Taming the Algorithm
YouTube for Autodidacts
Thinking about YouTube evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand, the service serves up heaping quantities of nonsense, fosters marathon doom-scrolling sessions, demonetizes splendid programs, privileges conspiracy theories (such as the Artist Formerly Known as Global Warming) and, during the COVID hysteria, suppressed information that might have saved a great many lives. On the other hand, the world’s largest repository of film clips makes it possible for people to benefit from an immense number useful, interesting, and edifying programs, from old films and indie music videos to academic lectures and cooking shows.
With this in mind, I offer some simple techniques that will allow self-directed learners to make the best use of YouTube and, at the same time, reduce the degree to which their actions line the pockets of the many malefactors involved in the enterprise.
Block Ads
Install a browser that blocks the advertisements inserted by YouTube. I use Brave, but suspect that other browsers out there possess a similar feature.
Blocking advertisements will greatly enhance your enjoyment of YouTube. It will also reduce, if only by a very small amount, the revenues of the aforementioned malefactors.
Of course, there will be cases in which the blocking of advertisements reduces the pittance that YouTube shares with some of those who create videos. If this concerns you, you can compensate for such losses by using Subscribe Star, Buy Me a Coffee, or another service of that sort to send money directly to the artists.
In very rough terms, a YouTuber who has managed to avoid various forms of internal exile will earn a penny, more or less, for every viewer who plays his video to its end. Thus, in order to earn the ten dollars (pounds, euros, etc) that you send him directly, he needs to garner something in the neighborhood of a thousand ‘views’.
Insulate Educational Content
If you use YouTube for several different purposes, you may find it useful to insulate educational content from videos of other sorts. Such measures will not preserve you entirely from suggestions that you devote four minutes to a clip about the meeting of a piglet and a baby monkey, but they will greatly reduce their incidence.
The simplest technique replaces the single YouTub button on your bookmark bar with a folder full of links, each of which takes you to a particular channel. Thus, rather than passing through a cacophonous cavern of clickbait, you go directly to a corner conducive to your quest.
You can enhance the power of the ‘folder method’ by using a separate profile, or, better yet, a separate profile on a separate browser. Thus, whether or not you create an account, YouTube will treat you like a new user.
Speaking of accounts … creating a YouTube account especially for educational content allows you to subscribe (and therefore support) particular channels. It also allows you to block particular channels, as well as the doomscroll-enabler called ‘Shorts’.
That said, I have found it possible to ‘train’ the algorithm without creating an account. This involves creating a fresh profile (or installing a fresh browser) and taking especial care to avoid searching for or clicking on any content that lies outside the realm you are trying to create.
Alternatives to YouTube
These techniques also work with the smaller services that compete with YouTube (if only on the margin). (Bitchute, Rumble, and Odysee come to mind.) Indeed, if you enjoy the work of an artist who posts his work to both YouTube and another site, bookmarking the latter channel offers an opportunity to exercise your ‘indie’ muscles. (As before, if you wish to toss a coin or two to the person who has entertained or informed you, direct donation does him much more good than the few dozen clicks you are able to provide over the course of a year.)
