Let me decide… Don’t recommend , please!

Siva Kumar | July 10, 2019 | Tuesday Technology Thoughts | No Comments

1) When I was kid, my uncle recommended a School to my father to put me in.
2) When I was studying my B.E, my professor recommended me a book
3) When my health got deteriorated, my mother recommended a new food/diet for me
4) When my daughter was looking for a special book, my brother recommended a book shop

All these recommendations helped me a lot.
A little observation will reveal, in all four cases, the person who recommended a suggestion did not get anything. He is doing for a purpose of my well-being, thats it.

When recommendations become intentional , it serves the user no purpose (it gives a lot to the providers)

Tech companies jump into this market – Auto recommendations
Amazon recommends what to buy
Youtube recommends what to see
Uber recommends where to go next
Google recommends what to search next

Enough …!! No such recommendations any more..

They are intended to make more money..

Let us understand YouTube recommendations

YT built algorithm to provide recommendations

Two aspects : How to get the relevant videos based on “profile” – watch history, content, demography and second one is how to rank those filtered videos

There are many algorithms for both of the cases.

However last one year, YouTube has got many complaints

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm doesn’t have the best track record. It’s been caught mixing up inappropriate videos featuring popular kid’s entertainment characters, pushing home videos of children to pedophiles, and even radicalizing youths toward extremist politics.

Yesterday Google announced three good features

1.users will be able to explore topics and related videos if they scroll up on the homepage and when browsing Up Next videos.
2. Users will be able to remove suggestions for channels you have zero interest in watching by tapping the three-dot menu and selecting “don’t recommend channel”
3. Suggested videos will now feature a small box underneath, explaining why this video, in particular, is being suggested.