YouTube is Experimenting With Ways To Make Its Algorithm Even More Addictive (technologyreview.com) 71
While YouTube has publicly said that it's working on addressing problems that are making its website ever so addictive to users, a new paper from Google, which owns YouTube, seems to tell a different story. From a report: It proposes an update to the platform's algorithm that is meant to recommend even more targeted content to users in the interest of increasing engagement. Here's how YouTube's recommendation system currently works. To populate the recommended-videos sidebar, it first compiles a shortlist of several hundred videos by finding ones that match the topic and other features of the one you are watching. Then it ranks the list according to the user's preferences, which it learns by feeding all your clicks, likes, and other interactions into a machine-learning algorithm. Among the proposed updates, the researchers specifically target a problem they identify as "implicit bias." It refers to the way recommendations themselves can affect user behavior, making it hard to decipher whether you clicked on a video because you liked it or because it was highly recommended. The effect is that over time, the system can push users further and further away from the videos they actually want to watch.
To reduce this bias, the researchers suggest a tweak to the algorithm: each time a user clicks on a video, it also factors in the video's rank in the recommendation sidebar. Videos that are near the top of the sidebar are given less weight when fed into the machine-learning algorithm; videos deep down in the ranking, which require a user to scroll, are given more. When the researchers tested the changes live on YouTube, they found significantly more user engagement. Though the paper doesn't say whether the new system will be deployed permanently, Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-YouTube engineer who now runs AlgoTransparency.org, said he was "pretty confident" that it would happen relatively quickly.
To reduce this bias, the researchers suggest a tweak to the algorithm: each time a user clicks on a video, it also factors in the video's rank in the recommendation sidebar. Videos that are near the top of the sidebar are given less weight when fed into the machine-learning algorithm; videos deep down in the ranking, which require a user to scroll, are given more. When the researchers tested the changes live on YouTube, they found significantly more user engagement. Though the paper doesn't say whether the new system will be deployed permanently, Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-YouTube engineer who now runs AlgoTransparency.org, said he was "pretty confident" that it would happen relatively quickly.
The next step is obvious (Score:2)
YouTube injected intravenously.
Re: (Score:2)
YouTube injected intravenously.
Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family and the proud producers of OxyContin, the non-addictive opioid pain killer are already working on a pill version of YouTube, for folks who don't like sticking needles into themselves.
Oh, and they promise it won't be addictive.
Re: (Score:2)
Want to get to the core of what they are actually saying. So where the fuck are these new users coming from in this day and age, another fucking planet or what. What they are really saying is, they are working on ways on the only new users left, children, how to hook children.
Ahh youtube search, I played a little game with it a while back, could not find an RT https://www.rt.com/ [rt.com], so experimented with another RT video to see what was going on, typed in the exact title, it did not turn up, had to look way d
Re: (Score:2)
It's just like opium -> heroin -> oxycodone et al, more and more refined versions designed to get you, and keep you, addicted more effectively. And if the Purdue Pharma story is anything to go by, it'll be decades before anything happens to Google for doing this.
What's addictive? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's addictive in suggesting me videos that I already watched over and over again? Their algorithm turned to crap last couple of years, as it became impossible to discover new things unless you specifically search for them. I would rather have it as it was before where on every video you get suggestions of related videos, not the ones you've already seen.
Re:What's addictive? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I would chance is to stop the fucking overlay of suggested videos at the end of the video I'm still currently watching. We lost the ability to watch the last 30 seconds of videos since that stupid bullshit began.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
One thing I would also change is the ability to edit my comments on Slashdot, because this is not the 1990's anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
The ability to edit posts would completely remove any ability to have a reasonable discussion on any topic.
Poster1: Solar power is awesome!
Poster2: I completely agree!
Poster1: edits his comments , new conversation reads :
Poster1: Fucking dogs is awesome!
Poster2: I completely agree!
It'd dumb, it isn't going to happen, get over it.
Oh and on your -1 comment. I actually really enjoy that I now see a lot less ASCII art swastikas. I mean you seen one , you've seen em all amiright?
Re: (Score:1)
Agree. That spammy shit was making it difficult to get to the good stuff.
I read at -1 because I want to judge for myself whether I agree with the moderation and if I want to comment on the post.
Some posts (this happens to me) are down-modded at first, but apparently cooler heads prevail and the post is up-modded.
As for editing, I'm just super careful. Sometimes Is still mess up.
That's so easy to address (Score:1)
...
Poster2: I completely agree!
Poster1: TRIES to edit his original post but... ...
1) Can't edit a comment after someone has posted a reply or even liked.
2) Reply shows original comment replied to, along with note highlighting your jerk update.
3) Commenter notices your edit and reports you, account is sent to the Phantom Jerk Zone.
4) REJECTED: All replies are removed after you edit (very bad if you think about potential misuse).
Basically option 1 would be more than sufficient though. 99.999999% of use case
Re: (Score:2)
Another option similar to your (1) is to ask for all that replied(up to single digit repliers...) if it is ok to push the edit and if they want to maintain their answer
Yes, most posts would be kept as-is in the end, but people would at least stop complaining(myself included)
Re: (Score:2)
Another option similar to your (1) is to ask for all that replied(up to single digit repliers...) if it is ok to push the edit and if they want to maintain their answer
Yes, most posts would be kept as-is in the end, but people would at least stop complaining(myself included)
That doesn't work because sometime people ignore /. for days or weeks or months at a time.
Re: (Score:2)
Honest question : Can you give me an example of any open forums that allow editing after initial post, that are not susceptible to abuse?
Re: (Score:2)
Wish I could edit.....
At least here we know that if you are reading it, the user typed it.
At least for most cases i guess ... 99.98%
Re: (Score:2)
aaaarrrgggg EDIT !
If you are reading it, it hasn't been "altered"
At least for most cases i guess ... 99.98%
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this. We should be able to edit and delete our own posts.
And that recent change to make score -1 posts disappear is really lame. I've set the options to view -1 posts, yet Slashdot seems to collapse and hide certain -1 posts from me anyway. It's BS censorship is what it is. Slashdot is becoming more and more like the fake news mainstream media...
Censorship is not applicable on a private platform.
Build yer own.
Meanwhile, read the ToS.
The only right /. members have is to leave.
Re: (Score:2)
"No, it can't."
Re: (Score:2)
Censorship is not applicable on a private platform.
Of course it is. Go look up what the word means, you dipshit.
Re: (Score:2)
No, censorship is not applicable on a private platform. The Red Zone is for loading and unloading passengers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, censorship is not applicable on a private platform.
As others pointed out, censoring is an action that can occur anywhere, it's just that in the US there are differing rules at the moment for private entities which are not considered a "public square". That "public square" status can change if the government passes a law or Act to make it so.
You do realize that things like censoring on sites like YouLube, Twatter, Facecrook, etc will affect you as well, as there are already those with Left-leaning views getting censored on those sites. See, those behind the
Re: (Score:2)
Yes please, that shit is really annoying. There are videos where the true action happens exactly towards the end, and there is no way to remove that overlay.
Re: (Score:2)
Try the following in uBlock Origin:
youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element
Unfortunately you are stuck with them on smart TVs and Android/iPhone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You can tell YouTube not to keep showing you stuff you have already seen by sliding the video to the right on Android or clicking the three dots on desktop. Select "not interested" and then "I have already seen this video". It's a bit less cumbersome than it sounds.
My theory is that by default it shows repeats because they have a lot of very young viewers who like repetition and don't even really understand that they can control it. I'm talking babies, toddlers and maybe up to age 7.
Re: What's addictive? (Score:2)
Did you do that for a while? Did the algorithm start showing less repeats?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes and yes. After a few days it now rarely shows me stuff I have already seen.
Re: What's addictive? (Score:2)
I tried doing that too, perhaps not enough. So there's hope!
Engagement vs. Addiction (Score:4, Interesting)
If something does what you want, you want more of it. For example: if you go to a food place and they give you good food, you want to go there more. If you put in effort to get crap food, you go there less.
That's simple economics.
Addiction is an overbalanced rewards function.
Once, I started working on a programming project and had to deliberately stop to take care of basic human needs. That was constant, and for several weeks, with my mind wholly focused on one task. I even considered switching careers. I felt great all the time, like someone high on shitloads of meth.
That's addiction. I never understood it before. I managed it deliberately and even well after it passed I have zero issue with triggering that again and using it to get things done, now and then, if I can figure out how--because I like it, and now that it's over and I'm no longer affected I still like it. For most folks, that means an endless stream of bad decisions.
Note that's different than substance dependency, where you can't stop because stopping hurts. Once you break a dependency, you never go back, because the only thing keeping you there was pain. Addiction is a desire for more reward, not an avoidance of pain. Substance dependency, such as with much of what is called opioid addiction, is the same thing as when you burn your hand and keep a wet rag on it: if you take the rag off it hurts, so you don't. After that you have no inclination to burn your hand or wrap it in a towel again.
A Youtube addiction would mean obsession, and essentially getting high on Youtube. We like to call things "addiction" when somebody has bad habits, and call things that encourage bad habits "addicting"; but addiction is something else. It's not an addiction because it's entertaining and distracting; it's an addiction because nothing else in your life matters and it's great and awesome and you want more forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Simple car analogy:
Kinda like sex in a car and stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
You said it WAY more eloquently but from a different angle "Misleading headline is misleading"
"YouTube is improving its product so people use it more" is much better than "YouTube is changing its product so that users are powerless to stop using it"
Watching YouTube *may be addictive, I certainly fall down the rabbit hole pretty often, but no more addictive than say sitting in front of the TV (with a remote and ample supply of snacks and beverages). Making the recommendation system better only improves the q
Aah. The "Being in control of yourself" delusion. (Score:2)
A staple of American society; "Always blame yourself."
Not a staple of neuro-psychology though. ... riight.
Yes, they *really* make it so you are powerless. Yes, making people want someting and think it's them who decided, is way easier than you think!
You alrealy want to reply, yes?
Totally in control of yourself
Try this: How much of what you believe is based on personal observation? How much of that was experienced under a bias based on personal observation.
I figure: None. Just like everyone else.
And how many
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's substance dependency. Separate problem.
Think about alcoholics. In many cases, they determine they can't be around alcohol: after years clean, with no withdrawal symptoms, when they see or smell alcohol they experience an intense craving. Many say they can be around others who drink, but they can't drink alcohol, because after the first drink they can't stop drinking. They drink at work. They drink and drive. They drink constantly.
Withdrawal and dependency are on one side. Such symptoms can
Re: (Score:3)
It looks like you're considering engagement and addiction to be entirely separate. They're not: there is a continuum between them. You were so close when you said this:
Addiction is an overbalanced rewards function.
Engagement works on the same rewards function, just to a lesser degree.
Engagement on Youtube is getting pretty close to 'addiction' levels already. I run a browser plugin to reduce the amount of time I can spend on Youtube, because without that I'd spend all evening on the damn site. It's difficult to stop when there's always one more interes
Re: (Score:2)
It's addiction if your obsession with it negatively impacts your life, e.g. your work, your relationships.
Yes, there are people addicted to YouTube.
enough for me thx (Score:2)
Re:enough for me thx (Score:4, Informative)
Click the gear. Set the speed to 1.5x or more.
No, it doesn't ruin things or make them hard to follow. If you spend a few minutes watching at 1.5x, then switch it back, it feels extremely slow. You adjust quite quickly. I frequently watch longer things at 1.5-2x speed. And you can hit L repeated to skip though the crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks.
This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...
YouTube's UI has gone to crap (Score:2)
It used to be that when I watched one video, I would see a lengthy list of other videos reasonably related to it. This aided discoverability of content that I actually liked. Now YouTube's algorithm promotes stuff that it thinks I might be interested in, which is a different problem.
Depending on whether I want to discover related content or just click on random junk that might be interesting, my goals as a user might be completely ignored.
Re: (Score:2)
^^ This! ^^
Re: (Score:3)
Lately I use FreeTube to watch my fix of science, and metal working videos. It's a bloated app based on Chrome, but it's much more usable than YouTube's ui.
Re: (Score:2)
To add:
I realize that the researchers are trying to address this. So far it does not seem to be working, in my experience.
Yup (Score:2)
The amount of time I spend on youTube has gone down because of this.
User engagement? (Score:2)
Is "User Engagement" marketroid for "Pissing Around Wasting more Time"?
All for it... (Score:3, Insightful)
All for it if it improves their current abysmal recommendations.
And what's this nonsense about "making their network more addictive"? Nice way to ascribe evil motives being them simply trying to improve their service. They're in business to entertain us and doing a better job recommending things we might find entertaining is helping to do just that.
Oh you sweet summer child ... (Score:2)
They are in the business of facilitating assholes manipulting you to steal as much money out of your pocket as psychopathically possible.
They are an ad company.
What we are, is their livestock.
The goal is to give you as little as possible, while taking as much as possible.
Of your ability to wisely pick what's best for you. Instead of impulse-buying crap because you were neuro-linguistically programmed to.
Sounds like tin foil hat sci-fi, but is the current state of the art. Look up some marketing psychology r
Re: (Score:2)
"Sounds like tin foil hat sci-fi"...
Took the words right out of my mouth. Like any company they're out to make a buck. Them simply improving their service is not some sort of post-modern nightmare, it's them learning to properly serve their customers. It's very simple competitive economics. If they can provide better services to me based on the data I've very obviously chosen to give them (my own personal usage data) then I encourage them to do so.
. ...And fucking really, "Lovecraftian Eldrich abomonation"?
Commercials are the cure (Score:2)
Google should keep adding commercials until there is no one left.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Learning algorithms (Score:2)
After a while the people at youtube won't even know anymore what their algorith,s are doing, just that they're tuned to optimize clickthrough rates.
Sidebar suggestions really suck (Score:3)
I search for a topic and find a video to watch. Click to start the video. You would think the sidebar would have other un-watched videos related to that topic. But no, it's filled with some videos I have already watched and many, many videos unrelated to the topic I searched.
Damn, if I wanted to re-watch videos I can go to my history.
If I want to watch something different I'll enter new words in the search bar.
Meanwhile stick with my current search.
Dear YT: STOP suggesting what I already saw!! (Score:2)
It is now common sight, that YT ONLY suggests videos to me, that I have already seen. It even shows the damn red bar below the thumbnail!!
Fuck is YT broken!
And NO way to tell them, since the are all antisocial psychos, that think human communication is something nobody wants.
To quote a certain YouTuber:
"I say, we kill the YouTube!"
EVEN MORE? (Score:2)
I never found youtube's suggestions particularly addictive. Sometimes it recommends videos I'd have been happier not even knowing about.
I've also turned off as many of the voluntary data collection settings as I could.
Re: (Score:2)
hmm (Score:1)
“In our research, we have found that YouTube’s algorithms created an isolated far-right community,
What, no far left communities? Or do those not exist?
pushed users toward videos of children,
Greta Thunberg?
and promoted misinformation,”
Indeed ...
Does that mean (Score:2)
YouTube self destructing (Score:2)
I think YouTube are struggling to attract and retain the viewers they sell to advertisers, for various reasons.
While overall viewing figures are strong the demonetisation of much content, the perceived political oppression from Youtube and the heavily unbalanced application of copyright law means that many content creators are now seeking other ways to engage their viewers.
As an example a channel I occasionally view, with over 14 million subscribers, has signed up with https://viewlift.com/ [viewlift.com] so that they can
You can force it to let you out of the bubble... (Score:1)
Ah, recommendations (Score:2)
I want a recipe for jamaican beef patties.
I get one.
I watch it.
I'm make them.
I eat them.
For the next five years, youtube recommends another thousand jamaican beef patty recipes.
How about "tweaking" the I've-already-solved-my-problem-and-don't-need-to-solve-it-again?
I watched "Inside Out". Netflix's first recommendation was to watch it again in French. Brilliant recommendation algorithms there.
Currently failing (Score:1)