Honestly, that's where I get some of the most use out of YouTube, the recommended videos main page. Sometimes I'm annoyed they aren't showing me enough variation based on my subscriptions and past likes. I'm not sure why I'd want this.
Sometimes I'm watching a technical presentation/talk by someone and I'll get other talks of theirs on the recommended videos for that video page, which is useful, or followup videos on a topic.
What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?
The problem is actually how good those recommendations are. They're designed to keep your eyes glued to the site as long as possible. It's a personal choice, but removing recommendations is one of the best things for your mental health if you're going to use YT or any social media.
That said, I also find them useful. But some people believe that it's better to seek out information for yourself even if being spoonfed is easier.
I don't know how you're getting relevant recommendations; YouTube seems determined to get me into watching the latest celebrity personalities, or endless streams of clickbait.
I use a few custom uBlock Origin rules to hide the recommendations sidebar and the end-of-video overlay complete. If a video doesn't show up in my list of curated subscriptions, I just don't see it, and that's fine. It's good for my feed to be slow and update infrequently; I've got other stuff to do.
If you just a single time watch a video out of your normal categories, yt will never forget. No matter how many times you click not interested.
Also, some of the horrific clickbait thumbnails and titles it suggests annoys me. So avoiding those is one less thing to care about.
Also, much of the problems with yt isn't how they allow dangerous videos to be on their platform, but how they surface them to lots of people by recommending them. They do little harm unwatched.
I suppose people that only want to watch the video they specifically came for, and don't want to be tempted by other media that they know they'll waste their time on.
YouTube does great at recommending videos. I love it, personally. But I can totally respect the former position as well.
> What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?
Recommendations that "the algorithm" provide to me are rarely good, but they are always distracting, and often click-baity. Instead, I come to YouTube to watch the channels I know I enjoy. The shortcut on my New Tab page directs me straight to my Subscriptions page, and that's where I stay.
Do I ever discover new channels? Sure! When a friend shares a video with me, or I stumble across a link on HN. :)
I believe the recommended videos are now the most monetized and yield the highest profits. Things I watch almost never have ads but whenever I accidentally tap a recommended video it's usually 2 ads + interstitials + ads at the end.
And it's fine, they need to make money, I just think they're optimizing for profit and not attention these days.
I know this is not mainstream view. Go and check anecdotally right now. It's worth running some experiments and seeing if the claim had veracity.
It's currently unsubstantiated but I believe it's verifiable since >0 ads monetize better than 0 ads.
Just as the name suggests, the recommendations try to 'hook' you, and some people may prefer to purposefully navigate to videos rather than feel they're being swayed by a recommendation algorithm tuned to surface videos that might catch your eye and keep you watching, maybe for longer than you intended to.
There is another ad-on for youtube which I recently started using. It skips all the advertisement inside the video ( such as self promotion, product promotions, into/outro, sponsorships).
I've tried Unhook and DF YouTube, but I replaced them both with Undistracted [0]. It's more versatile - it has better configuration, supports more sites (Reddit, Facebook, etc) and allows an arbitrary block list.
The internet would be a better place with the ability to hide recommended feeds [1]. They can be useful sometimes, but mostly they're used to distract you from your goal. It's the digital equivalent of placing milk in the back of the grocery store. The ideal home page of a service to me is an empty page with a search bar.
my personal solution is to block all images on youtube. I am perfectly happy browsing for information on text-only hackernews so I decided that it should be enough for video search too.
I honestly just wish the recommendations were better.
I watched an interview that Curtis Yarvin gave on Tucker Carlson (about an hour long...interesting at least).
Now youtube is sending me all these conservative "talk show" people that I have absolutely 0 interest in.
Same thing: I think I watched some video about guns a while ago. I think guns are neat, but I absolutely do not care about watching dozens of videos of bros broing down in the woods with the machine guns.
I was looking to buy a leather belt about 6 months ago. I found the belt and bought it (am very happy, thank you). Now it appears for the rest of my life I will be getting leather belt advertisements. On Facebook, Youtube, Google, everywhere. The whole reason why I wanted a quality belt was so that it would last me the rest of my life if cared for properly. I intend to never buy another.
And what's worse is that it's the same set of ads. Like before I cancelled Hulu, they would show the exact same ad over and over again, just to make it as irritating as possible.
You have to work on them a little bit but once you do, the recommendations are incredibly high quality.
Just make sure to hide the stuff you don’t want to see on your homepage. I go as far as removing dumb videos from my watch history (or watching them in incognito in the first place).
I find that most people who complain about the YouTube algorithm expect it to just work out of the box with zero tuning. It’s not that good and to be honest I personally don’t want it to be that good. But if you put in a LITTLE effort I promise you it’s an absolute recommendation beast. I have hundreds of hours of content in my watch later list just because of it. It’s all super high quality and I’m rarely disappointed hitting random videos in my homepage.
The odd time if there is a "weird" video I see somewhere like reddit I'll just watch it in private browsing to avoid this. It's annoying that I have to do this though.
I find I have the same issue on Spotify as well. I don't listen to Spotify a whole lot, but when I go to the gym I'll use it and listen workout style music. For me the stuff that gives me that energy and focus is often hip-hop/rap style music. But ironically it's probably my least favourite genre to listen to outside of the gym. But since at least half my time listening on Spotify is listening to that kind of music all my recommendations are terrible.
I really wish these services gave better options to manage your interests. I would love to just tell Spotify to just ignore certain genres from recommendations. Part of the problem is that I also suck at discovering music. So it would actually be beneficial to me to have better suggestions on what to listen to.
> I honestly just wish the recommendations were better.
Which is sad considering how great youtube recommendations used to be around the time Stripe was launched. Remember when people used to go down the youtube rabbit hole to see where they'd end up? Now there is no breadth nor depth to the recommendations. Youtube used to be a vast ocean, now it's a puddle ankle deep and no more than a step wide.
It surprises me how many people aren't being proactive about their recommendations.
Hover your mouse over a recommendation you don't like, click the three dots that appear to the right of the title, click "Not interested". Results change very quickly.
Hover over the recommended video and you can click the three dot tab to select "not interested in Curtis Yarvin" or "not interested in Tucker Carlson." I do this all the time and it makes the feed so much better.
You pretty much have to coach it with a generous amount of "Not Interested", "Don't Recommend Channel", etc. clicks on video recommendations of the sort you don't want.
Just do what I do: open the video, downvote it, then go back to the recommendations, hit the three dot menu, and click "do not show me this channel anymore", and if your sections have a three dot menu, "do not show me this section" for all the rightwing whackjob nutter categories.
Youtube eventually learned to stop showing it to me, and due to my downvotes, may be now restricting showing them to anyone.
Why not just publish as an adblock filter list? You really only need cosmetic filtering to do this (supported by adblock filters), and I don't want to worry about yet another extension going rogue and selling to some a shady company.
At least for music, you get much, much better recommendations when viewing in incognito mode. Basically you get songs that other people who listens to this song also listened to, instead of the same songs youtube thinks you like, regardless of the song playing.
I've started using YouTube while logged out in Brave. Every week or two I'll clear my cache / cookies / service worker / literally all of YouTube's local storage to be truly anonymous again.
The recommendations I get (next to a playing video) immediately after doing that are fantastic. It's like a time machine that takes you back to when their recommendations algorithm focused on recommending videos that are highly relevant to what you're currently watching.
When I hit an age gate and have to use it logged in, through firefox, the quality hit for the recommendations is immediately noticeable.
I was surprised that the difference is so apparent, and I've been spending more time on YouTube again as a result.
As others have mentioned there can be some real gems in Youtube recommendations.
Unfortunately there's always (in my experience) at least one out of place recommendation, usually for something that's entirely unrelated but trending amongst the overall userbase.
If it were possible to remove just those random lures along with all live broadcasts the recommendations would likely be uniformly high quality.
Anyway, congrats on the extension. This seems especially helpful on mobile where Youtube seems to want to draw you away form the video you actually came to watch.
I watch videos I'd like to get recommended while logged-in. I watch videos I'm not sure about in incognito/private browsing not to influence the recommendations in my account. If I find myself consuming that kind of content more often and would like it to be recommended to me, I promote it to the logged-in session. If I want to see less of it, I gradually demote it, including deleting YouTube history of videos of a certain type, and this acts as an indicator that I'm consuming more than I should.
This might not be the place to ask this, but does anyone know of anything like this for the youtube app? On appleTV and on Droid the youtube app is severely struggling. From the inability to say not interested in a video or don't show this channel, to being unable to refresh the home page without closing the app completely or signing out of an account. There's no community engagement in the app from what I can see.
I feel like there is something I am missing in some settings somewhere, but I just don't know.
Somewhat related: I wrote my own chrome extension that hides the initial page contents of YouTube other than sidebar/search because I found I would go to look something up like a song and a tile would distract me. So yeah now if I want to actually see the YouTube content on first page, have to click in that area. It's interesting they seem to have a DOM-modified check running.
I don't mind recommendations, YouTube does a pretty good job recommending things I would like. I just hate when I accidentally go to the trending tab. :shudder:
I never feel confortable showing or sharing "my" Youtube main page/recommendations with anyone. It's providing details on my personal interests that I don't necessarily want everyone to know about. This especially true in a work context, when the content of my screen is projected/shared with an audience (boy those endscreen video suggestions can be embarrassing).
[+] [-] perihelions|4 years ago|reply
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%23%23%20twitter%20ublock&type... ("## twitter ublock")
https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/of5z86/cleany...
edit: And here's the YouTube version of that HN query -- there are several suggested ways to block YouTube Recommendations,
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%23%23%20youtube%20ublock&type... ("## youtube ublock")
edit2: Here's a very satisfying generalized query ("## ## ublock" -- comments with two or more ##-syntax rules),
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%23%23%20%23%23%20ublock&type=...
[+] [-] Abishek_Muthian|4 years ago|reply
No ads, No notification pollution & recommendations require manual action(Separate tab).
[1] https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/import-export-data/
[+] [-] kbenson|4 years ago|reply
Sometimes I'm watching a technical presentation/talk by someone and I'll get other talks of theirs on the recommended videos for that video page, which is useful, or followup videos on a topic.
What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?
[+] [-] quocanh|4 years ago|reply
That said, I also find them useful. But some people believe that it's better to seek out information for yourself even if being spoonfed is easier.
[+] [-] zeta0134|4 years ago|reply
I use a few custom uBlock Origin rules to hide the recommendations sidebar and the end-of-video overlay complete. If a video doesn't show up in my list of curated subscriptions, I just don't see it, and that's fine. It's good for my feed to be slow and update infrequently; I've got other stuff to do.
[+] [-] matsemann|4 years ago|reply
Also, some of the horrific clickbait thumbnails and titles it suggests annoys me. So avoiding those is one less thing to care about.
Also, much of the problems with yt isn't how they allow dangerous videos to be on their platform, but how they surface them to lots of people by recommending them. They do little harm unwatched.
[+] [-] seanw444|4 years ago|reply
YouTube does great at recommending videos. I love it, personally. But I can totally respect the former position as well.
[+] [-] toastercat|4 years ago|reply
Recommendations that "the algorithm" provide to me are rarely good, but they are always distracting, and often click-baity. Instead, I come to YouTube to watch the channels I know I enjoy. The shortcut on my New Tab page directs me straight to my Subscriptions page, and that's where I stay.
Do I ever discover new channels? Sure! When a friend shares a video with me, or I stumble across a link on HN. :)
[+] [-] kristopolous|4 years ago|reply
And it's fine, they need to make money, I just think they're optimizing for profit and not attention these days.
I know this is not mainstream view. Go and check anecdotally right now. It's worth running some experiments and seeing if the claim had veracity.
It's currently unsubstantiated but I believe it's verifiable since >0 ads monetize better than 0 ads.
[+] [-] avnigo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Proven|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shmde|4 years ago|reply
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
There is another ad-on for youtube which I recently started using. It skips all the advertisement inside the video ( such as self promotion, product promotions, into/outro, sponsorships).
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...
[+] [-] hoppyhoppy2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suketk|4 years ago|reply
The internet would be a better place with the ability to hide recommended feeds [1]. They can be useful sometimes, but mostly they're used to distract you from your goal. It's the digital equivalent of placing milk in the back of the grocery store. The ideal home page of a service to me is an empty page with a search bar.
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undistracted-hide-...
[1] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
[+] [-] Nathanba|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thepasswordis|4 years ago|reply
I watched an interview that Curtis Yarvin gave on Tucker Carlson (about an hour long...interesting at least).
Now youtube is sending me all these conservative "talk show" people that I have absolutely 0 interest in.
Same thing: I think I watched some video about guns a while ago. I think guns are neat, but I absolutely do not care about watching dozens of videos of bros broing down in the woods with the machine guns.
[+] [-] rsj_hn|4 years ago|reply
And what's worse is that it's the same set of ads. Like before I cancelled Hulu, they would show the exact same ad over and over again, just to make it as irritating as possible.
[+] [-] scrollaway|4 years ago|reply
Just make sure to hide the stuff you don’t want to see on your homepage. I go as far as removing dumb videos from my watch history (or watching them in incognito in the first place).
I find that most people who complain about the YouTube algorithm expect it to just work out of the box with zero tuning. It’s not that good and to be honest I personally don’t want it to be that good. But if you put in a LITTLE effort I promise you it’s an absolute recommendation beast. I have hundreds of hours of content in my watch later list just because of it. It’s all super high quality and I’m rarely disappointed hitting random videos in my homepage.
[+] [-] Fogest|4 years ago|reply
I find I have the same issue on Spotify as well. I don't listen to Spotify a whole lot, but when I go to the gym I'll use it and listen workout style music. For me the stuff that gives me that energy and focus is often hip-hop/rap style music. But ironically it's probably my least favourite genre to listen to outside of the gym. But since at least half my time listening on Spotify is listening to that kind of music all my recommendations are terrible.
I really wish these services gave better options to manage your interests. I would love to just tell Spotify to just ignore certain genres from recommendations. Part of the problem is that I also suck at discovering music. So it would actually be beneficial to me to have better suggestions on what to listen to.
[+] [-] simorley|4 years ago|reply
Which is sad considering how great youtube recommendations used to be around the time Stripe was launched. Remember when people used to go down the youtube rabbit hole to see where they'd end up? Now there is no breadth nor depth to the recommendations. Youtube used to be a vast ocean, now it's a puddle ankle deep and no more than a step wide.
[+] [-] warent|4 years ago|reply
Hover your mouse over a recommendation you don't like, click the three dots that appear to the right of the title, click "Not interested". Results change very quickly.
[+] [-] alphabetting|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Legion|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawtkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DiabloD3|4 years ago|reply
Youtube eventually learned to stop showing it to me, and due to my downvotes, may be now restricting showing them to anyone.
[+] [-] gruez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmdresser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skymt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssttoo|4 years ago|reply
I've been using this for years to hide everything that's not video:
Source: https://www.phpied.com/defining-user-styles/[+] [-] ssttoo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcodiego|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visarga|4 years ago|reply
Downloading everything is a PITA.
[+] [-] movedx|4 years ago|reply
I highly, highly recommend it.
I've found YouTube much easier to consume as a result of this. It's not an endless binge anymore driven by an infinity feed.
That being said I use YouTube everyday and I'm an active content creator on the platform my self. I even have Premium.
[+] [-] wodenokoto|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeftHandPath|4 years ago|reply
The recommendations I get (next to a playing video) immediately after doing that are fantastic. It's like a time machine that takes you back to when their recommendations algorithm focused on recommending videos that are highly relevant to what you're currently watching.
When I hit an age gate and have to use it logged in, through firefox, the quality hit for the recommendations is immediately noticeable.
I was surprised that the difference is so apparent, and I've been spending more time on YouTube again as a result.
[+] [-] iansinnott|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately there's always (in my experience) at least one out of place recommendation, usually for something that's entirely unrelated but trending amongst the overall userbase.
If it were possible to remove just those random lures along with all live broadcasts the recommendations would likely be uniformly high quality.
Anyway, congrats on the extension. This seems especially helpful on mobile where Youtube seems to want to draw you away form the video you actually came to watch.
[+] [-] Jugurtha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nyjah|4 years ago|reply
I feel like there is something I am missing in some settings somewhere, but I just don't know.
[+] [-] pwdisswordfish8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcun4128|4 years ago|reply
Interesting that feature is part of this nice.
[+] [-] dcdc123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] posed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seph-reed|4 years ago|reply
You can enable/disable whatever you want. The point is to get rid of lame content.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sober-media/hfjclo...
[+] [-] gpayan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcuenod|4 years ago|reply