• Question: How does the YouTube algorithm work?

    Asked by brandonberry to William, Sophie, Rob, Maja, Diana on 24 Jan 2020.
    • Photo: William Pettersson

      William Pettersson answered on 24 Jan 2020:

      That’s hard to answer, in part because it’s a business secret and YouTube won’t give out specifics. I can give a vague guess as to how it works though. The algorithm looks at how long each person spends on the site, what videos they watch, how long they watch each video, whether they like the video, at what time they like the video (i.e., right at start, or after 2 minutes), whether they leave a comment, and whether they move on to another video or leave the site.
      The algorithm gathers that data, and crunches it all down to try to work out how to best keep you on the site, and interacting with it.

    • Photo: Diana Kornbrot

      Diana Kornbrot answered on 25 Jan 2020:

      do you mean the algorithm that ‘suggests’ vidoes to you?
      if so, its like many other algorithms that takes in as much data as ti can about all watchers and then chooses the ones that other people hwo have watched the same videos as you like. it probably knows akk the videos you have watched!

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