Mozilla needs your help to expose YouTube's recommendation algorithm:
YouTube's recommendation algorithm drives more than 70% of the videos we watch on the site. But its suggestions have attracted criticism from across the spectrum.
A developer who's worked on the system said last year that it's "toxic" and pushes users towards conspiracy videos, but a recent study found it favors mainstream media channels and actively discourages viewers from watching radical content.
Mine, of course, suggests videos on charitable causes, doctoral degrees, and ethical investment opportunities. But other users receive less noble recommendations.
If you're one of them, a new browser extension from Mozilla could offer you some insights into the horrors lurking "Up next."
[...] After installing the RegretsReporter and playing a YouTube video, you can click the frowning face icon in your browser to report the video, the recommendations that led you to it, and any extra details on “your regret.” Mozilla researchers will then search for patterns that led to the recommendations.
[...] Alternatively, if you'd prefer to block the toxic temptations served up the algorithm, you can use another Chrome extension called Nudge to remove YouTube recommendations.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:04AM (1 child)
Someone should recommend to Mozilla that they focus on creating a decent web browser that isn't Chrome.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Jordan on Friday September 25 2020, @04:39AM
Firefox is still great, it's just that the leadership at Mozilla has been consistently incompetent.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:07AM (8 children)
You mean uncomfortable truths the left doesn't want you to hear. Censorship has forced those videos to sites like Bitchute. The so-called "conspiracy videos" aren't even on YouTube any longer.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @06:58AM
If only somebody would post a video about this censorship conspiracy!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @12:37PM (1 child)
The truth is uncomfortable. People would rather believe propaganda than feel uncomfortable and anti-social media has capitalized on that behavior.
"Conspiracy theory" has almost become doublespeak, as it is gets stamped on any story or event the mass media and anti-social media doesn't want you to know about.
Just like how a thousand people who Burn,Loot, Murder, and riot every night are "peaceful protesters"
Or just like how BLM really doesn't think black lives matter because although the group has received over $1B in donations in five years, but they have yet to pay for the tuition for a single black college student, or clean up a single park, neighborhood, playground, or financially assist a single school in even one black innercity neighborhood in all of the US?
Uncomfortable truths people don't want to hear.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Friday September 25 2020, @07:37PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday September 25 2020, @01:00PM (2 children)
Youtube is a private platform and can choose to publish whatever they want. Since Bitchute is picking up the slack I don't see a problem here. So I feel the need to ask what category you fall under. Anti vaxx? Anti mask? Anti climate change?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @06:47PM (1 child)
You're a stupid little bitch. It's going to be funny watching you dumb slaves taking the covid vaccines and getting sick. Surgical mask-wearing, suck-ass morons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @08:50PM
Mom I told you stop posting on my favorite website.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @08:00PM
"the left"? Youtube is fucking over the actual left, and really just independent channels in general. Independent Youtube creators like Kyle Kulinski have been obliterated by Youtube's terrible algorithm changes. They would prefer to aggressively push corporate media outlets that led us into the Iraq war.
Anyone who thinks that these giant corporations are friends of "the left" is insane. Sure, they'll give some ground on some cultural issues because those don't directly challenge their power. But the economic left? That challenges their power, and they are very much against it.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 26 2020, @02:48AM
I think that's the first time I've seen -1, Insightful.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:24AM
Instead of trying to get more money from Google by whatever means, they could figure other ways to stay afloat. Because if it is about dubious rankings, they could also investigate Amazon or Facebook ones, there are plenty of cases to check, but maybe it's a coincidence that they do not send money to Mozilla Corp.
Dunno, maybe offering a configurable browser, with better extension API than Chrome, could get them some money from users. Not wasting it in "see what sticks to the wall" experiments would help too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Friday September 25 2020, @05:14AM (5 children)
1. It thinks I want to listen to the same song by the same artist again and again. Nope. Come on. You're smart guys. Do some genre correlation, deep cuts? Anything. Please.
2. Lists. It steers you towards videos of the "Top 10 X" variety. These are always bad. When you're getting pulled towards a "list" video, it's time to go back to the front page and start over again.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @05:18AM (3 children)
My biggest problem with it is that it's slipping ads past my adblocker again
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday September 25 2020, @05:28AM (2 children)
OK, Item no. 0 on the list, I guess. I too remember when you could block them. At least I can still pot them down so I don't have to listen to them. The day that's not possible is the day I just give up on it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @07:23PM (1 child)
Try youtube-dl. Avail for linux, MS - idk about BSD or ios/osx.
Never watch an ad from youtube again. Play at whatever speed yout tell your native player to play at. Etc.
1000x better. I haven't used the youtube.com website for plural years now.
Reminds me, time to donate beer money to the youtube-dl devs! :moseys off:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2020, @12:27AM
It's pure Python, so it should work anywhere with an interpreter and proper parts of the standard library.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @07:14AM
Absolutely on no. 1. Turn on autoplay, search for an artist, play the first song and you'll hear the same fucking song ten times in a row. It should be really simple to have the algorithm suggest every other song by that artist, or even similar artists. Even just a simple "no repeats" toggle would be a big improvement.
2. Lists should be the counter to no. 1, but at least half the idiots making lists put the same song in multiple times, and I'm pretty sure youtube pushes you towards those lists. They also seem to have a hard-on for those idiots u.s.i.n.g. r.o.b.o.t. v.o.i.c.e.s. a.n.d t.a.l.k.i.n.g. r.e.a.l.l.y. s.l.o.w. t.o. r.e.a.d. o.u.t. t.h.e.i.r. l.i.s.t.s.
It's like the "advertisers mentality" has really taken over. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, but they are applying it to the content too.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday September 25 2020, @07:25AM (9 children)
Youtube has no idea what to suggest to me. On my primary browser I'm not logged in to Google and I have cookies from youtube and a couple other google domains blocked, so it doesn't matter what I view, all it does is show the same generic suggestions because it can't figure out what to do instead. With a browser that isn't set to block youtube's cookies, I get the same effect by loading it in private browsing mode. It'll try to build a profile for suggestions based on whatever I've been watching in that specific session, but once I close it it's all gone and YT has to start over.
Either way, no recommendation profiles for me. I started doing this years ago because I got tired of loading YT links of dumb shit sent by friends and then getting flooded with recommendations for similarly stupid videos. It was about as useful as amazon suggesting similar products for months after I've already bought the item and I just wanted it to go away, so I took the nuclear option and never regretted it.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday September 25 2020, @07:41AM (5 children)
The only drawback is that you can't subscribe to channels. I have subscribed to some interesting channels like Fermilab and the LockPickingLawyer, whose video's are worth watching. But if I click on one cat video, I'll be flooded with cat video recommendations for days. That's really annoying (not the cats, but the suggestion behavior). Their system is really bad at what it does. Often the same suggestions keep coming up for weeks, for video's that I'll never be interested in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:51AM (1 child)
I hate the recommendation system for similar reasons. I almost never get recommendations for channels or videos I'd actually watch. I often don't get recommendations for other videos on the channels I do watch. I also highly doubt their reasonings they provide when you hover. I'm so sure people who watched a performance of "The Magic Flute" also watched a 10 hour video of the My Little Pony theme song on repeat or people who liked a six hour symposium on the intersection of intermittent pragmatism and undecidable fuzzy consequentialism with 1500 views also liked a 34 minute compilation of people filmed while getting hit in the genitals. Actually never mind on that last one, they both sound like could appeal to the right kind of masochist. Same with those stupid reaction videos with the idiot in the thumbnail with their mouth agape.
Regardless, be sure to try BigCliveDotCom. It sounds like you might like him and his educational content.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:40PM
I always end up with recommendations for people whispering soft nothings into the microphone. And also the world's largest military explosions. I'm starting to think Jesus is talking to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:57AM
Just use bookmarks or an HTML page with direct links to the channels. I have all my major bookmarks in an HTML page with columned layout.
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Saturday September 26 2020, @12:46AM
You can still get an RSS feed of a youtube channel. The format goes https : //www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channel ID>. For smaller channels the channel ID will be in the URL, for bigger ones you'll need to find some way to get the ID in the page source or from a third party site.
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCD5B6VoXv41fJ-IW8Wrhz9A [youtube.com]
and
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ [youtube.com]
should work for the channels you mentioned.
Not only does this let you follow specific channels without needing persistent google cookies but you'll actually know when those channels put up videos because RSS is just a list of everything they do (the last 10 things are in the feed, at any time), not filtered through machine learning trying to second guess what you want to see.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 26 2020, @02:57AM
I must be doing something wrong. I get mostly relevant suggestions, usually in the same ballpark as what I'm presently watching, and down the same alleys and rabbitholes as my various interests. Then again, I have about 800 subs (tho was only regular on a fraction of those), and both stay logged in and let it keep my history. If they're gonna follow me around, I'm gonna make them be useful.
Tho since they stopped emailing notifications, I don't remember to check on any but my most-regulars, and not always those.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday September 25 2020, @09:28AM (1 child)
A similar setup. So what I noted is that youtube just seem to suggest watching videos similar to whatever I watch at that moment. So it's feeding the loop in some sense, watch X and it suggests more of X. So I guess if I watched a lot of conspiracy videos or cat videos or whatnot it would suggest more of that.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 26 2020, @03:00AM
That's pretty much what I observe. If I watch koala videos, it suggests koala videos, and occasional kangaroo videos. But it also drops in the odd new vid from or related to my subs that have nothing to do with koalas. Which I then might follow and get reccs related to that. It works well enough that I have more good shit than I can possibly watch or keep up with, even when I just skim the cream.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @10:42PM
I see the same thing. If I watch more than 3 or 4 things close in time, my recommendations get flooded with that.
A little while back there was something I wanted to show my wife from Rick and Morty. After watching it, she clicked on about a dozen Robot Chicken blurbs. After that, and I kid you not, over 80% of my recommendations were for Robot Chicken, and if you throw in the suggestions for SNL, it took over more than 90% of my recommended videos. This was on a desktop computer where my browser shows five videos per line, and it was easy to scroll down very quickly to confirm this. It took weeks to get back to "normal."
They clearly have a problem with their PID controller because they get into a runaway situation. For me, at least, after I've seen a dozen or two of something, I'm less likely to want to keep watching more of it for a while because there is a saturation effect.
The other thing I've noticed is that, perhaps I brought up several videos on a very specific topic that I don't normally watch, like I want to see how to repair a cracked windshield, and I watch a couple of those, then I get a few more suggestions for those, which is fine, but then a certain amount of time passes, like three months, then I start getting similar recommendations again. It like there is (at least) a longer time scale where they dig up old recommendations.
I will say that it works well enough that I don't get most of the popular channels from the people that you occasionally hear about in the news (pew di pi, or whatever). I get essentially none of those, which I'm happy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by leon_the_cat on Friday September 25 2020, @09:34AM (1 child)
1) The pyramids of egypt
2) Dark matter
3) Youtube video recommends
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:41PM
4) ????
5) Profit
And the mysterious 4th step.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:09PM (1 child)
doesn't suggest anything. was i gypped?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @07:02PM
yeah. youtube-dl downloads from all kinds of sites too. I downloaded yesterday's alex jones show from banned.video (guest andrew wakefield), for instance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:31PM (2 children)
"A developer who's worked on the system said last year that it's "toxic" and pushes users towards conspiracy videos, but a recent study found it favors mainstream media channels "
... My bad. I get it now: MSM covers up conspiracies. Other media explores them. Potato, potahto. In both cases it is good for the economy, in that it employs a lot of people in the poo stirring business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:44PM (1 child)
Conspiracy stories are basically stories that someone doesn't have to bother creating the characters. They just grab a character who already exists. It's lazy fiction.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:59PM
Except when it isn't fiction. Conspiracy theories explore alternate explainations. MSM requires no theory, in that it is a statistical certainty that it is a conspiracy. How else would you explain the uniformity with which they take oppositional positions on problems that have more than two solutions? If the trinity of cabal news wasn't in on it together, occasionally they would meander into territory that couldn't be summarized by the statement: "I am right, and the other guy is an asshole."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @06:58PM
"A developer who's worked on the system said last year that it's "toxic" and pushes users towards conspiracy videos,"
you /would/ have to be a brainwashed imbecile to work at google.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @07:26PM
nice - work like this that's self-enclosed research that can be leveraged for the common good is exactly how Mozilla should be spending spare cycles. This and their privacy and anonymity research - and being the base tech for TOR! - further their end goals of a better net for us all.
I hope they have enough money and volunteers but that's a different aspect.