Best way to get recommended videos
Best way to get recommended videos
I know there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding YouTube's recommendation algorithms, but I can't seem to find a better alternative. What are the ways y'all find videos that are of interest?
I know we could use RSS and subscribe to our desired channels and get a better experience than YT's own subscription system, but what about channel/video discovery, those that you've never seen before? Is there a better way to find a video that might be interesting to you without kneeling before the almighty algorithm? Half of the recommended page on YT seems irrelevant to me, but I can't seem to find a better alternative.
One thing I really want are open source recommendation algorithms. Like lemmy introduced scaled but I wish there was an option to just apply your own choice of algorithm. I don't even know if thats possible lol but I'd love that on like newpipe.
I know this is only tangentially related and doesn't answer your question, sorry.
I only watch what’s in my subscriptions. Now and then I’ll add something new to see if I like it or remove something I don’t enjoy.
Old school way : using the search bar
Eh, that's fully enshittified too nowadays.
I use FreeTube on desktop to follow my favourite YouTube channels, and I've found the related videos section to be quite good in occasionally suggesting videos from channels I'm unfamiliar with. I also have a Nebula subscription, so I find content creators from there as well.
I do admit that sometimes I'll login to my old YouTube account and check what their algorithm is suggesting. I just copy/paste the URLs into FreeTube.
The old fashioned way was you asked people. Post a video of one of your favorites in a videos community and ask what people who like it what channels they also recommend.
I noticed that using Libretube when I was first interested in offline AI ~July got me different results. I quickly gravitated towards academics that are posting, but I didn't subscribe to many of them. I was searching for specifics more that styles/sources. I usually use newpipe, but it was having a problem and I got libretube as an alternate. It did not have any of my regular subscriptions.
As time passed, I subscribed to a few and the diversity of search results went to hell quickly. Even some of the CCs I watched several uploads from disappeared from results. I'm pretty sure subscribing to anything is a big part of the echo chamber problem on YT. Maybe use a second app or networking magic to search for better results. IMO it appears YT has moved more to the right politically and realized moving the masses to the right means information isolation and institutionalized ignorance. Gone are the days of suggested content intended to help expand horizons, question bias, and promote interpersonal growth. It still seems to value the academic uses for conferences and presentations, likely for data mining, but these sources are kept isolated from the masses like how google scholar justified google search becoming exploitive trash.
I find that Piped has a fairly decent "algorithm" for suggesting videos if you are already on a video. For example, "trending" doesn't do anything for you, it's effectively the same as not being logged in. Feed, once you have your subscriptions, is the same but for your channels.
But once you're on a video of one of your channels, the suggested content is pretty good. If you go to SEA or PBS Space-time you get other space videos. If you go to electroBOOM or Practical Engineering you get other electrical/device type videos, game channel and videos and so forth. And it's pretty spot on, whether your watching let's plays or reviews or philosophical discussion around it, it usually keeps it fairly in line with whatever that channel/video topic is on.
It's not perfect, like if you want the full broad spectrum algorithm. However, it's good enough for me as I tend to find that if I'm in a specific rabbit hole anyway I'm not really trying to find the diverse content, but continuing down what I was looking for.