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Comment by pilooch | Hacker News Reader

TikTok algorithm is like a tamgotchi with short memory. The echo chamber is actual much less than on other systems, or at least this is my actual understanding. I've been working on AI and ML for 20+y now, I'm always interested is testing the systems out there from the user side. Overall, I've been surprised by TikTok, as I did find it very enjoyable actually, and easily 'trainable'.

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Why does YouTube not change their algorithim. It is clearly sub tier to tik tok, they have the data and skill set to provide new and entertaining videos but the recommended feed has been so stale and stagnant for a few years, constantly pushing videos you’ve seen or ones you clearly don’t want to watch. How much of tik tok’s success do you think is their algorithim for recommending content. I heard from numerous people how addicting it is and how every video is different. Do you think the short videos give more instant gratification which has a Large effect? I use YouTube shorts and for the most part it is really entertaining

Yea, It may be as simple as the length. There's a vastly higher frequency of samples when every video is twenty seconds long.

It's also clearly designed around a different experience, a constant consume-or-scroll feed as popularized by Instagram. YouTube shorts also has this, but regular YouTube clearly doesn't, given that there's just enough latency between video skips that it feels like the algorithm is "making mistakes" at a much lower number of skips.

Exactly right. More data beats better algorithms every time. Because YouTube is (foolishly IMO) trying to turn itself into television, they've pursued 10+ minute videos even when there's only ~30 seconds of content. Tiktok's success is well deserved.

YouTube's algorithm used to be better, they neutered it at some point after all the articles about "YouTube Radicalization" dropped. Feels like it's heavily moderated or throttled on what can bubble up now, which probably results in less novel content and novel content is where TikTok excels.

I wonder about the 'other' viewers on youtube, the matching to 'you might also like' content is terrible. At best I get a lot of the same channel, or videos containing the same title, or worse still the celebrity garbage that is popular in the country at the time.

The algo also doesnt seem to get the hint - it suggests a video over and over again, an no matter how many times I dont ever watch a video on X channel or on Y subject, it keeps on trying.

While I am complaining, Netflix algo is getting worse too. Stop reccomending the movie I watched earlier in the week, I watched it. I clicked thumbs down on it. I dont want to waste another 90 minutes on it.

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