#24: Video Recommendations at Facebook with Amey Dharwadker

In episode 24 of Recsperts, I sit down with Amey Dharwadker, Machine Learning Engineering Manager at Facebook, to dive into the complexities of large-scale video recommendations. Amey, who leads the Video Recommendations Quality Ranking team at Facebook, sheds light on the intricate challenges of delivering personalized video feeds at scale. Our conversation covers content understanding, user interaction data, real-time signals, exploration, and evaluation techniques.We kick off the episode by reflecting on the inaugural VideoRecSys workshop at RecSys 2023, setting the stage for a deeper discussion on Facebook’s approach to video recommendations. Amey walks us through the critical challenges they face, such as gathering reliable user feedback signals to avoid pitfalls like watchbait. With a vast and ever-growing corpus of billions of videos—millions of which are added each month—the cold start problem looms large. We explore how content understanding, user feedback aggregation, and exploration techniques help address this issue. Amey explains how engagement metrics like watch time, comments, and reactions are used to rank content, ensuring users receive meaningful and diverse video feeds.A key highlight of the conversation is the importance of real-time personalization in fast-paced environments, such as short-form video platforms, where user preferences change quickly. Amey also emphasizes the value of cross-domain data in enriching user profiles and improving recommendations.Towards the end, Amey shares his insights on leadership in machine learning teams, pointing out the characteristics of a great ML team.Enjoy this enriching episode of RECSPERTS - Recommender Systems Experts.Don't forget to follow the podcast and please leave a review(00:00) - Introduction (02:32) - About Amey Dharwadker (08:39) - Video Recommendation Use Cases on Facebook (16:18) - Recommendation Teams and Collaboration (25:04) - Challenges of Video Recommendations (31:07) - Video Content Understanding and Metadata (33:18) - Multi-Stage RecSys and Models (42:42) - Goals and Objectives (49:04) - User Behavior Signals (59:38) - Evaluation (01:06:33) - Cross-Domain User Representation (01:08:49) - Leadership and What Makes a Great Recommendation Team (01:13:01) - Closing Remarks Links from the Episode:Amey Dharwadker on LinkedInAmey's WebsiteRecSys Challenge 2021VideoRecSys Workshop 2023VideoRecSys + LargeRecSys 2024Papers:Mahajan et al. (2023): CAViaR: Context Aware Video RecommendationsMahajan et al. (2023): PIE: Personalized Interest Exploration for Large-Scale Recommender SystemsRaul et al. (2023): CAM2: Conformity-Aware Multi-Task Ranking Model for Large-Scale Recommender SystemsZhai et al. (2024): Actions Speak Louder than Words: Trillion-Parameter Sequential Transducers for Generative RecommendationsSaket et al. (2023): Formulating Video Watch Success Signals for Recommendations on Short Video PlatformsWang et al. (2022): Surrogate for Long-Term User Experience in Recommender SystemsSu et al. (2024): Long-Term Value of Exploration: Measurements, Findings and AlgorithmsGeneral Links:Follow me on LinkedInFollow me on XSend me your comments, questions and suggestions to marcel.kurovski@gmail.comRecsperts Website

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Recommender Systems are the most challenging, powerful and ubiquitous area of machine learning and artificial intelligence. This podcast hosts the experts in recommender systems research and application. From understanding what users really want to driving large-scale content discovery - from delivering personalized online experiences to catering to multi-stakeholder goals. Guests from industry and academia share how they tackle these and many more challenges. With Recsperts coming from universities all around the globe or from various industries like streaming, ecommerce, news, or social media, this podcast provides depth and insights. We go far beyond your 101 on RecSys and the shallowness of another matrix factorization based rating prediction blogpost! The motto is: be relevant or become irrelevant! Expect a brand-new interview each month and follow Recsperts on your favorite podcast player.