7
votes
Strange YouTube watch-tracking behavior
Just looking for some indication that I'm not going a bit crazy here, but does anyone else get shown videos they've never seen before, indicating that the video has been partially watched?
It seems to be just on search results and recommendations and it picks random points in the video to be kick-off points for continuing.
If anyone has an explanation that'd be appreciated, as it almost feels like my watch history is getting mixed up with someone else's.
This happens to me, in two different scenarios
There's one that's somewhat infrequent, but sometimes YouTube seems to track how long a video plays when I hover over a thumbnail. And will bring me back to where I stopped if I ever click on that video in the future.
There's other times where, like you, I find a video through search and YouTube starts me somewhere in the middle of the video.
My assumption was that this was YouTube's attempt to guess the most relevant section of the video to my query, and jump me straight there. I know this was a thing on Google Search when you searched for a video, so I assumed that YouTube might've been extending that behavior more broadly.
I have definitely experienced the second: I search for something fairly narrow and get a video result that's more broad, but fast forwarded to the relevant section. The times it's happened it has usually been helpful.
Watch history has been working pretty poorly since hovering over a YouTube thumbnail, or simply having it on screen (on mobile) starts playing the video. My best guess is that that's what you're seeing.
It also counts and keeps track of history if you click through the preview.
I'd agree with you, except I did disable those preview play functionalities when they first came out, unless they somehow still happen in the background and are just hidden...
...you know, I wouldn't put that past Google 🫤
It turns on for new devices sometimes.
This happens to us, and we assumed it’s 100% because of our AppleTV not shutting off every time we turn off the TV. I’d be interested to see what others have to say.
Yes! This does happen to me and I've never been able to fully explain it! I never have autoplay enabled, so I never automatically get taken to other videos on any device, nor let videos play in such a way. I'm very picky and intentional about what I choose to play and how-so
I have thought, at one point, it was due to my mouse hovering over a video in a results list or sidebar, and it starting to play a video in the thumbnail- however this was quickly disproven by the fact that a number of videos that I've never played that showed as partially watched were significantly long and indicated that I had watched an hour or more of them. Unless hovering (even for a split second when scrolling a page) causes it to scrub to a particular place in the middle of the video, and even if that's done for a second, it considers said video 'watched up to that point', but that seems wild and implausible to me.
I do use a number of browser extensions, including some that help remember my place in videos without Youtube's help, or modify Youtube in certain ways, and I thought maybe some bug from them could be interfering, but it would not explain me seeing videos I've never even browsed to or searched for previously marked as partially-watched. There is also no common denominator between the various videos that have been "watched" that I've never watched, no common theme or content, or anything.
It's always a search result or recommendation, and it always seems rather random.
I have recently started using similar extensions, but disabled any independent tracking behavior. I also have my watch history only last 3 months, so it's possible to scroll back to that point and the video doesn't appear (that I can see anyway). Very odd.
I've also disabled the autoplay preview, since it bugs me, so that can account for some I imagine, but l like you said it can't explain them all.
*Oh should say, this behavior started before I used extensions/modified apps, from what I remember.
YouTube search has been busted at this point for a long while and I can't tell if it's because Googles search is so debased to sell ads that it's hitting their other internal services. Or because YouTube scale has hit a critical mass of poorly sorted content over time that conventional search systems are ineffective. But they would rather die maintain the broken system than give users better search controls and finding what they need. Same thing happened with Drive: they need to maximize the users time on the tool to justify existing so sorting and content controls seem maliciously bad.
I don't really mind it in Recommended and I think it's true to the function of that feed. Recommended is videos you would most likely watch. Subscriptions are for the channels you want to be informed had published something.
My guess with Recommend is that youtube has some segment of the algorithm in place to promote content from new/small creators and another that will just roll a stack of dice and point you to vids gaining traction with demographic groups you marginally apply to. I don't really mind and I've recently gone down and Advertising/Marketing rabbit hole. Last one was essays on weird video game obsessions. Any Austin following infrastructure in open world games and Internet Pitstop gushing about Vibes for hours makes for fun background listening.
Can't speak to the random start time. I know mine does that because my kid is only allows to watch YT on my profile. I think the app has device profiles because I get different recommendations on TV and my phone.
do you have a carbon monoxide detector?
No, but I just demonstrated the problem to my wife. Can you have a shared delusion with carbon monoxide poisoning? 😅
I mean, if you've got the poisoning thing going on, can you trust anything? :) If you don't have a detector, its a great time to get one. You should have one regardless.
if it isn't this, that's a very odd issue. Couldn't hurt to check which devices are logged in (guide)
If you can log every session out, that'd be ideal. Also check if you have any unexpected API keys at https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials