[Retric]

YouTube’s algorithm isn’t very good for users because it doesn’t really separate mildly interesting videos that you finish from awesome content you loved.

YouTube of course doesn’t care because they don’t make more money when you see something awesome.

[Mountain_Skies]

YouTube didn't help things any when they neutered the dislike button. It's still there but functionally useless. Yes, we all know why they did it to save the feelings of a few political staffers at campaigns aligned with the values of workers at Google but it's been an absolute godsend for scammers and terrible for signaling interests to the recommendation engine.

[layer8]

It does distinguish between videos you thumbed-up (or down) vs. videos you merely played. At least that works for me with YouTube Premium/Music.

[HPsquared]

It works pretty well for me. Do you use the like and dislike buttons, subscribe to channels you like, etc?

[Retric]

> subscribe to channels you like

That makes things worse IMO. My favorite videos tend to be one-offs not channels producing regular content. Unsubscribing from everything definitely improved my feed.

[im3w1l]

How would you distinguish one from the other given the data youtube has?

[Retric]

The algorithm is limited by their choices not the current system as they can update the UI.