I think there’s a sort of perfect storm that can happen. Suppose there are two types of YouTube users (I think there are other types too, but for the sake of this discussion we’ll just consider these two groups):
Type A watches a lot of niche content of which there’s not a lot on YouTube. The channels they’re subscribed to might only upload once a month to once a year or less.
Type B tends to watch one kind of content, of which there’s hundreds of hours of it from hundreds of different channels. And they tend to watch a lot of it.
If a person from group A happens to click on a video that people from group B tend to watch that person’s homepage will then be flooded with more of that type of video, blocking out all of the stuff they’d normally be interested in.
IMO YouTube’s algorithm has vacillated wildly over the years in terms of quality. At one point in time if you were a type A user it didn’t know what to do with you at all, and your homepage would consist exclusively of live streams with 3 viewers and family guy funny moments compilation #39.
I am also person A, so no I don’t think that’s it. A few of the channels I watch upload a good amount, but the rest is very infrequent uploads or very very niche channels.
I think there’s a sort of perfect storm that can happen. Suppose there are two types of YouTube users (I think there are other types too, but for the sake of this discussion we’ll just consider these two groups):
Type A watches a lot of niche content of which there’s not a lot on YouTube. The channels they’re subscribed to might only upload once a month to once a year or less.
Type B tends to watch one kind of content, of which there’s hundreds of hours of it from hundreds of different channels. And they tend to watch a lot of it.
If a person from group A happens to click on a video that people from group B tend to watch that person’s homepage will then be flooded with more of that type of video, blocking out all of the stuff they’d normally be interested in.
IMO YouTube’s algorithm has vacillated wildly over the years in terms of quality. At one point in time if you were a type A user it didn’t know what to do with you at all, and your homepage would consist exclusively of live streams with 3 viewers and family guy funny moments compilation #39.
You may be on to something. I am much more like person A.
I am also person A, so no I don’t think that’s it. A few of the channels I watch upload a good amount, but the rest is very infrequent uploads or very very niche channels.