this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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This, the algorithm doesn't care whether you ~~like~~ enjoy it or not, it cares whether you engage with it or not. Even dislikes are engagement.
It's also kinda dodgy what YouTube considers "viewing" a video. 3 seconds of autoplay? You viewed it. Misclick an ad trying to skip? Viewed it. AndroidTV previewed the video when you left it highlighted for too long? You guessed it, viewed.
Fortunately figuring out what it considers you to have viewed is pretty straightforward: if it's in your watch history it considers it viewed. You can also go through that and manually purge things.
Of course there's still the question of why YouTube will so consistently recommend videos that get people started down this downhill slide of absolute dogshit atrocious content.
If you don't disable the feature where it plays the videos directly in the thumbnail by hovering over it, it also counts as viewed if you let the thumbnail play for like 3 seconds. I hate it.
I meant like as in "enjoy" not as in click the thumbs up button, sorry for the confusion. Even a video that pisses you off, that you thumb it down along with every comment is considered engagement and it not only feeds you more but also boost the video as a whole.
All it cares is whether it keeps you on YouTube. It's like news, outrage is profitable even if everyone hates it.