[walrus01]

> Amazon keeps recommending me tampons (I'm a guy)

I bought one toilet seat on Amazon and now it thinks I'm a toilet seat collector. No I'm not going to buy another one any time soon, no matter how many color and size/shape/design variations it presents to me.

[erulabs]

This is exactly the issue with all recommendation systems. It's silly when I look at Amazon and see 15 different cat water trays just because I got one for my cat a month ago - but when it comes to social media the effect is really poisonous. YouTube is a good example: if I listen to something about Roman history it's all Rome all the time - a much better recommendation would be to suggest Greek / Persian history - rather than pigeon-holing me after 1 or 2 videos.

I really think I would watch more videos if the recommendations -challenged- what I enjoyed, rather than couching me, but I have to assume that someone has run that experiment and ad revenue went down.

[ashtonkem]

I occasionally watch firearms videos, usually Forgotten Weapons, and the recommendations it now gives me are ... interesting. The ads seem to think that I’m either a day trader, or I’m desperate to escape from Fake News.

[tachyonbeam]

I have that issue as well with the recommendation algorithm on YouTube. It's similar to the challenge of balancing exploration vs exploitation in reinforcement learning. I think that most people want more exploration/discovery so they don't get bored. More exploration also leads to more learning. It's a win-win for everyone.

[the_french]

the yt recommendation algorithm is probably the worst among all the major platforms. It will pigeonhole you into the same 10 videos, which you will never escape. I listen to music on youtube relatively frequently but then it will always go back to the same 10 songs its decided i should listen to, no matter what genres I play.

[0xEFF]

The system learned people buy one seat to try followed by more if they like it. It doesn’t know how many bathrooms you have, but it’ll learn after your second purchase or lack thereof.

[HideousKojima]

Same for me with a part I ordered to fix my AC/furnace, I better not need another one soon!

[gpm]

Or you might be going into the furnace repair business and about to buy a bunch more. Or you might have bought the wrong model.

Both of those are low probability, but they're probably higher probability than the probability that you are interested a product chosen uniformly at random.