A lot of people don’t know this but a hobby of mine is exploiting algorithms. I used to love to do SEO stuff on numerous websites. In fact, in the previous article about Jack Murphy I mentioned that. Right after posting it, I do mean the second I posted it, I had a few bots hit the article. Originally I intended to link to random stuff about Mr. Murphy. However, with him flagging down content constantly that makes it impossible. Why does that matter? Well, to optimize your SEO you need to link to external sites. It also ups it if you have external sites linking to you. Essentially Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all other search engines favor sites that give out a lot of external links and have external links to them. Once you understand this you learn a lot about how the internet works.
Sites like YouTube modify this with hidden algorithms. Which is why people like me used to spend hours testing it and seeing how we could optimize it. This is also why YouTube removed stuff like the P-Score being public, and dislikes. Every bit of data they can hide from people prevents us from learning how it works. Speaking of YouTube. I want to talk about a different algorithm on YouTube that no one mentions outside of comments on older videos. “Thank you YouTube recommendations”.
Everyone knows about this algorithm but no one understands how it works. To be honest, even I have no fucking clue how it works. The algorithm seems to be so “perfect” that it’s broken. I feel like I should explain that. How is it perfect? Well, YouTube tracks how long you’ve watched a video for and if you interacted with it. Then it will recommend more of that channel and channels it’s viewers like. Sounds pretty goods so far. There is one fatal flaw here. Likes and dislikes both count as the same interaction for all algorithms on YouTube. Ignoring the dislikes counting as likes, what’s the problem? YouTube will just recommend that channel and what it’s viewers watch. If you don’t understand let me make it less abstract.
Recently I watched Markiplier play Five Nights at Freddy (FNAF) Security Breach. After 1 ten minute video my entire YouTube recommendation feed is filled with his videos. I do not know why but I only like Mark when he does FNAF content, feel free to judge me. However, nothing I could do would remove his content from my feed. Even clicking “don’t recommend this channel” didn’t work until after a week of doing it. Even if I watched a full Best of the Worst, each video is over an hour, my feed was still full of Markiplier and other FNAF content creators. I watched 1 ten minute video. However, because people who watch Markiplier also watch other FNAF content creators my feed was filled full of content I do not care about. All because I watched 1 ten minute video. I didn’t finish the Security Breach play through until after it was finished because of this. Then I had to go through it all again.
Now that was a worst case for me, and something still affecting my feed. However, recently I learned of It’sAGundam. I find his videos actually enjoyable. Yet again after 1 video, though his are 20 minutes, my feed is full of his videos and now stuff like Mental Outlaw. As well as other content I don’t really care about. A lot of political stuff, no clue why. I was enjoying seeing more of his content for a bit. Then it started to lose its charm. Going back to my feed and scrolling through all I saw was his content, and content like it. It was just tiring. In less than 2 days I managed to get burnt out of his content. The same thing happened with Civvie11, ScottTheWoz, Red Cow Arcade, Spiffing Brit, Joel Haver, and many more. It was worse with daily/weekly uploaders too.
YouTube showing all of this content at once while overwriting everything else I see just causes viewership burnout. I am sure you’ve witnessed it too. Then because I stopped watching the creators due to burnout they stopped being recommended to me, even though I’m subbed to them. I just found out JHS pedals is still uploading. I didn’t know Scott Falco was still making cartoons. I don’t even get blue dots showing me they’ve uploaded. Same with Wampler Pedals, Today I Found Out, Modern Vintage Gamer, MrMario2011, EZ Scape, and many many more. The thing is when I go seek out their content, and watch it, I really enjoy it. Then YouTube floods my feed again with JUST THAT CONTENT.
Unfortunately, for a lot of content creators it isn’t that your content has gotten worse, or something better came along. Its just that YouTube is shoving it down our throats to a level you can’t imagine. We get viewership burnout from it. Like, when YouTube decides to stop hiding Scott The Woz. My feed is filled with videos of his I’ve watched, never the ones I haven’t. I need to go to his channel and manually seek those out. Then it becomes full of clip channels and best ofs. I don’t care to watch a 2 second clip of Scott going “I DON’T CAAAAAARE”. Same for when YouTube decides to show me Red Letter Media stuff. I don’t want to see a 30 minute video of Rich Evan’s pronouncing words wrong.
The fact YouTube would rather show you the same exact videos you’ve watched by creators, clip shows people are doing, and “content other fans of this creator like” just causes a spiral that gets you burnt out. Half the time in the “content other fans of this creator like” section is just the dumbest of shit. Then you have to realise that you’re being recommended stuff kids/teens watch because age group overlaps happen. So, in between videos of Civvie11 I have to go through all sorts of stuff people clearly younger than 17 are watching. When it is time for Angry Video Game Nerd to get recommended? Holy shit my feed becomes unbearable. Just full of “angry” reviewers and clearly stuff 10 year olds are watching because he said the “fuck” word hehe.
Sometimes I will ignore creators I like because of the recommended section. I like Red Cow Arcade a lot. However, every time I watch one of their videos I get bombarded with drama channels. They’re not a drama channel. Their most popular videos are over drama because drama sells, but they are not a drama channel. I like their discussions on movies, games, and many more things. Frankie’s video on his weight loss adventure is amazing! The issue is every time I watch it I get the same clips about drama and then drama channels. When I decide to watch the CU Podcast on YouTube my entire feed becomes anti Amico stuff. This isn’t a slam at the CU Podcast, or a pro-Amico thing. I think the Amico will fail, if it comes out. It just gets annoying to be bombarded with negative content or content surrounding just one topic.
The more I use YouTube the more I hate it. I don’t even mean the censoring. Just using it. The fact I missed an upload by one of my favorite channels, JHS Pedals, bothers me. YouTube is too busy showing me all sorts of shitty clip channels and FNAF fan theories that I just don’t use it. I almost missed the video about the Angry Driver. It was a great video and I really liked it. I liked seeing Josh’s perspective on a pedal he helped create, as JHS pedals don’t show up often on their own channel, and learning ways to use the weird pedal I bought. I missed an entire year of Scott Falco. AN ENTIRE YEAR! Same with Film Cow. Even Flashgitz aren’t showing up on my feed.
Before I go lets round it off with the “Thank you YouTube recommendations”. Have you ever see a 7 year old video pop up and it is full of those comments that are less than a month old? Well, it is because people who watch a content creator you’re currently watching all went to that video. Eventually as more viewers of that creator went to that video it started to get suggested to more, and more, of that creators viewers. Then it starts to bleed over into other content creators fans. For example: Say you’re subscribed to JHS Pedals. You watch a funny video of a bad anime dub. You send it to a friend who is also subscribed to JHS. YouTube sees that as 2 JHS fans liking this video. After so many JHS fans liking the video after being directly sent to it YouTube will start to recommend it to fans of JHS videos via the sidebar. After the sidebar comes your recommendation feed. Then if say 10% of JHS fans also watch Modern Vintage Gamer then the video will start to spread to Modern Vintage Gamer’s fans side bars. So on and so on. As a bonus if the video is viewed a lot by JHS fans then when you view that video, even if you’re not a fan of JHS, YouTube will put a JHS video in the sidebar for that viral video. This is why Philly D’s secret videos were always cool viral videos. He was trying to be shown in side bars of popular videos.
We have no idea what these thresholds are. We only know loosely how they work. However, if you get enough friends together to meet that threshold and all subscribe to a channel and view awful videos you will ruin the sidebar, and potentially recommendation feed, for all their fans. I’m desperately waiting for some people to abuse that. I don’t know if it’ll force YouTube to redo it’s modern recommendation algorithm but I sure hope it does. I miss the algorithm from 2012 where it showed you random videos from all channels you were subscribed to, and other fans. It prevented viewer burnout pretty easily. I think it led to a much healthier YouTube. Fans were happier, you saw more content then just 3 channels, and content creators were happy to be seen by more people.