<story><title>The Boring YouTube</title><url>https://gist.github.com/iosifnicolae2/1a78b5ab1d166fd5d17e6ae0a0fe0901</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>newsbinator</author><text>I suspect, without proof, that this is because a large segment of the global population watches music videos and variety show clips on YouTube, over and over on repeat.</text></item><item><author>markbnj</author><text>I know recommendations are hard, so I don&amp;#x27;t want to be too critical, but youtube does a couple of things that drive me nuts: they recommend videos I&amp;#x27;ve already watched, and which they know I&amp;#x27;ve already watched because the site fills in the red progress bar on the bottom; they recommend videos I&amp;#x27;ve added to my watch later list; and they recommend the same videos over and over even though I don&amp;#x27;t click on them and don&amp;#x27;t watch them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ivanbakel</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d be more inclined to believe that it&amp;#x27;s just the nature of how most users consume content.&lt;p&gt;If you look at the recommended content for most major services, they give a lot of space to &amp;quot;stuff you&amp;#x27;ve consumed before&amp;quot;. Anecdotally, this is true of Netflix (which tends to rank already-seen content below it&amp;#x27;s own-brand shows but above other third-party stuff); and it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;especially&lt;/i&gt; true of Spotify, which is constantly pushing me (in a real variety of ways) mostly music that I&amp;#x27;ve already listened to.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s likely that, music video or not, most users on YouTube &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; watching the same videos over and over again - hence why the algorithm tries to hard to cater to those users.&lt;p&gt;From a cynical perspective, such an algorithm is also a &amp;quot;safe&amp;quot; bet - if you won&amp;#x27;t even binge videos YouTube knows you like (because you&amp;#x27;ve seen them), it will probably be much harder to get you to watch lots of videos you &lt;i&gt;might&lt;/i&gt; like. Users who like to see the same stuff over and over are probably giving the best return on YouTube algorithmic investment, and they might even be YouTube&amp;#x27;s most valuable users outside of content creators.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Boring YouTube</title><url>https://gist.github.com/iosifnicolae2/1a78b5ab1d166fd5d17e6ae0a0fe0901</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>newsbinator</author><text>I suspect, without proof, that this is because a large segment of the global population watches music videos and variety show clips on YouTube, over and over on repeat.</text></item><item><author>markbnj</author><text>I know recommendations are hard, so I don&amp;#x27;t want to be too critical, but youtube does a couple of things that drive me nuts: they recommend videos I&amp;#x27;ve already watched, and which they know I&amp;#x27;ve already watched because the site fills in the red progress bar on the bottom; they recommend videos I&amp;#x27;ve added to my watch later list; and they recommend the same videos over and over even though I don&amp;#x27;t click on them and don&amp;#x27;t watch them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>buscoquadnary</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll attest that info sometimes I need to do a boring but slightly involved task such as putting together a vision chart where most of the thinking has been doing, but there is a lot of little fiddly arranging boxes and pulling lines that is annoying and tedious but requires some degree of attention.&lt;p&gt;The only way to make that bearable for me is to either  solve the meta problem which often isn&amp;#x27;t feasible, or turn on some mindless show that I&amp;#x27;ve already seen and don&amp;#x27;t have to pay attention to enjoy. I find in particular The Simpsons seems to often hit that sweet spot between funny enough to be entertaining and mindless enough to not be distracting.&lt;p&gt;Whereas if I try and listen to a podcast or audiobook it requires too much focus and I miss the book or can&amp;#x27;t pay attention to that task I am working on, liking filling in a years worth of time sheets at the end of December.</text></comment>