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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I think somebody watched a lot of pimple-popping videos while logged into your account. You might want to take a look at your viewing history:

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

Because that's definitely not a default. I've never seen YouTube recommend one of those in my life.

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> search results

the real problem is that youtube has decided to just put normal recommendations on the search result page in the place where search results should go. I use the extension 'unhook' with the setting 'Hide Inapt Search Results' to remove that misfeature.

this feature was presumably somebody's baby and I'd really like to read their writeup where they unironically exalt its virtues so I can try to gauge how far up their ass their head is.

My favorite internal Google writeup of that kind was for when they doubled the number of screens you needed to click through to cancel YouTube Premium. By adding friction there, they reduced the number of people who successfully canceled their subscription. But the writeup was so very sure that all those people, in the middle of the cancel process, suddenly realized all the features they value in YouTube Premium, and that this change was making people's lives better.

> I'd really like to read their writeup where they unironically exalt its virtues

Increased engagement by putting content after search box.

Reduced search box to such the number that 99.7% searches still can accomplish successfully.

Significantly reduced DB load.

New incentive for the AI team to keep pacing its algo towards AI-only search.

> New incentive for the AI team to keep pacing its algo towards AI-only search

Please no... Facebook is already doing this in marketplace and it's beyond awful. Like "search for an oscilloscope and get a vibrator" level of awful.

Considering how popular marketplace is, fb seems to be doing everything possible to reduce the utility of it.

That explaination doesn't hold water. I see the same kind of grossout videos occasionally surface in search results. I never engage with content anything like that. I don't use an account, but I do have a cookie set for personalized suggestions. This cookie is never more than a few months old. I don't share this device with anybody. I'm not getting recommendations from other people sharing my IP, all my video recommendations make sense for me except for these gross out videos. There isn't another trace of other people's interests, for instance zero sports content despite sports being extremely popular with the general population. Finally, several other people have reported this same sort of behavior from youtube.

Aside, I find it really disheartening how quickly people on this site of all sites are to conclude "I don't see that, so you're holding it wrong". The most likely explaination is these results are some experimental feature run amok. You should know that companies like Google run all kinds of AB tests on the unwitting public, so one person not seeing something should never be taken as proof that another person is imagining it! This kind of "I'm not seeing it so you must be doing something wrong" comment is effectively gas-lighting when it comes from people who work in or near the industry and should know better.

Using YouTube's search through something not tied to your account like NewPipe will solve this issue of recommendations in search.

I've checked, believe me. They don't show up in the feed, only in search results.

I've seen them pop up (hehe) while searching for multi-tools and bushcraft videos. Never seen one before.

Recommendations also are based on non-YouTube sources, as we might expect. I recently watched some things on streaming and they showed up in YouTube.

It's possibly coincidence, of course, but why wouldn't YouTube use the same profile data as everyone else?

Never watched them myself, and doubt anyone did with my account, but I sometimes get such videos presented as if it is something I'd want. I have had lodgers and sometimes have guests who will obviously have appeared from my IP addresses while on my wireless so that may be part of why I get certain things (one of the lodgers was Italian - that was many years ago, and I still occasionally get adverts in the language). Also it only takes one accidental click to register as “engagement” - maybe I have done that with a slip of the mouse/finger at some point.

Hint: Allegedly most of the people who watch the pimple popping videos are women.

It feels accurate. My middle-aged sister definitely does.

It's also possible that the videos you do watch are similar to people who _also_ watch those pimple popping vidoes, and so the algorithm guesses that you might also enjoy it.

Maybe, in which case I'd be interested to see where the cross-over is.

Though I've had them come up on facebook too, which is why I'm erring on it being someone more actively engaged coming from my main IP address (home has had the same /29 for the last 10+ years). Unless youtube and facebook are fairly directly sharing information, I thought it more likely that someone has interacted with such content in both places than both algorithms making an obscure link. Of course, it could be that there is a cross-over, and it is a strong enough signal that both sets of data miners have picked up on it.

Edit: too early in the morning and my mind is refusing to switch tracks… Thinking about it, liking certain horror/scifi films is a potential link. Maybe people more heavily into body-horror than I are generally fascinated by real aspects of bodily function too.

You can see your YouTube watch history through the account settings. I've found the watch recommendations are VERY sensitive to oddball videos watched a long time ago. Through the same interface though, you should be able to seek out and delete watch history for garbage that may throw off your recommendations. It's mostly worked for me.

Watch history now include videos you've only hovered over. Very annoying since if you hover over something and then watch it later it doesn't start from the beginning, it starts from where it left off from the hover.

Interesting. I have autoplay turned off in my browser, & I don't get recommendations of the like you mention, which makes me think that that's enough to keep that "feature" from activating.

Nope. I get the exact same thing (to the point where I no longer search for things on YouTube, the thumbnails can be pretty disturbing). I've audited my history to check for that sort of thing.

I think YouTube has just put me in a gender/age/location bucket and figures other people in the same bucket like that thing.

(But actually, who the fuck is watching this shit.)

Edit: plus if this was history pollution then this gross shit would show up on the home page or else where. It is exclusively in the "you might also like" shit that youtube hides in the search results.

yt has this weird thing if you click on one vid. it will decide you want to see anything related to that one vid.

yt will also throw 'random' things into your feed.

Also I have seen just hovering over a video on desktop counting as 'viewed' in my history. So you may have inadvertently 'looked'.

Use the do not recommend feature. That seems to calm it down.

This is why I have my watch history disabled on youtube.

They are super popular so they occasionally float up to the top recommendations by the algorithm. There are all sorts of niche things that get recommended to people whenever the algorithm changes a little. You always seem comments like "never thought I'd watch a video about X but the this came up on my feed."

I have my childrens accounts under my main account. If they watch a lot of certain types of videos, that will show up as a suggestion under my main account. I'm positive its not because they are using my account, I watch videos with them.

I also have a second account for watching more technical videos and that leaks into my main account suggestions.

I got those for a bit but it was a couple months back.

YT algo is so messed up and it seems the more they try to shape the content people view, the easier it gets for bad actors to exploit the algo.

Shorts are the absolute worst for it and it's why I mostly stick to my subs page over the home page.

Yes it's definitely affected by location (IP) and/or specific device metadata, casting videos from an incognito window affects future recommendations even though it warns about not being signed in to preserve history.

Poison YouTube recommendations at the nearest Starbucks! (Actually a marketing hack - encourage followers to log out and watch a channel's YouTube videos on public WiFi.)

if you leave the mouse hovering over a video and, if it autoplays (previews) an $amount of the video, it will be added to your view history and you will then be offered more of that "content".

I turn this "feature" off every time I open it, it tells me it has saved that configuration, but that is not the case. like other poster commented, review your view history and delete anything you do not want to see or clear it out entirely. There is also option to "don't recommend channel" ([3x ...] beside the video)

> There is also option to "don't recommend channel" ([3x ...] beside the video)

This doesn't exist for search results, only for the feed

No. I currently am the only guy using my google account. This happens every single time. Definitely a case of IP recommendations.

Nope, I got the exact same thing too.

Literally never seen this shit. Not even once. This is like someone saying it's horrible that there's porn all over the computer and how computers are evil.

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