What does YouTube recommend to you?

[SOTTREADER]

So, I'm curious... What sort of videos does YouTube recommend to you? I've noticed it floods me with mind numbing stuff nowadays... mostly endless sports.

Like these are the videos on the home page right now

How do I get out of this mind numbing algorithmic hell?

 

[SOTTREADER]

And like, this is the top of my subscribers page

How is it that the videos on the home page are so disconnected from the channels I'm subscribing too?

 

[Alejo]

Well, some of them might be suggested by other videos you have watched at one point or another. Some others are paid for by the uploader for advertising to people in several different groups, region, age group, gender etc.

I think there's an option where you can tell YT to stop suggesting a specific video to you (I think on those three dots) but it'll get you from one chunk of the algorithm to the next.

The more nefarious possibility about it is that YT could be also listening to conversations on your day to day and if sports come up, then it'll suggest it to you, as Amazon or FB would suggest a product to you. So I would also check the settings on your device for microphone access and deny it.

 

[Sybil]

How is it that the videos on the home page are so disconnected from the channels I'm subscribing too?

Well Alex Belfield and Resistance GB is not the cup of tea of Censor Media :D. ( I don't like Alex Belfield much as a person, he is annoying and ranting, but he is right, mostly). Russel Brand is a celeb, still, and a comedian. As long as he behaves he is permitted, but if he bites too deep in Big Media's hand, he is out too.
The suggestions generated by AI. It mixed with your general interest, misinformation, propaganda, and silly stuff.

 

[Sybil]

I think Russel Brand is a contemporary Jester. Clever, witty, and very funny. He is allowed to speak, just like medieval Jesters. They could tell the truth because they were considered fools. But the Jester was everything but a fool. He was very clever and understand the thin line he was balanced on in order to stay alive, although many Jesters didn't survive the monarch's bad mood. I really do hope Russell will survive. ( Maybe he got some dark credit from his marriage with Katy Perry)

 

[Natus Videre]

What a particular sequence of tags...
(Scene) (Gordon Ramsay) (Eating) (Humans)

 

[Sybil]

The suggestions generated by AI. It mixed with your general interest, misinformation, propaganda, and silly stuff.

I would like to withdraw this statement. The tags above doesn't seem to be random, it seems to reflect the 2D (or 4D?) qualities of G. R.

 

[SOTTREADER]

Well Alex Belfield and Resistance GB is not the cup of tea of Censor Media :D. ( I don't like Alex Belfield much as a person, he is annoying and ranting, but he is right, mostly). Russel Brand is a celeb, still, and a comedian. As long as he behaves he is permitted, but if he bites too deep in Big Media's hand, he is out too.
The suggestions generated by AI. It mixed with your general interest, misinformation, propaganda, and silly stuff.

I was listening to Alex Belfield at the beginning of the pandemic, not so much nowadays. Russell Brand I listen to every now and again - I think he's got something to him and isn't entirely all "dead" inside.

I'm just a bit annoyed that all YouTube throws at me tends to be sports related whilst the majority of channels I subscribe to aren't sports related. I noticed a big change after the pandemic. I think the algorithm pushes things to you that "they" want you to consume, not necessarily stuff that is in line with what you're after or really interested in. Looking at the homepage you'd think I only watch sports when in fact I haven't watched less sport than I do now.

Look at this! You'd bloody think I was American too

 

[ToxicCoward]

How do I get out of this mind numbing algorithmic hell?

You can manually fix Your browsing history by searching for sport videos You watched in the past, then You can hover over found entry wait for X to appear and click it.

 

[Chad]

In my experience, as TC notes above, the suggestions seem to correlate with your watch history, and maybe even with what you've 'liked'. I find that, so long as i bear that in mind, when compared with other websites, the suggestions Youtube provides can still be pretty good/interesting.

Although i do agree that its algorithm does seem to get a bit carried away with suggestions on some topics. In my experience that particularly applies to anything popular/ mainstream.

Perhaps editing your history, as well as just clicking and 'liking' a load of stuff that interests you (you don't necessarily have to watch them in full), might help reconfigure your suggestions a bit quicker.

 

[Sybil]

Look at this! You'd bloody think I was American too

they trying to hypnotize you... I read it somewhere that all this modern sport fetish is just another tool to maintain the mass illusion.

 

[goyacobol]

I think Russel Brand is a contemporary Jester. Clever, witty, and very funny. He is allowed to speak, just like medieval Jesters. They could tell the truth because they were considered fools. But the Jester was everything but a fool. He was very clever and understand the thin line he was balanced on in order to stay alive, although many Jesters didn't survive the monarch's bad mood. I really do hope Russell will survive. ( Maybe he got some dark credit from his marriage with Katy Perry)

It does make me wonder how YT allows him to stay there.

I was just wondering where to post one of his videos on the glorification of Bush and past political enemies now suddenly cozying up to each other. I think Russell Brand is a very witty and wise fool.

You can manually fix Your browsing history by searching for sport videos You watched in the past, then You can hover over found entry wait for X to appear and click it.

Thanks for the tip @ToxicCoward. I never use the settings that much but I can see how there are more options that may be useful.

 

[onemen]

It might help that there is an addon called Unhook that allows you to hide everything that you dont want to see on youtube.

I hide thoses things/pages I dont want to see : home, recommended video, exlore, trending, shorts, end of video cards.
And set to redirect to subscriptions page as my home page. So, My home page looks like this right now : only see videos from subscribing channels.

Sometimes I go to youtube and checks news from subscribed channels. But I find other platforms (twitter) is better for news feed checking so I end up only going on youtube when I want to search for something specificaly and not getting sucked into mindless video consuming nearly as often as before.

 

[T.C.]

I’ve been pretty surprised over the last few months at the channels, videos and shorts YouTube has been recommending to me. It is, unbelievably, working as it actually should.

I’ve been able to watch a lot of vids on channels that actually give way more objective assessments of reality that I wouldn’t have found on my own due to the fact that if I find one or two reliable channels then I tend not to bother looking for other ones.

 

[Goemon_]

It might help that there is an addon called Unhook that allows you to hide everything that you dont want to see on youtube.

I may look into that. I'm not completely against recommendation, I have had some good ones, but mostly it's either things that seems totaly unrelated to what I watch or things that are on channels I am subscribe to.