While I grew up right along with the computer age and learned coding before I learned to earn a living, there’s still a lot I don’t understand about modern day cyber-abilities.
One of the great things about today’s information age is Google. I must admit I love Google, keep it as my home page, use it daily and rarely do I find it to be of no help. Whoever put that search engine together, in my opinion, got it just right.
Oddly enough, the same corporation is responsible for YouTube, which has, in my opinion, one of the lousiest algorithms out there. Here’s why I think so.
When you browse Netflix, they use an algorithm to analyze your interests and then suggest other items that might interest you. Netflix does this quite well, and so does Amazon and doubtless others, so it can’t be too hard a trick.
So by the same theory, YouTube should assess your clicks and offer up something of similar interest. It fails. It fails bigly.
Don’t get me wrong. I like YouTube and often search out videos there. The problem is all the dreck that follows my searches and clogs my feed. Here’s a specific example.
In the last week, I searched two specific videos. One was a “trailer” of a new version of the video game Plants vs. Zombies. Since I liked the original, I wanted to see if the new one was worth buying. My other search was for a comedy sketch concerning the day’s political happenings.
Now when I pull up YouTube, my page pre-loads with 81 offerings of clips to watch. Of that 81, exactly 40 offer other clips of the same Plants vs. Zombie game. Then 12 more items are actual movie trailers, with apparently a wild stab at what sort of movies I might enjoy. Another 22 clips are all comedy/political comedy/nighttime comedy clips. Okay, a little closer to the mark there; however, only 5 of them are anywhere near current. All others are weeks or even years old. Nothing like ancient political humor.
So out of 81 offerings, YouTube came up with 74 things I had absolutely no interest in. Of the remaining 7 suggestions randomly thrown into the mix, not a single one of them tempts me to click. YouTube clearly does not get it.
I’ll go back to YouTube. I’ll search videos again. And I’m sure the suggestions that follow will be of little or no interest. And that’s a shame.