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I was wondering if this is really her, my YouTube feed is full fake AI songs and other nonsense slope that I avoid but if really convincing before one clicks.
I’m not just reluctant, I completely refuse to click anything from the recommends feed at this point. I don’t check out new channels unless someone I trust recommends them.
I don’t have a account anymore, because google wants me to give my phone number for them, I’m sure they already have it, but I’m not doing it out of principle. So I use the browser to watch videos that friends link to me, and Free Tube to have subscription lists etc. When I open a new video in the browser, the amount of extremely bad AI slop, with MILLIONS of views is staggering, disappointing and sad.
I wrote a bunch more stuff but decided to remove them because it went a bit off the rails and this mini rant is already too much. I apologize.
I’m not just reluctant, I completely refuse to click anything from the recommends feed at this point. I don’t check out new channels unless someone I trust recommends them.
I do the “don’t recommend” for any channel that posts any AI-generated music, lost some good ones over the years, goodbye 666MrDoom.
goodbye 666MrDoom
Oh shit, oh fuck.
I see you, is OK. Sharing is caring my friend. Stay stealthy.
For some reason I read that as “stay salty”. Stealthy does sound better.
puts on ninja suit
Pro tip: if you still want to use YouTube’s recommendations in some way, create lists for the videos to watch in your notes app of choice. Then under videos that you liked, look through the recommendations for related videos and copy promising ones into a list by topic (an extension like ‘Copy URL To Clipboard’ can help with this, especially if using Markdown or Org-mode). I’ve been using this system for ages with YouTube’s built-in playlists, and it worked great — I have probably a whole year’s worth of videos to watch full-time.
On the phone, you can use NewPipe or Invidious. Particularly, if using Firefox on Android, you can trick it into installing a desktop extension like ‘Redirector’ that would open Invidious instead of YouTube. And for copying page links, I use the Automate app by sharing the tab to it.
Also, if you use Android (a Pixel phone in particular), it might be possible that Google would confirm your account by sending a verification notification to the phone. This technically doesn’t give them info that you haven’t already explicitly provided, though of course they know the phone number anyway from said phone.
Luckily I have collected a decent amount of channels, I don’t really run out of things to watch anymore, even if I’m only relying on the new uploads per channel feed. So I don’t really “need” the recommendations. Though Free Tube does have them on the side when watching a video, so I have that as a backup. But so far, for the last year or so, I have had no need for them. I think. Probably.
On mobile, I use Morphe and that thing is still signed in to the google account, through Android, I assume. But I’ve grown to hate my phone so I tend to not use that. I use it mostly to be petty, for example, if I watch a video with Free Tube, that I think deserves a like, more visibility and whatnot, I play the video also on Morphe, hit like and make a comment. I turn off the screen and let the video play. I know its not much but I keep being told that liking and commenting does boost videos on the algo, so I keep doing it for the videos I deem deserving.
Thanks for the tips anyway, I hope someone else sees it and gets use out of it.
Well, you can use my approach if you ever wish to stray outside the defined set of channels. Personally I prefer to collect videos all over and keep only a few subscriptions.
Yup I have put your suggestions to a .txt file in case I ever want to, or more likely have to, change my ways. Its good to have options.
Btw, I must also note that I’ve gotten some cool music recommendations from Youtube, despite having quite snobby and unusual tastes — mostly by the virtue of jealously curating my algo for years by not opening any random stuff under my account (usually using an incognito tab for that). I think it might also be possible to do that by just using the recs under videos.
Fun fact: Youtube tracks recommendations for a non-logged-in session. With the help of Firefox’s ‘Multi-Account Containers’ that isolate a site in some tabs from normal cookies, I once ran a logged-out Youtube session for a month or two just to listen to some eurodance/europop tunes from my youth without polluting the main account.
So you could in fact have proper personalized recs without logging in, except for videos that are marked as adult or if using a VPN or Tor.
Thanks, good info. I’ll look into the container thing. I just refuse the browser cookies as a default. So I don’t get any recommendations on the browser.
I’m same as you with music, I have very specific tastes, to the point that my best friends don’t bother recommending anything to me anymore lol. Or if they do, they say “I know you probably wont like this but I’ve been listening to __________ recently” haha. I’ll see if I can find motivation to let youtube recommend something for me. I did use YouTube Music with Morphe for about half a year and… it wasn’t very good. I even did the whole “don’t recommend this” dance, but it still kept recommending the artist, just different albums/songs. But maybe it was a case of not using it enough.
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