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My friend Mark told me to stop clearing my YouTube history to 'train' the algorithm, and it backfired big time.
He said if I just let it watch me, it would get better at suggesting stuff I like. So for three months, I didn't touch my history. Now my feed is just a loop of the same five car repair videos from that one time I fixed my taillight, plus weird political stuff from shorts my dad watched on my phone. I feel like I'm stuck in a digital echo chamber I can't escape. Has anyone else tried to 'fix' a recommendation algorithm and just made it worse?
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avery_jackson2mo ago
Ugh, my feed is just ads now.
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tyler2372mo ago
Honestly, does the algorithm think we're all just waiting to buy stuff? My feed is like a weird mall now. I'll see a video of a cat, then three ads for cat food, a cat tree, and pet insurance, @avery_jackson. Tbh, I'm starting to feel like the product they're actually selling is my own attention.
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the_lisa2mo agoMost Upvoted
Used to think it was just showing me cool stuff I might like. Now I see it's just trying to keep me scrolling so it can sell my eyeballs to someone.
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diana5122mo ago
Yeah, that's the thing about letting it run wild. The algorithm doesn't really know what you like, it just knows what you watched. So if you watched a car repair video all the way through, it thinks you want a hundred more just like it. And it definitely picks up on other people using your account, which just makes a big mess. I mean, maybe you have to actively search for and watch a bunch of new stuff to kind of reset it, but idk, it feels like a full time job.
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