The Boring YouTube

I'll attest that info sometimes I need to do a boring but slightly involved task such as putting together a vision chart where most of the thinking has been doing, but there is a lot of little fiddly arranging boxes and pulling lines that is annoying and tedious but requires some degree of attention.

The only way to make that bearable for me is to either solve the meta problem which often isn't feasible, or turn on some mindless show that I've already seen and don't have to pay attention to enjoy. I find in particular The Simpsons seems to often hit that sweet spot between funny enough to be entertaining and mindless enough to not be distracting.

Whereas if I try and listen to a podcast or audiobook it requires too much focus and I miss the book or can't pay attention to that task I am working on, liking filling in a years worth of time sheets at the end of December.

Some waiting rooms put on long youtube videos of stuff like "jungle scenery" or "fish" as makeshift screensavers.

Scenario for music videos makes some sense if you're one of those, but wouldn't it be easy for the algo to only do it for music videos only? I agree with parent, that behavior is absolutely senseless..

>> I suspect, without proof, that this is because a large segment of the global population watches music videos and variety show clips on YouTube, over and over on repeat.

That's a great point, and could very well explain showing me videos I've already watched. Fixing my other two complaints would require keeping track of how many times a video has been recommended, and consulting my watch later list when building the recommendations list. It seems safe to assume YT is not unaware of these possibilities, so they must have reasons for not adding these signals in.

Could be, but YouTube does, not for all, but for many, know if the video is a music or not.

I'd be more inclined to believe that it's just the nature of how most users consume content.

If you look at the recommended content for most major services, they give a lot of space to "stuff you've consumed before". Anecdotally, this is true of Netflix (which tends to rank already-seen content below it's own-brand shows but above other third-party stuff); and it's especially true of Spotify, which is constantly pushing me (in a real variety of ways) mostly music that I've already listened to.

I think it's likely that, music video or not, most users on YouTube are watching the same videos over and over again - hence why the algorithm tries to hard to cater to those users.

From a cynical perspective, such an algorithm is also a "safe" bet - if you won't even binge videos YouTube knows you like (because you've seen them), it will probably be much harder to get you to watch lots of videos you might like. Users who like to see the same stuff over and over are probably giving the best return on YouTube algorithmic investment, and they might even be YouTube's most valuable users outside of content creators.

As someone who does put Youtube videos on repeat and does follow up on old videos that I still enjoy as "comfort" entertainment, I have two points to amend to the above:

1. I still don't want them showing up in recommendations. Recommendations are not a history view, if I'm listening to a song on repeat for 5 hours I don't need Youtube to recommend it to me. It has been recommended once very successfully, and if I need to find it again it should show up in my history[0], or at least it should be quarantined to its own recommendation section that I can toggle off. Even among people who obsessively revisit old videos, revisiting old videos and looking for new content are two separate categories of searches that should usually be handled differently imo.

2. The fact that I revisit certain series or listen to music on repeat for 5 hours does not mean that I want every video recommended to me that way -- ideally it should just be the variety clips and music videos. Youtube's algorithms are theoretically advanced enough to tell the difference between music and a programming tutorial or product review. So there shouldn't be repeat recommendations for me showing up for stuff like... one video in isolation out of an entire Lets Play playlist.

I feel like, Youtube knows that's not a music video: I know they know because they already put the video in the gaming section. They're just being obstinate and refusing to use that information in their recommendation engine, and refusing to ask the obvious question of "is a music video consumed differently than one video out of context from a Lets Play."

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I don't think you're wrong, I think you're probably 100% correct, I think that Youtube kind of just optimizes to get people to click on things and repeat videos are a way of doing that, and the algorithm just does what it does. But I'm not sure I know anyone who likes that, I should be the target audience for that behavior, I obsessively rewatch stuff all the time, and I don't like that behavior, the algorithm doesn't feel like it's tuned to my preferences. It feels like just kind of mish-mash.

In theory, if it was optimized for me, then I shouldn't be losing track of music. But it's not like its reliable enough to use as a bookmarking system, if I have a favorite song on Youtube I like to listen to, then I can't trust recommendations to have it in front of me, I have to actually bookmark it or (nowadays) download it and save it to an offline playlist.

So if they're trying to please people like me, then... it's not working.

<ranton>Personally, I feel like every time I interact with Google products or try to dig into how they work or recommend things, I always feel like the designers/programmers are almost deliberately trying to make their own jobs harder. Like they think it's cheating or something to have a toggle that could let people turn off this behavior. They have to organically have an AI come to every decision or else it's not 'real' programming; it's very weird.

I don't understand the reasoning why this wouldn't be user-configurable behavior at the very least, why it wouldn't be something where we can apply human reasoning on top of the AI algorithm. If you work at Google, I promise that no customer is going to be mad at you or shame you or say that you're bad at programming if you give us really clear controls that let us just tell you what we want in a predictable way. No one is going to be offended if you just ask us if we want to see repeat videos, you don't have to intuit that, we can all tell you ourselves and we won't be mad that you asked.

I hate feeling like I have to do reinforcement training on a cat to get good Youtube recommendations just because some product designer is scared that I'll think less of them if they ever admit that they don't magically know my preferences without asking. Some people might want repeat videos, and some people might not want them, and this shouldn't be an existential problem for Youtube, I thought the whole point of this algorithm stuff was that I could have an individual experience that was customized to me. Instead we've got the worst of all worlds because Youtube thinks its a personal failure if they don't come up with one single, universal strategy for serving videos that makes everyone happy across the entire world.

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[0]: Shoutout to NewPipe that allows sorting history by the number of views. History in general could be way better on pretty much platform, but even just that sort option is useful on its own.

This is probably true! However YouTube also knows how many times I personally have clicked on a video I have already watched. Which is zero, barring the possibility of a mistimed mouse click.

I suspect its because Google reused the same recommendation code they wrote for ads.

You just bought a new car? have some car ads.

If youtube can detect copyrighted music - then why can't it detect the difference between a music video and a non-music video?

>> Don't you re-watch your favourite movies and TV shows? Why would YouTube be any different?

I honestly don't very often, and when I do it tends to be over a span of time long enough to forget many of the details. I do have some music videos on youtube that I have watched several times, and some instructional videos I have returned to occasionally.

So yeah probably its the weakest of my three whines.

> Genuine question: Don't you re-watch your favourite movies and TV shows? Why would YouTube be any different?

Very rarely. Even more rarely do I re-watch movies less than a month later, but that doesn't stop Youtube from recommending things I watched the day prior.

If I got recommended something I watched a year ago, sure. But what youtube frequently does is just recommend all of the videos I watched the day prior.

I would be less annoyed if this wasn't such a recent development. Youtube recommendations used to be fantastic for me ~5 years ago. I would actually get recommended stuff I haven't watched, from creators I didn't know about, on topics that I have shown interest in. Now I mostly just get the same videos I have already watched or nearly the same video uploaded by another channel. Or I'll watch a single 15 second video about something I normally don't watch, and suddenly half of my recommendations are about that.

I turned off watch and search history because of this. There are a lot of downsides (you lose progress meters and recommendations tend to suggest watched videos a lot), but there are upsides too: namely, that YouTube only considers upvotes, subscriptions, and "Not Interested" when it makes recommendations, so your homepage is only stuff you've explicitly signalled that you're interested in, plus YouTube's usual spam (the off-the-wall suggestions they always have no matter what—for whatever reason I get a lot of cat/dog and meditation music videos).

I've been using this for about half a year now and it's great!

I think the parent's goal was to use the presence of a stupid thumbnail as proxy for low quality and completely hide those videos instead of merely replacing the thumbnail.

Now if there's also something that could detect "YouTuber voice" (https://www.vice.com/en/article/aepn94/the-rise-of-youtube-v...) or the awful trend of putting a short clip in the intro with no context which wastes your time at best or spoils the video at worst that would be great as well.

Installed. Wow.

Discovered this extension a few months ago from another HN thread. It's great, the annoyance levels caused by 'Youtube face' was getting to be intolerable. I was making judgements on videos before even watching them, because of the thumbnail.

Thanks, turns out from this GitHub thread that there's even a Safari version - https://github.com/pietervanheijningen/clickbait-remover-for...

edit: Bought and installed and I can confirm that this makes YouTube at least 43% more bearable. Most of the other 57% is taken care of by Vinegar - https://andadinosaur.com/launch-vinegar

The trick is to recognise those early and switch to a different video. Or quickly figure out which channel is more serious about getting to the point, and pick their video.

Youtube tested some sort of feature where you can see what are the parts which are the most watched by people.

I’ve learned over time that many people who make helpful videos are not skilled at how to edit or pace a video at all. But I often need the content and can’t get it elsewhere. 2x is so great for screencast tutorials for things like Blender. I can’t imagine watching them any other way.

Yea, I don't get the appeal of watching someone pretend they haven't seen "The Empire Strikes Back" and are watching it for the first time and are agog at the the twist.

Some YouTubers outright say it increases views. Given that some of them make a living out of this and that I'd rather keep seeing their content, I can live with some pandering to the algorithm/trends in thumbnails.

Linus Tech Tips talked about this a while back, and it is just like when Wikipedia uses Jimmy Wales face to raise money. Everyone say they hate it, but it is what yields the best results.

I do sometimes but it doesn't seem to help. Roughly a third of the videos have a progress bar underneath (usually complete or nearly so) so YouTube knows that I have seen them.

You'd be amazed how well these work.

Sometimes the order falls through, sometimes the washer needs to be returned. The thing is that these items are so high-profit that targeting this small chance of purchase is very valuable. And these users, even though they have just bought this thing that typically they need 1 of for 20 years, are still higher probability than average to purchase another.

Yeah, I suppose that they are testing new algorithms there..

To me it's hidden at the end of the list, but sometimes it's unreachable unless I resize my browser and many times I don't have that section at all on my Android TV. Not very useful how it's implemented.

Also, let us tell YT we're not interested in a category. I've watched a blacksmith video once, I had the Metallurgy category recommended to me for 6 months.

Google, the world famous AI company, presents the proof that recommendation engines are incredibly dumb and annoying except in very tightly controlled environments. There is nothing intelligent about it.

Its syntax [1] is also surprisingly powerful. You want to block an element if it doesn't contain an element matching a particular string/xpath/css selector? But only on specific pages? Even if the URL is manipulated by .pushState? Easy.

I've also used it to blur the text of newsarticles talking about a particular sports event.

Frankly that part of the extension on its own is amazingly useful.

[1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/Static-fi...

I think I've disabled my watching history in Youtube and the frontpage suggestions are quite poor (mostly videos from my subscriptions I have already watched or videos that might share one or two tags with a video I watched last year and don't interest me at all).

Yup, I've noticed that when I use an account old enough (like for 7-8 years), Youtube recommends the same videos.. (it seems to be in a local maximum).

There are reasons why: Keywords being used in title are not popular ones, account not having any videos, subscriptions, likes etc. All this is taken as criteria when ranking algorithms rank videos.

Interesting idea.

Nice!