My liveblog of the 522 videos I watched at the mercy of the autoplay function can be found here. Originally, my goal was just to continue watching these videos, without any skips, until I reached something weirdly different, but 522 videos later, I can honestly say that I have learned more about myself, about Drake, about Teen Beach 2: The Movie, and about life than I could have ever imagined. I pulled up a completely random song on Youtube and decided to let things flow from there. So obviously, there’s only one other way to find out. After you watch a YouTube video on your computer, we’ll automatically play another related video based on your viewing history. The autoplay feature on YouTube makes it easier to decide what to watch next.
So how to actually gain more information about a mechanism like this? The Youtube blurb on the autoplay is incredibly unhelpful: While unlikely, a particularly strong bent toward or away from certain songs may actually make the difference between a single reaching #1 or not (or perhaps charting at all or not). And those views affect even bigger things, like the Billboard Hot 100. While it is at most a minor inconvenience among Google’s many attempts to wring video views (and accompanying ad revenue) from the general public, it can very quickly affect what gets views driven to it (even views that only initiate the stream and play a tiny segment of the video count toward the total).
What? You’ve never had this type of experience before? That must be why nobody’s written about this algorithm before. As your friend runs for cover, they shout an unintelligible stream of obscenities at you and are never heard from again. All of a sudden, something else starts blaring through your speakers. The video is a success! You and your friend start swapping crazy animal and/or Roomba stories, and you get so into the conversation that you forget that Youtube is still open.
You pull up your trusty bookmarks and open “Cat In A Shark Costume Chases A Duck While Riding A Roomba” for them. They’re having a bad day and need cheering up.