Persine

Release v0.1.4. (Installation)

Persine is an automated tool to study and reverse-engineer algorithmic recommendation systems, like YouTube videos and Amazon products. It has a simple interface and encourages reproducible results.


Persine is dead simple to use!

from persine import PersonaEngine

engine = PersonaEngine()

with engine.persona() as persona:
   persona.run_batch([
      "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZw23sWlyG0",
      "youtube:next_up#3",
      "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZw23sWlyG0"
   ])
   persona.history.to_csv("history.csv")
   persona.recommendations.to_csv("recs.csv")

In this example, we visit a YouTube video, click the “next up” video three times, and then revisit the original video. We then save the results for later analysis.

See Persine in action on Google Colab.