YouTube is wild - Page 2

On February 05 2022 04:54 Loco wrote: I could watch Jordan Peterson videos for two days to know what the hype is all about, and then I'd have a bunch of videos of him and his acolytes in my recommendations, none of which I'd care to watch, because my Peterson Project would have been completed already. And those would stay for quite some time. If almost all the recommendations are not things you care about/will click on, then by definition they aren't sniffing out a preference of yours.

Loco's mom Monday: Would you like a cheese pizza for dinner?
Loco: Sure
Loco's mom Tuesday: How about a pepperoni pizza for dinner?
Loco: Sounds good
Loco's mom Wednesday: Do you want to eat a supreme pizza for dinner?
Loco: That'd be great, I'm starving
Loco's mom Thursday: How about a bacon and sausage pizza for dinner today?
Loco: Nice idea yeah!
Loco's mom Friday: Do you want to eat a buffalo chicken pizza for dinner?
Loco: nO bY dEfInItIoN yOu ArEn'T snIfFiNg OuT a PrEfErEnCe Of MiNe

On February 05 2022 04:54 Loco wrote: I can give you a great example of my point. I have absolutely no interest in almost all things that are trending but one day there was a video of a guy opening some very old canned foods and taste testing them. The algorithm had nothing to go on based on my individualized preferences, it just suggested it in a bubble to me because it was trending, and it happened to be something I love and I ended up going in a rabbit hole with it. Still watch this kind of stuff a year later, but only from this one guy that I found. If it showed me other channels I wouldn't click on them, because I get my dose with this guy and I like his personality. YouTube's algorithm would fail by recommending more old food channels.

Notice the amount of mental gymnastics we have to get through here

Loco's great example of his point never happened

It showed him the channel Steve1989MREInfo and he watched it and then it recommended him all the other vids from that channel that he all watched, and it still recommends him the channel and he watches it (Unclear if he knows how to subscribe)

IF it showed him other channels of that, he wouldn't watch them, and that would mean the algorithm has failed

but it hasn't even in his own example, because he said

IF

lmao

On February 05 2022 04:54 Loco wrote: With that said, the more simpleminded and narrow/stable your interests are, the more predictable you are. I personally have turned off recommendations a long time ago because they were not useful/accurate for me despite having spent a lot of time on YouTube simply because my interests changed or I had moved on from watching certain things. And also, of course, because I aim to be more intentional with the site as a whole - there is always the possibility of being bored and clicking on shit you don't even really want to watch.

philosophy genius stumbles upon the fact that if you watch a video, and at the end it suggests 9 related videos, and in the sidebar there's 20 video recommendations, and you load the front page and there's 25 videos waiting for you

and you don't have time or interest to click and watch every single one

and then watch every 10-25 that get suggested on each of those videos in turn

if you don't click on all of these, it means youtube's algorithm has failed and there's no such thing as big data

guys i've got a great example of the youtube algorithm falling flat on its face

you know what would totally demonstrate that it failed miserably?

if it did something that it didn't do

On February 03 2022 14:59 Bigbobm wrote: then we disagree on what 'sniff' means, which is stupid.

On February 05 2022 04:54 Loco wrote: I wasn't saying it's pure randomness, I'm saying it's not individualized - or at the very least, it's not always individualized. I'm not stupid, I know you're never going to get some Hindi-speaking kid recommended to you if you are a white adult who lives in the US/Canada and only speaks English. I'm just saying you're not dealing with some advanced artificial intelligence that knows you. GPS and age and whatever else they start with might get them to recommend some French Canadian cooking channel to me that a lot of people in my age range/area like, but it won't stick because I don't give a shit. That's what I mean by random here. They are placing bets but there is more that they don't know about what I want to watch than there is that they know if I'm on a fresh account. Obviously, the more you use it, the more this becomes skewed towards them having a better chance of recommending something you will want to pay attention to. But it will still have some of its randomness in there, like picking from the trending videos list, which isn't going to work when you have no interest in popular media trends. I could watch Jordan Peterson videos for two days to know what the hype is all about, and then I'd have a bunch of videos of him and his acolytes in my recommendations, none of which I'd care to watch, because my Peterson Project would have been completed already. And those would stay for quite some time. If almost all the recommendations are not things you care about/will click on, then by definition they aren't sniffing out a preference of yours. I can give you a great example of my point. I have absolutely no interest in almost all things that are trending but one day there was a video of a guy opening some very old canned foods and taste testing them. The algorithm had nothing to go on based on my individualized preferences, it just suggested it in a bubble to me because it was trending, and it happened to be something I love and I ended up going in a rabbit hole with it. Still watch this kind of stuff a year later, but only from this one guy that I found. If it showed me other channels I wouldn't click on them, because I get my dose with this guy and I like his personality. YouTube's algorithm would fail by recommending more old food channels. With that said, the more simpleminded and narrow/stable your interests are, the more predictable you are. I personally have turned off recommendations a long time ago because they were not useful/accurate for me despite having spent a lot of time on YouTube simply because my interests changed or I had moved on from watching certain things. And also, of course, because I aim to be more intentional with the site as a whole - there is always the possibility of being bored and clicking on shit you don't even really want to watch.

Yeah no disagreement here. Btw i'm used to interpreting statements about 'randomness' very pedantically. Most of the videos I actually want to watch have less than 200 views, and are never recommended to me. There's actually a lot of gold on the internet but it's buried so far deep beneath the galactic proportion of filth that no algorithm will ever find it for you. I've watched about 60 seconds of JP in total and then got his shit recommended to me forever. I guess it's because the algorithm knows I'm a youngish disillusioned male so it would guess I like it.

I actually went one further and made a new account, set the age to 12. So hopefully Google thinks I'm a very messed up 12-year old I guess.