Slowly becoming convinced that all but the simplest recommendation algorithms are not, in fact, that good. A while ago Letterboxd released a "powered by Nanocrowd" list of similar films that appear at the bottom of movie pages, they are universally less useful than just trawling user watchlists that contain a given film, or just searching for user watchlists called "werewolf movies" or something.
Then I recently started getting into Rate Your Music, which is a delightfully web-2.0 music rating/list website, and so far I've discovered more new music in the past week based on user playlists and top-ten lists than I have in 6 months of Spotify's personalized playlists.
"The Youtube and TikTok algorithms keep on trying to spray raw sewage directly into my corneas" is basically a joke at this point. IDK man maybe this stuff just sucks. Half the internet is jerking their dicks raw talking about AI but "random goth girl on the internet tells you her favorite post-punk albums" still seems like the best way to actually discover new stuff.
This is actually my biggest issue with algorithmic suggestions. You can puts lists of attributes together all day, but the algorithm will not know the specific reason why I like anything.
You watched a video containing gay people? You must want to watch Queer Eye!
You listened to a song by a woman? You probably would like Katy Perry.
You once talked about a video game in earshot of your phone? You should try Honkai: Star Rail!
It's very much one of those situations where you bought two green t-shirts in a row, so your mom thinks it's your favorite color and inundates you with green clothes or objects.
No. I liked those two specific shirts. And I didn't ask for the pound of cold cuts you bought because I made one (1) sandwich two weeks ago!
The closest any algorithm has even been to understanding my interests was when Pandora first came out and was still calling itself an experiment. Back then, you could give it just a song, and it had a very complex set of attributes it used to determine what music you enjoyed. I actually bought quite a few albums because of early Pandora.
What I witnessed, however, was that the more I stated I liked songs it played me, the more diverse attributes it would include in my feed to the point where I wouldn't enjoy a "station" as much. When I deleted my history of likes, the feed would be better again. Nowadays, Pandora wants you to put whole artists or genres, and it isn't bad by any means—I created a station of artists from the Furi soundtrack that is still fantastic. But it's obvious the algorithm just thinks I'm into synth new wave with some dance; it's not wrong but also not right.
Generally, I never want to be suggested anything, at least not by a computer or AI. It hasn't asked me why I like anything, and if I told it, it wouldn't be able to categorize it, and it's very frustrating to have someone or something miss the mark entirely…hundreds of times a day when I'm trying to look at cat photos.
Also, I had wanted to post about how relaxed I feel about cohost in that I don't worry that clicking or liking something is going to result in me being suggested anything. Do you understand what a relief it is to take any action on the Internet nowadays and not have anything respond to it unsolicited? [chef's kiss]