written by owen on 2019-Jan-20.

I have seen many people refer to Artificial intelligence (AI) as a "blackbox" usually because they are out of the loop or because they choose to be vague. Many things fall under the AI hat in today's fuzzy tech atmosphere but this article is about my most recent annoyance; Youtube Related Videos (YRV). I am referring to those videos that show up at the side/bottom while you are watching a video and are often used to feed the autoplay feature. Here is what I see happening over the past year;

Showing me videos that I have already watched

I am not sure why you would keep showing a user videos that they have already watched. Maybe it is a case where the user has ADHD or some kind of forgetfulness but youtube insists on allocating at list one block to something that I have already seen as if to say "hey, look at this! do you want to watch this again?" This is particularly annoying because this video will literally be suggested everytime you watch a video, no matter where or what it is you are watching.

Showing a video from my subscriptions

In case I do not know where the subscription page is located or maybe I forgot. Youtube wants me to go watch a new video from one of the channels to which I have subscribed. Most times it seems to be just a random video off the top of the list - totally unrelated to anything I am currently watching.

Push the VEVO

Youtube set up VEVO accounts for musicians signed up - it is another one of their many money making schemes. They would prefer that I watch songs on the artist's dedicated VEVO channel. Its a business thing I understand. But most times I just want to keep watching

Autoplay slowly diverging from what I originally started with

I rarely use autoplay but whenever I use it for a long period of time it tends to not be able to keep on the correct path. Sooner or later it falls onto a paid video or some kind of viral video released last week. I think it is because youtube really needs to promote its biggest publishers (it is their business model). The only way I see around this to manually create a playlist.

Videos that Youtube wants to be relevant

In my search for Micheal Bolton videos they often sprinkle in newer artists such as Bruno Mars or some other random current generation singer. This is another strategy to boost views on paid videos. Once the autoplay goes onto one of these videos they are gone for good - never to return to my original intent which was to watch Micheal Bolton. It is like a tour guide that never wants the tour to end. On top of that the tour guide starts giving little mini tours.

Conclusion

I have been using youtube for a long long time. The dawn of shallow A.I. has put an end to any form of focused internet usage. If you are logged in to a web service in today's internet it is likely going to be actively monitoring your activity trying to drive you crazy or trying to control your viewing habits using fuzzy logic and tricks. This is ruining the youtube experience and the internet as a whole. Technology will never truly be able to read people's minds or be able to figure out the varying habits of each individual but for the love of all that is good please stop with this bullshit.

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