Why Youtube's recommendations are now days are weird and possible solutions to the issues

ImpossibleRubiksCube , 10 months ago

As a reminder, they also cranked up premium by like three bucks a month recently…

PM_ME_YOUR_ZOD_RUNES , 10 months ago

I feel like the algorithm for recommendations hasn’t changed much in years. It’s decent, better than a lot of other recommendation algorithms. The not interested options have always done jack shit. I can’t count how many times I’ve not interested a video and told it I had already watched it. Only for it to consistently recommend me other videos I’ve already watched. You’d think after the 100th time selecting I wasn’t interested in videos I’ve already watched, that it would get the clue.

HeavyRaptor , 10 months ago

Yeah, not interested doesn’t do much but don’t recommend channel is flawless for me

ElBarto , 10 months ago

I like to listen to creepypasta stories when I’m going to sleep, youtube has been insisting on showing me 2 hour long videos about the Decline of ancient cities… how we get from dumb horror stories to the fall of some empire from 500ad is beyond me.

Teknikal , 10 months ago

I noticed earlier the same video I just “not interested” actually appeared twice on the next refresh not only did they ignore my effort but they doubled down.

ImpossibleRubiksCube , 10 months ago

“We tell you what’s good, and play it till you like it!”

_Sprite , 10 months ago

I stopped using Youtube since I started getting blasted with autoplaying shorts related to nothing I actually watch and Temu & TikTok ads. Invidious and Newpipe fixed all of that for me

Kbobabob , 10 months ago

WTF is with that word salad title? AI generation?

maniel , 10 months ago

They just didn’t know how to write nowadays, happens when you’re not maybe English speaker or have poor vocabulary because you don’t read enough

ImpossibleRubiksCube , 10 months ago

Bone. Apple. Tea.

yata , 10 months ago

Also a superflous “are”.

YoBuckStopsHere , 10 months ago

I switched to watching YT in an incognito window.

twistedtxb , 10 months ago

I’m back to subbing to my favorite creators because the algorithm has been so fucking random for the past weeks. Nothing even makes sense.

I don’t know if that was their intention or not, but the YT homepage is now worthless to me

sik0fewl , 10 months ago

Yeah, I've been doing this for a couple years, since recommendations became useless. At least 50% of recommendations are things I've already seen (and I do have history turned on). I also use SmartTubeNext, which let's me filter out shorts.

twistedtxb , 10 months ago

SmartTube is so much better than the official app. Same for Revanced

afunkysongaday , 10 months ago

and NewPipe and FreeTube.

GuyDudeman , 10 months ago

I turned off my Youtube history, and now my YouTube home page is just a message asking me to turn it back on. It’s weird.

theactuallynx , 10 months ago

I found a browser addon that just redirects the home page to my subscription page. There was nothing of note on the home page before and there sure as hell isn’t now

GuyDudeman , 10 months ago

Do you remember what the addon was called?

*edit: Nevermind - found it! addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/youtube-sub-redirect/?…

MeanEYE , 10 months ago

Same, but am standing strong on my decision. If they want to chase me away, I’ll find a different place.

GuyDudeman , 10 months ago

There are alternatives these days. Which is cool.

MeanEYE , 10 months ago

Even if there were none, I wouldn’t budge. Call me stubborn, but I was fine when they moved from wanting a finger to wanting whole hand. But now they want an arm and a leg, preferably part of your soul. Yeah, I can live without it. Most of the content has been deteriorating in quality anyway thanks to their algorithm changes. Number of creators who make content which is not formulaic and is actually useful is shrinking constantly or migrating to other services.

CmdrShepard , 10 months ago

They recently announced they’d be doing this for people with history turned off.

mesamunefire , 10 months ago

It’s so much better… subscribing I much better than their algorithm.

CmdrShepard , 10 months ago

I subscribe to most channels I enjoy but still appreciate the recommendations as I find a lot of new videos/channels of interest without having to wade through a bunch of low quality/uninteresting content. It’s felt pretty stale lately but at least I’m not getting a bunch of right wing propaganda these days.