It's not really so much about wanting to not squash creativity as much as a believe that website owners shouldn't shape content if they are running a platform. Mark Zuckerberg shouldn't be in charge of how much people like or dislike a particular political view, social movement, or politician. I believe in applying slippery slope concepts on leaders and that if you are a leader you have to apply the same principles on yourself that you would like to see in other leaders. It's not my job to shape what people see, or upload, outside of methods that treat all content equally if its allowed on the site. So other sites categorize. On gvid there are only two categories, allowed on the site, not allowed on the site. That's it. So we don't support gore or pornography (differentiated from erotica or nudity, where porn for our purposes involves a sexual act). I'm not going to ban every video that has a girl dressed too sexy for some people to handle because then where is the line. Again I consider slippery slopes valid. And nudity is allowed because to some degree it is allowed on youtube, and gvid is at least a little more mature oriented than youtube (also vimeo and daily motion).

The other idea that I'm hoping will have an impact but I didn't write about because I thought it would be too long to write among the rest is I'm planning on moving to a multi-algorithm approach to suggestions where each suggestion came from a different algorithm and when you click on one it notes that's an algorithm that suits you and changes the balance that comes from each algorithm. Some of these are going to be dead simple. Random, New, Hot, New by uploader, Hot by uploader, and the current click through system which uses history, and the same click through system but only based on the current video. I'm hoping this tones down the strong idiosyncrasies of a click through suggestion system, one of the most prominent being people click on sexy videos. It should even tone down the suggestions made by that algorithm because the click through into videos suggested by other algorithms will be fed into it instead of it feeding into itself exclusively.

Other advantage is that people get into modes for how they want to watch. If people want to see random videos they will get suggested random videos. If people want to see new videos that will get suggested new videos. If they want to see something based on their history they will see that. If they are in a mood to see what is directly related to the video they just watched they will see that.

If you have patience with me I do think the multi-algorithm will do quite a lot to solve the problem. The idiosyncrasies of the current system feeds on itself and it is out of balance. I think the over dominance of sexy videos in some suggestions despite being 0.3% of videos is a reflection of that. Also we should consider the attention getting properties of those videos gets us to see it even more than it is present. It represents probably 1 in 60 suggestions. Depends on the browsing history of other people who watched each of the videos in your history. Because most people who visit from the outside don't watch a second video but the ones who click on a sexy video watch several sometimes a video can get bombed esp if its a newer video. If you see a video that gets bombed just click on and maybe watch several other videos afterward. When you see suggestions you are basically looking at the combined browsing history of everyone who watched it.

Also, all videos hijack attention to some degree. There is a reason why youtube is considered an unhealthy site esp because their algs are geared toward watch time, so their videos are designed to waste your time. So hijacking attention doesn't really form an exception. But I'm with you. I want to see less of it. I'm going to go forward with my plans to do it.