[pantelisk]

The youtube algorithm is working extremely well, to the point where I find hard to believe it does not have any human in the loop or active moderation.

I have discovered so many interesting types of music and documentaries and subculture/subgenres on it. It manages to hit my interests so well, that I rarely go to netflix nor spotify anymore for discovery. I 'll either directly go watch something that I 've chosen on amazon prime, or let the youtube algorithm handle recommendations. (I know this reads like a fake review - but I swear I have no affiliation for youtube btw. Just amazed how well their recommendation engine works)

[stingraycharles]

Are you for real?

YouTube seems to do terrible at the recommendations. It cannot even recognize that when I’m behind the computer, I’m not interested in watching documentaries and when I’m behind my Apple TV, I’m not interested in listening to music videos. It’s such basic stuff, let alone the actual recommendations; it just keeps rehashing the same channels. “Oh you watched a video about the US elections, let’s bombard you with US election videos for the next 3 weeks”.

If I compare the music recommendations of YouTube versus Spotify, the latter is miles ahead. YouTube always seems to either descend into obscurity, or you’ll end up with the same old stuff, where Spotify seems to balance things out fairly nicely.

In all honesty, for all the AI expertise and “intellectual excellence” Google possesses in this area, I am surprised how bad they are doing here.

[frankosaurus]

I actually agree with OP. YouTube recommendations on my primary account are quite good.

I attribute this to careful curation of my logged-in viewing habits.

> you watched a video about the US elections

That's the problem. As a rule, I never view political, celebrity, or clickbait videos when logged in. There is such a vast amount of dreck in these categories, you're sure to be disappointed sooner or later.

If I see a political/clickbait video that catches my eye, I open it in an Incognito tab.

[BeetleB]

> I attribute this to careful curation of my logged-in viewing habits.

> That's the problem. As a rule, I never view political, celebrity, or clickbait videos when logged in. There is such a vast amount of dreck in these categories, you're sure to be disappointed sooner or later.

I think you've just pointed out that YT's recommendation algorithms are very poor. If a user needs to carefully curate to get good recommendations, then it means Youtube's algorithm is not very robust.

[Zancarius]

I've had a similar experience. Anything I don't want to litter my recommendations I view from a private window. If I accidentally click on something I don't particularly want to watch, I remove it from my history.

It's not perfect, because as you go down the YT rabbit hole, you'll invariably get fed "top ten X" type clickbait videos if there's anything that's remotely related to what you're watching, but it does reduce the noise level.

Curating your subscriptions also helps.

[piva00]

I think this is the problem: it's really hard to understand how to get better recommendations out of YouTube.

I did try to curate my watching history, at one point I erased it and started to keep track of what stayed there or not, it doesn't matter, if I watch 2-3 news/political commentary I start to get crap recommendations. If I watch 2-3 videos of any subject I start to see a flood of those recommendations.

It is absolutely useless to me, even more that I have some very non-overlapping hobbies that I jump around.

I tried curating my subscription list, at some point that worked but since YouTube dropped those from their recommendation algorithm my subs are just to check videos from channels I like, some weeks I will see the same videos on my recommendations that I have already watched.

It's a mess, I can't understand it as a SWE to be able to tailor it to my usage. By now, after trying for about a year or so, I completely gave up on "training" YT's recommendation algorithm...

On the other hand, Spotify has always been really good for me, the trends of what is recommended doesn't change so often if I don't change my listening habits, when I do change it picks it up as a quiet signal and doesn't overwhelm me with recommendations for a genre I listened to one day out of the year. Also the Spotify's Radio feature for a song/track/album/artist works really well for the genres I listen to, when I'm tired of my playlists, or when I just want to discover new music, a starting a radio from a track, album or artist I like usually gives me very relevant content.

[kovek]

Nice "hack" with incognito! I also notice that Youtube will catch on to a random video I watch and recommend me similar things, even if I am not interested in those topics. I'll think about incognito in the future! "Right Click -> Open Link in Incognito Window"

[mcjkrw]

I always start with a fresh session and never log in. Then if I'm researching a particular topic, I always get recommendations on that topic. If something is worth saving, I bookmark it like a regular page to access it in future sessions.

[dastx]

My biggest annoyance is that it suggests videos I've already watched. Old and new. I totally understand if a recently uploaded video gets suggested several times a day or over a few days, but it suggests videos I've watched years ago, and also months ago. Over and over again.

Their "don't suggest this video" or channel doesn't work for shit either.

[rasz]

inject those two styles into YT website:

    a #video-title { color: red !important;}
    a:visited #video-title { color: black !important;}

[timc3]

That doesn’t help across multiple devices

[simlevesque]

Are you sure the video was registered as seen ? Sometimes on my phone I watch a video and I don't see it in my latest seen videos. It's an issue with Play Service I think.

[bobbean]

I constantly have the same issue. Youtube even shows the video as already watched. I click not interested, then already seen, but another one pops up in it's place. Quite annoying.

[crispyambulance]

I think youtube recommendations are a sneaky and opaque thing. Whatever they're doing, "it works" well enough for their ulterior motivations rooted in surveillance capitalism.

The OP is absolutely right in wanting to regain some control over what's presented to his eyeballs. Right now the only way you can do that is to right-click on an offending video and select "don't recommend this channel" or "not interested". That only partially works.

I wish there were some way to specify actual words in a "black list" such that videos whose titles or descriptions contain a black list word would NEVER be presented as a recommendation. This is sort of like Twitter's muted words list. It really is the only way to block content that you really don't want to enter your headspace. Not perfect, of course, but better than being left to the whims of pavlovian algorithms coordinated by ever-improving AI.

I once made the mistake of viewing a Jordan Peterson video. It was mildly interesting, I found him somewhat provocative but a bit paternalistic, not my cup of tea, no big deal. But then... I got a ridiculous number of men's right's or "red-pill" videos recommended to me which were totally disgusting. It's easy to see how people can get radicalized or worse all because somebody is paying Google money for clicks and Google is, in spite of whatever they say, disinterested in our well-being.

[cuddlybacon]

I have two YouTube accounts I use, for watching in different languages.

In one language, the suggestions are pretty good. I've found plenty of new stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have.

In the other, it basically recommends a mix that is 80% videos from my subscriptions that I've already watched 10+ times and 20% new stuff that I just don't have any interest in. I wonder if there is some sort of failure mode I'm hitting.

[Tor3]

So, I went to youtube.com right now to check what my recommendations are. Lately I've been watching a few videos about music theory, and some old jazz stuff. And now YT recommends pages and pages of music theory.. hundreds of videos. All the recommendations (useful ones) I saw in the past, about history, old computers, natural sciences.. all gone. I would prefer a slightly more balanced approach from their algorithms.

[rawoke083600]

Ja I'm with you.. I'm super amazed at the channels, doccies, channels and cool videos I did discover ! Now a "real F1 score" is not really possible with the size and nature of YouTube ( Recall VS Precision) but still I find 6/7 days I get recommended cool stuff 3/5 times :) My gf(ok she is now my ex since 2 weeks ago) use to also complain at how bad YouTube algo was for her, but she did enjoy my videos and channels I got recommended. The only difference is I think, was that I spend a lot more time on YouTube then her ?

[wruza]

This sounds like from 10+ years ago. It did that discovery thing for me, but only for a while. Today my youtube is an isolated cell that I have to forcefully break out of to discover something new. As if they were not interested in me consuming new content at all.

[serjester]

Seconded. I find YouTube’s algorithm to be fantastic (maybe I’ve given it too much training data). It does a great job suggesting videos about my various hobbies, movie clips and obscure music recommendations. Surprised it works so poorly for others.

[tripzilch]

The surprise is mutual :)

[noodles_nomore]

(Edit: I'm talking about related videos here. Maybe that's not the same thing.)

5 to 10 years ago I would frequently get lost in Youtube's music recommendations, just going down one rabbit hole after the other with dozens of tabs of untrodden paths. Nowadays everything seems to loop you back to the same tightly knitted clusters of popular music. I suspect that if you were to graph the video recommendations, the resulting graph would be of a devastatingly low complexity.

[SirLotsaLocks]

Yeah same, I guess it depends on how much data they have on you. I've been using youtube and google products in general for a long time and only recently have been breaking away, but I'm sure that that has somewhat helped. Especially considering I created a new account and the reccomendations are not so great, and youtubes in general. Still its pretty good so ¯\ (ツ) /¯

[raunakdag]

What are your interests, both entertainment and music wise?

If you could drop some examples it might be easier to understand why it’s working for you.

[pantelisk]

(Please see the reply I left to Krasnol). So, if you just gave me a search-bar and have me play music, it would be post-rock or metal. And what I get on spotify is a bunch of post rock and black/death metal. Which is fine, but predictable and kinda boring.

But youtube manages to recommend to me things that aren't in my alley, but I somehow end up loving.

(just a random sample from music) "Heilung - Lifa" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BsKIP4uYM

"The caretaker at the end of time" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWksPWDKOc&t=10573s

"Babe Rainbow - Secret Enchanted Broccoli Forest" - https://youtu.be/lh2qHxUDt6o?t=26

A whole new genre called DungeonSynth - https://youtu.be/E9R-vzIe8x0

And one called Witchhouse - https://youtu.be/6XIlNP-c4Ds

And Sovietwave goth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZZSyO28RUg

Uhh, drum n bass n sax?? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G55GspnNkBo

And the latest weird recommendation a San Jose band called Sunami.

Oh And This! - https://youtu.be/cIMKJ43TFLs?t=76 ---- I wouldn't be searching for any of that on my own. But I love all of it (ended buying merch from quite a few "youtube recommended" artists). To me that is as successful a recommendation system as it can be. It shows me things I didn't even know I 'd love! From Jazz, to Funk, to Ambient, to SovietWave goth, to psychedelic rock, the list is always expanding.... I was never that open minded, but now I am. Maybe this is more on me and how my personality evolved through the years than on youtube's recommendations...

---

But you can see that many people had the same happen to them by how popular comments like this are -> "You didnt find this video. It found you." Or "I would love to know what I did to make this come up in my suggested videos. Holy shit this is awesome!"

Curious, ain't it?

[smoe]

I reckon part of why it works well in this case is, because they are relatively popular (tens of thousands to millions of views) songs in somewhat niche genre. So maybe more similarity between users? In more mainstream genres, say Hip Hop, Rock, Metal, EDM i feel it is much harder to break out of the loop of sameishness although the genres have much more to offer.

Also in either case, I'm pretty sure, the vast majority of songs out there have sub 10k views and basically never get recommended. Just top of mind a few songs, that based on the list above you might like, but I think I would never have discovered via algorithms, unless I already happend to start quite close.

Roel Funcken - Balaklavskiy prospex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7WVGwb-9x8

Subheim - Foray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ7IHYSrquc

Klez.E - Nachtfahrt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi-8wkccjsw

Altın Gün - Cemalim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_J3-yr9GNI

Ok, the last one is fairly large, but it came to mind :) I do discover quite a bit of new music on YouTube, but only when I deliberately select a starting song and go from there, on the main page there is rarely something interesting. If there is music at all. I'm sure it would get a lot better if I'd listen music primarily via YouTube.

[AntiImperialist]

I have found that Facebook videos always has had much better video recommendations.

[Krasnol]

It really does sound like a fake review.

Especially considering the fact that you did not even attempt outlining what the reason might be why so many others have the opposite experience.

[cuddlybacon]

Just because someone has an opinion counter to the Hacker News hivemind doesn't mean they are faking it.

In this case, I'd imagine this is a case where the people who have a bad experience with the YouTube suggestion algorithm have a reason to speak up but the people who are having a fine experience do not.

[pantelisk]

I don't know... honestly. I was extremely surprised. I was actually wondering if they switched to some level of human in the loop, because it used to suck in the past, but now is great. I expected people to have good experiences too. I 'm actually shocked to see how disappointed people are here...

Here's an example of some stuff that just showed up recently.

[1] Some guy camping an exploring an island that used to be a federal prison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xnI1hZdltw

[2] A documentary about homeless people racing carts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi-f_J6hV-g

[3] Fantastic funk music (and I don't even listen to funk!) - https://youtu.be/m1oLjnKeUiY?t=2

[4] Fantastic old school theatrical hard rock from Japan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbI79e5iZKs

[5] Sapolsky's must-see lecture on stress - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H9qTdserM&t=112s (which I got recommended and was watching this morning in the background while I worked)

Just a random sample from stuff that popped up in the recent past. All the above captured my curiosity 100%. Maybe it's a personality thing, maybe I am eager to just discover novel stuff, that the quality level might not be the highest but the novel factor covers for it.

[splaytreemap]

I have the same experience as the above user. I primarily watch guitar and exercise videos, and have never had any complaints about the youtube algorithm. The one algorithm I do feel underperforms is Spotify's. For some reason, their discover weekly is always filled with covers of songs I already have in my playlists.