How YouTube perfected the feed
theverge.com
theverge.com
Instead, it seems to either:
1. Hide stuff I actually wanted to see from channels I'm subscribed to 2. Show me videos I've already seen before. 3. Show completely irrelevant videos 4. Mix up subscriptions and recommendations by recommending videos I'd already have seen if they showed me the bloody subscriptions in the first place.
And watch later... oh boy, their idea of videos to show there seems to be stuff I've either seen years ago and didn't like enough to finish, or that I've seen multiple times and didn't finish once or twice because I saw something new to watch.
Otherwise I agree completely.
Feels like a generational difference. I'm from the generation that prided itself on its ability to selectively craft one's own "feed" (RSS originally) by spending time finding the highest quality, most relevant sources of trusted content.
The author of this piece doesn't take that approach. And YouTube caters to such. [edited to be less judgmental]
I'm constantly annoyed that the YouTube homepage requires several clicks for me to find new videos posted by channels I subscribe to. The organization on the home page is different every single day. My only options are to delete suggested channels (to see them reappear a week later!!). But in small print on the side, YouTube taunts me that it actually does remember all the channels I've subscribed to. It just thinks that it knows better what I want to be watching.
And you know what? I probably do spend more time on the site because of this shitty design. But what their algorithms don't tell them is the slowly simmering resentment I have toward the site and my feeling of being in an increasingly adversarial role with Google as a whole. Maybe that feeling will never have any monetary impact on anyone, but it seems dangerous to ignore.
I'm sorry but your melodramatic attitude makes it very hard to take you seriously. Simmering resentment? Adversarial role? Come on. It's as simple as getting a YT browser extension.
Same can be said about the insufferable video suggestions that now cover half the embedded player right where you have got used to click to pause/unpause it over the years.
YouTube UX designers implement this dark pattern, then look cheerfully at their metrics as if people are really into it because they use it so much. When I know for a fact I've mis-clicked it almost every time it's popped up.
Drowning design decisions in metrics needs to die, it's just a breeding ground for dark patterns.
The searches mean that what I'm shown in a specific session tend to be related to that session's focus, and not random other stuff from 18 months ago.
It's a tremendous incentive to not log in to YouTube.
However, their music recommendations for me have improved drastically in the last few months. I've discovered so many obscure indie bands that it has become my go-to discovery platform now.
My biggest complaint with youtube is that the feed is awful. It doesn't help me discover new stuff I like, it doesn't even help me discover obvious stuff like new uploads from posters I like. I don't know what the hell they're doing, but I've caught myself resorting to google searches to find Youtube content that I like on more than one occasion. Maybe I'm a minority, but the entire front page of youtube is a huge miss for me.
The feed seems to be incredibly biased towards recently watched videos, to the point where clicking a single weird link on reddit is enough to fuck up my top suggested videos for a while.
Noticed several other scenarios like this where you watch a part of one video on a topic and YT's algorithm will try and force a certain YouTuber on you for the rest of the time you use that account.
This isn't perfecting this is force feeding. Respect my blocks.
A giant feed of neurally recommended videos, created by average people with passion in topics really feels like the future.
Sure, show me a few related videos, but often it can be a large percentage of the home page taken up by a section like this.
The same over-personalisation is an issue in a lot of Google platforms. On the Google news feed in Android, when I enabled personalisation it became dominated by unimportant articles about games, films, or TV shows I'd looked up recently, and hardly any general news. Not to mention the filter bubble of Google searches in general. I find this trend of over personalisation inconvenient, and not to mention a bit creepy.
This is a console-based audio- and video-playing tool which allows me to:
1. Search for content.
2. View detailed information.
3. Search by user or YouTube playlist.
4. Selective add or remove items from a current playlist.
5. Save and manage multiple named playlists.
6. Queue up large sets of content to be accessed. Including audio-only, in background (my preferred mode).
7. Works on Android via Termux.
8. Keyboard playback controls to skip, jump, play, pause, speed, or slow playback. (Similar to mplayer's if you're familiar with those.)
9. No ads.
10. No comments.
11. No recommended "fail", "dash-cam", or "blackhead" crap. That corner of YouTube.
It's everything I've wished YouTube was, and that it isn't.
Works wonders for click baity videos that you're likely to regret if it affected recomendations.
1. it shows me cool new stuff
2. it keeps me on the site
1 is obvious. 2 is questionable. It could be a consequence of point 1. Or it could be a matter of sneaky manipulative tactics. I am suspicious of platforms' recommendation algorithms. They are working for the interests of the platform, not necessarily mine. (But that isn't the way it needs to be. Recommendation bots independent of platforms could resolve this conflict-of-interest issue.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-ro...
The other option is to use a downloader (yt-download, mps-youtube -- seem my comment elsewhere) to specify only what you want to watch, without YouTube's "helpful" drug-pusher suggestions.
In light of recent transgressions against speech on their platform, I wouldn't use the word "perfect" to describe YouTube feed.