2023, see top creators and watching habits | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Unofficial YouTube Wrapped 2023, see top creators and watching habits

videorecap.viewodyssey.com

48 pointseightants11 comments

Great concept, although I'm hesitant to share my watch history with a third party just for a review.

Even Twitch has their own Wrapped! Why doesn't YouTube have an official one as well? We all know they're tracking this data anyway. It really baffles me that YouTube is leaving any kind of celebration of community on the table without acknowledgement, especially after killing Rewind.

It mentions that the data is processed locally. I checked the network requests, it does save some data. It included the top channels, num videos watched, and a bit of watching habits. Would be great to have something like this open-source which is completely browser based.

Here I am, hesitant to even let first party services remember this

Spare me the algorithm, it serves them - not me. I need to find less content, not more.

While this is a fun and interesting way to see what you've watched for your personal amusement and even sharing if you so choose, what else could be done...?

I'm curious if the general public would react if a tool like this took it further to then show you the analysis that targeting advertisers can use based on these metrics. Obviously, this isn't the entire set of data used, but it would show a great deal of the "logic".

Or, would it be possible to create an alternate suggestion algo than YT's? The algo would be based less on ad sales or engagement, but proper suggestions based on similarity to what you were watching. Allow the user to then start tweaking the suggestions then and there with buttons that encouraged/discouraged similar content in the suggestions and other types of things that YT will never allow. Is that even something people would do? I'm guessing yes if people are willing to download/upload this data just to get a summary that's not directly beneficial to finding more content. <shrugs>

I feel like the odd one out being completely uninterested in stats like this...

Largely for what you allude to: what else are they doing (or could) with this?

I don't know. It's not like I feel exposure through my YT viewing or music listening habits. What harm is there? Probably little/none.

I still have history disabled/listen offline, though.

It just feels suspect. We get used to being watched, more rent seekers pop out of the woodwork, or other things I can't envision.

The juice isn't worth the squeeze, I don't need a companion for my entertainment

Pretty cool! Your project also made me genuinely miss the yearly tradition of YouTube rewind. Too bad it got cancelled indefinitely.

It was fun to watch, but became more and more plastic over time. Excluding the clip show one.

When I upload my watch-history.json, I very breifly see an error saying something like "No creators found". My json file looks fine to me.

Love that 3rd button to get a preview.

Broken. "No creators found"

Cool.

Really liked it.

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