(I use bold text throughout this "rant" not to make things look more dramatic, but to highlight important bits because I know this is a long text that is kind of rambling).---I really need to get this off my chest since it's driving me up a wall. I've always been a huge fan of YouTube - it's one of the few social media outlets I love because everyone has a chance on it, it's much more creative and it's just a giant database of videos for you to explore and search.Although... it isn't anymore, really. YouTube, to me, lately has been the same dopamine-craving, empty, void of any meaning social media that Facebook and Snapchat already were. I don't get any joy out of being addicted on YouTube anymore. And it's all due to being unable to find videos that I care for anymore.I have an older YouTube account that I hadn't been using anymore for the last 5 years. I went back on it to go through my watch history to get nostalgic, and one thing immediately stood out to me: my watch history back then is completely different from what my current watch history is! And I don't mean specific videos or that I have different interests now, I mean that my current watch history is way more monotone: the same people, the same channels, over and over again.I started watching some of those old videos again: a lot of them were obscure with less than a 100k views or even only thousands of views today. But all of them were of much better quality creative wise and in terms of variety.And it got me thinking: why? How did I find these videos back then, a lot of them classics that I hold dear to my heart, and why can't I find those kinds of videos anymore? I mean, back then I wasn't actively searching niche videos, yet I still found them, whereas today, I can't.And that's when I saw the recommendations next to the video that I was watching. The video that I was watching was obscure and old; a Japanese song that was ripped from nicovideo. Back in the days when I found this video, the recommended videos would have had something to do with that Japanese video - either based on title, the current channel or the tags from the videos. This meant it was easy for me to find more videos like this, regardless how obscure that video was. View counts, verified statuses and video time- those all didn't matter.But now - that same video has the most bland, generic and godawful recommendations next to it. There is not a single video in that list that has something to do with the current video. It's all "Saturday Night Live" (which I never even watch), "Game Grumps" (which I do watch frequently but has NOTHING to do with the video), or that one clickbait video that seems to get recommended to everyone for months regardless of interests.It doesn't matter which video I chose, it doesn't matter how often I refresh te page and it doesn't even matter if I clear my recommendations. The list stays roughly the same for everything, forever. I can't find new videos anymore. I can only see channels I liked in the past or that others "like me" like.And just like that YouTube's machine learning has sucked me into my bubble. I can't find opposing videos anymore without actively searching for them and even then YouTube doesn't put those videos at the top, I can't find niche videos anymore because those don't make YouTube any money and I sure as hell can't even find any old videos I've watched that are hidden deep down in my Search History (which btw, still doesn't have any sort or filtering system) since YouTube just acts like I've never watched those kinds of videos - no no, watch some of these bland and sh*t videos instead that generate us heaps of cash, whether you like it or not.The thing that hurts me the most is that I know these niche types of content is still being made. I'll just never, ever be able to find them anymore thanks to YouTube itself.The giant database of interesting videos is being dumbed down because a system thinks it knows me better than I do - or that acts on its own bias to only get money out of me, whatever the cost.YouTube lost the thing that made it great - and there's not even a good alternative to YouTube which makes it only sadder. I guess that means there's no point for me to go to YouTube anymore except for maybe occasionally checking my subs.I hope I'm not the only one who feels annoyed at YouTube for their way of running things nowadays. There are lots of problems with their copyright system, demonetisation system and - still ongoing, but less bad - ElsaGate stuff, that stuff like this never really seem to get as much attention. I don't know if there's a plugin or extension that could get the old recommendation system back, there probably isn't, but at least it's off my chest. via /r/youtube
