Looks Like YouTube Are Doing Something Serious About Recommendations

September 25, 2023

Trying not to get my hopes up, but this is a brilliant idea, so we should be able to copy it on Panquake and Rumble and anywhere else like Louis Rossmann's https://grayjay.app/. See this post.

I got this when I clicked on todays Google doodle:

For some reason YouTube has no videos in the topic you get when you click the YouTube "Listen" link:

Maybe there was a flash mob psy-op that deleted them all? I don't know. And the Spotify link gives this:

"No healthy upstream"? Are they talking about the Amazon or the Thames?

Here's an interesting interview with John Matshikiza, his son, who was a South African actor based in London, talking about Richard Attenborough's film Cry Freedom which was shot in Zimbabwe, by the sounds of it:

Subscribe to Villon Films.

Here's a nice bio of John Matshikiza:

John Matshikiza was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg in 1954. Sophiatown was soon after demolished to make way for the White suburb of Triomf (Triumph). Matshikiza's father, Todd, was a renowned jazz pianist, composer and journalist who shot to fame in 1958 with his musical King Kong, which had an all-black cast. King Kong helped launch the careers of singer, Miriam Makeba, and musician, Hugh Masekela. Todd Matshikiza was also a founder writer for Drum, the pioneering, black-led magazine edited by Anthony Sampson, who was John's godfather.

In 1961, soon after the Sharpeville massacre, the banning of the political organizations and a state crackdown on the media, Todd Matshikiza went on tour to Britain with King Kong, his family followed. In 1964, they went to Lusaka, Zambia, where Todd Matshikiza became head of broadcasting services for the newly independent country, he died in 1968. After his fathers death John Matshikiza returned to London to study at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, Swiss Cottage, and after training with the Royal Shakespeare Company he worked for the Glasgow Citizens Theater Company.

I was just looking at a poster today asking NHS patients who are in ethnic minorities to support a campaign for equal access to healthcare, and there was this guy in the park playing some new-fangled rap on a ghetto-blaster (he usually plays reggae). So I was thinking about Branson and Virgin and the music business and music therapy and that Soviet synthesizer music with the girl saying something in Russian "The test reads zero" over and over again, ... or maybe that's not what she says, maybe it's just what's on the label. See Soviet Electro Electronica 1984 Rhythmic Gymnastics.

Choose topics in your recommendations

If you’re signed in, you’ll notice topics on Home and on watch pages to help you refine your recommendations. These topics are based on your existing, personalized suggestions. The topics are also based on content related to what you interact with. These topics are meant to help you find content you want to watch faster.

If you find a video that isn’t related to the topic you’ve chosen on Home, let us know by tapping More and then Not <topic>

No I completely misunderstood. These "Topics" are the ones listed across the top of the recommendations "home" page. I thought there was some way for "the community" to curate topics. But to do that, you have to identify the community by some topological notion of intersections of shared interests, and that's probably a privacy violation.