It's crazy to think that clicking on the "not interested in videos from this channel" button previously did not remove videos from that channel in recommendations. I used to press it up to 5 times on the same video and it still did nothing.
I click on "not interested" when it shows videos i've watched the day before, but then assuming i don't want to see videos of a similar type would be a mistake, yet that's how broken the system is. Any attempt to "train" the algo is wasted effort based on past experience. You could say we users have been "trained" by the algo not to even bother anymore.
My approach is to vote on videos I've watched, and just skip it if I've already seen it. It works for me. I'm concerned that I'd see less relevant content if I start saying I'm not interested in previously watching interesting videos.
> I'm concerned that I'd see less relevant content
I used to have that concern as well, but then I realised I didn't actually get that much value from yt recommendations. The stuff I want to see comes from channels I'm subscribed to and only very rarely have I discovered something good from recommendations - most of the discovery comes from the right-hand side video column.
> I didn't actually get that much value from yt recommendations.
The last rec engine I got much value out of was early Netflix, around the first public competition to improve their engine.
My nightmare is that corporations suddenly realized that recommendation engines don't actually help them sell content. Maybe it's easier to persuade tons of people to watch something they'll all think is "good enough" rather than to identify or develop content some tiny subgroup of people will think is sublime.
I think this arises because we can't really model intentions as they involve irrational, subjective, qualitative preferences. .. That's to say, I completely agree with you.
To further the point, the algos are training YT admins based on suspect user metrics.
Did anyone ask for; "What did you think of this video?" 5-star feature, or "Recent Posts" ie. "Hi guys, i know i haven't done a video recently blah blah".
It appears they are repeating the same mistakes made on G+.
The android app "Google Opinions Rewards" occasionally asks me to rate a video i've recently watched, then follows it with a binary choice of recommendation, which I subsequently have to rate the quality of the recommendation.
I'd assume that data is being used for training somewhere.
Also helps to clear your viewing history (Youtube's "History" sidebar tab) every once in a while when you're tired of seeing the same recommendations.
For example, I kept seeing Starcraft 2 replays on the homepage after watching the AI vs human tournament which kept helping me procrastinate. I don't even play the game nor subscribe to a single SC2 channel.
Cleared history, started off strong watching some of my language-learning channels, and now my Youtube homepage is pretty productive.
I've turned off my view history, but my recommendations are bloody awful. YouTube knows what channels I subscribe to, it knows what I click like on, it knows what video I'm currently watching, but it still serves me recommendations that are apparently totally unrelated to any of that.
> it actually does this on purpose, if you've watched it once there is a good chance you will watch it again.
Bullshit.
If I start a random video and let it automatically progress to the next one, I will have to watch it (or parts of it) to tell if I’m interested or not.
This is particularly annoying for Youtube music where starting a radio from something you like now is guaranteed to add new artists to “your artists” because you listened to them once, only to click “next” or “not interested”.
Young kids love the ability to predict what will happen.
An example of this is Blue's Clues, initially producers/scheduling were afraid that by having reruns in the same timeslot would doom the show. Instead kids being able to watch the shows again was a great boon to their target audience's enjoyment.
I’m confused. What was this feature for, then? Just to let off steam when they suggest terrible videos?
Another infuriating thing about that button is that it visually overlaps the video itself (at least in the iPhone app). I don’t know how many times I’ve fatfingered it and started playing an upsetting video rather than report it.
