Impressions: Every exploit to “break the algorithm” targets this baffling metric
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.พ. 2021
- Welcome to my first meta-video! Today we will be taking a break from physical science (It'l be back tomorrow) and entering the realm of computer science, with a TH-cam video about impressions and the recommendation algorithm that has a self-referential updating thumbnail that tells you how many people have seen the thumbnail!
I also introduce the "CTR-Watch-Time Product" as a metric for video success, effectively the additional time TH-cam expects to retain a viewer by showing them a thumbnail. It's an interesting metric when youtube is behaving normally, and for videos of similar length.
At the end, I go into some detail on the python script that's actually updating this thumbnail all the time. Warning: it's absolutely horrendous code…
#TH-cam #Algorithm #CTRWtP
Music etc. in this video:
I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626
Deep Thought - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Patrick "push it somewhere else" meme - Spongebob Squarepants
Purple Crewmate - Among Us
GlaDOS voice and screenshot - Portal/Portal 2 by Valve
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Slack quotes from other TH-camrs used with permission - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
"Because... My code is really fragile."
Oh surely it can't be that ba- OH MY GOD NOOOO
Glad that the VM helped tho
Just imagine if TH-cam changes their layout, and coincidentally the "DELETE ALL VIDEOS" button ends up right under where one of these fake mouse clicks should be...
My kind of coder 😂😂
@@dundeedideley1773 Ooh, so you're into messy coders?
@@alsmoviebarn how to cancel 2025 yourself inn 2021:
Step 1:
oh you weren't kidding that is grotesque
Nice to see you here
What is this? A crossover episode?
jan Misali watches AlphaPhoenix? can't say the man has bad taste
Hey it’s random conlangs and memes guy
It's great to C you here. I'm looking forward to your next incredibly detailed video on a letter of the alphabet. The W video was a revelation and I send the C video to EVERYONE.
You're now part of my impression pool because I clicked on your gerrymandering video.
Same, and maybe also because I watched that Tom Scott video
Well I watched it 4 months ago and now I'm here again
@@UltraBadass do the vids you watch say that you havent watched them after 4 months too?
Ditto, gerrymandering vid was recommended yesterday and I got this today
Yup, same!
"I did what Tom Scott said not to do"
Ahh... So you like to live dangerously
It could be worse. He could have gone bathing in the Strid.
"youtube has shown this video to 1 people"
"2 of them clicked it"
🤔
Currently "showed to 4 people, 16 have clicked"
@@12jojimbo And it's still that one for now
I got it at 744 and 125. Now it's 806 and 108
@@LeoStaley I saw an 800 something but now it's back down to 705 and 73
The view count must have had a jump (sometimes YT rearranges things retroactively) because my internal “real-time” clock is at about 200 per hour. Or maybe the real-time views are actually manlier than I thought. Interesting!
The thumnail felt A LOT like clickbait, I tried VERY hard not to click... I failed...
Glad I did
I agree. I wasnt going to click out of spite, but I accidently (and in an unrelated way) started watching his other videos (the ice ones). And then I watched some others. Finally, I got a feel of his videos and personality and didn't mind clicking on this video lol
This is the kind of clickbait that works on me, I also knew it was some legit interesting thing, because it's AlphaPhoenix!
Yeah, I ignored it about three times before I had watched enough of his videos to trust his clickbait to be honest. :P
@@bow-tiedengineer4453 I feel the same LOL. But now I know he's worth it :P
This kind of nerd clickbait is the only one that really works on me
1:18
Sup!
i love you man, you want to marry me?
it u
O hai der
@@Ravenist C'mon it's Will Osman, don't do my man like this
I'm a huge fan of the programming horror at the end. It's beautifully Chaotic.
I made an entire aimbot/AI for a minecraft csgo minigame out of just screen scraping lol surprisingly the hardest part is it takes about 150ms to take a screenshot and access it depending on resolution, and it's not faster to access individual pixels as needed, so the maximum refresh rate something like this can achieve is like 6 times per second in practice without doing some other optimization
@@josiahmarsh9453 interesting thanks for the info. I saw a similar concept being exploited in csgo and cod with a somewhat successful result. I guess in minecraft a 150ms delay might not be as significant of an issue as it would be in a twitch shooter game with much more detailed models. How was the AI able to determine whether you were against an enemy just from screen scraping? I'd assume there's some visual indication that you were able to take advantage of or it was a FFA and the AI was good to just attack any player model it sees?
5:27 the "while 1 == 1" instead of "while true" is killing me
it hurt me too
while 1 != 2:
@@vil3n80 iirc while 1: used to have a slight perf benefit over while True: (but not 1==1... gross)
while true == true and false == false
@@want-diversecontent3887 Good idea. Just in case one changes.
The title was so clickbaity that I almost never had clicked it. Luckily I saw your logo next to it, and I knew, I would like it. Which I did.Thank you!
This video itself is an experiment. I’m going to be glued to the analytics screen looking at subscribed vs unsubscribed clicks for days...
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel This is funny: I almost instantly got a heart from you on my comment, so I was almost sure, you included a likebot as well. Thanks for your answer, now I know, I was wrong.
Yeah the thumbnail immediately made me go "ew" but then I thought about it, saw it was from this channel, and figured I'd give it a try.
I saw it and actively avoided it. I'm here from the particle decay RNG video :P
I saw this video initially, and passed it. Then I watched the gerrymandering video, was shown it again, and was like "aight now I'm into it"
A suggestion if you need to do this kind of a thing in the future: instead of clicking, copying and pasting from the actual web page you can read that stuff out from the DOM with simple javascript. I would also /strongly/ advise you to randomise the refresh rate of how often you refresh the page.
Very stonkly recommended.
This
you can probably do the whole thing in python by using a cookie jar, searching the html, logging, randomizing the time between refreshes, and faking the header to look like a real browser.
I don't know if google does this or not but half of what the 'I am no a robot' captcha looks for is randomized or rather statistically imprecise mouse velocities. Even a simple swipe to confirm captcha is non trivial to automate in selenium in a way that accurately mimics human interaction.
Something I miss is how you keep the data from the script when you refresh the page.
I think there is no way to remember where you were in the code before the refresh, even with tampermonkey scripting or similar, and it's actually very hard to save partial informations on your local machine.
So how do you do that?
I think the algorithm has chosen your channel. This is the first time I’ve seen this channel and there’s a ton of fresh comments from 1-3 days ago which have a lot of likes, showing that a lot of other people are also viewing this video NOW, even though it was posted multiple months ago. Congratulations sir! Your content is great by the way, already subscribed in the first 2 minutes of the video.
I agree
Yup
Corrections etc.:
1) First of all, screenshots inside a VM aren't nearly as robust as I imagined, so the live (hopefully still running) code simply memorizes coordinates on the screen from a single printscreen as to where to click.
2) It looks like I may have been wrong about the first self-updating video. I couldn't find confirmation of the method, but it looks like CGP Grey (fantastic channel btw) published a video with the profit from the video in the title. th-cam.com/video/KW0eUrUiyxo/w-d-xo.html
========================================================
The saga of launching this video:
1) I've never been so nervous to click "publish" on a video before. I'm not sure how long it will take for the first impressions to appear, so the first bunch of people may see the double zero starter… The thumbnail should change about every 10 minutes. Here goes!"
2) There may be glitches where the number either doesn't change for a while or goes WAY up for an hour because impressions are one of the TH-cam metrics that gets changed and updated retroactively, and I'm plotting a derivative. There can be huge discontinuities if you're just plotting the number on the webpage over time (which I am to calculate the last hour) so IF I catch one of these I'll try to fix it by hand but no promises…
To be specific "Data for Impressions is displayed up to the minute. This is an estimate and may be adjusted over time as the data becomes more refined."
3) OK it looks like at the very start, only like 20 minutes in, the views are outpacing the impressions. I think this is two-fold: many viewers are getting to the video from the subscriptions page which is not part of TH-cam recommendations, and impressions are slower to update... AAAAAhhhhhhhhh. It will look a LOT better past an hour when the derivatives make sense!
4) It's been one hour - I had one small typo in how numbers less than 1000 were handled, and in my zeal to debug I think I made TH-cam angry by uploading too many thumbnails too quickly, but ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD NOW! Also the impressions reporting naturally lags behind the views, but it's caught up, so the thumbnail even makes sense now!
The way I would do it is to create a browser extension to scrape the page data, and then pass the data to a locally running server. For example, you could create an object pointing to localhost, with the data in the URL. Then on the Python-based server, you just grab that as the data. Circumvents the whole screenshot stuff, and should work inside the browser natively.
A couple of years back there were ways to make selenium webdriver login onto youtube and do stuff. Maybe with an occasional captcha, if you got too crazy. I think there might still be ways to do it if you go deeper down the rabbit hole.
@@1ucasvb That's a damned good way of handling it!
Have you tried running Selenium with the real browser instead of headless mode? It should behave the same as if you were doing it directly.
As a side note, you should include a timestamp in the thumbnail… and the pink background is awful!
@@1ucasvb That's what I was thinking, except I'd just use the TamperMonkey extension, which makes it a whole lot simpler.
Ah yes, This Old Tony. I see You're a maho of culture as well.
It had to have been an emergency if I didn't watch one of his videos the day of release!
Hahahahaha! Yes, the perfect comment.
Your gerrymandering video was literally suggested to me like 6 times before I watched it to make it go away.
But I'm watching your backlog now.
Seems like this video is getting a yet another wave of blessings from the algorithm. Lemme add a comment just to boost it that one tiny bit.
I have no clue why this video popped up on my recommended, never watched this channel before, though probably because curiosity and similar video from Tom Scott some odd months ago about APIs and updating video title.
Yep, watched the same video a while ago.
Oath sick vid, glad the algo fed me his ice stuff
What's really funny about this is that I think its broken, but you'll never be able to tell, since impressions and clickthrough data aren't available to the public. I only suspect that its broken since its been recommended to me like 5 times recently (because I've been re-binging this channel lol), and the numbers in the thumbnail haven't changed. Its really funny to me, since Tom's video is about "digital entropy", so when it breaks down, its just part of the theme. But this video is about the "chewing gum and duct tape" kinda solutions that we throw together, so the fact that it broke just reinforces why you shouldn't code like this
Proud to see the 0 just as this was posted!
Love the channel!
haha on a tear to break 10K a while back thanks to Steve Mould, but that was about it xD
Screenshot this for when you break 1 million. Mark my words this channel is going to definitely hit that if you keep up the amazing content. This is literally the only channel I have the bell icon set for.
You should have included a small "data updated" date in the thumbnail so that those of watching months in the future might know if this is still running.
Totally agree. But, I mean, only if you want...
@Robert Swaine Me too, but I assume not.
The VM scripted scraper is the epitome of a non-deterministic system; “faith programming” -
*"As long as my code keeps working..."*
Well you got the attitude at least! And your solution is so janky its fantastic!
I mean it's already written in Python so therefore it's jank by default!
Thanks, youtube. This was something that kept me 7 minutes and 28 more seconds in the platform.
I have no clue who you are or watched anything similar to this yet it was recommended to me on my home page at 900 views. Impressive
That’s the dream! Lol
I mostly do science experiments/maker projects/astronomy with a few programming things thrown in. It’s eclectic but universally nerdy
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel ok an update it seems that instead of this being the algorithm suggesting this already it seems to be TH-cam randomly subscribing me to this channel. I noticed after watching that I was subscribed but I have never seen you before or any of the videos you uploaded let alone in my subscriptions or any of the polls I now get. Very weird. Just updating this to not get more confusion about the algorithm.
@@unicorndelta6071 Or you subscribed and simply don't remember it. I just find it hard to believe because it's something that never happened to me in the 10 years that I have been using this platform.
@@cavemann_ I understand which is why I would've preferred deleting my comment since there is no point in saying these things without having factual evidence, which TH-cam doesn't provide for these things, but I kept it up for now to not create confusion about the algorithm.
Nevertheless I have also never had this happen before in my 8 years on here, however I've been watching a lot of TH-cam for a while now and in that time I have answered every single community poll and announcement from my subscriptions till there were no more and I have never seen any from alphaphoenix, except starting yesterday where I know see his announcements and old polls in my feed. That is why I know for sure.
@@unicorndelta6071 Actually, youtube has started pushing out community polls and announcements to non-subscribers. Spiffin Brit did a couple youtube videos about this, and content creators everywhere made a ton of polls. I'd be surprised if AlphaPhoenix was the only channel you saw polls from, that you weren't subscribed to.
Neat video! Just a minor Thing: I'm not sure if was self updating or manually updated but the first 'automatically changing video' I can remember is CGP Grey's video called 'This Video Made $3,388 at Auction. How Ads Work on TH-cam. (Post-Adpocalypse Updated Estimate)' which would update the title over time based on how much money the video made. It was released 2 years before Tom Scott's video.
I look forward to your future videos :) I hope you have a good rest of your day
Ah that’s cool! I had no idea. I only recently learned of cgp grey around the time of hexagons... it’s a fantastic channel! I’ll add a correction up top
And here I thought Tom Scott was up to doing some Janky stuff.
"youtube has shown this video to X people"
"X+1 of them clicked it"
I watched this video when it released, and TH-cam just showed me it again. So naturally I had to re-watch it to not screw up the numbers and leave a comment for the engagement bots
Randomly rewatched the ice-freezing video before watching this, then went to your video library and went to the first video I didn't watch yet, it happened to be this one, which talks about the ice-freezing video. The algorithm is lining up time traps now...
Anyway, since you asked, the preview said something like 5600++ people saw the thumbnail and 480 had clicked it in the past hour. I think it's safe to say it's not updating anymore.
This was really interesting, I’ve been trying to figure out how the Twitch algorithm works for recommended channels because that seems to be the only real way of growing
Love it, as Tom Scott would say "the art of the bodge"
I’m so glad the algorithm recommended me this. I love meta-videos, and this is the best one I’ve seen in months. Really admire the effort that went into this.
IIRC, there was a video before Tom Scott’s that updated the title every hour, along the lines of “This Video Has Earned $X Since Launch”. But updating the thumbnail is something I haven’t seen before. Nice one!
Current stats for this video: 5780 impressions in the last hour, and 480 clicks.
Okay, so your code shown on screen at ~6:10, the if branches' comments earned my subscription! Great video, though. Btw, I avoided clicking on your videos suggested by youtube for weeks now coz I was thinking it's a dangerously addictive channel. :D
Wow, this really is the mother of all jank in terms of data collection, I'm impressed
This has been going a while. You should follow up with a graph over time.
Seconded
Thirded
Thanks for going in to how your script works! That's one of the things I love about your videos when you trigger a question in my mind you always answer it and I dig that! Also I'm going to have to figure out how to keep checking this thumbnail I have a feeling, based on the way it's increased just since I clicked the video, this is going to pop off!
Just found your channel a few hours ago and have been going through a few of your videos, Very cool stuff!
Also I love your intro and appreciate the fact you timed your lighter to go with the music :D
No no, I wont click this.
Well I clicked it
When I saw this thumbnail, I had to watch the whole video!
Came across your channel from a comment you posted on a different youtubers video covering information theory. Love the content keep it coming!
Edit: @4:30 It's working pal. Can confirm.
Okay, I finally clicked it. The number on the thumbnail keeps going up. lol.
AAAAannnnd it turns out the first 50 seconds of your video perfectly explains why I ended up clicking it.
If google ads have an api it might have the necessary impression data you need, even for youtube as it is always seems to be far more detailed than anything youtube offers so you might be able to extract stuff from there.
I'm usually really impressed by this channel, with this one I'm just scared
TH-cam has a lousy way of suggesting videos.
I just watched that, thanks.
Or
I've seen that suggestion 40 times and haven't watched it. Thanks.
I just subbed that channel, you mean there's MORE videos there!?! Thanks
I got here from LMG, your presenting style as with most of the TH-cam I watch, I can listen to it like a podcast snd not loose a whole heap of the information. One of the better presenters of interesting topics around
June 28th 2022
if you're questioning is this video still updated- its not, it stopped working about 9-10 months ago, based on what other comments say :)
This appears to have stopped working about 5 months ago according to the comments.
I'm a new viewer.
This video pulled me in because of my interest in the TH-cam algorithm.
However, upon checking your uploads for more content, I realized; TH-cam has been recommending me *several* of your videos for the past few days consistently.
I personally think this is really interesting!
I skipped over these videos for literally days but it kept recommending them to me until I finally took the bait on one, and now I'm hooked.
That's all, I don't know what this all means exactly but it's cool to see the algorithm working like this. I wouldn't have even noticed it if not for the subject of this video and my recognizing your thumbnails (specifically "what is polycrystaline water?," "Ditch the DSLR?" and "why are metals so stretchy? 2^13 subscriber special")
Oh, also. This took place mostly via TH-cam on TV via Roku and LG WebOS TH-cam applications, as well as TH-cam Vanced on mobile
Real talk I wanted to avoid clicking on this video because of the thumbnail but then I saw your gerrymandering video. It was incredible, so you earned this view!
Still 5870 impressions with 480 clicks pretty sure it broke
mine said 69 people clicked this and 496 people were shown this
I started seeing your videos pop up a week ago. I predict your channel will grow exponentially.
When I found your videos yesterday (I think it was the vacuum-tight video, or maybe the gerrymandering one), you had 35K subscribers. I then subscribed, and now that I'm watching this video, you have 44.7K (!!!) I think you're hitting the "blowing up" phase now, haha
The night the algorithm decided Robot Cantina was my new favorite channel, with each new video I watched his subscriber count increased by about 1500.
did it freeze?
(5870 impressions, 480 views)
(5870 impressions, 480 views, 8h later, 22:00 UTC)
(5870 impressions, 480 views, 2 days later, 11:30 UTC)
(5870 impressions, 480 views, 9 days later, 6/23 21:30 UTC)
Yes it did
Nice! The algorithm just proposed me again your thumbnail! Quite unexpected
I don't know why but for some reason TH-cam took years to recommend these videos to me even though they're right in my wheel house. The first one I ever saw was the gerrymandering video and I've been making my way from oldest to newest and I'm almost caught up now.
bad vidio
Yep, the algorithm chose your video (about the algorithm). Never seen you before, but I subscribed. : )
TH-cam is forcing this thumbnail onto my eyeballs. I think it's been shown to me 15 times before I somehow accidentally opened it (autoplay maybe?). Only realised it was *that video* after I saw the thumbnail. You win this time
Hey! I have never heard of your channel before, but the thumbnail worked for me as I was always wondering, if someone would start experimenting with the TH-cam algorithm through a kind of a direct communication with the audience through the thumbnail.
Would be cool to see other experiments in that field and maybe insights about the algorithm!
My first contact with your channel. Very interesting stuff!
5:23 "What is my purpose?"
"You refresh a webpage."
"Oh my god."
I saw the thumbnail pop up randomly and thought "oh one of those API self-updating videos" and clicked out of curiosity. Though I'm not a TH-cam creator and don't have anything uploaded to this account, it sure was interesting!
My god I loved this channel so much, when TH-cam recommended it to me, that I subscribed. Guess it worked!
I find that the most interesting videos like yours appear on my phone as a play next, while im doing something else and i come back to see something that i wouldnt find just scrolling
I saw one of your videos yesterday and I'm hooked. It was the atom electron microscope one. I learned so much in one video and you did it so well so I watched another one. I'm scared ill run out!!
This was interesting on many levels!!!
I originally came here (your channel) for the astronomy content because i make some myself, so as a creator this was a very cool surprise!
Also, the portal 2 reference was 👌👌👌
Glad you liked it! It was a break from my usual science...
That ice video is what introduced me to your channel, it was a great video and it got me hooked!!
Glad to hear it! Episode 4 (or 3b, whatever, the last one) is uploaded and going out tomorrow!
i have NO clue who you are, but this video showed up in my feed and now i watched it and love your channel :)
When I started to watch it was 5285 people and 517 click throughs. By the end of the video it was 5470 and 547 click throughs. Blowing up!! Really like the channel, I subbed on the vacuum gasket video haha. Great stuff :)
I don't remember your channel but I couldn't resist that thumbnail, it lured me in.
4 months in and I'm happy to announce that the program is still working and I have subscribed
The gerrymandering video was good. I watched the entire thing. Now TH-cam wants me to watch all of your videos! They're pretty good so far!
I see you've made a 2^14 subscriber plaque. Nice blueprint! My favorite plaque of yours is the 2^12 subscriber special.
When you started talking about screenshots, I half-expected you to tape an OCR library to it all. Woulda been beautiful.
This thumbnail was so clickbaity I just had to click it. Glad I did, cause you're basically everything I love on TH-cam
Kudos for trying though!
In case you're wondering; the thumbnail was way too clickbaity for me to click, but once I noticed the channel it was from I knew it would be interesting and so came to watch it.
Saw the thumbnail a few times now and I finally caved and clicked.
Very cool, like the update of the impressions, very cool.
I am really interested in data mining and statistics, as well as much of your other content about crystal growth, your newest video about gerrymandering is what brought me to your channel
I definitely enjoyed the video! thanks for making it
Well hi this was in my recommendations and I just so happen to be interested in the things you post. The algorithm machine is usually pretty off but this time it was right!
I don’t know how I found you but I did about 5 days ago and now I’m watching most of your videos all the way through
Oh wow this is the first time I came across this channel and wow this is very interesting! Seems your fragile py script is currently inactive... Anyway, next up, the gerrymandering video!
What an impressive jenga-style but still working code a non programmer person can think of! I appreciate your dedication.
Really great idea. And a very informative video. Thanks for sharing
I started watching your videos some weeks ago. I am not subscribed yet, because then the suggestion algorithm suggests your videos less.
And now this one popped up. I did not watch it for several days, and only realized its your channel when clicking on it.
Nice experiment.
If you are interested how your channel got suggested to me, I have watch history activated and could extract some stuff.
Looks like this might be getting suggested to people now :P Will definitely be interesting to watch the thumbnail change
You know what I really liked this video I'm subscribing
We could quickly figure it out if we made a plugin that tracked whats watched and whats recommended, their tags, views likes and dislikes and gathering the data and compiling it
And can also track the creators videos if selected
Soooo the VM is clearly off… it’s said the same numbers for months. but I’m STILL getting this recommended in my feed after watching it once and now this is probably sometime after a 3rd impression.
Still a great video!
I remember your spray paint intro from a video I watched on the vacuum seal compared to air tight seal. I do often watch science videos.
found this through your account which I can’t remember why I subscribed but unimportant. fully 100% support any algorithm manipulation. o7
Ok fine youve managed to tempt me into clicking with that thumbnail trick now that it came up multiple times
Hello. TH-cam thinks I was a good candidate to get captured in the net which it cast for your video. They weren't wrong. I'm subscribing.
The thumbnail actually disincentivized me from clicking the video. The title was what interested me more, but I don't like being told what to do on the basis of some statistic lol
You recently ended up in my suggestions, I like all your videos so far. Sadly though I know within a few weeks you’ll stop showing up for me and I’ll forget about you, like has happened with so many other creators
Subscribe and you’ll never forget
This might be the third time I've watched it, and I am really interested in the view count of this video, it pops up in my feed every once in a while.
'what is my purpose'
'you press ctrl r'
'oh my god'
from the "botnet buys cars before russians" defcon talk. the "proper" way to do this would've been a tampermonkey script