I noticed my consumption has decased quite a bit. I would visit regularly to watch content from few channels. I would probably still visit every so often to watch the new videos. But the experience has become more deliberate and conscious. I go to YouTube because I want to go and watch something specific. Mindlessly browsing and watching additional content is harder.
This is good progress from Google to get off their platform :)
I always keep watch history turned on, because the recommendation system has always sucked if you kept it turned off. It’s more honest to the user now that they give up instead of intentionally sucking – “we can’t give recommendations if we don’t know what you tend to watch”. That basically makes sense to me and I accept the tradeoff this poses.
I know a lot of people think Youtube recommendations always suck and are therefore not even worth trying, but I beg to disagree. You can cultivate good recommendations, even if your interests have no overlap with the default front-page. It comes down to two basic ingredients:
By default Youtube is going to try feeding you lowest common denominator junk. This is because it starts out knowing very little about you besides broad demographics. The more feedback you give it the less it falls back on this crutch until eventually you get solid recommendations. Every single bad recommendation is a hidden opportunity to tell Youtube to get that garbage out of your face.
And, yeah… in my experience this really works. If you click the buttons and make it a habit, you can get some really great stuff! As encouragement, I’ll share a selection from my home feed full of fresh videos relevant to my tastes. Even the topic bar is on point:
I’ll probably watch all 3 of these videos at some point, which I think indicates a pretty successful outcome. In fact, over the years, I’ve found hundreds of channels almost exclusively using the recommendation system. Even if you primarily stick to your subscription box, improving your recommendations can help you with building that out little by little.
(Note: I am deliberately avoiding the question of whether or not one should want an algorithm to intimately understand their interests because that’s a hard conversation and my soul has already long since been sold)
Idk, I watch a lot, a variety too. I thumbs content, mark not interested. And my recommendations are an absurd over representation of the last 3 or so topics I’ve recently viewed mixed with a small selection of my subscriptions it’s decided I want to watch.
Yeah that happens to me too, but I’m often happy with that because it fits well with my personal tendency to hyperfixate on new topics for a while.
What I like to do is ride out a trend until I lose interest and then start Not Interesteding them. It doesn’t take long for them to fall out of my feed and from that point on only surface every once in a while if a particularly strong video is currently making the rounds.
Don’t hesitate to throw out negative feedback even for stuff you feel lukewarm about. Youtube can take the hint without going overboard and forgetting that interest too completely.
Recommendations have gotten better recently. I’ve been recommended more specific stuff and more stuff that has less than a thousand views, which is really small for YouTube. I feel like the algorithm now has more bias towards recency than trendiness. I don’t mind being a guinea pig for new videos, much better than being inundated with successful clickbait and other crap.