NCC1701DEngage

I'm working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations. You can search a channel to get a list of similar channels. Our list for Asianometry includes the Asia Society's official channel which has videos of public talks on Asian geopolitics, TechTechPotato which covers semiconductor chips, and Dongfang Hour covering the Chinese space program, as well as dozens more channels covering hardware and asian geopolitics (sometimes both!):

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC1LpsuAUaKoMzzJSEt5WImw/

People here recommend like to recommend mCoding. Our alternative YouTube recommendation algorithm can suggest dozens of similar channels to mCoding which also focus on python programming:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCaiL2GDNpLYH6Wokkk1VNcg/

>As a user of them, I make sure to use multiple engines

You may be interested in our alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to find a list of other channels making similar videos. For example, our recommendations for How Money Works include other established econ focused channels like Economics Explained and Money & Macro but also smaller more obscure channels like Wall Street Millennial:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCkCGANrihzExmu9QiqZpPlQ/

>Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.

This is exactly why I am working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations.

Search a channel to get a list of smaller channels making content focused on similar interests. Our algorithm is designed to surface more obscure, but relevant, content that YouTube generally doesn't recommend.

Here is our list of relevant similar channels for SpaceX's channel:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCtI0Hodo5o5dUb67FeUjDeA/

Navigate by clicking on the channel icons in the list or by searching a channel in the top search-bar.

YouTube is definitely doing curation of "viral" videos to introduce novelty into their recommendations. They've gotten so conservative that the usual algorithm can't fully satisfy users' need for novelty, so they widely promote a curated selection of videos. I first realized it with this video "An Old Man's Advice" with an older balding guy in reading glasses with an enormous Santa beard in the thumbnail. English language users will probably recognize it from about 2 months ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhckVlgYZJE

Here is the guy's Social Blade page where you can still see the spike in views and subscribers from late June partially scrolling off the end of his historical graphs:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5hWk56PCwg1D11kDgt...

I think one they currently are promoting to English-language YouTube today is this Kurzgesagt video about loneliness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9hJ_Rux9y0

I haven't seen it in my own homepage today (although I haven't been looking at it much) but I saw it mentioned several times by Twitter users expressing mild bewilderment at the recommendation, like these two posting about ten minutes apart:

https://twitter.com/Grary_/status/1567265382750093312

https://twitter.com/bradplaysclari/status/156726305981873357...

Oh, apparently these were two more, the originals I saw were these:

https://twitter.com/masterlerle/status/1567262297424560128

https://twitter.com/microfennec/status/1567257618061692928

These are all within the last hour. The fact we have four people posting about this within the last hour on Twitter visible under a single search term suggests the video is going out to a massive audience, many of which are caught off guard by the recommendation. This doesn't seem to be normal algorithmic behavior, especially for a video that is only 7 hours old as of my writing.

There was another article (from The Atlantic) posted here about an old supposedly discontinued practice of "coolhunters" at YouTube, individuals responsible for curating and promoting videos (in the article they discuss Justin Bieber in particular as hand-picked for promotion), which supposedly were replaced with the homepage recommendation algorithm. I am pretty sure they were brought back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32730285

To combat the lack of algorithmic novelty on YouTube I am working on a small team to develop alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to get a list of similar channels. Here is Kurzgesagt's similar channels list:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q/

Navigate by clicking the icons or using the top search bar to look up a channel.

They are definitely doing this again. They have become so risk-averse in their algorithm that they have to curate "random" videos to stimulate users' needs for novelty. This video "An Old Man's Advice" with an older balding guy in reading glasses with an enormous Santa beard in the thumbnail was a recent (~2 months ago) curated YouTube promoted vid. You probably recognize it. I realized it was being promoted when I noticed a bunch of people talking about it on Twitter a few days after it popped on my homepage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhckVlgYZJE

Here is the guy's Social Blade page where you can still see the spike in views and subscribers from late June partially scrolling off the end of his historical graphs:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5hWk56PCwg1D11kDgt...

Also this recent one about Fritz Haber from Veritasium is another example of a "random" curated video that got promoted to almost everyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvknN89JoWo

For actual novelty in YouTube I'm working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to get a list of recommended similar channels. I like to use the list of similar channels for Y Combinator's YouTube channel as a demonstration, but you can navigate by clicking the channel icons or using the search bar on top:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg/

>It's the dreaded "more of the same shit" algorithm

This problem of not-enough-novelty in YouTube's recommendations is exactly why I am working on a team to develop alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel name to get a list of similar channels.

As an example: our recommendations for Tesla's channel includes James Locke, a small channel (~10k subscribers) with a researcher working on Full Self Driving for Tesla vehicles. There are also dozens of Tesla driving, electrification, and investing channels along with channels for some of Musk's other companies like The Boring Company on the list:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC5WjFrtBdufl6CZojX3D8dQ/

>at the same time, youtube is really bad at exposing you to new channels that you would enjoy. they bombard you with similar videos ("here's 15 more toilet seat review videos for you!") but they're not able to extrapolate channel tastes for some reason. it's left largely up to the user to dig around for collaterally-themed channels.

This is exactly why I am working on a team to create alternative YouTube recommendations. Our algorithm is designed to surface smaller more obscure but relevant channels.

Search a channel to get a list of channels making similar content. Our recommendations for Project Farm include other tool review channels like A Concord Carpenter / Toolboxbuzz and Thrifty Tool Shed. Click through to A Concord Carpenter's list of similar channels also reveals Tools & Stuff. Thrifty Tool Shed is a great example of a very small yet relevant channel that the algorithm surfaces (~15k subscribers).

Our list of channels similar to Project Farm:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng/

Of course there are dozens more channels on PF's list that are about more general carpentry, metalsmithing, and home-engineering projects. And you can use the search bar at the top of the page to search any other channels you watch to get their similar channels lists.

Have you seen NightHawkInLight:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFtc3XdXgLFwhlDajMGK69w

LaserSaber:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKzUKkh7XtnSYPW0AJb-9w

or StyroPyro:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJYJgj7rzsn0vdR7fkgjuIA

They have similarity to the Quint BUILDs channel that the knife throwing machine video came from. They all do some pretty crazy builds.

I am on a team working on alternative YouTube recommendations and I discovered Yannic Kilcher and Machine Learning Street Talk off the list of channel recommendations for Two Minute Papers. The whole list has a ton of AI channels:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg/

I actually found his channel with the alternative YouTube recommendations database I'm working on. He was one of the top links off the list for Y Combinator's channel.

The list for his channel includes some likely suspects like TechCrunch, Y Combinator, and a16z but also some smaller names doing business advice like Section4 and David Perell:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCIBgYfDjtWlbJhg--Z4sOgQ/

>An airline or UPS can absolutely say “we don’t like the contents of what you are shipping so we refuse to transport it”.

Cf.:

>An important legal requirement for common carrier as public provider is that it cannot discriminate, that is refuse the service unless there is some compelling reason.

ibid

I suppose you can make "compelling reason" arguments for some things, but the default is carry.

Like, you may as well say "Well there are 'compelling reasons' exceptions so theoretically people can do the exact opposite of what the law says."

Social media should be considered common carriers, like telephone companies, delivery services, or transportation services.

An airline or UPS cannot just say "We don't like your politics so we will not ship your packages."

Social media is extremely similar to all these common carriers in that they are a "content" delivery mechanism. They do not decide what item is in a box or what message is in a phone call, they just distribute the box or phone call from the originator to the consumers. Similarly with social media content the social media company distributes content they have little control over through its distribution network. There is little different from a social media account than a (teletype?) conference telephone call with answering machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

Good suggestion and noted.

Thanks!

>Who stops people from running their own search engines?

This is basically the reason my team and I are building an alternative set of YouTube recommendations. You can check them out here:

https://channelgalaxy.com

I was just tired of YouTube steering me back to the same old small niche of videos, many times giving me repeat recommendations for stuff I'd already seen. Our algorithm is designed to surface smaller channels and find more obscure content.

I'm working on a team to make alternative YouTube recommendations. Here is our list of similar channels for Not Just Bikes which includes dozens of urban design and transit channels like Oh the Urbanity! and Shifter:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A/

>Happens to me a lot on Youtube too - you watch just one thing - and now your recommendations are full of things like that one thing. Or Facebook/Youtube, somehow: I watched a single video on Youtube about Viking sword fighting and suddenly my people recommendations on Facebook were at least 20% militaria fans, always visible from the profile picture already. It finally stopped but it took well over half a year.

>That's why I thought this story was about recommendation systems recommending either only narrowly what you already know, and finding something new is not really well supported or not better than random, or that one outlier can skew your recommendations for a long time.

This kind of problem is exactly why we are building alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to find more channels making similar content:

https://channelgalaxy.com

Click on icons in the lists to go to that channel's list. You can "surf" along that way to discover new content.

How has Yannic Kilcher not been mentioned yet?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZHmQk67mSJgfCCTn7xBfew

I discovered him on Two Minute Papers' similar channel list on the alternative YouTube recommendation algorithm I'm helping to develop. Here is Yannic's list of similar channels which includes a number of AI-research focused channels:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCZHmQk67mSJgfCCTn7xBfew/

>YouTube also has volumes of content, most of which barely gets seen, while they have a massive user base that is regularly unsatisfied with recommendations they get...

>YouTube is still useful if you know how to dig deep and find content...

I'm working on alternative YouTube recommendations to solve these exact issues. Search a channel you watch to get a list of other channels making similar and related content:

https://channelgalaxy.com/

The lists are inter-linked so you can click the icons and "surf" from channel to channel to discover more creators. The algorithm prioritizes smaller channels to help users explore deeper into subject areas.

We've also mapped YouTube by plotting a few thousand YouTube channels in a 2-d mapping with a drag and zoom Google Maps-type interface, placing similar channels closer together. You can get a sense of the entirety of YouTube and how broad subject-areas are inter-related.

https://channelgalaxy.com/blog/article0/

(We're getting weird "Please try again in 30 seconds" errors from Google App Engine, but an immediate reload will usually work. Any advice on this would be appreciated.)

It is pretty obvious as a creator. The analytics available encourage experimentation. You find that mentioning subscribing or making a more visually engaging thumbnail will significantly boost important metrics like CTR. CTR is a metric almost entirely dependent on thumbnail image, although title and description play small roles, and CTR is an incredibly important metric for getting the content served by the algorithm.

And it isn't entirely true that including a face mugging for the camera is always the most visually engaging (although representations of people are very attention grabbing). A person in the image is a character for a story, the whole "worth a thousand words" is true in that a whole narrative can be compressed into a single image and viewed with a glance. A person or other sentient being is a character for that story (I'm sure cat thumbnails do well too).

Just try to think of an interesting narrative involving exclusively inanimate objects. Kinda hard; the whole "animate" thing seems to be necessary to give a before, middle, and after to events (ok, maybe collisions, explosives, and rockets might work, they'd probably do well as thumbnails too). A thumb with Linus looking surprised or disappointed or puzzled gives a short and incomplete narrative about the object he is looking at and how it made him feel those emotions. Part of this is that watching the video will give you a more complete narrative.

Just put out an update on the database to correct the missing icons. As channels change icons the old links go dead. Should be back to near 100% icon coverage now.

As far as "elements out of focus and missing some borders" goes, I think this may be referring to the choice to have channel descriptions pop-up on hover in the lists rather than cluttering the screen with text. It may be something else, we do use a gray background underneath the page headline (with the channel title, subscriber count, large red "View on YouTube" button, and channel icon), for example.

Of course, we'd love to hear more feedback on the page design choices.

Give it a reload. Google App Engine is giving random problems and an immediate reload will almost always solve the issue.

If anyone has any advice on this issue I'd love to hear it.

Surprised Quanta and Sean Carroll aren't on this list.

You watch The Angry Astronaut?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQvhpTBJRgMAXXzHHzJr7hg

Lex Fridman definitely has a YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHZKyawb77ixDdsGog4iWA

He even has a clip channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJIfeSCssxSC_Dhc5s7woww

You ever hear of Machine Learning Street Talk?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMLtBahI5DMrt0NPvDSoIRQ

>Fall of Civilizations

You might like Dan Davis History:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVwT8zcS5Z_rYXnpomlbfg

and Maiorianus:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAPLyCPMWlJ0hZCS5-A8loA

> Moth Light Media

Paleo Analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQoaCXh2vU2_qeUDt25LY-Q

Hey, I'm working on a project to help users discover more interesting content on YouTube. Our channel-based recommendations allow you to search a channel and get a list of other channels making similar content, with a focus on surfacing relevant smaller and more obscure channels.

We have most of these channels mapped and I think you'll be able to discover some interesting new content on some of these lists, especially in the more niche categories of the shoe commentators and the London transport channel:

Rose Anvil: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCId9g4zlQ9BOn6fLKIt1Y0A/

I'd recommend clicking through to Trenton & Heath's list for a more complete listing of shoe channels:

Trenton & Heath: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCVYlC0HmT9eZI3ZrFy_xthQ/

Fireship: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCsBjURrPoezykLs9EqgamOA/

Mike Shake: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC6ktP3PLU5sAJxN9Rb0TALg/

The Plain Bagel: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCFCEuCsyWP0YkP3CZ3Mr01Q/

History Matters (Ten Minute History): https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC22BdTgxefuvUivrjesETjg/

PensionCraft: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC9OIwUcx-Uss7xj7s1P5XGw/

Become Elite: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCFfFE-6nfCHz4uDZ-08o6ng/

Jago Hazzard: https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCcHuNKYzVMc06FXqsBEAV3A/

I hope some people find the tool useful. You can search channel names in the top bar or click icons in the lists to navigate to different channels' pages.

Cheers!

>as well as begin reading/watching some great information on entrepreneur published on yCombinator youtube channel.

You ever hear of Slidebean?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4bq21IPPbpu0Qrsl7LW0sw

I found their channel through the list of similar channel suggestions for Y Combinator here:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg/

>I remember going on deep YouTube rabbit holes in another era, because their recommendations always pointed to new, highly related content. Then, at some point in time, YouTube switched their recommendations algorithm to direct me to a mixture of 1) videos (mostly on unrelated topics) that I've already viewed, 2) videos about topics that I've recently searched for or watched that are unrelated to the current video, 3) videos trending across all of YouTube, and etc.

I've been working on a small team to tackle this problem. We have a working prototype if anyone is interested in checking it out. Look up a channel to get a list of channels in the same niche or related niches. It is specifically designed to surface smaller creators.

Here is our list for 3Blue1Brown, which seems to be popular around here:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw/

The icons are crawlable links, so you can click the channels in a given list to go to the list for that channel.

We also have mapped the channels to provide a new way to explore. The map clusters similar channels so you can get a spatial sense of where your interests are and what interests and niches are very far away, ones you may not consider or even be aware exist. For the curious, here is a short blog post explaining the map and how to use it:

https://channelgalaxy.com/blog/article0/

I hope this isn't too self-promotional. I think there is a need for this kind of thing and it is hard to resist the many, many cries of frustration about user exploration on YouTube and the narrowness of their recommendations that I frequently see around here.

Cheers!

You aware of the AnandTech channel and their podcast?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Qjj9Jpww3iQarwt8HOcDw

I could give you a list of channels that do similar content to TechTechPotato.