Normally, I use YouTube very little (watch a couple videos a month). However, I’ve been in bed with an injury for some time now, which has led me to watch quite a bit of YouTube. The thing is, I subscribe to a small handfull of channels that I enjoy content from, but after a relatively short time I had watched pretty much all the new content from those channels.
Now, I would expect that the YouTube algorithm, which is supposedly designed by competent people to get me to stick around, would be able to suggest some decent content to me based on my subscriptions. However, the past week, I’ve opened YouTube only to find the same old videos being suggested over and over. Even worse: Whenever there’s something interesting-looking from a channel I don’t recognise, it always turns out to be some shitty AI voice over some generic animations or footage.
I know for a fact that thousands of hours of content are created on YouTube daily, but it genuinely feels like there are maybe five creators out there that are making anything worth watching. It’s either that, or the YouTube algorithm is just complete crap at suggesting creators that are in any way similar to what I’m already subscribing to.
What’s going on here? Why does it seem like there’s no real content out there?
As a “funny” side note: What’s with the “aggressively American” AI narrator-voice? I’ve heard it before, but thought it was some dude until I realised it’s the same voice in a bunch of unrelated videos. It reminds me of the Discovery-channel “action-narrator”-voice from back in the day, but now it’s showing up in all kinds of crap videos.
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This may be a large part of my problem. I’ve kind of just noted that theres so many people spending so many hours watching youtube, that there must be an abundance of good content. Then again, a decent amount of people are probably content with having some slop on in the background, and a major user-base probably consists of kids watching people scream into the camera. With that in mind, it may not be that unlikely that even with millions of hours of content, there may only be a few thousand actually worth watching if you find it…
There are some extensions that make a big difference.
“Blocktube” sounds like one you’d get a lot of use out of - all it does is add a block video and block channel option to the drop down menu of each video.
Get that AI voice or any other content that indicates the entire channel is garbage, just block the entire channel in one click. Be aggressive with blocking channels, and you’ll start noticing much less trash in your feed.
Block video is more useful for the channels you’re subscribed to -once you’ve watched a video, block it as a kind of “mark as read” button. That way your recommended videos won’t keep showing you shit you’ve already seen.
The algorithm isn’t there to suggest you something enjoyable to watch.
It is designed to keep you on the site as long as possible by suggesting you what has kept other people on the site longer who also have watched what you watched, maybe.
Use the not interested button very liberally when it recommends you something you don’t want to see.
I guess I’ve understood that “keeping me on the site” doesn’t necessarily coincide with “show me stuff I like”, but I honestly thought there was more overlap. I keep scrolling past loads of shit before leaving, and then just being shown the same shit again when I come back. I haven’t really used the “not interested” option, I’ll try that and see if it helps. Thanks for the recommendation!
Or if you have already seen it, but it keeps getting proposed in your list, you can open it, like it, and it will disappear. Works for me at least.
I can feel you. YouTube is my “tv” and I’ve been watching it for years. But lately the quality of the suggestions has gone completely out of whack, imo. I scroll through the suggestions and find nothing worth watching. Sometimes i try to improve it by hitting ‘not interested’ or ‘don’t suggest this channel’, but it’s not helping.
Maybe Spez has bribed Google to show us rubbish, so we’d return to Reddit?
It’s actually kind of nice to hear this. You’re the kind of person I was thinking of when I thought to myself that “there must be heaps of decent content out there, because a bunch of people use youtube as their tv”, so if it’s gone to crap for you as well, at least that indicates I’m not just going crazy from lying still for way too long.
There is a lot of garbage out there, but also some really good stuff. I like to stay logged out and clear history occasionally to try to keep from getting too algorithm bubbled. It’s not just automatically filtering content by subject matter, it also filters by length if you watch mostly long form videos you’ll get more long recommendations, and same for short videos. Try using more generic search terms for hobbies, interests, topics, etc you’ll get a little more variety in search results and won’t rely as much on the algorithm to filter recommendations.
my experience is that is def not made by competent people, and i have to train the algorithm by selecting garbage and tell it to shove it up and never recommend it while im alive…and MAYBE in the future im gonna get a watchable video
What types of videos do you like? I have so much high quality content available I literally cannot watch it all.
The youtube algorithm used to show users a smattering of all the types of content on the site. Everyone was getting random shit from one public algorithm.
Now, it only shows you the tiny section related to the search data you seeded your own personal algorithm with.
The moment I hear the AI voice, I instantly jump to the next video.
Oh, so much this. It’s gotten to a point where I feel physical revulsion when I hear them. The tiktok-woman voice is decidedly the worst, but there are others that make me sick to my stomach as well.
O tempora, o mores! A lot of it is Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha youtuber/streamer trash but I’ve found that the recommendations improved after I started subscribing to channels I liked. Once I’d fed the algorithm enough of my tastes it’s started to do a reasonable job of recommending things. Like there’s this Louis Theroux/Vice knock-off called Channel 5 News which have a couple good videos that it just inferred I would enjoy from my history.
Music recommendations surprisingly good too. Like it knows to go from Aesop Rock -> Lupe Fiasco -> Danny Brown -> Death Grips -> INSERT PUNK BAND HERE
Unfortunately, quality content is hard to find on youtube, especially because the algorithm will focus more on already established creators and channels. Videos under 20k views and creators under 1k subs almost never appear, even if they’re better related to what you’re watching than what’s being shown on the sidebar.
One thing you can try is to check the related videos while browsing incognito, or with Piped/NewPipe or Invidious, as these will ensure the recommendations are as “plain new account” as possible.
My personal experience, whenever I watch anything game related while logged in, YT will throw dozens of Brazilian Roblox/Minecraft videos as related, even if I’m watching english videos. I block them, refresh the site and another batch of similar shit shows up. I check the same video on Invidious and a different set of videos show as related.
