Dear Google, Lets Talk About Context
I have a love/hate relationship with Google at this point. One feature that I often use on my phone is the discovery news feed. I also have taken to watching a fair amount of YouTube videos. The trouble is, that everything you do on Google feeds the algorithm and things get, just plain muddy.
Just because I happen to search for an actor or if there’s going to be a new season of a television show, does NOT mean I want to see every bit of gossip around every 6 degrees of relation to that show, or the actors. I wanted a singular piece of information and that’s it. Same goes for my YouTube suggestions. YouTube is very similar. If I watch a JoBlo or Looper video, it doesn’t mean I want to READ about these same things in my news feed either.
In the end, I wish I could limit my news feed to articles that are either cold, hard based facts about news and politics or limited to technical articles on subjects I care about. Half my suggested articles are either celebrity, tv, movies or human interest. I don’t care about any of that, and generally skip/remove them. Unfortunately, some of these articles come from sites I do like many of the articles from, so can’t say “don’t show me articles from SiteName” as it would block articles I do want, sometimes I can clearly do this (gossip sites). Other times, the topic category is something I’m interested in, but the article just doesn’t belong there.
Another issue, there’s no real way to clear something I’ve read off . I really just want to be able to swipe right, or dismiss an article after I’ve read it. Let me do this without having to click “Not Interrested In This Article.” I mean really, I can’t be the only person who wants an item to (optionally) go away after reading. In a similar vein, I really wish there was more I could do to train things… such as an expanded like/dislike menu… such as like -> this style, this site, this article, this topic. Similarly for dislike, that can better train your system to what I want to see more of in the context of suggestions for the news/discovery.
Similarly for YouTube. You’re literally hiding the dislike counts, but not taking any effort to understand any categorical reason for like/dislike. Which circles back to, what I like on YouTube or search for, does not directly correlate to what I want to read about and vice-versa. These are relatively separate contexts, even if there is some overlap for many people.
Franlly I kind of miss RSS feed readers, and wish you would bring back something more akin to google reader, that would take the feeds into account when suggesting articles outside those feeds… “Discover” vs “Your Feeds” and it could be great. Sure, offer a curated experience, but don’t take away the ability to self-manage what one wants to read. I think the summary deletion of google reader and some of the iGoogle options are the worst things you have done for your users. I get why you’ve done these things. Maybe, just maybe, you should consider rolling back some of the individual curation options and come up with solutions somewhere in the middle.
