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 actually like the recommendations. I usually only get content that’s relevant to my interests, and I’m always finding new channels that are interesting and worth my sub.
Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing differently from everybody else, because I never see much of the spammy/irrelevant content everyone else seems to be getting. Or maybe I’m just easy to please.
Same. I usually find something in the first 4 results that are relevant and interesting. Only thing I wish it did more is expand a bit. It heavily favors stuff related to what you’ve watched very recently. There’s some channels I love but completely forget about because I haven’t played them in a little where.
My recommendations are broken. It just repeates what I’d been watching and never nothing new. I don’t know why my algorithm is broken. I have gotten to the point of watching more movies and tv shows at this point.
There’s a new tab. That might fix your issue
I love long form comedy content but it does nothing but recommend 30 second clip content. It’s absurd. I just can’t like and interact with the videos I actually like enough.
I do a search for a specific comedian with the words “full set” in the search terms. I do the search outside of the YT app (e.g., using DDG) and watch it either on Firefox with UBO or I search for it in Newpipe. And then subscribe in Newpipe ( and in the regular YT app so they get a little engagement; I also go in and randomly like a few of their videos).
I don’t know what kind of comedy you’re into but here’s a full Matteo Lane set (I think he’s hilarious) - enjoy:
Then tell it you don’t like those channels and thumbs down the short stuff you don’t want, and thumbs up the long stuff you do.
Remove the “shorts” section entirely (I know you can with vanced, forget about vanilla) if those are the 30 sec videos you mean. I hate them and ignore them entirely. Simple.
It’s really not hard to get YouTube to be a pretty damn good recommendation engine. You just have to give it some constraints.
Me: I interact negatively and it doesn’t work
You: then just interact negatively.
Do you actually tell it what you do and don’t like? If it keeps recommending a channel you don’t like, click the “no more from this channel,” or “don’t recommend things like this” or whatever those options are.
If you do that, as well as thumbs up/down, you get good recommendations. Really not very hard.
I have the same experience and I’m wondering if it’s because I’m not American?
I also have a good experience with it and am American. But I also pay for premium for my family and I wonder if it’s not pushing contentious shit to maximize watch time because they already have my money?
I’m American. I use adblockers extensively and do not pay for premium. I’ve always enjoyed my recommendations and they have always been very relevant to my interests. I don’t get spammy content.
Same. I like the recommended stuff, it actually matches my background noise preferences and has changed over time too and landed some shots in the dark.
It has one drawback: Repetition. I watch a dumb and savage 10s clip from an old cartoon, I get 20 clips recommended. And if one was particularly popular, it recommends that one 20 times. Thing is, it switches gears fast, specially if I tell it I’m not interested. It’s the only algorithm that just seems to GET the concept of “give me DIFFERENT trash”.
I’m in the same boat. The recommendations don’t bother me too much, except when it recommends me videos I’ve seen in the recent or distant past. Also, when I watch one video from someone, then come to find out they’re part of some right wing culture and end up getting recommended the right wing rabbit hole videos for a few weeks.
I have the opposite experience. YouTube is always pushing dumbass recommendations. I only go to YouTube when someone links to a video I’m interested in, say some neat demonstration of a old analog synthesizer, and there’ll be a couple of slightly interesting suggestions on synths, I’ll click on that and then the recommendations are like “Woah!!! Check out what happens when I stick a synth cable into my butt!!!” And it’s not because I ever watch videos like that, in fact that shit is what makes me close the YouTube window and never go back until some other website links me directly to an actually good video again.
I only go to YouTube when someone links to a video I’m interested in
I wonder if this is part of the discrepancy, as I use YouTube pretty much all day long. I work from home and pretty much always put some YouTube videos on my TV while I’m working. Maybe YT just has a more robust dataset for my account to filter recommendations better.
“Woah!!! Check out what happens when I stick a synth cable into my butt!!!” And it’s not because I ever watch videos like that
You don’t gotta hide it. We’re all friends here. ;)
Same for me. Sure there’s crap in there sometimes and because I like some Atheist/Philosophy vontent YT kinda likes to shove Prager U and other religious channels down my throat from time to time. But hesides that, I’m usually quite happpy with my recommendations
Hahaha going to a random invidious recommendations page also only shows tech stuff. Pretty nieche though
90% of my recommendations are videos I have already watched.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about YouTube.
I have an addon that makes watched videos gray and adds a WATCHED tag to them. Makes it more satisfying to browse, knowing you won’t get tricked into wasting time rewatching something. Now you can waste time watching NEW useless stuff.
Youtube recommendations used to be an amazing way to find new music. Sometimes you even had a little community of people in the comments going from video to video.
Another casualty of enshittification, I guess.
I’ve only been getting that recently.
It’s like I just watched 50 minutes of this hour video, took it out of my Watch Later and enjoyed it enough to actually give it a Like, why the hell would you recommend it to me again.
No. Mine decreased when ad frequency increased.
As someone who routinely watches YT through Invidious and NewPipe, I haven’t changed my habits.
NewPipe user here, and same thing. It’s amazing.
Yeah, I catch myself sometimes to switch to NewPipe. But sometimes the videos just don’t play. And sometimes it works fine
Was unusable for some weeks once, now fixed again and just works. Sometimes crashes but videos always play
I’m watching less because I’m not getting any new or interesting recommendations. I just keep seeing the same stuff over and over again. I hate algorithms. I hate that something is deciding what I should watch while not showing me 99.999% of the other things on the platform.
Oh, and the ads are absolutely out of control. I have to decide if the content is really worth sitting through all the infuriatingly jarring ad placements. Most times, it’s not.
If you watch on Android get the reVanced app. No ads and skipping features. It’ll skip sponsors, intros, and end credits plus a shit ton more. It’s the stock YouTube UI with really granular control over features
I watch almost exclusively on my AppleTV. I’ve given YT premium a lot of consideration but it’s just a bit too much and I assume the price will continue to increase.
Yes, the ads is a whole another level. Using it without ad-block is not pleasant one bit
Nah recommendations are shit anyway. I just watch my subscriptions
I have history turned on and it generally recommends stuff I’m interested in. My only complaint is that it doesn’t update often enough and likes to recommend videos I’ve seen already.
Same, I get the feeling very few people actively interact with the “not interested”/“don’t recommend” stuff, so they end up getting all kinds of weird recommendations. Or they also use Youtube Music. For some reason Youtube seriously struggles to understand that most people don’t consume video the same way they consume music, and conflates the two constantly.
I use subscriptions only for a long time and occasionally throw off dead weight there. No need for such a feature to be honest. I get most new interesting channel either by recommendations from youtubers i subscribed to or from random links like on lemmy. Which happens rarely, like, I subscribe to 5 new channels max per year, and remove about the same number each year.
I’ve primarily only watched my subscriptions for a few years now.
Honestly, my YouTube consumption went down when Hipyo refused to endorse trans rights and then the Linus stuff came out shortly after. The one two punch kind of made me start seeing nearly all YouTube personalities as unhealthily egotistical and probably kinda scummy. There are some creators I like, but at this point I just really don’t care what most of these people think anymore.
I’ll always tune in for Philosophytube or Contrapoints, though. I’m a sucker for the format when it’s done well. And I do enjoy Matt Colville and that D&D animated guy.
Nope, subscriptions give me what I want. And peertube has a lot of cool channels if I want discovery.
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After switching to Newpipe, yes a bit
Honest question:
what about newpipe is secured against google cracking down on ad evasion through
utilizing their api(just read their FAQ, they don’t use the api. Though still, I imagine google has other options to crack down on this type of use)? I imagine google is one bad day from breaking things like newpipe because people are circumventing their ads?I think that they dont use the Api is the reason why it works. Maybe they use RSS too, Freetube does that as Fallback.
If Google implements WEI we are fucked. And they could somehow bind an ad server to the content, only it the server is used, content is loaded
Does Newpipe have any recommendations? I haven’t noticed any setting for this (and I haven’t missed it, just curious).
Since I’ve been using Newpipe I’ve watched more videos of what I was specifically searching for and little to no mindless viewing. It’s allowing me to research certain topics more easily without the ads and distractions.
I’ve purposefully avoided the recommended videos for a long time now. They only exist to increase the amount of time you spend watching ads.
I’ve always just watched things that I wanted to watch from followed channels for the most part 🤷
