Training the YouTube Algorithm

[-][anonymous]5y150

You don't even need to create a new account to start this experiment. If you clear your watch and search history on your existing account, your recommendations will get reset immediately. Here is the support doc from Google detailing how to do so; https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en

[-]Lambda5y90

I found, when I tried to do this over a year ago, that no matter how much effort I put into "pruning" the home screen, YouTube would always devote ~10-20% of it to stuff I didn't want to see. Either it was epsilon-exploration, or stuff that tested well with the general population, or a bunch of "mandatory modules" like popular music or "news," but whatever it was, I couldn't get rid of all of it, and some of it managed to attract my clicks despite my best efforts. These extra items filled me with a sense of violation whenever I scrolled through.

So, I wound up using a CSS editor to block the main content of the youtube index page, as well as that column of recommended videos that gets shown next to the player. Here's my custom stylesheet:

.branded-page-v2-secondary-col > * {
  display: none;
}

ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] {
  display: none;
}

ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer {
  display: none;
}

Now when I visit youtube.com, I get a blank page, and have to click on "subscriptions" in the left column to get the user experience I want, plus I get recommended videos only when I FINISH a video. This is a far more pleasant experience, and I am able to use YouTube for pretty much only classical music, cooking tutorials, and the occasional education video, without ever getting pulled into things I don't want.

Speaking of the recommendation algo, btw, it's also super awesome. It has somehow consistently surfaced new classical music composers to me, and has played a major role in the development of my tastes and interests over the past few years. Without it, I doubt I would have been exposed to Schnittke or Bruckner, for example. Way better than spotify, and I haven't found anything to replace it, sadly.

[-]lsusr5y20

Do you use a particular CSS editor plugin?

[-]Lambda5y30

Stylebot for chrome. Perhaps there's better now — the ui can be a bit wonky — but I've used it for almost a decade, so

[-]Lukas_Gloor5y40

I did this and it worked really well. I spent maybe 3h on the training initially until it was mostly just showing me music. Then clicked away the occasional non-music video suggestion for a couple of days, until the music-only preference was completely locked in. I feel like I don't get other suggestions anymore (and the habit to click them away is still installed anyway).

When I want to watch other youtube videos, I use incognito mode (unfortunately that disables the adblocker).

[-]Slider5y40

I pay attention to what kind of story the youtube recommendations tell of me. I avoid training it so that I am not getting a self-fullfilling propechy.

[-]Joseph Miller5y30

I've also been doing this. In my experience, for it to be effective you have to be very vigilant about never clicking on anything you don't want it to recommend. The easy way to watch guilty pleasure videos is to right click > 'open in cognito'.

[-]lsusr5y30

I do this too. Then, after opening it in cognito, I press "Don't recommend channel".

[-]Measure5y30

I wonder how many times I'll have to click "not interested - I've watched this before" for it to learn to stop recommending videos I've watched before.

[-]Nicholas Kross5y30

I tried to do this with a Twitter alt account, to get info about one specific topic. Then I got lazy and used it as a dumping ground to follow any account I came across. But maybe this could've worked there, too.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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Training the YouTube Algorithm

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