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Comment by eimrine | Hacker News Reader

Why disabling youtube recommendation? It is literally the only recommendation engine that works, just don't watch shite (at least from your account) and you will never be recommended of that. Other smartphone services are irrepairely wrong, but youtube is a search engine for what you dream. Everything you are searching in google or mentioning somewhere on youtube forum will be added to your "interests". Regular search is broken but the recommendation "search" is the best service I ever had, it is like an oldschool librarian who knows what book will interest you.

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because it flips the content consumption model on its head. instead of "i want to watch a video about X" -> search for video about X -> watch, the loop becomes open youtube -> see interesting recommendation -> watch. you are no longer using youtube as a tool to consume videos, it is using you, increasing time spent on the site/app and therefore generating more ad revenue.

How youtube can use me if I spend all my time outdoors and yt is just a radio? There are some ways to see it without ads even wihout deepening the profile with the credit card.

My point is that there is no better software to get acknowledged about the different Xs than yt. My point is to go cold turkey about any other recqmmendation services because they can not serve my interests when I work with my hands, or walking, or driving. I have listened some 3.5 hours podcast about Math and I am sure there is no other way to consume such a podcasts other way than I recommend here.

I believe the point he was trying to make is that he doesn't want to be recommended things he wants to watch. He wants his YouTube use to be be focused and intentional, and not let himself get sucked into an endless stream of engaging content.

And my point is that your words is about any other recommendation engine. Youtube is very different, there is no better information source to shape oneself what is really good to be interested in. Except of maybe book search websites.

The author wants to find content when he is looking for something specific. He does not want his attention grabbed by something he wasn't looking for, no matter how educational it may be.

Multiple people have clearly explained this to you in several comment threads and you're still insisting it makes no sense. At this point the only question is why you don't want to understand.

Well, what is enough good to grab one's attention? If not Youtube, something/somebody else has to provide this function for the person. The impact Youtube does on me is like having fucking Aristotle as a teacher. Tell me please what is better.

This is why I often use/watch via http://www.ytch.tv (hn/u).

Check out Channels 1/6/7/25/35/40

I concur. The YouTube algorithm actually appears to work, and doesn't feel like it's trying to steer me away from my interests. My only issue is that it will suggest "current event" type content that is years old sometimes.

Youtube does that for some channels or persons which are so favorable for me that I use to watch all of their videos.

My recommendation about human interests and yt consuming is not to close yourself in your shell, but actively explore what are there any interesting. I become cold turkey to any other recommendation services since I have unleashed the power of Yt.

> It is literally the only recommendation engine that works.

do you really find this to be true? i find it’s incredibly wrong like 90+ percent of the time. i am not close to interested in most of its recs. i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often. i’ve even tried entirely new accounts.

i mean, sure every once in a while im like “whoa, that’s a great rec” but thats pretty rare. it’s definitely better than spotify and the like etc… they’re wrong almost always, but a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.

recommendations from people is so much more accurate.

when i get a music recommendation from someone who works at the record store the positive hit rate is so high, same with movies and music recommendations from friends, etc… if it works for you that’s great but my feed is overflowing with video after video where i’m like “why in tf do you think i’d want to watch this?”

I'd say YT recommendations are more than 90% right for me. It almost always recommends me stuff I'm interested in, related to things I've watched. It seems to have the best recommendation engine of all the social media I use, hands down.

I just have to be careful, when I watch something I don't want YT to think I liked, to remove it from my watch history.

> when i get a music recommendation from someone who works at the record store the positive hit rate is so high, same with movies and music recommendations from friends, etc…

That tells me you are a simple person so yt gives you a simple recommendations. Music content in yt is poor, your music taste can be improved in different places. Movies are just a stupid time consuming, if you like to watch them, why to complain about bad recommendations?

> recommendations from people is so much more accurate.

You are happy to have well-educated friends probably.

> a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.

For me its top 10 slots are 100% about the persons I appreciate, so to get to the point is time when 9 of 10 are bad I need to watch everything what the persons have published for the time I have been offline. 90%/10% is just the usual Pareto, it's ok.

> i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often

It doesn't take years. Just open all youtube links featured on HN and start playing those from your account without even seing/listening. You will see the changes immediately. Next step is to just stop watching any channel with 1M subs and any videos with 1M watches. Soon yt will ask you in some modal window: do you want to see the content from the smaller channels? Press the "yes" answer and you will unleash the real power of yt without clickbait headers, with no arrows on previews etc. Join small channels and treat them like Reddit subforums. This totally works for me, I participate in more discussions on yt than on HN.

Spend every day for a year watching the highest quality YouTube content and it won't get you as far as spending every day for a month directly engaging with content yourself, or some other use of the same time. It's fun, engaging, and easy enough to turn into something you can argue "but it's not slop, it's <x>!". At the end of the day though... it's still 95% entertainment.

I spend a lot of time "protecting" my YouTube recommendations (clearing garbage videos from my history, blocking certain channels, opening links from friends separately) but I still try to immensely limit the amount of time I spend on the site, and the recommendations go directly against that.

You still seing it wrong. Youtube is the best radio possible, it never disappoints me while my outdoor activity. There are no reason to "watch" 99% of hours of content, nothing is interesting in seing talking heads.

Negative measures such as clearing history, putting dislikes and using "not recommend" just doesn't work because from my experience the only negative metrics which works is just refusing to watch shite. Youtube actively uses spaced repetition approach so consider any time you are being recommended to shite as active shaping your recommendation engine. Don't even touch that square with the cursor. Try teaching your recommendation blackbox in positive ways - watch some channels when you are not watching and listening, subscribe to small channels, write comments with no less than 8 words and actively use such nouns which you are welcome to be recommended to.

I also avoid spending much (if any) time listening to the radio/podcasts/etc these days for the same reasons.

> Negative measures such as clearing history, putting dislikes and using "not recommend" just doesn't work because from my experience the only negative metrics which works is just refusing to watch shite.

Clearing history certainly works, just make sure there is absolutely not a single unwanted video in your history or the algorithm will go on a tirade thinking "I REALLY bet I can get this person interested in Lego videos because they watched one 4 weeks ago and I have a ton of Lego content they've not even touched yet". The instant you clear the final offender the recommendations change like night/day.

I'm not sure dislikes/"Not interested" actually do anything. "Don't recommend channel" also definitely works, though there may be a limit to how long they are saved and it's better to just aim the algorithm.

The only thing the algorithm is really good for is finding videos it thinks will suck up your time. The curation is ultimately down to how much work you put into it, which isn't all that unique to YouTube. Putting similar effort into curating any large body of content will also get you more content than you have time to consume, but still doesn't help you actually gain much from engaging with it anyways.

I haven't really try cleaning all the history but I have 2 points of why I consider cleaning the history as futile.

1. Youtube obviously grabs some info not only from Youtube but it also grabs all history from Google search and most of all some random words from Gmail, cleaning that all just for the sake of experiment might be not handy.

2. If some video has got deleted it obviously disappears from history. But there is a man I really fond of, his channels are regularly get banned after a month of activity, than the man finds a new channel with new author/interviewer. Somehow I am among the first ones to get recommended about new interviews with the man.

> "I REALLY bet I can get this person interested in Lego videos because they watched one 4 weeks ago and I have a ton of Lego content they've not even touched yet"

I can share another anecdote. Ten years ago there were a music video "Wintergatan - Marble Machine". I used to watched it dozens of times almost every day. Now if I scroll the feed to the end (Yt is not a doomscrolling) I have 90% probability of receiving the Marble Machine in the very last line. I have not touched it even once in the last several years but it knows I used to love it earlier. BTW it doesn't remember what I loved 15 years ago when most of the videos required Adobe Flash.

> The only thing the algorithm is really good for is finding videos it thinks will suck up your time.

Isn't that how a really great teachers teach? Forget about the teacher's interest, the teacher exists until the fellow pupil is interested.

> The curation is ultimately down to how much work you put into it, which isn't all that unique to YouTube.

That's a lie because FB and other rivals have nothing except the engine (no useful content). Just consume it responsively. The only reason to not use yt's algo is when you are so fond of your work that you have the chair glued to your arse and every second spent to someone's wise thoughts means a lost penny. So pity I have typed a lot of text but noone has asked me to share all my hacks to shape the algo towards one's satisfaction.

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