[xbkingx]

I call it "collapsing into the mean" - all recommendation engines (as the currently exist) will eventually corral you into the most vanilla, mass marketed set of recommendations and then fail miserably when any conflicting data is presented. We've effectively turned the web into cable TV circa 1990 - a finite set of junk food level entertainment sources that we voted for because they were "eh, good enough" and easy to find.

With as many YouTube videos that I've watched since 2005, you'd think they might recommend a video with less than 1000 views once in a while. I've found 1 new channel in the last 6 months and used the "Not Interested" option more times than I can count. And the rules are unclear. I don't want tech reviews from 5 years ago, but if I hit Not Interested, does that influence the channel, topic, age, keyword, etc recommendation frequency? I don't mind old DIY or woodworking videos, I'm subscribed to the channel, and watched the recommended video 5 years ago. (Of the current 12 YT Recommended videos, 2 are labelled Watched and only 2 are less than a year old.)

I think part of it stems from the lack of user organization features. Offer too many and you scare away users, while the people with vested interests dump money and time in to wash out any negative opinion (see Amazon reviews). Offer too few and you get poor recommendations during on-boarding/startup.

[maest]

> And the rules are unclear.

There are no rules. They just record your preferences and might retrain their black box algo in the future.

The black box decides those rules