#youtube algorithm

[headphones-lifeform]

The YouTube algorithm once suggested I watch a video titled "Garak and Bashir- Star Trek's first gay shipmates?" or something similar.

Well.

Deep Space Nine is not a starship, but a space station. Therefore they are stationmates.

"First"? Have you forgotten where the term "slash fiction" came from? STAR TREK. IN THE LATE 1960'S AND EARLY 1970'S.

Garak/Bashir is a cool pairing, though. I mean, the actors basically confirmed it.

[felixcloud6288]

Youtube apparently thinks I'm the only person who likes both ClariS (They made songs for Cells at Work and Puella Magi Madoka Magica) and Myth & Roid (They made songs for Re:Zero and Overlord) cause no matter how much I listen to them, the algorithm refuses to make a mix album with both.

My efforts and experience to get the algorithm to form a link between the two goes:

Play lots of ClariS songs. Now Youtube knows to recommend playlists of their songs

Play lots of Myth & Roid. Now Youtube knows to recommend playlists of their songs

Alternate between them between songs. No integration.

Play more ClariS. Nothing.

Play more Myth & Roid. Playlists start adding a band called Mili (Mili and M&R did a song together one time).

Listen to tons of Mili. Youtube recommends mix tracks of Mili and M&R

Listen to ClariS. Youtube doesn't mix ClariS with anything.

Listen to more M&R. Ender Lillies OST gets recommended (Mili made the soundtrack).

Listen to tons of Ender Lilies. That gets integrated to Mili and M&R

Buy Ender Lilies. Beat it in a month. Remember what I was originally doing.

More ClariS. The playlists now have ClariS, Mili, and Ender Lilies. No M&R.

Play Mili. Start getting Made in Abyss Soundtrack (M&R made some songs for it)

Nier Automata OST randomly shows up one day. I can't find any discernable reason for that happening.

Play more ClariS. Playlist finally shows M&R.

Wait no, it's a playlist of ClariS and Made in Abyss. No non-MiA M&R are here.

Discover at some point M&R removed most of their songs (Likely due to the band leader leaving)

At this point Youtube will make playlists of ClariS, MiA, Ender Lilies, Nier, and Mili; or M&R, MiA, Ender Lilies, Nier, and Mili. Still refuses to mix ClariS and M&R.

New ClariS song comes out. Listen to it nonstop.

Youtube decides the new ClariS song should be associated with M&R and not ClariS.

M&R restores all its songs. Have to start all over.

New band Kokia suddenly appears in playlists.

Listen to tons of Kokia.

ClariS is now willing to associate with M&R but only the songs that weren't previously removed.

M&R still refuses to associate with ClariS though.

This has been a minor pet project for nearly a year now. I have made almost no progress but have found tons of music I love so it's not a total waste.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I'm agreeing with you on the subject of YouTube wanting negative comments in that they've been pushing the trans phobic Dave Chappelle SNL clip HARD on my recommend videos.

I already know that it's bad abs there is no reason for me to engage in it.

Yeah, this happens a lot. My advice is DO NOT click on the videos to hit "dislike" - instead try and find the "not interested" prompt and use that in your recommendations, or "do not recommend channel." Do that every time there's a shitty video in your recommendations, whether on the front page or in the sidebar next to a video you're watching. If a few shitty videos show up in the sidebar of a video you're watching, it can be worth scrolling down to make more videos load in and hitting "do not recommend" and "not interested" on everything garbage.

If you do it over and over and over and over again, EVENTUALLY the system starts to get the hint and will mostly leave you alone. It's just an exhausting thing to have to do so much.

The Shorts feed is even worse, and even more insistent and sticky - I frequently get frustrated comments from people who have been trying to hit dislike and "not interested" to get my shorts out of their feed but YouTube just keeps pushing them anyway. Their mistake is leaving a comment about it, that just ensures it'll keep happening.

In Shorts, hit dislike and scroll away AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and do this over and over again and eventually the algorithm should correct. Same rule applies on TikTok.

It's very hostile design. The algorithm knows (as much as a machine learning algorithm can "know" anything) that anger and upset motivates engagement, and it will keep trying to push it.

[iamafanofcartoons]

Tools for blocking Youtube Channels

Problem with youtube is that you click anything related to what you like, youtube will spam hate videos, spoilers, and the the opposite of what you want in the recommended. Same with youtube search. Clicking Dislike, not interested, or don't recommend won't fix that. I am a fan of shows like star wars and RWBY, and Enjoy movies like Captain Marvel or the like. You watch one video, the hate comes in. Same with politics or religion. I did find tools that may be useful, and so I want to make the knowledge of these tools accessible to others.

Blocktube Chrome - www.chromewebstore.google.com/detail/blocktube/bbeaicapbccfllodepmimpkgecanonai

Blocktube Firefox- www.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blocktube/

Channel blocker/youtube cleaner- www.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-cleaner/

uTube Downloader-www.youtubedownload.minitool.com/youtube/how-to-block-youtube-channels.html

Channel Blocker for Opera-www.addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/channel-blocker/

[notwiselybuttoowell]

girl what did I do???

[keir-mal]

Can we talk about the YT algorithm?

Okay, so we all know how harmful and addictive the TikTok algorithm can be. It's the og. But can we talk about the YouTube shorts algorithm for a bit? Like, at least the TikTok feed learns your taste and preferences and shows you more of those kinds of videos. But with my experience over the past few months of scrolling through YT Shorts, I see SO MUCH far-right conspiracy and anti-LGBT content coming through every time I decide to mindlessly scroll through the shorts feed. Being someone who only follows left-leaning content creators on YouTube and is a part LGBT community, the only content I like and engage with are things that align with my beliefs, but I'm still getting an influx of this content. Then I started disliking and clicking "don't show content from this creator" and that hasn't helped in any form.

I KNOW there are left-leaning communities on YouTube. But why am I not seeing any of them in the feed? Is anyone else seeing this pattern or am I cursed?

[troythecatfish]

Ngl I’m loving this YouTube update :)

[nana-hotaru]

This is giving me "it's the same picture" vibes

[arcsin27]

Youtube algorithm is right sometimes. Yeah that’s my mix right there

[kuiperblog]

Algorithmic neologisms

Much has already been said about the way that certain platforms censor or throttle certain content based on the use of certain "forbidden words," which leads users to come up with creative workarounds.

The most plainly obvious example is the way that some people say "s3x" in contexts when the word "sex" might get them flagged. And sometimes, if a platform is paranoid about use of the word "kill," then you'll start to see "k*ll" instead. But sometimes it leads to the invention of new neologisms: instead of "k*ll", you might say "unalive." And everyone knows what the eggplant emoji represents.

But one of the silliest examples of this I've seen is on YouTube.

You see, YouTube's algorithm hates hate speech. Posting hateful or hate-related content is a quick way to get your content flagged as algorithmically "unsafe."

But apparently, "hate-related content" is a category that can includes anyone using the word "hate" to describe how they feel about something. (Which, I guess is sort of true in the most literal sense, but when people talk about "hate speech," they're usually referring to something specific that doesn't include statements like "I hate Gohan.")

This has been a great source of consternation to YouTuber LordKnight, who has an entire genre of video which is predicated on the idea that "fighting game players hate every character on the roster except their own," which now have to be retitled:

I hate short people! Their tiny hitboxes make them hard to hit in neutral!

LordKnight is not a hater! He just strongly dislikes certain characters:

Genuine question: does "STRONGLY DISLIKE" carry less or more negative affect than "HATE?" Like, which comment would you be bothered by more if someone wrote a mean comment? Certainly, one requires more effort to type, which sort of carries the association of someone putting more effort into the bad vibes they're sending your way.

On the other hand, on a purely aesthetic level, I'm in agreement with Stephen King that the presence of an adverb is a dead giveaway that you're using a weak word: obviously, any editor reading your manuscript would see "STRONGLY DISLIKE" as a phrase that could be strengthened by changing it to "HATE."

Mentally, I just love to anthropomorphize "the YouTube algorithm" as a dinner party host who overhears someone say "I hate Adult Gohan" and yells, "HEY! Hate speech will not be tolerated in this house!"

[bethanythebogwitch]

Youtube's algorithm is clogging up my homepage with two drama channels accusing each other of bad behavior and I cannot emphasize enough that I don't care

[studiogimmick27]

So, I’ve been getting through my watch later playlist at work. And a good majority of it is just philosophical, analysis videos of Bioshock.

If you don’t know by now one of the major themes is anti-socialism.

Apparently the ad algorithm understands this. And now it thinks I’m an anti-socialist.

I have made a grave error.

[kingskyless]

HEY not to rant in public but I contacted youtube support 'cause there's a visible decline on my audience engagement and I got this.

I am very upset but I also think it's important to share this if anyone is having the same problem! I was taking it personally and believing my art wasn't that good anymore but this helps clear thing up, even if it's messed up.

this sucks but we gotta keep going!!

i also got a nice little message at the end that applies to all artists i think

[vaguely-problematic]

a u.s. supreme court case for 2023 may change the internet. legal eagle (above video) explains.

Gonzalez v. Google LLC is about whether youtube can be held liable for the content that its algorithm recommends to viewers. it involves a terrorist attack by isis and the fact that youtube was recommending isis videos to its users.

[iamafanofcartoons]

i'll be real. you blazed a post onto my dash. i'm gonna block you. rules are rules. figured i'd help you out before i do.

you really want to know why the youtube algorithm is bad? positive feedback loops. not positive as in good, but positive as in they grow larger over time.

youtube's recommendation algorithm is partially based off of what it learns from users. it takes in all kinds of data on what users watch--the uploader, the title, the tags, the thumbnail, the description, anything it can glean from the audio and visuals, whatever. you name it, google's probably holding it. they dont have yottabytes upon yottabytes of data for nothing.

importantly, though, is that they also keep track of what the user watches Next. see, google (as with most social media that uses an ad revenue model) will run studies, where they try out different experimental algorithms created from viewership data on different users and see what is more likely to get users to click through. how they create these experiments is pretty complicated, and i'll save you the technogore. think of it as making tons of algorithms that each think different combinations of aforementioned viewership data at different amounts are the reason why that viewer made their choice, then projecting that onto all users to inform future suggestions. trust me, that's the easy way to think about it.

what makes it a positive feedback loop? well, recall that i said the algorithms are created on viewership data. the successful one(s) is/are then used to inform future recommendations. that data is then used to further experimentally tweak the algorithm. the choices user make influence the algorithm. what influences the choices users make? the algorithm. as time moves on, the algorithm becomes more and more biased until youtube decides to make more dramatic changes to influence things in a different direction (remember the change to favor runtime? then to favor watch-through?)

here's where i get all communist, and why i felt compelled to write all this. youtube isn't fixing shit about this system. why would they? people are clicking through recommendations at insane rates! they're watching more videos! and sure, a general societal right-wing bias might have positive feedback looped into turning the website into a facism pipeline, but google is making so much fucking money from gathering an insane amount of information from users that can be used in ad targeting the whole time. even if youtube itself struggles with profitability, even if people like. kind of say stuff about the problem but never really do anything about it at a large scale, even if people are being redpilled, why should google care when they make more money than anyone could even comprehend? until capitalism is overthrown, there will be a shit algorithm.

blocking channels is a start, but there will always be more shitty things to block (just like how there's always blazed posts for me to block the OPs of). apps that bypass youtube accounts and privacy loss (youtube vanced and newpipe) are privacy tools first, kind of hit or miss when it comes to the algorithm. never looked into the source code of them, but, if you ask me, it's either some amalgamation of everyone's recommendations who use those apps, a "default" algorithm, or one that's kind of tailored to you as youtube slowly worms its way into identifying you by your device and ip address.

point is, dont hold your breath waiting. keep looking for tools, keep spreading the word, keep finding ways to support content you like so the artist isnt reliant on ad revenue. dont keep throwing your money at tumblr, though, they really dont need it. they really never needed it. buy yourself a nice fuckin sandwich. everybody deserves a nice sandwich.

god, i'm going to look dumb if my ask gets deleted when i block you in five seconds. you have a good night.

Soo...yeah....this was based on this post

Basically I'm sick and tired of people like Manga_Kamen, Vexed Viewer, WatermelonCube, and other people raging about how they hate something that others like, and how people are supposed to hate what they hate.

I just wanted to give people the opportunity to remove those hate videos from their search results, so that they can at least find what they're looking for, using Youtube search.

[tatdritt]

YouTube’s moderation of “child? Put on YouTube kids” is stupid because 1. Some adults sound like kids

but also, not all content that is made by kids or teens aren’t necessarily “for kids.” Like for example, a 10yr child could post a tutorial video on how to make a casserole… and you don’t want that on YouTube kids because a two year old could end up killing everyone in the mothertrickung house trying to make a casserole. Or sometimes, children take place in creative works such as movies. There’s a fair supply of short films on YouTube and such, most of which are made by adults but have a child actor, or trailers for horror films produced by indie studios, or a child taking a job in voice acting, or…. Yeah. Not everything that has a kid in it is for kids, period.