Normally, I use YouTube very little (watch a couple videos a month). However, I’ve been in bed with an injury for some time now, which has led me to watch quite a bit of YouTube. The thing is, I subscribe to a small handfull of channels that I enjoy content from, but after a relatively short time I had watched pretty much all the new content from those channels.
Now, I would expect that the YouTube algorithm, which is supposedly designed by competent people to get me to stick around, would be able to suggest some decent content to me based on my subscriptions. However, the past week, I’ve opened YouTube only to find the same old videos being suggested over and over. Even worse: Whenever there’s something interesting-looking from a channel I don’t recognise, it always turns out to be some shitty AI voice over some generic animations or footage.
I know for a fact that thousands of hours of content are created on YouTube daily, but it genuinely feels like there are maybe five creators out there that are making anything worth watching. It’s either that, or the YouTube algorithm is just complete crap at suggesting creators that are in any way similar to what I’m already subscribing to.
What’s going on here? Why does it seem like there’s no real content out there?
As a “funny” side note: What’s with the “aggressively American” AI narrator-voice? I’ve heard it before, but thought it was some dude until I realised it’s the same voice in a bunch of unrelated videos. It reminds me of the Discovery-channel “action-narrator”-voice from back in the day, but now it’s showing up in all kinds of crap videos.
I’m constantly adding and removing subscribed channels. A few I added recently with many hours of content are Contrapoints, Tom Nichols, and Ordinary Things. Very informative and entertaining.
When the algorithm stops reccomending new stuff I take a look at !videos@lemmy.world or r/mealtimevideos@reddit.com and find something cool that isn’t in my recommended.
The moment I hear the AI voice, I instantly jump to the next video.
The youtube algorithm used to show users a smattering of all the types of content on the site. Everyone was getting random shit from one public algorithm.
Now, it only shows you the tiny section related to the search data you seeded your own personal algorithm with.
Unfortunately, quality content is hard to find on youtube, especially because the algorithm will focus more on already established creators and channels. Videos under 20k views and creators under 1k subs almost never appear, even if they’re better related to what you’re watching than what’s being shown on the sidebar.
One thing you can try is to check the related videos while browsing incognito, or with Piped/NewPipe or Invidious, as these will ensure the recommendations are as “plain new account” as possible.
My personal experience, whenever I watch anything game related while logged in, YT will throw dozens of Brazilian Roblox/Minecraft videos as related, even if I’m watching english videos. I block them, refresh the site and another batch of similar shit shows up. I check the same video on Invidious and a different set of videos show as related.
You clearly have the intelligence to spell the words ‘algorithm,’ ‘aggressively,’ and ‘the.’ The algorithm is not meant for you. It is made to suck children and idiots down into machine induced ADHD. If you have standards of any kind, you reject the obvious trash and end up where you are. You have my congratulations and my sympathies.
I hate their setup. The way they recommend the same creators over and over again if you just watch a minute of their content makes it so bland and repetitive.
A lot of it is AI slop now too
This is probably the biggest factor for me, outside of my subs all the content it recommends is low effort AI content. “Oh cool a video about this historical thing I’m interested in.” Cuts to AI slideshow with bad grammar, pacing and no inflection, click don’t suggest videos from this creator. YouTube suggests similar slop from other “creators.”
The algorithm seems to have gotten progressively worse in terms of just continuing to show you the same stuff, especially recently. What it recommends me isn’t worse, just more repetitive. A page refresh doesn’t make much change.
Exactly! I feel like one getting recommendations for cheap ripoffs of the stuff I follow and actually watch.
Sounds like you’re letting the algorithm do all the work. You can’t trust that shit. If you know what genre of content you want then you need to research what actual human creators make it. If it’s nerd stuff, look to see who’s got content on Nebula. If it’s stuff similar to (insert creator here) or on a similar topic, then search or ask around for suggestions on similar creators. And if it’s AI slop or TTS bullshit, just pretend that it doesn’t exist and move on.
O tempora, o mores! A lot of it is Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha youtuber/streamer trash but I’ve found that the recommendations improved after I started subscribing to channels I liked. Once I’d fed the algorithm enough of my tastes it’s started to do a reasonable job of recommending things. Like there’s this Louis Theroux/Vice knock-off called Channel 5 News which have a couple good videos that it just inferred I would enjoy from my history.
my experience is that is def not made by competent people, and i have to train the algorithm by selecting garbage and tell it to shove it up and never recommend it while im alive…and MAYBE in the future im gonna get a watchable video
There is a lot of garbage out there, but also some really good stuff. I like to stay logged out and clear history occasionally to try to keep from getting too algorithm bubbled. It’s not just automatically filtering content by subject matter, it also filters by length if you watch mostly long form videos you’ll get more long recommendations, and same for short videos. Try using more generic search terms for hobbies, interests, topics, etc you’ll get a little more variety in search results and won’t rely as much on the algorithm to filter recommendations.
My recos are great. 🤷♂️
Stuff Made Here
