Does YouTube play junk when you fall asleep?
-- noticed that when youtube thinks I'm sleeping the stuff it serves up on auto is mostly junk - almost always stuff way outside my interests - often very old - I was trying to think why the algo picks such strange stuff for me to watch when I'm asleep - the only good thing I could come up with is that they know i'm asleep - don't want to pay ad revenue when I'm asleep - this happen with anyone else? --
Yes, kind off. But I've developed a habbitt. Whenever I feel like falling asleep I simply go to this playlist [0], set it on shuffle an repeat, and all is good. It also helps that I have uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock active.
My advice: find yourself a long and "innocent" playlist and run it a few times. The content around it and related to it gets better with time and the junk just falls off after a while.
[0] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl6BRvEJ-auZ5aYPHj1B3pKJ_...
> don't want to pay ad revenue when I'm asleep
I wouldn't be inclined to give YouTube the benefit of the doubt, but one potential explanation if we were being charitable is that they're legitimately trying not to interrupt peoples' sleep.
A random YouTube ad with loud audio interrupting any random video with steady audio would be far more likelier to wake you up and piss you off royally.
Youtube has discovered a new revenues source, what you sleep-watched. They can shovel whatever they like - whatever is the best $$ spinner. It might be worthwhile to have rooms full of raspberry Pi's 'watching' and clicking.
I see the exhaustion of an advertising platform as there is push back as invoiced clicks fail to meet projected revenue flows and are culled.
Probably put you in the same category as other people who like to watch the junk late at night...
Not for me, but I (almost always) very intentionally start a 10 hour long track of something like "rain and thunderstorm noises" or "raging snowstorm and crackling fire noises" right before going to bed.
You'd expect it to play better results first and worse results later.