Has anyone else's YouTube feed/recommendations been noticeably worse this week?

[gomipile]

Has anyone else noticed their YouTube feed and/or "next video" recommendations being noticeably poorer in the past week or so?

I'm going through my subscriptions watching good recent videos, and working on coming up with some good searches to "retrain" the algorithm. It seems to be working a bit, but I have a long way to go through my plan of action on this. But, I was wondering if this had happened to anyone else recently, or it's just me?

[Peelee]

Has anyone else noticed their YouTube feed and/or "next video" recommendations being noticeably poorer in the past week or so?

I'm going through my subscriptions watching good recent videos, and working on coming up with some good searches to "retrain" the algorithm. It seems to be working a bit, but I have a long way to go through my plan of action on this. But, I was wondering if this had happened to anyone else recently, or it's just me?

Some of my friends commented on this a few days ago, with YouTube recommendations for content that very much does not align with their interests.

[akma]

While I have not experienced this myself (possibly because of generally using Youtube less), there is a claim that Youtube pushes certain content even when it's against the users interests. Personally, many times I found out about a new show because Youtube recommended to me a video complaining about it, which would definitely not what I would put in my recommended videos if I had full control over it.

[gomipile]

While I have not experienced this myself (possibly because of generally using Youtube less), there is a claim that Youtube pushes certain content even when it's against the users interests. Personally, many times I found out about a new show because Youtube recommended to me a video complaining about it, which would definitely not what I would put in my recommended videos if I had full control over it.

Some of that is fine, of course. Lately, though, the nearly all of my recommended videos have just looked uninteresting, boring, etc. This, despite the fact that when I look though recent videos from my subscriptions, there are quite a few that look interesting but haven't been in my recommended feed or next video suggestions.

[akma]

I guess it's tinfoil hat time. Besides being uninteresting, can you find other common threads between the videos Youtube wants you to watch?

[Buufreak]

I honestly feel this way on a daily basis. Luckily, you can block channels from popping up. I think the worst is if through a TV app, as soon as you open it, it jumps right into ads.

[Oerkali]

So it's not just me! I keep getting recommendations for sports videos, random "influencers" I don't care about, mommy vlogs, news channels, and streamers for video games I don't play.

My video history? D&D, Warhammer, comedy news, movie video essays, game/film/food theory, and Power Rangers.

And no matter how many times I select "not interested in this video" or "don't recommend this channel," it doesn't stop.

Their recommendation algorithm is pretty busted.

[Buufreak]

Don't forget shorts, the answer to reels, the answer to tiktok, the answer to vines, the answer to......

[Cygnia]

One of the true crime channels I frequent on YT has a Discord -- and its bot recommended the latest Tesla livestream crap.

It's never done that before. The bot is supposed to ping only when the channel owner has posted a new video. He's not involved with Tesla or Muskmelon at all. :smallyuk:

[Smoutwortel]

One of the true crime channels I frequent on YT has a Discord -- and its bot recommended the latest Tesla livestream crap.

It's never done that before. The bot is supposed to ping only when the channel owner has posted a new video. He's not involved with Tesla or Muskmelon at all. :smallyuk:

Sounds like one of the bot manufacturer made an adware upgrade or the channel administrator made a mistake, but probably b.
This can probably be fixed by sending them a mail. Carefully explaining the issue.

[Cygnia]

Sounds like one of the bot manufacturer made an adware upgrade or the channel administrator made a mistake, but probably b.
This can probably be fixed by sending them a mail. Carefully explaining the issue.


It was something more insidious -- someone hijacked the channel to post Tesla spam, which caused the Discord bot to ping (it pings when the channel updates). Fortunately, the owner got his channel back, but he said it caused him to lose about a 1000 subscribers.

[gomipile]

Also, I'm aware that this could just be a "Does Onyxia Deep Breath more?" type of situation. Probably is, really. My own experience of my YouTube account's feed can't be anything but subjective.

Thanks for the feedback.

[akma]

I checked my Youtube homepage a bunch of times since this post, and the videos there made sense. Maybe it's a country thing? I'm from Israel and I don't hide my IP.


Also, I'm aware that this could just be a "Does Onyxia Deep Breath more?" type of situation. Probably is, really. My own experience of my YouTube account's feed can't be anything but subjective.


Why let rational skepticism ruin our tinfoil hat time?

[wrathcough]

Youtube search has been annoying for a while too -- they'll give you like three actual search results, then ten videos from your history or frontpage recs, then three actual search results, rinse and repeat. If you don't find what you're looking for right away you're hosed

[2D8HP]

It does seem to be suggesting more comedy performances and other stuff that’s not the usual old songs that I listen to

[Arcane_Secrets]

Has anyone else noticed their YouTube feed and/or "next video" recommendations being noticeably poorer in the past week or so?

I'm going through my subscriptions watching good recent videos, and working on coming up with some good searches to "retrain" the algorithm. It seems to be working a bit, but I have a long way to go through my plan of action on this. But, I was wondering if this had happened to anyone else recently, or it's just me?

I'm glad to see someone else mention it because gods its absolutely terrible now. Unless I'm logged in (which I rarely do except to comment) I get loads of basically random garbage that I would have absolutely no interest whatsoever in ever watching. Unless I specifically search for what I want to see nothing that even remotely resembles anything I've watched before even shows up at all.

[Ionathus]

Unless I'm logged in

I'm convinced this is the point. Sure, maybe the random garbage they show on Trending really is trending and it's just broadly appealing content that isn't to the niche tastes that might be present on this forum...but I'm also pretty sure that at least part of it is bombarding you with totally off the wall crap so that you're incentivized to sign in, thus they can track your behavior, thus they can market to you more effectively, which is their true goal of course.

[Rynjin]

...Why are you guys expecting Youtube to give you personalized recommendations when you're not logged in? That's a You problem, not a Tube problem.

I mean yeah, when you're not logged in you're gonna get a random array of stuff that is currently popular. Would you prefer them to stop pretending that they need you to be logged in and give you personalized recommendations and targeted ads at all times?

[Bohandas]

They could be trying to de-echo-chamber the site's algorithm

[Algeh]

I'm never logged in on YouTube, run a browser with pretty high privacy settings, and YouTube's front page is consistently filled with things related to what I've been watching recently. It doesn't seem to keep track over long periods of time, but it'll usually recommend additional videos from the channels I've been watching in the past month or so and other videos with keywords like the ones I've been watching lately. (As well as the garbage-lines of recommended Shorts and other such lines of "specific kinds of stuff that you don't currently watch but we think you should" such as news/politics related things or promoted stuff from YouTube Live.)

It takes about 8 "regular" rows before I hit things that don't seem to make sense based on things I've watched previously, and even then I can kind of see why they might think they're related to topics I actually like even though they're wrong.

Unfortunately, I almost never have actual new things I want to watch show up, because I'm pretty picky about which specific channels within each topic area I want to watch things from, so it's mostly a mix of stuff I've already watched from the channels I like and stuff from channels that I'm not interested in watching videos from even if they are on the same topics. I suppose I should seed some new topics again to get my recommendations less same-y.

[Ionathus]

That's a You problem, not a Tube problem.

Beautiful.

But yes, to your broader point - unless you're logged in, don't expect tailored results.

My point was more that whenever I open up a brand-new YouTube tab in an incognito/cookieless browser, the "trending" content seems aggressively uninteresting to me, compared to when I opened the same tab 5 years ago. If I was designing a frontpage of my video sharing website, I feel like I would work to make it cover more bases and have "something for everyone." Maybe the YouTube audience has just significantly changed in that time, or the algorithm totally revamped, or content creators figured out how to hack it, or kids are watching so much cocomelon that that's all it finds.

But maybe I'm wrong about all that, and the world has just moved on, and I need to accept I'm an old man and now I just have to perpetually see SniperWolf make that exact same annoying face on thumbnails until the heat death of the universe.

[Rynjin]

It's definitely a shift in what content is popular and trendy, with a side of Youtube aggressively pushing content that is...family friendly? I initially wanted to say "for kids", but that's not accurate. "Appeals to kids without explicitly being made for them" is the general kind of content that does well at the moment, in any case.

Safe, nonaggressive, flashy without much substance. That's a lot of the trending material at the moment, and that's how Youtube wants it. They killed off animation, and drove away gaming content to Twitch (and are now trying to reel it back with their own streaming options; it's working apparently), so those are out. Skits do about as well as they used to, but many have moved to Shorts now with varying levels of success.

That leaves weird stuff like "stream highlights" that exist to just push people toward the Twitch account of the streamer in question, video essays (which got a big boom recently due to some wrinkle in the algorithm and nobody is sure why longform content is suddenly favored again), and "influencer" content, because children are easily...influenced.

[Bohandas]

Google's results in general have been getting worse and worse for the past couple of years. I think something's gone terribly wrong with the entire corporation (like, beyond the whole morally questionable adware and data gathering angle; something is going terribly wrong with the services themselves)

This really sunk in for me a couple weeks back when I was trying to look up how many people are descended from genghis khan, and the featured snippets kept returning the same wrong answer (which I know is wrong because I read the articles they were from and they're actually the answer to a different, tangentially related question).

And you havan't been able to exclude results for years now.

And half the time it just completely ignores half of your query (although occadionally it's at least conscientious enough to inform you that it's done so)

[Zevox]

Not recently, but I've noticed it does this every so often over the years, throwing completely random videos that have nothing to do with anything I've watched into the mix. I've always just assumed it was deliberate to see if they could get you hooked on something else, and thus spending more time watching things on the site. I just tell it not to recommend the channel(s) and it usually goes away for a long while.

[akma]

They could be trying to de-echo-chamber the site's algorithm

I think the echo-chambering thing is more of a people problem than an algorithmic issue, people often simply avoid content that doesn't suit their worldview.


Google's results in general have been getting worse and worse for the past couple of years. I think something's gone terribly wrong with the entire corporation (like, beyond the whole morally questionable adware and data gathering angle; something is going terribly wrong with the services themselves)


It could be related - either some sort of ideological push that accidentally has wider implications, or the workers themselves doing a bad job due to moral issues.

Google and others are widely considered to be evil corporations, so if someone that works there considers himself to be a good person, they could think of intentional sabotage as the right thing to do. Eviler workers could think of Google's success as making the world a worse place for the profit of those at the top, and making the world a worst place for people (including themselves) so other people will profit is not very motivating.

But I'm just throwing wild theories around, I barely even used Google search in the last few years.

[Buufreak]

Not much to report, but alot of the chaff has disappeared from my page. Not sure if it was me reporting/downvoting/blocking enough stuff that it gave up (yea, I'm that guy), or the bad recs were part of them running updates (appearance has changed a bit, now has start up sounds, etc) but I'm happy about it.

[Melayl]

I'm always logged in when I browse YouTube, consistently say what I don't want to see, and it *still* recommends stuff I have said I don't want...

[Argis13]

Not much to report, but alot of the chaff has disappeared from my page. Not sure if it was me reporting/downvoting/blocking enough stuff that it gave up (yea, I'm that guy), or the bad recs were part of them running updates (appearance has changed a bit, now has start up sounds, etc) but I'm happy about it.


I'm always logged in when I browse YouTube, consistently say what I don't want to see, and it *still* recommends stuff I have said I don't want...



But maybe I'm wrong about all that, and the world has just moved on, and I need to accept I'm an old man and now I just have to perpetually see SniperWolf make that exact same annoying face on thumbnails until the heat death of the universe.

If you're okay with running extensions on your browser, you can normally find an extension that can actually make it so that you never see a recommendation from a particular channel.

Here's the one for firefox that I use:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-cleaner/

[Buufreak]

Sorry, I exclusively watch from a TV ALL app.

[Bohandas]

It's definitely a shift in what content is popular and trendy, with a side of Youtube aggressively pushing content that is...family friendly? I initially wanted to say "for kids", but that's not accurate. "Appeals to kids without explicitly being made for them" is the general kind of content that does well at the moment, in any case.

I think "parent friendly" would probably describe it better than "kid friendly" or "family friendly"

[Rynjin]

I think "parent friendly" would probably describe it better than "kid friendly" or "family friendly"

"Advertiser friendly" would probably describe it best, now I've had a chance to mull it over. =p

[snowblizz]

"Advertiser friendly" would probably describe it best, now I've had a chance to mull it over. =p

We have a winner ladies and gentlemen.

[Bohandas]

I still stand by "parent friendly", that's whose sleep-deprivation related paranoia the advertisers' demands are pandering to

[DarkTogashi]

Things are looking normal for me.

[Dimples786]

Yes I noticed that to

[gomipile]

If anyone cares: I did make an effort to go through my subscriptions and actively watch, like, and comment on a bunch of videos that looked interesting.

Now, if anything, I have the opposite "problem." My watch later list is growing faster than I have time to empty it.

Still, sample size of one person, Onyxia Deep Breaths more, etc.