Oh it's way worse than random, I think half my home page are videos I've already watch so surely I'd just LOVE to watch them again right ?
Because the most watched youtube videos are music videos, and people listen to the same music regularly.
Also because some videos have been popular enough that people wanted to show that to their friends, and regular users don't know how to use the history, so they want to find it in their home page again.
I assume the algo just doesn't know the difference between videos that are rewatchable and ones that are not, and does that on some statistical metrics that don't make sense in a lot of contexts.
When you think something is stupid, the answer is usually there is something we don't know about it.
Personally, unless I’m quering something that’s fairly narrow, for recommendations you push to me please never show me anything older than 36 months. No, I don’t want an 8 year old video on this topic.
And for age, it is also fairly normal to listen to music older then 36 months. And to watch educational videos older then that. Or crafting videos older then that. Or tutorial videos older then that. Most of time, I am cool with old videos.
For framing, the first thing everyone recommends is “Framing Walls with Larry Haun” (1992). You even get the VHS tracking blips now and then from the video capture.
To be fair it’s also good advice to then supplement Larry Haun’s videos with modern framing techniques but his videos are the first one should watch.
Might just be a single example but it’s the first counterpoint that popped in my head.
They are. People that started with the genuine intent of sharing their knowledge gradually turned into professional youtubers, and now it's all about hacking the algorithm, diluting content in multiple videos, selling you to their sponsors. Older videos are almost always better.
These are easy and solved already. Apply exponential weighted average for length since watch for sorting, with two peaks of a month ago and a year ago.
I fear the YT folks have a hot mess and it will be twitterized at some point (the new tech lobotomized).
You can always chose the "new to me" saussage, it is always last in the line of sausages with some tags inside of them. The problem is that "new to me" stops showing really new content if you gonna use it heavily. Sometimes it gives video with that red line on the bottom of preview which means I watches this recently or videos from some channels I am subscribed to. So, this is option is a garbage as most of other YT options.