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More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/deGoogle@lemmy.ca
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[–] 29 points 1 month ago (15 children)

2026 and there is still no 3rd party plugin that will filter out the clickbait and slop

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    You can use DeArrow to fix clickbait titles.

    Know of any Peertube instances that ban outright slop content?

    We need an extension for setting the latest YouTube year.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    Why at this point would you have recommendations turned on? You can make your own feed these days

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    The 'Subscribed' section has gone pretty much untouched for almost 20 years. There is a highlights thing now but from there down it's ONLY what you want.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago* (8 children)

    They stopped fully populating your subscriptions back in.... 2022ish? I want to say. To even see them all you have to use 3rd party software, or they'll narrow the presented channels down based on a shitty calculation

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

    I have heard that many times but have not observed it first hand, when a user posts after years of absence it shows up in my list. And when I remember a user that I have not seen in years and I check them directly there aren't any videos that I have missed. Maybe they are doing something on a per-user basis to drive engagement.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (4 children)

    What kind of channels do you sub to? Are they prone to saying things that are not censor-friendly, because that's one of the big things that will cause it to drop them from your notifications.

    The other is when people subscribe to a channel but haven't watched recent releases while logged into your account. Youtube sees that as "well you're subscribed to them, but like do you REALLY watch them?"

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Almost exclusively maker/hacker/science guys with some animators/artists mixed in. Checking the users with the lowest subscriber counts they have either not posted in years or I have watched their most recent uploads :/

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    Okay. Those are guys who I assume would know what kind of stuff not to say to avoid getting their visibility messed with. I guess this is a thing that will tend to happen more to political and history commentators. But if you watch their videos while logged out for any reason, same deal across the board.

    Offhandedly, Is there anyone that you would recommend to me?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Oh god damn, buckle up

    https://www.youtube.com/@twoswap - awesome math guy

    https://www.youtube.com/@alnwlsn - electronics, computers, maker stuff

    https://www.youtube.com/@ancientjames - guy builds novel video displays from scratch

    https://www.youtube.com/@AppliedScience - flat out smartest guy on he internet

    https://www.youtube.com/@Attoparsec - hacky/computery/makey guy

    https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisStaecker - math instrument historian, also funny af

    https://www.youtube.com/@DiffractionLimited - Build a um scale 3d printer

    https://www.youtube.com/@dipdoting - build computer from relays

    https://www.youtube.com/@YeanyScience - retired science teacher teaches you science

    https://www.youtube.com/@HuygensOptics - turns out you don't know anything about optics, neither do i

    https://www.youtube.com/@illinoisenergyprof6878 - learn about atomic power

    https://www.youtube.com/@mikeselectricstuff - the original electronics youtuber

    https://www.youtube.com/@okooptics - turns out you REALLY dont know anything about optics

    https://www.youtube.com/@UsagiElectric - buid computers from the wires up

    https://www.youtube.com/@wbeaty - the original science youtuber

    Some of these guys rarely upload anymore but the stuff they have uploaded is brilliant. I tried to pick guys who are least likely to show up on the main-stream of recommendations.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I've heard that since 2018 or something like that. I heavily use subscriptions with dozens of very diverse and diverging channels and not once was a video not shown to me. Several friends say the same. My theory: People use the front page (not the subscribed page) thinking it'll show all new videos from subscribed channels.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Not what happened to me. Creators I watch who say things that are unfriendly to advertising will just be missing from my literal subscriptions page where my subscribed channels are listed.

    Other ones have stopped having their videos appear in my subscriptions page when they drop a new video if I didn't watch previous ones when they released. FD Signifier and a few other channels have correlated this but I can only search for one lane of evidence right now and that's a lot of video to go back through

    Here's some trouble shooting guides that were written recently to address this and also other people who correlate this exact behavior verbally affirming or providing screenshots they are on the correct page. There's been at least one plugin made to address the problem, I completely stopped using youtube's frontend because of it. 1 2 3 4

    If it hasn't happened to you that's great. Large websites like youtube and reddit don't tend to implement these on everyone all at once. Or you just watch channels that don't trigger the conditions, I have close to 200 that I'm subscribed to so it's a crazy wide sample size. It ultimately correlates with youtube's goals to move people from the subscription page into recommendations so they can be suggested more kinds of videos that are preferred by the company's interests. While I was searching links to post I found that they recently ran a consumer test in may where they removed the subscription page entirely from the app.

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    • [–] 28 points 1 month ago

    Bring back the dislike counter and we might actually be able to do something about it.

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    [–] 16 points 1 month ago

    The other 80% is normal slop thank god

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    [–] 10 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    I’ve encountered more slop videos posted on Lemmy than I’ve clicked on the algorithm on YouTube, so there’s that anecdata.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Youtubes algorithm is super stubborn and even moreso when it comes to old accounts. I'm far more likely to see a shit post I watched 10 years ago appear in my recommendations than I am anything to do with AI unless it's shitting on the tech.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Open up a new private tab and give it ago. Also start with YouTube shorts.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    I tried but the only thing showing in the feed is "try searching to get started". Problem is that I don't know what the fuck I want to search for, and even on the rare chance that I do know what I want to see, I don't bother with YouTube's search because it never returns relevant results!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    You start with shorts and start scrolling for a few minutes and it will populate your feed after that. Unless things changed YouTube shorts just starts going on its own.

    Otherwise when you type in something it's kind of going to influence your feed. You can also influence the feed by stopping and viewing a certain short video over a different one. So I don't know to control for that other than using a ardunio with motors and a stylus on a phone. Which is too much effort to care.

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    • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    When I'm logged in I get a slop suggestion about 1 in 20 times, nearly all of them are obvious ripoffs of commercial science-tubers.

    I've tried browsing logged out on a PC at work and it's at least 50% slop, with the other half being clickbait products, lists, and tiktok style crap. Like every site that has 'user generated' content, it's only good when it's curated.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    The quickest way for me to unsubscribe from a YouTuber is when they admit to using ai as their primary research tool.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    Using ai for their b-roll, using ai for diagrams, using ai for voiceovers. Basically admitting that they are no longer willing to invest their time into a project that they expect me to watch.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    Google got pretty poopy. I can salvage just a bit with an instance of searxng, but even the search results are usually generated themselves.

    Using an llm as a search engine has been a pretty positive experience for me, just gotta double check some funny looking sources.

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    • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    Honestly, I don't know if I curate my food well enough, but I genuinely don't see any AI. I'm not even saying that as in like, so that I can't tell it's AI. I can verify all the videos I'm watching are not made by AI. Since they're from pretty reputable channels.

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    [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Just use RSS feeds to watch youtube. No need to subject yourself to algorithms.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    I watch youtube quite a lot while doing chores and things like that. Or watch shows like taskmaster. My recommendations are all just things i would watch anyway. Every now and then there is a mr.veast or something that i click: do not recommend. A minth or so ago, i logged out of my youtube and got tge whole unfiltered homepage. Holy shit, that is a sight to behold. I don't think i would use youtube at all if that was my first glance ever. It was all trump this fox news that and people doing the YouTube face unironically

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    • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    My wife watches cooking and food videos on youtube, and has for years. Recently I've been amazed at all of the AI videos that are popping up. Mostly related to nostalgia (how gramma was able to prepare chicken stew on a cold winters night for her poor family...). I can see why it would be cost effective to create these videos. I cannot get past the voices though. They really sound off, but I can't put my finger on it. I bug her about "selling out" by watching these AI videos and her response is "How the hell am I supposed to tell which is which?!".

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Even videos with people in them are becoming ai slop. So I sympathies with her on not knowing.

    One of the artists I watch meat canyon has writers that makes scripts (on his second channel that focuses on talking about random topics) and one of them was using Ai to write the script for them.

    I still watch that person it's not the biggest deal to me. Theres bigger fish to fry, and we are all human. Worlds not black and white. What's a bigger deal to me is I'll often watch history videos to fall asleep to, and its sooooo hard to find a channel that's not just 100% ai generated from like start to finish. Including pictures. Its like history is getting rewritten from this foggy/fuzzy inaccurate lenses. Kids in the future are going to see a ai generated image of 1800's new York where a man is using a tablet, and think its true.

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    • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Just use clients like newpipe or pipetube, etc. You only see what you subscribe to.

    Its was actually kind of depressing when I first switched, there was a level of "life" that having an algorithm felt like it brought.

    But I got used to not having it and my brain kind of leveled out. Now when I see someone else's YouTube home page I'm disgusted.

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    • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    meow meow, meowmeow

    meow meow, meowmeow meow

    yes i do have a daughter

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