My "better way to watch YouTube" is to use the recommendations and not remove them. As long as you flag things you really don't want with "not interested" and follow things you're interested in,...
My "better way to watch YouTube" is to use the recommendations and not remove them. As long as you flag things you really don't want with "not interested" and follow things you're interested in, you'll get more of those topics consistently.
My feed ends up mostly being digital music tutorials, JPop and vocaloid music, stuff on a niche electronics and 3D printing topic I've been researching lately, and other interesting stuff that you can't magically know every possible channel to follow in order to get it.
I have my watch and search history turned off. My liked videos and subscribed accounts are all the algorithm gets to find me content I'd like. It's worked pretty well for me. Edit: It's what the...
I have my watch and search history turned off. My liked videos and subscribed accounts are all the algorithm gets to find me content I'd like.
It's worked pretty well for me.
Edit: It's what the post talks about 😅 I should've read it thoroughly first.
Agreed. My YouTube recommendations are incredible after close curation. The one thing I would also recommend is avoid watching political videos on the main account. Those are probably too tricky...
Agreed. My YouTube recommendations are incredible after close curation.
The one thing I would also recommend is avoid watching political videos on the main account. Those are probably too tricky to balance correctly and tend to overwhelm every other type of video…
Personally YouTube recommendations work well for me and have led me to discover many channels I wouldn’t normally have discovered. The only caveat is that you have to be careful about your watch...
Personally YouTube recommendations work well for me and have led me to discover many channels I wouldn’t normally have discovered. The only caveat is that you have to be careful about your watch history or it’ll give you 10 videos on vacuums after you look at one video guide about a particular vacuum model.
It's a very delicate balancing game with the YT algorithm. It seems to want to stereotype me as a user model that I am not. It clearly has some assumptions of me that made me have to aggressively...
It's a very delicate balancing game with the YT algorithm. It seems to want to stereotype me as a user model that I am not. It clearly has some assumptions of me that made me have to aggressively cull the far right propaganda from my feed a few years ago. I was successful in that, but I have to be careful because if I watch a video thats somewhere in that middle ground the floodgates open again. I am terrified to click on a history video relating to religion because if I do, then YT wants to drown me in all the religious debate discourse that I really don't care about.
I've found a combination of blocking channels and disliking videos tends to work for cleaning these things out. It's a never ending battle but it has made it way better for me. Sometimes I end up on then global feed through a private browsing window and it looks like a completely different platform
That was my exact problem with it: I'd discover some topic, fill my watch history with that thing, then a month later when I'd lost interest my feed was full of that one topic and I'd have to...
That was my exact problem with it: I'd discover some topic, fill my watch history with that thing, then a month later when I'd lost interest my feed was full of that one topic and I'd have to clear my history out to find something new. It just rabbit holes you too much.
These days I have history off, I watch something in my sub feed and discover things in the recommendations below that first video. It's not perfect but it works.
I do the opposite of this and my experience has always been pretty great, to the point that I wonder what everyone else is doing wrong. My "process": Have a YouTube account since '06 (avoids...
I do the opposite of this and my experience has always been pretty great, to the point that I wonder what everyone else is doing wrong.
My "process":
Have a YouTube account since '06 (avoids spurious age checks)
Leave history on to help build a recommendation profile and make finding old videos easier
Like/add to Favorites playlist often (but only stuff I both actually like and want to see more of)
For stuff I definitely want to see, subscribe to the channel with the "notify for all" setting
On the rare occasion I get a bad recommendation, use the "not interested -> I don't like this" feedback, or block the channel for extreme offenders
If I ever watch a video I don't want "infecting" my algo, make sure to do it in incognito or manually remove it from my watch history
My homepage ends up being a good mix of content I'm likely to enjoy, with short-term interests occasionally taking over maybe half the slots before burning out on their own. It's even good about recognizing context -- for ex, my iPhone app pushes short-form videos, while my TV leans more toward 10-20+ minute content.
Ofc, the biggest QoL improvement is to either pay for YouTube Premium Lite or use an adblocker or modded client like YTLitePlus (iOS) or SmartTube (TV).
I do not have a youtube account and I semi-regularly remove YTs cookies, so that the data the algorithm gathered is reset. I subscribe to specific channels with an RSS-reader that supports...
I do not have a youtube account and I semi-regularly remove YTs cookies, so that the data the algorithm gathered is reset.
I subscribe to specific channels with an RSS-reader that supports youtube, so I get a notification when something new is released.
When I want to pause a video and watch it later, I add the timestamp to the URL with this add-on and simply bookmark it in a default folder.
Other than that I use uBlock Origin and sponsorblock .
All in all this works fine for me. The more control I have about how I use YT the better.
The only exception are age-restricted videos, for these I would need an account. But I rarely encounter restricted videos and even if I had an account, I'd never send a picture of my passport to Google to verify my age, so that's just not available to me.
My counter point to many of these "well i did this and it worked" things is that in my case, youtube often just gives the fuck up. I do something similar to what several people are posting, and...
My counter point to many of these "well i did this and it worked" things is that in my case, youtube often just gives the fuck up.
I do something similar to what several people are posting, and can scroll about half a page until youtube just says "Uhh yeah maybe try something new" and shoves garbage at me.
In general i've found the best way to use youtube is to subscribe to channels you like with an RSS feed, so you actually get notified easily of their content and can quickly and easily decide if its something you want to watch.
For finding new content, meh? Rarely the recommendations will hit me with something that matters, but yes even with careful pruning there's just simply the fact that youtube does not promote content I like. It does exist, i've often found it myself through other means, but the way these algorithms work means that if you're not enjoying the same thing as other people, then you're not going get the same content.
The amount of...loud obnoxious drivel in my eyes (ESPECIALLY livestreams), that other people seem to enjoy is just overwhelming.
Got a bit of a surprise to see my own channel in the subscription picture. Overall I still feel like the algorithm gives me enough interesting new videos for me to keep it running. Id love to find...
Got a bit of a surprise to see my own channel in the subscription picture.
Overall I still feel like the algorithm gives me enough interesting new videos for me to keep it running. Id love to find something that blocks youtube shorts after a minute of aimless scrolling.
I can't help you with that specific feature, but I've been using Hide YouTube-Shorts and it's working great for hiding pretty much every Short on the site. It's the only addon/extension I've found...
Id love to find something that blocks youtube shorts after a minute of aimless scrolling.
I can't help you with that specific feature, but I've been using Hide YouTube-Shorts and it's working great for hiding pretty much every Short on the site. It's the only addon/extension I've found that actually removes shorts from the Notification dropdown and Search results, which is where I find them the absolute most annoying.
I always (haltingly, with large caveats) recommend FreeTube, a standalone YouTube client app that strips out everything terrible about YouTube. When it works, it’s exactly what I’m looking for....
I always (haltingly, with large caveats) recommend FreeTube, a standalone YouTube client app that strips out everything terrible about YouTube. When it works, it’s exactly what I’m looking for. But it’s locked in this cat-and-mouse game where YouTube keeps deliberately fucking with little implementation details to break third-party app compatibility. So I’ll be using it happily for months, then it will suddenly start erroring constantly until the devs can push out a release that fixes it. And sometimes that can take a while… we are currently in one of these periods, so if you download the app today it will not work. No idea when the fix will come.
Besides that the app is rather clunky. The Mac binaries are unsigned so you can’t even run them without approving them in System Settings. Also, videos that require login to view are unwatchable because there’s no way to log in. FreeTube was designed to fallback to Invidious in those situations, but since Invidious is dead now that doesn’t work. But on the plus side, there are no ads, including live reads thanks to SponsorBlock. And you can pretty thoroughly customize what you want to appear in the UI, which is nice.
I'll try not to totally rehash what other people are saying. But I actually really like YouTube. I use adblock and Sponsorblock, and I consistently give feed back through liking, adding to...
I'll try not to totally rehash what other people are saying. But I actually really like YouTube. I use adblock and Sponsorblock, and I consistently give feed back through liking, adding to favorites/watch later, and clicking "Do not recommend this channel again". I have hundreds of subscriptions at this point. YouTube feels like one of the few platforms that has not completely changed and lost its charm, despite the real issues and controversies that have happened over the years.
In the past, when I tried using the Subscriptions page as a sort of homebase, (out of curiosity), it felt quite boring and flat. There are a lot of channels I subscribed to because they put out one or two videos I really liked. But then they've pumped out a bunch of uninteresting vlog or exhaustive list-style videos since then. If I stick to YouTube's recommendations, I'm not even aware of that. The exhaustive videos are not shown to me, because they're not popular in general.
As others have said, it might be a function of how I've already used YouTube. My account is from like 2006, and I've used it actively since then. So the recommendation algorithm really seems to get me. Maybe the advice in the article only applies to new or relatively new (<5 years old?) accounts?
For reference, YouTube rolled out auto-delete watch history every 36 months. Unless you manually went in and changed that, it's not operating on data from 2006
My account is from like 2006, and I've used it actively since then. So the recommendation algorithm really seems to get me.
For reference, YouTube rolled out auto-delete watch history every 36 months. Unless you manually went in and changed that, it's not operating on data from 2006
Personally I effectively gave up on YT what a decade ago by now? I prefer not to exert constant effort simply to not get bombard with designed to be addictive but otherwise low quality content and...
Personally I effectively gave up on YT what a decade ago by now?
I prefer not to exert constant effort simply to not get bombard with designed to be addictive but otherwise low quality content and also ads. All determined by entity with orders more magnitude of resources dedicated to get me to watch it.
If something links to interesting video I watch it, otherwise what YT?
For the few video media I watch now I have taken the third option.
Ditto. I've been using Hide YouTube-Shorts and it's working great for hiding pretty much every Short on the site. It's the only addon/extension I've found that actually removes shorts from the...
Ditto. I've been using Hide YouTube-Shorts and it's working great for hiding pretty much every Short on the site. It's the only addon/extension I've found that actually removes shorts from the Notification dropdown and Search results too, which is where I find them the absolute most annoying.
My "better way to watch YouTube" is to use the recommendations and not remove them. As long as you flag things you really don't want with "not interested" and follow things you're interested in, you'll get more of those topics consistently.
My feed ends up mostly being digital music tutorials, JPop and vocaloid music, stuff on a niche electronics and 3D printing topic I've been researching lately, and other interesting stuff that you can't magically know every possible channel to follow in order to get it.
I have my watch and search history turned off. My liked videos and subscribed accounts are all the algorithm gets to find me content I'd like.
It's worked pretty well for me.
Edit: It's what the post talks about 😅 I should've read it thoroughly first.
Agreed. My YouTube recommendations are incredible after close curation.
The one thing I would also recommend is avoid watching political videos on the main account. Those are probably too tricky to balance correctly and tend to overwhelm every other type of video…
Personally YouTube recommendations work well for me and have led me to discover many channels I wouldn’t normally have discovered. The only caveat is that you have to be careful about your watch history or it’ll give you 10 videos on vacuums after you look at one video guide about a particular vacuum model.
It's a very delicate balancing game with the YT algorithm. It seems to want to stereotype me as a user model that I am not. It clearly has some assumptions of me that made me have to aggressively cull the far right propaganda from my feed a few years ago. I was successful in that, but I have to be careful because if I watch a video thats somewhere in that middle ground the floodgates open again. I am terrified to click on a history video relating to religion because if I do, then YT wants to drown me in all the religious debate discourse that I really don't care about.
I've found a combination of blocking channels and disliking videos tends to work for cleaning these things out. It's a never ending battle but it has made it way better for me. Sometimes I end up on then global feed through a private browsing window and it looks like a completely different platform
That was my exact problem with it: I'd discover some topic, fill my watch history with that thing, then a month later when I'd lost interest my feed was full of that one topic and I'd have to clear my history out to find something new. It just rabbit holes you too much.
These days I have history off, I watch something in my sub feed and discover things in the recommendations below that first video. It's not perfect but it works.
I do the opposite of this and my experience has always been pretty great, to the point that I wonder what everyone else is doing wrong.
My "process":
My homepage ends up being a good mix of content I'm likely to enjoy, with short-term interests occasionally taking over maybe half the slots before burning out on their own. It's even good about recognizing context -- for ex, my iPhone app pushes short-form videos, while my TV leans more toward 10-20+ minute content.
Ofc, the biggest QoL improvement is to either pay for YouTube Premium Lite or use an adblocker or modded client like YTLitePlus (iOS) or SmartTube (TV).
I do not have a youtube account and I semi-regularly remove YTs cookies, so that the data the algorithm gathered is reset.
I subscribe to specific channels with an RSS-reader that supports youtube, so I get a notification when something new is released.
When I want to pause a video and watch it later, I add the timestamp to the URL with this add-on and simply bookmark it in a default folder.
Other than that I use uBlock Origin and sponsorblock .
All in all this works fine for me. The more control I have about how I use YT the better.
The only exception are age-restricted videos, for these I would need an account. But I rarely encounter restricted videos and even if I had an account, I'd never send a picture of my passport to Google to verify my age, so that's just not available to me.
e: I recently added an add-on that removes the YT-suggestions panel and I really like it. Away with the drama influencers, hello peace of mind. 🙂
My counter point to many of these "well i did this and it worked" things is that in my case, youtube often just gives the fuck up.
I do something similar to what several people are posting, and can scroll about half a page until youtube just says "Uhh yeah maybe try something new" and shoves garbage at me.
In general i've found the best way to use youtube is to subscribe to channels you like with an RSS feed, so you actually get notified easily of their content and can quickly and easily decide if its something you want to watch.
For finding new content, meh? Rarely the recommendations will hit me with something that matters, but yes even with careful pruning there's just simply the fact that youtube does not promote content I like. It does exist, i've often found it myself through other means, but the way these algorithms work means that if you're not enjoying the same thing as other people, then you're not going get the same content.
The amount of...loud obnoxious drivel in my eyes (ESPECIALLY livestreams), that other people seem to enjoy is just overwhelming.
Got a bit of a surprise to see my own channel in the subscription picture.
Overall I still feel like the algorithm gives me enough interesting new videos for me to keep it running. Id love to find something that blocks youtube shorts after a minute of aimless scrolling.
I can't help you with that specific feature, but I've been using Hide YouTube-Shorts and it's working great for hiding pretty much every Short on the site. It's the only addon/extension I've found that actually removes shorts from the Notification dropdown and Search results, which is where I find them the absolute most annoying.
I always (haltingly, with large caveats) recommend FreeTube, a standalone YouTube client app that strips out everything terrible about YouTube. When it works, it’s exactly what I’m looking for. But it’s locked in this cat-and-mouse game where YouTube keeps deliberately fucking with little implementation details to break third-party app compatibility. So I’ll be using it happily for months, then it will suddenly start erroring constantly until the devs can push out a release that fixes it. And sometimes that can take a while… we are currently in one of these periods, so if you download the app today it will not work. No idea when the fix will come.
Besides that the app is rather clunky. The Mac binaries are unsigned so you can’t even run them without approving them in System Settings. Also, videos that require login to view are unwatchable because there’s no way to log in. FreeTube was designed to fallback to Invidious in those situations, but since Invidious is dead now that doesn’t work. But on the plus side, there are no ads, including live reads thanks to SponsorBlock. And you can pretty thoroughly customize what you want to appear in the UI, which is nice.
I'll try not to totally rehash what other people are saying. But I actually really like YouTube. I use adblock and Sponsorblock, and I consistently give feed back through liking, adding to favorites/watch later, and clicking "Do not recommend this channel again". I have hundreds of subscriptions at this point. YouTube feels like one of the few platforms that has not completely changed and lost its charm, despite the real issues and controversies that have happened over the years.
In the past, when I tried using the Subscriptions page as a sort of homebase, (out of curiosity), it felt quite boring and flat. There are a lot of channels I subscribed to because they put out one or two videos I really liked. But then they've pumped out a bunch of uninteresting vlog or exhaustive list-style videos since then. If I stick to YouTube's recommendations, I'm not even aware of that. The exhaustive videos are not shown to me, because they're not popular in general.
As others have said, it might be a function of how I've already used YouTube. My account is from like 2006, and I've used it actively since then. So the recommendation algorithm really seems to get me. Maybe the advice in the article only applies to new or relatively new (<5 years old?) accounts?
For reference, YouTube rolled out auto-delete watch history every 36 months. Unless you manually went in and changed that, it's not operating on data from 2006
That's good to know. Although I kind of doubt that Watch History is the only factor going into your recommendations. Wouldn't there be other data too?
Personally I effectively gave up on YT what a decade ago by now?
I prefer not to exert constant effort simply to not get bombard with designed to be addictive but otherwise low quality content and also ads. All determined by entity with orders more magnitude of resources dedicated to get me to watch it.
If something links to interesting video I watch it, otherwise what YT?
For the few video media I watch now I have taken the third option.
I recommend using an extension to block shorts.
Ditto. I've been using Hide YouTube-Shorts and it's working great for hiding pretty much every Short on the site. It's the only addon/extension I've found that actually removes shorts from the Notification dropdown and Search results too, which is where I find them the absolute most annoying.