There was an outage of the YouTube site earlier this week
Some of you may have noticed YouTube had some issues earlier last week where the landing page (which usually has recommendations) was showing blank. Oddly, if you knew the specific video you wanted to see, that was still available, it was just the home page, so… what gives?
What the YouTube people had to say on the subject… eventually.
“Update: An issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids),” the company explained. “The homepage is back, but we’re still working on a full fix — more coming soon!”
So… what is the “recommendations system”?
The recommendations system of YouTube is where their much vaunted algorithm presents its evaluation of what you’re most likely to engage with based on your prior viewing history.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the videos it recommends to you are ones you like, just ones that encourage you to watch be it because you do like them, or even if it enrages or even discusts you. The videos that recommended to you via the recommendation system are frighteningly accuratly crafted by their algorithm to keep you watching… for… just… one… more clip.
These engagement algorithms aren’t unique to YouTube, they’re used by a myriad of modern methods of spending time (and/or dollars) with most forms of social media, games (on phones or tablets) and in gambling machines, they’re everywhere.
