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Same for YouTube..they always recommend Jordan Peterson clips even though I seldom watch his videos. I think this puts a dent in the narrative that social media is always pro-left. I suspect the reason for this is because Jordan Peterson and non-PC political videos have a high retention rate and follow-through rate. People who watch one video are highly inclined to watch more , probably more so than other niches.
How does one explain how incredibly bad YouTube recommendations are? If I go to YouTube and just look for something interesting to watch, I have to scroll past dozens and dozens of videos to find something interesting. The most baffling thing is that it can't figure out that if it shows me a video every time I go to YouTube and I always scroll past it and don't click on anything until it has shown me about 40 videos, I probably don't want to watch that video and it shouldn't show it to me 20 times before giving up.
It also seems to have a long memory and a short memory for the wrong things. If I watch one video from a particular channel, it will suggest videos from that channel every day for a few weeks even if I never watch any more. But if I watch a lot of videos on a particular subject, if I stop watching them for a few weeks, it will completely forget that I was interested in that and never show me one of those videos again. It should be the exact opposite. If I just watch one video about something and don't keep watching more videos that it suggests on the same subject, it should assume I'm not that interested in it or was only interested in that particular video. But if I watch a lot of videos on a subject, it should assume I will be somewhat interested in that subject for the long term, even if I go a week without watching one of them.
Another thing it struggles with is it seems to put too much weight on the channel the video is hosted on and not enough on the actual content. If I watch a video because I am interested in the interviewee, it will keep recommending videos with the same interviewer, but it won't recommend other videos with the interviewee.
The other thing is that it clearly grouping certain channels into clusters and cannot figure out that I actually really dislike certain types of videos in that cluster. So like if it clusters videos about Alice and Bob together because people who like one tend to like the other, if I watch a video about Alice, it will immediately start suggesting videos about Bob, even if I never watch a Bob video. It cannot figure out that I am in some way different from other people who like this cluster of videos.
I actually like this feature. I watch different categories of videos ranging from various debates and podcasts, gaming videos, historical videos and documentaries, videos about technology from solar to new weapons and I also follow some channels due to them being entertaining or just cute to clean the palate with something wholesome such as some animal stuff. I often think something may be interesting but not right now as I am interested in different topic at the moment. But I like it if it remains in the feed for some time - even for a day or two - as I can return to it.
On the other hand I do use "not interested" feature for content I do not find interesting which helps. I am also blocking/unsubscribing whole channels a lot if the algorithm thinks for some reason that I should watch the content even if I find it uninteresting. One example is that I do watch League of Legends content from one youtuber/streamer when I am chilling in the evening or drinking my coffee as he has soothing voice and it helps me vent off stress. Of course as soon as I subscribed to his content and watched a few of his videos, I was slammed by other League content that I am not at all interested in. It took me weeks of religious blocking of random League stuff until the algorithm realized that no, I do not want to watch anything else from that category.
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At a guess, shoving in 400k/4M view videos increases watch time overall, because most people do want them - but people hre tend to not want them?
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I think youtube wants to drastically reduce the amount of niche content they host and broadcast, so they're always recommending stuff from only the channels they want to keep, even if it's not what people want to watch.
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Sure, it's the same idea, but tiktok is much more powerful. You don't have to follow, like or even watch an entire video for the algorithm to respond. Being even slower to dismiss a video will boost similar videos. The youtube equivalent would be something like tracking your eye movement to see which thumbnails you're looking at. I know because I'm now getting porn-ish content after being slightly slower to dismiss videos with pretty girls.
I would be willing to bet YouTube does timing stuff too, if only because ad revenue is definitely based on watch time.
There’s a possibility that TikTok’s is more aggressive, or maybe it just gets more independent data points due to the short form. I wonder how fast Vine adapted to users.
Youtube created an entire Shorts product that's a direct clone of tiktok, so they're definitely paying attention. And even before tiktok YT creators believed YT used watch-time as part of their recommendations and tried to keep it high.
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100% this. Youtube's metrics include the following:
How much did you watch a video?
Did you leave after watching this?
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This is probably true.
It’s also the origin of complaints about an alt-right “pipeline.” You watch one Peterson meme and your recommended videos will be destroyed by FACTS and LOGIC. Never mind whether or not you actually cared about Shapiro or whoever, YouTube knows that some people are really into both, so that’s where you’re sorted, bucko.
I’m of the impression that the effect waxes and wanes based on YouTube’s current algorithm. Though it could just be trends in how much vocal notice it receives? Either way, this phenomenon applies to the left as well. “Breadtube” was explicitly created to harness similar network effects. It’s best known for Contrapoints and I think hbomberguy. People make long-form talky videos and try for algorithmic cross-pollination.
It does seem to create weird trends. I like to watch videos of people building things. One day, I watched a video of somebody building a bizarre contraption termed a turbo burn barrel, which involves connecting a automotive turbocharger to a sealed metal barrel full of burning wood and starting the turbo going with a leaf blower. Pretty amusing, I thought. Well it seems either this was a Youtube creator trend or the algorithm decided I loved it (or both), since I kept seeing a constant stream of turbo burn barrel videos for the next few weeks, which I mostly did watch. Then all of the sudden it just stopped and I hardly ever saw them anymore. I saw a few hints suggesting videos in that genre were still getting made, but it seemed more like the algorithm just decided to stop showing them to me for some reason.
I saw that one in action! Thing was terrifying. I have no idea how much thrust a regular turbo is supposed to produce, but it certainly looked like a lot.
However, it didn’t mess with my recommendations. No idea why.
Depends which one - at least 5 or so channels that I saw built them, probably more.
Those automotive turbos aren't supposed to produce thrust at all, the exhaust is supposed to be run through the usual mufflers. With bare exposed turbine exits, it'd be just a little. You'd probably need to build a proper nozzle to generate much thrust.
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I got the turbo barrels too! Does youtube push them to people in a broad demographic or do they have an implicit characterization of people wherein we both fall into the same narrow bucket of turbo-woodstove-video susceptibility? I honestly find this question rather disturbing, in that unless I choose to buy print media it's getting harder and harder to tell what's going on in the general populace. As in, how am I to tell whether something gets to me because it's in general circulation, as opposed to having been precisely targeted?
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The YouTube algorithm is notoriously opaque from the end user perspective, and truly is hasn't been transparent since YouTube made the first major adjustment to it by disincentivizing clicks over watch time and website retention. Back when they were on their meteoric rise in popularity, the Paul twins were famous for directing their viewers to their brother's videos and using each other's channels to 'trick' the algorithm and they both got really famous really quickly as a result. The algorithm correctly identified that viewers who watched Jake Paul very often watched Logan Paul videos, so as soon as you click on one of their videos in your 'Recommended' tab, YouTube had already started the process of tailoring your user profile to watch videos from the other brother.
Information about how and why the YouTube algorithm was changing from 2015-2020 would be so incredibly valuable for contextualizing a lot of the social movements we've seen recently, but too bad that this is information we will probably never get publicly.
Many successful youtubers emulate this by having multiple channels even if all of them have basically the same type of content. They just advertise content on the other channel during the video and maybe with a link in description. Sometimes this secondary channel gets even more popular than the main one, so this crosspollinating definitely has some effect.
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