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You may be interested in our alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to find a list of other channels making similar videos. For example, our recommendations for How Money Works include other established econ focused channels like Economics Explained and Money & Macro but also smaller more obscure channels like Wall Street Millennial:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCkCGANrihzExmu9QiqZpPlQ/

Comment · 4 years ago

>Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.

This is exactly why I am working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations.

Search a channel to get a list of smaller channels making content focused on similar interests. Our algorithm is designed to surface more obscure, but relevant, content that YouTube generally doesn't recommend.

Here is our list of relevant similar channels for SpaceX's channel:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCtI0Hodo5o5dUb67FeUjDeA/

Navigate by clicking on the channel icons in the list or by searching a channel in the top search-bar.

Comment · 4 years ago

YouTube is definitely doing curation of "viral" videos to introduce novelty into their recommendations. They've gotten so conservative that the usual algorithm can't fully satisfy users' need for novelty, so they widely promote a curated selection of videos. I first realized it with this video "An Old Man's Advice" with an older balding guy in reading glasses with an enormous Santa beard in the thumbnail. English language users will probably recognize it from about 2 months ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhckVlgYZJE

Here is the guy's Social Blade page where you can still see the spike in views and subscribers from late June partially scrolling off the end of his historical graphs:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5hWk56PCwg1D11kDgt...

I think one they currently are promoting to English-language YouTube today is this Kurzgesagt video about loneliness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9hJ_Rux9y0

I haven't seen it in my own homepage today (although I haven't been looking at it much) but I saw it mentioned several times by Twitter users expressing mild bewilderment at the recommendation, like these two posting about ten minutes apart:

https://twitter.com/Grary_/status/1567265382750093312

https://twitter.com/bradplaysclari/status/156726305981873357...

Oh, apparently these were two more, the originals I saw were these:

https://twitter.com/masterlerle/status/1567262297424560128

https://twitter.com/microfennec/status/1567257618061692928

These are all within the last hour. The fact we have four people posting about this within the last hour on Twitter visible under a single search term suggests the video is going out to a massive audience, many of which are caught off guard by the recommendation. This doesn't seem to be normal algorithmic behavior, especially for a video that is only 7 hours old as of my writing.

There was another article (from The Atlantic) posted here about an old supposedly discontinued practice of "coolhunters" at YouTube, individuals responsible for curating and promoting videos (in the article they discuss Justin Bieber in particular as hand-picked for promotion), which supposedly were replaced with the homepage recommendation algorithm. I am pretty sure they were brought back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32730285

To combat the lack of algorithmic novelty on YouTube I am working on a small team to develop alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to get a list of similar channels. Here is Kurzgesagt's similar channels list:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q/

Navigate by clicking the icons or using the top search bar to look up a channel.

Comment · 4 years ago

They are definitely doing this again. They have become so risk-averse in their algorithm that they have to curate "random" videos to stimulate users' needs for novelty. This video "An Old Man's Advice" with an older balding guy in reading glasses with an enormous Santa beard in the thumbnail was a recent (~2 months ago) curated YouTube promoted vid. You probably recognize it. I realized it was being promoted when I noticed a bunch of people talking about it on Twitter a few days after it popped on my homepage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhckVlgYZJE

Here is the guy's Social Blade page where you can still see the spike in views and subscribers from late June partially scrolling off the end of his historical graphs:

https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5hWk56PCwg1D11kDgt...

Also this recent one about Fritz Haber from Veritasium is another example of a "random" curated video that got promoted to almost everyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvknN89JoWo

For actual novelty in YouTube I'm working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel to get a list of recommended similar channels. I like to use the list of similar channels for Y Combinator's YouTube channel as a demonstration, but you can navigate by clicking the channel icons or using the search bar on top:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg/

Comment · 4 years ago

>It's the dreaded "more of the same shit" algorithm

This problem of not-enough-novelty in YouTube's recommendations is exactly why I am working on a team to develop alternative YouTube recommendations. Search a channel name to get a list of similar channels.

As an example: our recommendations for Tesla's channel includes James Locke, a small channel (~10k subscribers) with a researcher working on Full Self Driving for Tesla vehicles. There are also dozens of Tesla driving, electrification, and investing channels along with channels for some of Musk's other companies like The Boring Company on the list:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC5WjFrtBdufl6CZojX3D8dQ/

Comment · 4 years ago

>at the same time, youtube is really bad at exposing you to new channels that you would enjoy. they bombard you with similar videos ("here's 15 more toilet seat review videos for you!") but they're not able to extrapolate channel tastes for some reason. it's left largely up to the user to dig around for collaterally-themed channels.

This is exactly why I am working on a team to create alternative YouTube recommendations. Our algorithm is designed to surface smaller more obscure but relevant channels.

Search a channel to get a list of channels making similar content. Our recommendations for Project Farm include other tool review channels like A Concord Carpenter / Toolboxbuzz and Thrifty Tool Shed. Click through to A Concord Carpenter's list of similar channels also reveals Tools & Stuff. Thrifty Tool Shed is a great example of a very small yet relevant channel that the algorithm surfaces (~15k subscribers).

Our list of channels similar to Project Farm:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng/

Of course there are dozens more channels on PF's list that are about more general carpentry, metalsmithing, and home-engineering projects. And you can use the search bar at the top of the page to search any other channels you watch to get their similar channels lists.

Comment · 4 years ago

Have you seen NightHawkInLight:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFtc3XdXgLFwhlDajMGK69w

LaserSaber:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKzUKkh7XtnSYPW0AJb-9w

or StyroPyro:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJYJgj7rzsn0vdR7fkgjuIA

They have similarity to the Quint BUILDs channel that the knife throwing machine video came from. They all do some pretty crazy builds.

Comment · 4 years ago

I am on a team working on alternative YouTube recommendations and I discovered Yannic Kilcher and Machine Learning Street Talk off the list of channel recommendations for Two Minute Papers. The whole list has a ton of AI channels:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg/

Comment · 4 years ago

I actually found his channel with the alternative YouTube recommendations database I'm working on. He was one of the top links off the list for Y Combinator's channel.

The list for his channel includes some likely suspects like TechCrunch, Y Combinator, and a16z but also some smaller names doing business advice like Section4 and David Perell:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCIBgYfDjtWlbJhg--Z4sOgQ/

Comment · 4 years ago

>An airline or UPS can absolutely say “we don’t like the contents of what you are shipping so we refuse to transport it”.

Cf.:

>An important legal requirement for common carrier as public provider is that it cannot discriminate, that is refuse the service unless there is some compelling reason.

ibid

I suppose you can make "compelling reason" arguments for some things, but the default is carry.

Like, you may as well say "Well there are 'compelling reasons' exceptions so theoretically people can do the exact opposite of what the law says."

Comment · 4 years ago

Social media should be considered common carriers, like telephone companies, delivery services, or transportation services.

An airline or UPS cannot just say "We don't like your politics so we will not ship your packages."

Social media is extremely similar to all these common carriers in that they are a "content" delivery mechanism. They do not decide what item is in a box or what message is in a phone call, they just distribute the box or phone call from the originator to the consumers. Similarly with social media content the social media company distributes content they have little control over through its distribution network. There is little different from a social media account than a (teletype?) conference telephone call with answering machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

Comment · 4 years ago

Good suggestion and noted.

Thanks!

Comment · 4 years ago

>Who stops people from running their own search engines?

This is basically the reason my team and I are building an alternative set of YouTube recommendations. You can check them out here:

https://channelgalaxy.com

I was just tired of YouTube steering me back to the same old small niche of videos, many times giving me repeat recommendations for stuff I'd already seen. Our algorithm is designed to surface smaller channels and find more obscure content.