Have Youtube's Algorithmic Recommendations Returned Good Videos?

[Salmancer]

Youtube recommends videos to users based on their prior viewing history, in order to keep viewers on the service and hopefully make more advertising revenue. Most of the time, these either aren't interesting, are actively annoying, or lead people down conspiracy spirals. But every once in a blue moon, Youtube actually succeeds in linking to a video I want to watch. Maybe we should make a list of all the times the algorithm has actually made someone's life better instead of worse.

I'll start. I was looking up some Sonic The Hedgehog 4 music when I stumbled across this video.
I'm not sure how Youtube determined I was an Angry Birds fan based solely off of Sonic music unless it has also caught on to the similarities between Sonic and Angry Birds. (Maybe it has something to do with Sega buying Rovio?) Either way, I love challenge runs and I used to enjoy Angry Birds, so a challenge run of the original game was right up my alley. While I liked the video, most of the other videos on the channel were Zelda related and thus outside of my sphere of interest. Regardless, Youtube did give me a new channel to keep an eye on so I felt I should give it some props.

 

[guzmania]

most of it is stuff i'm not interested in but sometimes it gives me music videos that turn out to be excellent and i may never have discovered otherwise

 

[Zexy]

I picked "only from creators I already follow", but thankfully it does a stellar job at it, since I am not the type to check most channels from start to finish, would rather get a mix of them at random intervals and only pick those I am in the mood for at the moment.

 

[Nicolas721]

It depends. The homepage and the suggestions on the right work relatively well, they match the video and I like that sometimes they show videos from new or not very popular creators so you have a chance to know them.

However searches are...eh. After scrolling a while, they start showing those ugly as shit "kids" videos filled with bright colors and nasty stuff. I hate them and I wish there was an option for them to stop appearing. Once I got so mad about them that I started watching documentaries about violence and criminals so the algorithm would understand I'm not a child and would stop showing them. It did not work.

 

[Aozora]

Sometimes, but there is definitely a lot to sift through. I think it helps to stay away from anything related to video games, pop culture/music, or politics.

I sometimes use YouTube to listen to music from video games, getting recommendations for content creators playing/talking about video games because of that is pretty annoying (I hope I don't sound mean, but watching other people play video games is just not super interesting to me).

I really dislike how if I search for something, youtube brings up the "people also watched" tab, with things that are only tangentially related. Also no, I'm not going to click on a short ever. Same with mixes, they're the worst.

I think the website in general would be less annoying if the algorithm didn't reward comments so highly. I feel like this incentivizes people to make videos where the primary goal is to get people to comment on them, which usually means making something really polarizing.

 

[indigohex3]

Sometimes, it selects great videos, but most of the time, its garbage from like Sky News Australia or one of those Pauline Hanson's Please Explain videos, both I tend to avoid like the plague. However, I found a couple of Russell Howard videos (which I watched and enjoyed), HDVee and music.

 

[ToxicWhiskers]

Sometimes I get some really good stuff, but other times I get absolute garbage, like these videos that claim to be wildlife documentaries with poorly mashed together thumbnails of animals "fighting" with laughably bad blood and gore effects thrown in.

It depends. The homepage and the suggestions on the right work relatively well, they match the video and I like that sometimes they show videos from new or not very popular creators so you have a chance to know them.

However searches are...eh. After scrolling a while, they start showing those ugly as shit "kids" videos filled with bright colors and nasty stuff. I hate them and I wish there was an option for them to stop appearing. Once I got so mad about them that I started watching documentaries about violence and criminals so the algorithm would understand I'm not a child and would stop showing them. It did not work.

I have that issue as well. Often I'm looking up clips from some of my favourite animated shows or animation tutorials and I get recommended that Elsagate filth, even if the stuff I'm looking at isn't kid friendly (stupid Animation Age Ghetto rearing its head as always and I feel sorry for any parents who try so hard to avoid letting their kids see that trash, I know my cousin had a similar issue when her daughter found a video of the dogs from Paw Patrol "killing" each other). I used to have this plugin that allowed you to block certain channels, such as these, from appearing in your feed, but it no longer works.

But it's not all that bad. I've discovered plenty of great creators over the last few years, especially a few whose videos got me through some tough times, like the pandemic. One recent one I started following, It'sTimeToTravel, run by this lovely Japanese couple, does these fantastic videos about different places to stay and Japan's tourist hot spots. The videos are often very calming and nice to have on in the background while I'm working on something and they're giving me some ideas of where I might visit when I start planning my eventual trip to Japan.

 

[JollyYoshi]

I’ve realized after watching a video that my search results aren’t exactly that relevant. I’m having a really hard time thinking of that one example where that happened.