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Comment by Quarrelsome | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. It painfully overfits based on what I've watched. I've watched thousands of videos and it still doesn't understand me at all because it appears to treat every action as equal. As an example, I like watching the Starcraft II streamer uThermal but I'm not really interested in other Starcraft II content creators because uThermal scratches that itch. However YouTube will keep showing me Starcraft II content creators that I am not subbed to and whose content I will never watch.

Of the 30 videos currently proposed to be on front page I'd consider watching maybe 4 of them. To be honest I'm a big fan of the change they made to occasionally show new content because it actually provides some novelty (one of those 4 is of a video from a creator with only 19 subscribers).

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The worst is that if you're someone who enjoys multiple niche things and who also interacts with the algorithm (like - dislike - not interested) your account gets marked as content discovery vanguard and it will endlessly feed you videos with <1000 views just so they can get more feelers on if the content is actually good.

Even if you consistently "not interested", the algorithm never ever figures out the overlapping theme is that you (generally) don't like low view count low subscriber count content.

As a fellow uThermal enjoyer, I have to admit the algorithm knew enough to suggest him to me if I was watching battlecruiser cheese.

I just wish they'd recognize that the fifty-first time I don't watch a video they should find something else to show me.

Ahh a fellow Mr Guy <3.

(I just wanted to use Mr Guy in a sentence once in my life)

I find it painfully overfits time of day. I get the same investment themed videos late at night on autoplay.

Isn't your first parapraph an example of YouTube's algorithm underfitting though?

Youtube's front page is terrible:

- Of the topmost 4 videos I would consider watching one because I am already subscribed to the channel and even have the particular video in Watch Later (so what's the point?)

- Shorts appearing again and again after I explicitly remove them, taking up valuable space

- Below some random videos half of which I am already subscribed to so I can see them in Subscriptions - no need for duplicates

- The other half in large part is of doomerism, although I don't watch that content

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