Just because someone has an opinion counter to the Hacker News hivemind doesn't mean they are faking it.

In this case, I'd imagine this is a case where the people who have a bad experience with the YouTube suggestion algorithm have a reason to speak up but the people who are having a fine experience do not.

I don't know... honestly. I was extremely surprised. I was actually wondering if they switched to some level of human in the loop, because it used to suck in the past, but now is great. I expected people to have good experiences too. I 'm actually shocked to see how disappointed people are here...

Here's an example of some stuff that just showed up recently.

[1] Some guy camping an exploring an island that used to be a federal prison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xnI1hZdltw

[2] A documentary about homeless people racing carts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi-f_J6hV-g

[3] Fantastic funk music (and I don't even listen to funk!) - https://youtu.be/m1oLjnKeUiY?t=2

[4] Fantastic old school theatrical hard rock from Japan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbI79e5iZKs

[5] Sapolsky's must-see lecture on stress - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H9qTdserM&t=112s (which I got recommended and was watching this morning in the background while I worked)

Just a random sample from stuff that popped up in the recent past. All the above captured my curiosity 100%. Maybe it's a personality thing, maybe I am eager to just discover novel stuff, that the quality level might not be the highest but the novel factor covers for it.

I have the same experience as the above user. I primarily watch guitar and exercise videos, and have never had any complaints about the youtube algorithm. The one algorithm I do feel underperforms is Spotify's. For some reason, their discover weekly is always filled with covers of songs I already have in my playlists.