Seriously, the amount of AI slop I get served in my YT recommendations is off the scale. Mainly low effort sci-fi TTS vids from channels with HFY or HFS in their names. I've been hitting the do not recommend option on every one I see for the last 6 months+ but it's actually increasing in frequency. AFAIK there are no ways from within YT so I'm wondering if there's a third party plugin or something that I don't know about. Most searches ended up indexing complaints threads on Reddit with no hint of a fix. Anyone got anything?
I understand most of the reasoning and effect of AI and the whole circular BS feeding death spiral but I'm hoping to find something to filter some of it out. That vid was oddly AI-ish and pretty self-serving - I know AI Slop channels won't yet have managed 25M subs, but the presentation was very AI.
I have previously found that YouTube recommends me videos based on things I’ve viewed previously. That sounds obvious I know but it even goes so far as adding things to viewed even if my mouse hovered over the preview for a few moments too long, even if it was something I never actually watched and never ever would. I actually ultimately reset my whole viewing history and started over, with it recommending things based on my channel subs and it’s been much, much better since. But I also watch a lot of Timelapse stuff that wouldn’t suit AI slop well - for now at least. Until Youtube enforce a mandatory “AI content” tagging rule with penalties for not using it, as with the “made for kids” stuff, and allow it to be filtered out, there’s not going to be a huge amount we can do. Personally I’d be okay with some AI created imagery mixed in, but not 100% generative, I hate AI TTS mostly because they clone copyrighted Characters and/or impersonate voice actors who don’t get compensated fairly as it is; I am also against AI-generated scripts. If I wanted that **** I could go ask for it myself. I want something some actually came up with. I imagine there’s some who would disagree with me for that but eh
I watch few videos on YT and, never log in so, I have no stored history. When I do use YT, it mostly suggests videos related to the one I'm watching. I'm not really their target audience.
Sadly, I don't think there is. I don't tend to get much in the way of outright AI slop in my feed... except when it comes to music. But even then it's still pretty obvious. I just get a lot of irrelevant shite I'm not interested in. I can see why you'd think that, but Kurzgesagt has sounded and looked the same for quite a long time. 11 years ago, Sam Altman was still running Y Combinator and the term 'deepfake' hadn't even appeared, but Kurzgesagt videos still looked and sounded very similar to today - albeit with fewer birds: If it feels 'AI-ish' then it's almost certainly because it's a style that the slop-slingers are copying.
Surprisingly, even without logging in, I've found my parents TV youtube app is full of what they often watch. I think there's cookie/device/app ID of some kind. As mentioned, deleting/curating/nuking your watch history is the only way. I've watched a few of the AI generated what would cartoon character look IRL video. But deleting it from watch history seems to limit algo-recommendations of those types of video. However, for searches, I've not found any method of filtering. Only way is to be on your toes and look at channel historic contents.
YT on the TV is so plagued by ads, we just don’t use it. On the PC using Vivaldi, it is still ad free.
Yeh it's a bit odd, Germans I think, but they've used that cartoon style since day dot, probably feeding the AI machine that now imitates it. I think there was a microbiology video of theirs that first caught my eye, and it reminded me of a cartoon that used to be on channel 4 back in the late 80s that was about the body, and anthropomorphised all the different cells and functions similarly.
There is definitely device fingerprint, IP address, etc, tracking going on. I occasionally watch YT videos on my work laptop, using an “incognito” window and without signing in to YT. Usually for work-related tools, software, languages, etc - stuff I don’t do at home. My corporate VPN does “split tunnelling”, so when I’m watching YouTube videos on my work laptop while working remotely, that traffic is coming via my home connection and not the VPN. When I’m using my Apple TV or a personal PC, I will sometimes see recommendations that are related to stuff I’ve watched only on my work laptop. Like stuff about DBT, or Data Vault, or AWS Redshift - things I use on a daily basis at work, but have zero need for or interest in outside of that context. My OH uses her YouTube account on the same Apple TV that I do, as well as obviously her own PC. She gets recommendations related to stuff that I have watched but she’s never seen and has zero interest in. Like car videos. It doesn’t help that her YT account is part of my Premium “family” account.
"Once Upon a Time: Life" perhaps? The studio did a whole bunch of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time...
Geez, that might be the thing I've been trying to track down, I remember an episode that was like germs invading the body, and it would show them fighting inside, I'm sure they blew up an ambulance at some point? I've looked for it a few times over the years but it's a tricky thing to find when you have only a vague description.
Yeah man I used to love this too I spent two decades describing it randomly to people until I finally googled it the right way and figured it out.
So you're one of the 93 viewers each of their videos have, before I slap a "Do Not Recommend" on them?
I wish i could disable their shitty robotic autotranslated overdubbing... yo YT, i actually *want* to watch it in the original language not robotic broken english.
