[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.