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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

The only "cultural exchange" between me and "AI algorithms" is that I'm trained like a frigging Pavlov's Dog to do or not do some entirely pointless things in order to not mess up my YouTube or Spotify recommendations (such as switching to the browsers private mode before watching some YouTube content to prevent being spammed from videos of the same type in the future).

Thanks but no thanks.

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I should have done this myself probably. My YT feed had a golden era where it would recommend stuff I actually want it to recommend, but now I'm often very disappointed. I don't want to watch 10-15min click-bait "tutorial" videos of something that can be read in an official documentation and actually be understood. But I guess YT thinks it's helpful to show these after having watched a 45min talk about a related subject.

Even just clicking one time on a short low quality video seems to trigger YT into wanting to spam me with the same kind of stuff. I want to be surprised by interesting recommendations that go deeper into a subject (may that be technical or entertainment or art doesn't matter), rather than being a distraction.

So yeah it seems like interaction with "AI" recommendation systems is all about trying to make it behave in a certain way, which is tedious. But I guess we tend to overestimate what these algorithms can do for us.

I turned off YouTube watch history entirely partially for this reason. I'd recommend it. The algorithm still tries to guess based on your subscriptions and likes, but it has much less data to work with.

I agree. I practically gave up at this point.

While YT still sometimes is able to surface some interesting gem, IG is horrible. I had my search feed pruned and cleaned and was content with what the algo surfaced for about two weeks. Then from one day to the next, seemingly arbitrarily, it was back to tictok style crap, political enragement porn and clickbaity bs.

But even YT is getting worse every day.

I am glad that I do not rely on recos to consume media. I avoid Spotify, Amazon Music or Netflix exactly because the more often than not do not contain any of the things I like to consume (or hide it behind additional paywalls in case of Amazon).

I feel old, but I remember a great source of music discovery being the head of the music department of a bigger local drug store. We talked a lot and he always came with a bunch of "here, listen to this" back when you could prelisten CDs in the store.

I had little money and he knew that. But every now and then I would find a great piece I absolutely needed to buy. I could have bought way more if I had the money back then. He was a great guy and I still listen to music he recommended to me.

I have not found anything the likes in any artificial algorithm yet.

One of the problems with recommendation systems (or maybe the companies deploying them) is that they lack that urge human experts have to edify those that seek advice and raise their standards a little bit. It would be interesting to figure out if such an AI is even possible using current methods.

I'm sure the drug store department head got shrugged off by a lot of customers with no interest in digging deeper than the Top 40 and if he had been an AI optimizing for engagement he never would guided you to these other artists.

The lack of these kinds of positive externalities and small but important relationships is part of what makes AI driven processes so tiresome.

Between my wife and three kids, and my account being the default on the living room TV, my recommendations these days are mostly videos of trains, video games, horses and Chinese soap operas.

I cant use Instagram app anymore, combining ads and "because you watched ping you may like this pong" videos 30-40% content is irrelevant.

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