A recommendation system can’t show you a video it never admitted to the list.

That’s the choice I find interesting in HackerTube , Andrej Karpathy’s new video site built around recommendations in Hacker News comments. The familiar video grid is the visible part. The admission rule does a lot of the editorial work. 🍿

The live About page says a video needs links from at least three different people , with real commentary, across at least three different months to make the initial cut. It then uses AI to distinguish recommendations from other kinds of mentions. 1 , 2

Original explanatory diagram. The excluded video is a hypothetical example, not an audited HackerTube record.

Two videos walk into a filter

Imagine a brilliant new lecture. Someone posts it on HN with a thoughtful explanation. Nobody else has linked it yet.

Now imagine an older talk that people have brought up independently across several months.

Under the published initial rule, the new lecture hasn’t qualified. The older talk may have.…