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Comment by nicetryguy | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago, i used to get youtube recommendations based only on the video i was watching at the time, and it was awesome! I could discover new videos/songs related to the video i was watching much more easily.

Lately, most/all of the recommendations are based globally on every video i've ever watched, so the recommendations are almost the same no matter what video i watch, so it's tougher to discover new things. For some reason, it insists on constantly recommending videos i have watched before, which is annoying. Maybe it's because i use youtube as a music player often and i do repeat videos. It is amazing for video game OSTs, which i enjoy and are hard to find anywhere else.

I could certainly see how this could lead people into isolated thought bubbles, especially with how the algorithm is lately compared to a few years ago, it has happened with myself to some extent.

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> For some reason, it insists on constantly recommending videos i have watched before, which is annoying.

The insanity is deeper than that:

1) YouTube recommends videos they _know_ you watched before (they're marked as watched).

2) YouTube forgets which videos you've watched after a few months. Google, of all companies, forgets what I've watched. WTF?

3) So even if YouTube didn't recommend videos you've watched before, they'll forget in a few months anyway and recommend it again.

4) And you can't mark videos as watched. Say you watched a video elsewhere. YouTube recommends it to you. But you've already seen it. Can't mark it as watched. Can't make Google not recommend it. Even if you could, they'll just forget in a few months.

5) Watched a video, but skipped the last 5 minutes because it's sponsorship content? YouTube: Better not mark that as watched and instead recommend that you finish it for the next few months.

Some people, like me, will watch the same video multiple times, if not dozens.

YouTube likely isn’t forgetting that you’ve watched it. It is probably suggesting it again because it thinks it has been enough time you’d want to watch it again.

> YouTube likely isn’t forgetting that you’ve watched it.

No, they do. Videos that you've watched are marked as such. They have a red bar at the bottom of the video thumbnail that shows how much of the video you've watched. For ones you've watched all the way through, it's just a solid red bar.

After a few months, YouTube just forgets. I can go to, say, Chubbyemu's channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos), which I've watched most videos on, and it only shows that I've watched videos 6 months or newer. YouTube forgets everything past that.

The point of my post was multi-fold. YouTube will recommend a video they _know_ you've watched; it's got the red bar at the bottom. But even if they didn't do that, they'll forget in six months anyway and recommend it anyway.

> Some people, like me, will watch the same video multiple times, if not dozens.

Hmmm, yeah, you're right. I do the same. Must be that their AI has learned that behavior, but hasn't quite figured out what makes a video "rewatchable" yet.

I think I was just being needlessly pedantic.

For whatever reason I was fixated on the word 'forgetting' meaning that /all/ records where lost or deleted and that it couldn't mean they just get rid of the visual indicator after some time in order to trick you.

Upon reflection, that's a bit silly of me. Sorry.

No worries. I didn't think you were being pedantic; I figured my comment wasn't worded clearly. Hope my reply didn't seem defensive? I was just trying to clarify.

But yeah, it's possible that Google does keep the records around, but don't surface it in the UI after six months for some reason. Could be an optimization, to keep the edge databases lean. Or it could be a weird dark pattern.

Probably their bloom filter implementation?

Yes, that change in the right bar recommendations was very noticeable (though it happened quite some time ago). Like you I find the new system much less useful.

This has all the hallmarks of one of those changes driven by single-minded metric chasing (engagement!) instead of principled reasoning on what the product should do and feel like to use.

100% Agree. The sad part is, at least for me, it works... i definitely waste more time on youtube now....

That said, i also think production value in popular channels has really skyrocked the last few years. We've entered kind of a golden age for user generated content, for better or worse. It is very entertaining but very much more addicting.

For example, i watched a guy for years who reviewed classic synthesizers and made silly songs. He has recently made an entire 2hr documentary on the history of ARP synthesizers with engineer interviews and everything! It is like some Ken Burns level stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31RXiVSI9s Nothing on youtube existed like this a few years ago. It is an amazing world we live in now.

There's no question about the value of the content youtube has accumulated. It's their stewardship of it that worries me.

Google tends to let automation do most of the work and apply a heavy hand to issues. I lost an entire account a few years ago, gmail address and all, due to copyrighted music on video games i was streaming. I got hard locked out, I didn't have personal info tied to that account, and they wanted some crazy validation information like what month did i create the account, and i had no idea. Since i only had 300 followers or so, there was nothing i could do to get it back. It was a bad feeling. It really made me think twice about what you do with big G, because they can take everything all away in an instant.

I can't imagine trying to administrate / police all of the people / content on youtube. It's an impossible task. There are hundreds of millions of users with thousands of hours of content being generated every second of every day. It also cost more to run than it generates, so it's practically a public service. I wish there were more customization for recommendations though.

Alex Ball is freaking amazing. He did a short podcast about that video last week, which I found interesting. https://www.soundonsound.com/people/alex-ball-making-arp-syn...

Yup, I've made the same observation as well. If you somewhat want the "old" youtube back, block all cookies and other saved content from the domain. You'll get a better video recommendation experience, unfortunately at the cost of no logged in session.

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