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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, that's where I get some of the most use out of YouTube, the recommended videos main page. Sometimes I'm annoyed they aren't showing me enough variation based on my subscriptions and past likes. I'm not sure why I'd want this.

Sometimes I'm watching a technical presentation/talk by someone and I'll get other talks of theirs on the recommended videos for that video page, which is useful, or followup videos on a topic.

What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?

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The problem is actually how good those recommendations are. They're designed to keep your eyes glued to the site as long as possible. It's a personal choice, but removing recommendations is one of the best things for your mental health if you're going to use YT or any social media.

That said, I also find them useful. But some people believe that it's better to seek out information for yourself even if being spoonfed is easier.

If I feel a need to watch a video, especially "watch it before you lose where you found it!" panicky feeling, I push the "Watch Later" button, and just treat that Watch Later queue as an infinitely long list of "meh, eventually I might watch it" videos.

If Youtube ever gets rid of that Watch Later button I guess I'll have to push stuff I'm interested in into a list of bookmarks or a log file or something.

I do the same, but it irks me that when a video is removed or set to private, YouTube also removes the Watch Later list entry or leaves the entry but no longer shows the title or any other metadata.

Thats part of what I used https://www.recovermy.video/ for. But sadly: https://www.recovermy.video/shutdown

> But some people believe that it's better to seek out information for yourself even if being spoonfed is easier.

I mean, when I'm looking for something specific on YouTube from my desk, I agree. When I'm in bed watching it on my TV, not so much.

>The problem is actually how good those recommendations are.

I keep reading this or equivalent opinions and am consequently annoyed and confused. On at least 50% occasions, the recommendations are either designed for the most capricious of olympic ADHD champions, or appear ingeniously tailored with zealous desire to insult my intelligence. And frequently when I'm scrolling through, eg layman-level physics lectures, I'll get Don't Talk to the Police, or Lizards of the deep state, or some circumstantially irrelevant garbage. This happens after removing cache, changing advertising ID, and other regular practices. However, it truly seems subject dependent; when researching fermentation, the suggested content tends to remain on subject, minus the inevitable guy ferments whale and tiger vs crocodile vs anaconda, uhh.. sauerkraut! 50TrillionViews stragglers. Somewhere along the way, I watched or clicked on something that must have biometrically branded me as a vagarious, insatiable idiot that despite searching very specifically for Cross Pollinating Chili Plants, really wanted to watch CGI snakes fight polar bears. They won't forgive me.

Definitely designed to keep one's eyes glued, but my reaction considers gluing them shut and hating myself for expressing fascination in so many things that I want nothing to do with.

Edit: I want to add a broiling chafe of mine. On rare occasion, I will view a video of an unfortunate event, something specific, bothersome. Every time, I see the Up Next video lubriciously lurking below, smart enough to detect tragedy, but sloppy enough to assume I'm watching what I'm watching for entertainment purpose and intend to merrily traipse on to the next disaster, or whatever. If I couldn't disable autoplay, I'd smash my device.

I don't know how you're getting relevant recommendations; YouTube seems determined to get me into watching the latest celebrity personalities, or endless streams of clickbait.

I use a few custom uBlock Origin rules to hide the recommendations sidebar and the end-of-video overlay complete. If a video doesn't show up in my list of curated subscriptions, I just don't see it, and that's fine. It's good for my feed to be slow and update infrequently; I've got other stuff to do.

My method: I subscribe and upvote generously, only downvote when it feels good, and do "not interested" in the sidebar recommends, with prejudice ("I don't like the video") if necessary. But the real trick is, on the yt home page, if any video that even looks like content I don't like comes up, I choose the option "don't recommend any more videos from this channel" immediately.

Only in this way have I managed to completely expunge all mention of J**dan P**erson from my yt recommends.

Completely!

This sounds like the Google News problem - there are more trash blogspam news pages found by Google daily than you can possibly ignore. I've stopped using it entirely because of this but just today it's showing stuff from "Cool Material", "Reality Tea" and "BreatheHeavy.com" (not to forget "Minimalist Baker").

I make a concerted effort to upvote stuff I like, so maybe that helps. When I was watching videos from /r/videos (which I haven't done in a while) I would actually make sure to click through to YouTube to give an upvote on things I thought deserved it (it always seemed kinda sad to me that some someone else might post a video to reddit and get a bunch of karma but while the creator might get a lot of views, most of those viewers wouldn't even be presented an upvote option for stuff they enjoyed).

In addition to that, while my subscriptions does have some crap in it, it's also got quite a few math and science educators, as well as people doing visual essays. I'm also a sucker for educational crossed with pop-culture, so stuff from LegalEagle usually gets a watch and a like (and I'm subscribed) as well.

I agree is does seem to weight recommendations to much on what was recently watched sometimes, but I imagine that's so people that are in the rabbit hole can go deeper if they want. Unfortunately, it makes it hard to find something interesting for me on occasion when the last stuff I was watching is not what I'm in the mood for at all.

I treat YouTube like I do any other media source, like Netflix. I go to it and look for stuff to watch when that's what I actually want to do, so I don't generally mind watching a few things in a row. Often I'm doing it on my TV.

I'm with the other two replies. My recommendations match my interests quite well. Probably due to what videos I like and others that I hide because they're not relevant to me. I don't think I'd be using YT if it weren't for the video suggestions.

Any time you see a related or recommended video that annoys you, you should click the three dots and choose "not interested"

If you just a single time watch a video out of your normal categories, yt will never forget. No matter how many times you click not interested.

Also, some of the horrific clickbait thumbnails and titles it suggests annoys me. So avoiding those is one less thing to care about.

Also, much of the problems with yt isn't how they allow dangerous videos to be on their platform, but how they surface them to lots of people by recommending them. They do little harm unwatched.

You can remove an individual video from your watch history by going to library -> watch history.

I suppose people that only want to watch the video they specifically came for, and don't want to be tempted by other media that they know they'll waste their time on.

YouTube does great at recommending videos. I love it, personally. But I can totally respect the former position as well.

> What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?

Recommendations that "the algorithm" provide to me are rarely good, but they are always distracting, and often click-baity. Instead, I come to YouTube to watch the channels I know I enjoy. The shortcut on my New Tab page directs me straight to my Subscriptions page, and that's where I stay.

Do I ever discover new channels? Sure! When a friend shares a video with me, or I stumble across a link on HN. :)

I believe the recommended videos are now the most monetized and yield the highest profits. Things I watch almost never have ads but whenever I accidentally tap a recommended video it's usually 2 ads + interstitials + ads at the end.

And it's fine, they need to make money, I just think they're optimizing for profit and not attention these days.

I know this is not mainstream view. Go and check anecdotally right now. It's worth running some experiments and seeing if the claim had veracity.

It's currently unsubstantiated but I believe it's verifiable since >0 ads monetize better than 0 ads.

It could easily be the other way around, too. Popular videos get recommended, popular videos get interest from advertisers.

Just as the name suggests, the recommendations try to 'hook' you, and some people may prefer to purposefully navigate to videos rather than feel they're being swayed by a recommendation algorithm tuned to surface videos that might catch your eye and keep you watching, maybe for longer than you intended to.

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