I noticed my consumption has decased quite a bit. I would visit regularly to watch content from few channels. I would probably still visit every so often to watch the new videos. But the experience has become more deliberate and conscious. I go to YouTube because I want to go and watch something specific. Mindlessly browsing and watching additional content is harder.
This is good progress from Google to get off their platform :)
I actually like the recommendations. I usually only get content that’s relevant to my interests, and I’m always finding new channels that are interesting and worth my sub.
Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing differently from everybody else, because I never see much of the spammy/irrelevant content everyone else seems to be getting. Or maybe I’m just easy to please.
Same. I usually find something in the first 4 results that are relevant and interesting. Only thing I wish it did more is expand a bit. It heavily favors stuff related to what you’ve watched very recently. There’s some channels I love but completely forget about because I haven’t played them in a little where.
My recommendations are broken. It just repeates what I’d been watching and never nothing new. I don’t know why my algorithm is broken. I have gotten to the point of watching more movies and tv shows at this point.
I love long form comedy content but it does nothing but recommend 30 second clip content. It’s absurd. I just can’t like and interact with the videos I actually like enough.
I do a search for a specific comedian with the words “full set” in the search terms. I do the search outside of the YT app (e.g., using DDG) and watch it either on Firefox with UBO or I search for it in Newpipe. And then subscribe in Newpipe ( and in the regular YT app so they get a little engagement; I also go in and randomly like a few of their videos).
I don’t know what kind of comedy you’re into but here’s a full Matteo Lane set (I think he’s hilarious) - enjoy:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/K2rxborNVsc
https://piped.video/K2rxborNVsc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Then tell it you don’t like those channels and thumbs down the short stuff you don’t want, and thumbs up the long stuff you do.
Remove the “shorts” section entirely (I know you can with vanced, forget about vanilla) if those are the 30 sec videos you mean. I hate them and ignore them entirely. Simple.
It’s really not hard to get YouTube to be a pretty damn good recommendation engine. You just have to give it some constraints.
Me: I interact negatively and it doesn’t work
You: then just interact negatively.
There’s a new tab. That might fix your issue
Do you actually tell it what you do and don’t like? If it keeps recommending a channel you don’t like, click the “no more from this channel,” or “don’t recommend things like this” or whatever those options are.
If you do that, as well as thumbs up/down, you get good recommendations. Really not very hard.
I have the same experience and I’m wondering if it’s because I’m not American?
I also have a good experience with it and am American. But I also pay for premium for my family and I wonder if it’s not pushing contentious shit to maximize watch time because they already have my money?
I’m American. I use adblockers extensively and do not pay for premium. I’ve always enjoyed my recommendations and they have always been very relevant to my interests. I don’t get spammy content.
Same. I like the recommended stuff, it actually matches my background noise preferences and has changed over time too and landed some shots in the dark.
It has one drawback: Repetition. I watch a dumb and savage 10s clip from an old cartoon, I get 20 clips recommended. And if one was particularly popular, it recommends that one 20 times. Thing is, it switches gears fast, specially if I tell it I’m not interested. It’s the only algorithm that just seems to GET the concept of “give me DIFFERENT trash”.
I’m in the same boat. The recommendations don’t bother me too much, except when it recommends me videos I’ve seen in the recent or distant past. Also, when I watch one video from someone, then come to find out they’re part of some right wing culture and end up getting recommended the right wing rabbit hole videos for a few weeks.
I have the opposite experience. YouTube is always pushing dumbass recommendations. I only go to YouTube when someone links to a video I’m interested in, say some neat demonstration of a old analog synthesizer, and there’ll be a couple of slightly interesting suggestions on synths, I’ll click on that and then the recommendations are like “Woah!!! Check out what happens when I stick a synth cable into my butt!!!” And it’s not because I ever watch videos like that, in fact that shit is what makes me close the YouTube window and never go back until some other website links me directly to an actually good video again.
I only go to YouTube when someone links to a video I’m interested in
I wonder if this is part of the discrepancy, as I use YouTube pretty much all day long. I work from home and pretty much always put some YouTube videos on my TV while I’m working. Maybe YT just has a more robust dataset for my account to filter recommendations better.
“Woah!!! Check out what happens when I stick a synth cable into my butt!!!” And it’s not because I ever watch videos like that
You don’t gotta hide it. We’re all friends here. ;)
Same for me. Sure there’s crap in there sometimes and because I like some Atheist/Philosophy vontent YT kinda likes to shove Prager U and other religious channels down my throat from time to time. But hesides that, I’m usually quite happpy with my recommendations
Hahaha going to a random invidious recommendations page also only shows tech stuff. Pretty nieche though
I never went to the homepage unless I accidentally landed there because of autofill. I normally just go straight to subscriptions. There are still recommendations under videos, so I check that out every so often, mostly because my secondary monitor is portrait and I can see them under the video
Same, the subscription page is essentially my homepage. It has exactly the content I want on it, and I can always use the sidebar recommendations if I feel like browsing for something new after my queue is complete.
This is my standard. Subscriptions or bust.
There was a time, maybe 5+ years ago, when I’d occasionally go to YouTube’s homepage, right-click every video in the feed, and select “don’t recommend channel.” After doing that off and on for a year or so, I suddenly found myself with an empty homepage. Absolutely no videos would load, just a blank white screen with a YouTube search bar at the top. It was glorious.
That is, until Google updated YouTube and it removed all my preferences. Now I have unlimited video recommendations on my homepage and I can’t seem to make them all go away anymore. #BringBackOldYouTube
Why would I have my watch history turned off? I assumed that Google knows what I watched whether or not I tell them to keep that info available for me.
Before youtube disabled recommendation for people with watch history turned off, having watch history turned off made it so your recommendations were only based on channels you are subscribed to and possibly videos you’ve liked, commented on, …
There are some categories where I only ever search for the category, then watch a video, but never subscribe to any channel. Those videos were never recommended to me. Meanwhile on my girlfriends pc with watch history turned on, as soon as I watch a single video from a channel she’s not subscribed to similar videos appear all over the front page.
watch history is kinda important to me because sometimes I want to continue watching or rewatch a video at a later time or on my pc instead of my phone and then watch history is the only way to easily find that video
deleted by creator
How am I supposed to know I want to rewatch it beforehand ?
deleted by creator
90% of my recommendations are videos I have already watched.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about YouTube.
I have an addon that makes watched videos gray and adds a WATCHED tag to them. Makes it more satisfying to browse, knowing you won’t get tricked into wasting time rewatching something. Now you can waste time watching NEW useless stuff.
Youtube recommendations used to be an amazing way to find new music. Sometimes you even had a little community of people in the comments going from video to video.
Another casualty of enshittification, I guess.
I’ve only been getting that recently.
It’s like I just watched 50 minutes of this hour video, took it out of my Watch Later and enjoyed it enough to actually give it a Like, why the hell would you recommend it to me again.
No. Mine decreased when ad frequency increased.
As someone who routinely watches YT through Invidious and NewPipe, I haven’t changed my habits.
Yeah, I catch myself sometimes to switch to NewPipe. But sometimes the videos just don’t play. And sometimes it works fine
Yes, I’ve experienced that too. Newpipe generally functions smoothly on my phone, working around 98% of the time. However, when I opt for invidious, the videos sometimes doesn’t play.
Recently, I’ve been leaning towards using Freetube more. I’ve configured it to include invidious in the settings. It appears that it seamlessly switches between different invidious instances, ensuring an better user experience than just using a normal invidious instance.
Major bugs usually get fixed pretty quickly- I always check the GitHub to make sure I have the latest version when I have issues. And Invidious can work as an alternative most of the time, but some instances work better than others
Was unusable for some weeks once, now fixed again and just works. Sometimes crashes but videos always play
NewPipe user here, and same thing. It’s amazing.
Nah recommendations are shit anyway. I just watch my subscriptions
I have history turned on and it generally recommends stuff I’m interested in. My only complaint is that it doesn’t update often enough and likes to recommend videos I’ve seen already.
Same, I get the feeling very few people actively interact with the “not interested”/“don’t recommend” stuff, so they end up getting all kinds of weird recommendations. Or they also use Youtube Music. For some reason Youtube seriously struggles to understand that most people don’t consume video the same way they consume music, and conflates the two constantly.
I’m watching less because I’m not getting any new or interesting recommendations. I just keep seeing the same stuff over and over again. I hate algorithms. I hate that something is deciding what I should watch while not showing me 99.999% of the other things on the platform.
Oh, and the ads are absolutely out of control. I have to decide if the content is really worth sitting through all the infuriatingly jarring ad placements. Most times, it’s not.
If you watch on Android get the reVanced app. No ads and skipping features. It’ll skip sponsors, intros, and end credits plus a shit ton more. It’s the stock YouTube UI with really granular control over features
I watch almost exclusively on my AppleTV. I’ve given YT premium a lot of consideration but it’s just a bit too much and I assume the price will continue to increase.
Yes, the ads is a whole another level. Using it without ad-block is not pleasant one bit
I use subscriptions only for a long time and occasionally throw off dead weight there. No need for such a feature to be honest. I get most new interesting channel either by recommendations from youtubers i subscribed to or from random links like on lemmy. Which happens rarely, like, I subscribe to 5 new channels max per year, and remove about the same number each year.
Honestly, my YouTube consumption went down when Hipyo refused to endorse trans rights and then the Linus stuff came out shortly after. The one two punch kind of made me start seeing nearly all YouTube personalities as unhealthily egotistical and probably kinda scummy. There are some creators I like, but at this point I just really don’t care what most of these people think anymore.
I’ll always tune in for Philosophytube or Contrapoints, though. I’m a sucker for the format when it’s done well. And I do enjoy Matt Colville and that D&D animated guy.
I always keep watch history turned on, because the recommendation system has always sucked if you kept it turned off. It’s more honest to the user now that they give up instead of intentionally sucking – “we can’t give recommendations if we don’t know what you tend to watch”. That basically makes sense to me and I accept the tradeoff this poses.
I know a lot of people think Youtube recommendations always suck and are therefore not even worth trying, but I beg to disagree. You can cultivate good recommendations, even if your interests have no overlap with the default front-page. It comes down to two basic ingredients:
- Use the “Not Interested” button on bad recommendations
- Click on the like/dislike buttons after watching videos
By default Youtube is going to try feeding you lowest common denominator junk. This is because it starts out knowing very little about you besides broad demographics. The more feedback you give it the less it falls back on this crutch until eventually you get solid recommendations. Every single bad recommendation is a hidden opportunity to tell Youtube to get that garbage out of your face.
And, yeah… in my experience this really works. If you click the buttons and make it a habit, you can get some really great stuff! As encouragement, I’ll share a selection from my home feed full of fresh videos relevant to my tastes. Even the topic bar is on point:
I’ll probably watch all 3 of these videos at some point, which I think indicates a pretty successful outcome. In fact, over the years, I’ve found hundreds of channels almost exclusively using the recommendation system. Even if you primarily stick to your subscription box, improving your recommendations can help you with building that out little by little.
(Note: I am deliberately avoiding the question of whether or not one should want an algorithm to intimately understand their interests because that’s a hard conversation and my soul has already long since been sold)
Recommendations have gotten better recently. I’ve been recommended more specific stuff and more stuff that has less than a thousand views, which is really small for YouTube. I feel like the algorithm now has more bias towards recency than trendiness. I don’t mind being a guinea pig for new videos, much better than being inundated with successful clickbait and other crap.
Idk, I watch a lot, a variety too. I thumbs content, mark not interested. And my recommendations are an absurd over representation of the last 3 or so topics I’ve recently viewed mixed with a small selection of my subscriptions it’s decided I want to watch.
Yeah that happens to me too, but I’m often happy with that because it fits well with my personal tendency to hyperfixate on new topics for a while.
What I like to do is ride out a trend until I lose interest and then start Not Interesteding them. It doesn’t take long for them to fall out of my feed and from that point on only surface every once in a while if a particularly strong video is currently making the rounds.
Don’t hesitate to throw out negative feedback even for stuff you feel lukewarm about. Youtube can take the hint without going overboard and forgetting that interest too completely.
Ok, thanks for the tip.
I’ve primarily only watched my subscriptions for a few years now.
I’ve purposefully avoided the recommended videos for a long time now. They only exist to increase the amount of time you spend watching ads.
After switching to Newpipe, yes a bit
Does Newpipe have any recommendations? I haven’t noticed any setting for this (and I haven’t missed it, just curious).
Since I’ve been using Newpipe I’ve watched more videos of what I was specifically searching for and little to no mindless viewing. It’s allowing me to research certain topics more easily without the ads and distractions.
There isnt any recommendations and I quite like it that way, keeps me from spending too much time there.
Honest question:
what about newpipe is secured against google cracking down on ad evasion through
utilizing their api(just read their FAQ, they don’t use the api. Though still, I imagine google has other options to crack down on this type of use)? I imagine google is one bad day from breaking things like newpipe because people are circumventing their ads?I think that they dont use the Api is the reason why it works. Maybe they use RSS too, Freetube does that as Fallback.
If Google implements WEI we are fucked. And they could somehow bind an ad server to the content, only it the server is used, content is loaded
