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Ask HN: YouTube keeps suggesting vids I marked “not interested”. What can I do?

41 points by MaxikCZ ↗ HN
I think it started about a month ago, but recently got out of control. I mark ALL videos on my homepage as not interested, refresh the page and see about 20% of videos I just marked suggested again. Or next day, or the day after.

It seems Youtube just decided to ignore my "NOOO" signal.

Anything I can do? Any tampermonkey scripts that will add the video to local blacklist database and hides it from suggestions?

82 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] thread
ksherlock
Turn off watch history for that fresh homepage feeling?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37157835

laweijfmvo
This has honestly been a blessing and cut down my mindless Youtube scrolling ten-fold. Maybe I'm the minority, but can't imagine why Youtube wants me to close the tab instead of watching more videos.
titzer
I turned it off more than a year ago and then it started nagging me to turn it back on, to the point it would not even show me my lists without enabling it. Dark pattern.
g1184
The same thing happens to me. The solution was to use a Firefox extension called YouTube Unhook. So I block everything that distracts me.
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bombcar
you marked too many, and so it ran out of suggestions and so started suggesting ones you ignored

anyway the suggestion queue is getting very bad

greenthrow
Youtube's recommendation algorithm has gotten terrible. There's a pretty low limit on the number of channels you can block. Additionally, different interfaces won't allow you to mark certain things like Mixes or Movies as "Not Interested" at all.

I have been paying for Youtube Red/Premium since like 2016 and I'm strongly considering canceling it and giving up on Youtube altogether. It's gotten that bad.

My replacement is just supporting the creators I like on Patreon or wherever they choose to put their content for a direct payment.

gremlinsinc
you'd think they could create a chatGPT like agent that basically knows what you like based on your history and just ask it if it would like this video or not, that would be so easy to implement, LLMs love play acting like they're someone Else.
darrylb42
Do you subscribe to anything? You may need some positive signals. I have premium so it may work different but suggested is mostly new stuff from channels I subscribe to or channels I have watched. Though mostly I just look for what is new in my subscription list and don't pay much attention to the home screen.
MaxikCZ
I am subscribed to loads of channels. Best is when after 3 days of reloading recommendations to find something nice it suggests me a video from subscribed channel (that I have notifications set to "all") from 3 days ago.

Whole 3 days it was unable to suggest me a video I told it I would want to see. Its mind boggling.

Honestly think scraping the algo alltogether and writing it from scratch could only result net positive, regardless of how broken new version would be.

samcat116
Gonna go against a lot of folks here and say I think the YouTube recommendation algorithm works pretty well for me. Definitely helps if you watch a lot of certain topics to give it some positive signals.
Cpoll
I bookmark and use the subscriptions page to avoid the algorithmic recommendations. https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
wolpoli
A slight variation of this: I bookmark specific Youtube channels to only view their content.
throw0101b
I use the RSS/Atom feed of specific Youtube channels so that I know when new things are posted:

* https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=THE_CHAN...

collinvandyck76
This is what I do. It's really awesome that this exists.
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the_70x
Is it even possible to have the RSS feed from the subscriptions page?
srcnkcl
you can take out sube data then give it to a rss reader to find all of them. It can be a pain to add to the reader and there would be no thumbnails.
MrMember
I have bash scripts set up to download new videos from specific channels using yt-dlp once a day. I don't even have to visit youtube anymore :)
tennisflyi
This is the only way to use YouTube. Didn't really think people used "Home" or "Shorts." Bad suggestion will still show up in the sidebar though.
kibibu
I use Home. I appreciate being recommended content similar to the stuff I watch, and it's how I've discovered some of my favourite creators.
Regnore
If you disable all youtube tracking, your homepage is just a message saying

“Your watch history is off You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you. Learn more”

which is kind of a nice feeling.

anigbrowl
I just use my YT account on Chrome these days, but watch most videos in another browser without being logged in. Downside, it doesn't remember all my preferences/playlists/etc. Upside, recommendations are limited to my actual viewing choices over the last week or so.
Nextgrid
Another option is to use RSS readers. Every YT channel page has <link> elements pointing to RSS feeds, which means you can paste channel URLs into any RSS reader and subscribe to them through that.
kazinator
How can that be used with Android TV?
Syonyk
Stop using YouTube.

Or just use one of the various youtube downloader forks that actually works well to watch stuff you care about, and ignore the referral engine entirely.

I'm quite serious - this isn't a snarky response. You've evaluated that a product is actively ignoring your wishes. So why continue rewarding it with attention?

aldousd666
They don't provide a fungible service. There's nobody else providing the same service. It's ok to be unhappy about a service you're getting and still using the service, especially when there's no alternative. TikTok is certainly no help.
manquer
There are two components here, the video streaming/ content database has no equivalent peer for sure, however the general app UX has plenty of alternatives and is pretty fungible.

One can consume Youtube, without shoddy recommendations, annoying shorts or intrusive ads if you wish. Most of the peers are legal and comply with YT policy as well.

3523582908
Are there YT alternatives for TV/PS5? That's my primary consumption way, I don't watch YT on my computer.
tredre3
> I'm quite serious - this isn't a snarky response

No, you are being quite snarky. It's clear OP wants to discovery content and wants to be suggested stuff. Telling them to stop using it without suggestion ANYTHING even remotely close to a substitute isn't a solution. It's snark.

cheeze
Totally agree. This is the standard HN response that is frustrating, because it completely ignores the fact that _the user wants to use youtube, there is no viable alternative, and they are annoyed with a specific feature.

This is the equivalent to "don't like how Windows handles X? Just use Linux bro!

AshamedCaptain
But youtube simply doesn't have a decent recovery and/or recommendation system. What do you want to do ?
danaris
Words have meaning, and "snark" isn't just "giving someone a response that absolutely does not fulfill their request."

Snark is very much about tone, and it is absolutely possible to give a response like the GP with no snark whatsoever. If they give their answer with absolute sincerity, it may be rude, and it may be unhelpful, and it may even be arrogant (it may not—those are all very context-dependent)—but none of those things make it snarky.

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irusensei
Speed running games. Not interested plus I abhor the idea of skipping a good game in 10 minutes but YouTube really wants to notify me when someone finds a glitch to skip from Kalm to Junon.
mianos
I have a similar problem with youtube music premium. It keeps adding songs that I thumbs down to my liked song list.

It even added a few songs I thumbs downed to my seasonal favourite playlists.

It feels like I must have insulted a developer once and they do this just to annoy us. Or, there are no career advancement opportunities in fixing broken stuff at google. It certainly seems more commercial and quality is rapidly fading as it grows.

snailmailman
I haven't (yet) run into this issue on youtube, but I encounter it on Youtube TV all the time. Every time I open the app, if I scroll down a little bit it has a suggestion for two shows I have zero interest in watching. Every time I see them, i select "don't show me this again" and it will show me them again as soon as I refresh the page.
phantom784
If you happened to watch/click on a video that you don't want recommendations for, go into your history and delete them, and then you'll stop getting recommendations for similar videos.
anderspitman
You can start investing in open platforms and services that get better, not worse, over time. Centralized tech doesn't result in less pain. It's just amortized over eternity.
netsharc
The "Improve YouTube" extension[1] used to be able to hide the sidebar, and even hide the whole homepage except for the search. Today I noticed YouTube seem to have changed something and the extension is no longer effective.

Seems like a style-modifying extension and adding the CSS rule div#secondary { display: none; } still works. Although it also hides things like live chat and transcripts...

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improve-youtube-%F...

e-clinton
Others similar to you really like that content, so you must’ve mistakenly thumbed it down.
jjoonathan
Ugh, it's absolutely awful. The skin condition / holes / maggot videos are the worst. I didn't even watch one by accident, but I do sometimes watch ASMR videos and I think that's the keyword roping these in. It was bad enough to push me into actually flagging them, but of course that does nothing to stop the recommendations so they keep popping up in my feed.

EDIT: Here's an example, but if my recommendations are jammed up with this shit after watching 0 of them I can only imagine what happens if you watch one intentionally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIkRLRP3gaI

MaxikCZ
Id appreciate a screenshot instead of youtube link, I dont want to bring this plague on me as well.
kledru
it is only logical that maggots take over at some point
freedomben
If you aren't already, I would make sure you're liking/subscribing to things you do want to watch. The algo to me seems primarily driven by thumbsups.

In YT Music especially, this has resulted in some really fantastic recommendations. Being someone who doesn't like most "popular" music (not simply because it's popular, I just think most people have bad taste :-D), I've never had a good experience with music discovery in services until now, and it's gotten on point for me.

joshSzep
YouTube music has been really great for me as well when it comes to discovery.
red-iron-pine
my theory is that the unpaid algo is optimized to make money, and that usually means shoveling sponsored shit at you with low effort. paid customers actually get the functional algorithm.
wvenable
I don't mind YouTube's recommendation algorithm because it helps me find new videos and channels to watch but it seems to constantly recommend videos I've already watched. In fact, when marking a video "not interested" you have the option to say it's because you've already seen it before. Are people constantly re-watching videos that this is a thing? Can't YouTube tell the difference between a music video and a long form video on a niche subject?
MaxikCZ
I have a tampermonkey script that hides all watched videos from recommendations. First I tried to mark all those I watched "not interested because I watched it", and hoped the "we will tune your recommendations" would actually tune them. Instead it just kept falling in, so I had to find other solution.

At least marking videos "not interested" worked till now, but I just cant anymore. It's like they want to push me away.

xahrepap
Reading through the comments of other people having similar problems makes me question if this is at all related to the specific issue. But I think it's worth bringing up anyway:

When I first started using PiHole, the default filters were filtering out all of the YouTube tracking domains. Which makes sense. However, these are the same domains that the history tracking uses. So it would never remember that I saw a video or how far into it I got.

Perhaps the Not Interested gets similarly blocked by tracking filters?

jjoonathan
I have no pihole or adblock and I have been intensely flagging a particular genre of video (pus / holes / maggots) but it keeps popping up in my feed.
solardev
Lol really? I don't think I'd ever seen a video of that sort recommended to me. (Knock on wood)

Is it possible someone in your household is playing a prank on you?

etrautmann
Sadly that’s popped up for me without any interest from my end.
jjoonathan
Nope, I'm the only one on the account. I'm pretty sure it's the same stupid dynamic from the "chum box" days (the box of ads at the bottom of articles), just dressed up for youtube. People have a curiosity about the gross and grotesque. Which is fine, so long as the thumbnails/ads don't get grotesque enough to make engagement nonconsensual, but that's exactly what is happening.
taberiand
The algorithm probably sees you as an excellent content filter signal for videos it's uncertain about.
brokenmachine
Holes? Like, literally, holes?
jjoonathan
Trypophobia stuff -- regular patterns of holes the sight of which triggers a strong anti-parasitic instinct in most people.
soupfordummies
Just in time for the beginning of Halloween season, join us for the spooky tale of jjoonathan's Youtube feed becoming haunted and possessed by disgusting horrors! A ghost in the machine?

Tune in Friday at midnight!

KomoD
The only thing I've found to really work is clearing my entire watch history, subscriptions, comments and likes
MaxikCZ
Scary. What if it will keep doing what it does, but the rest will be the most common denominator of videos they push onto new people? That would actually be worse than it is, and I thank you for the lesson that "it could be worse"
alrs
The youtube algorithm is very aggressively trying to get you to watch dumb shit, and you are correct that there is no way to opt-out.

It's best at present to not engage with recommendations at all, and instead start following the RSS feeds of the channels you enjoy.

jwells89
I don't have any suggestions to offer, but have found that the quality of my YouTube front page has degraded considerably in the past few weeks. Sometimes removing videos from watch history can jostle things to make it resemble its past self but it likes to drift, which is frustrating.
timeon
For few days my YouTube front page was just blank page with search bar and some other button. It was so refreshing. Unfortunately those random videos are back.
Alphaeus
In my experience, blocking entire channels rather than individual videos is much more reliable. Clearing out related videos from your watch history also helps a lot.
timbit42
I use the web browser add-on, "Channel Blocker", to block channels. It puts an X next to the channel name. Clicking it permanently removes that channel's videos from every YouTube page.

I use, "BlockTube", to block keywords in video titles and channel names so those videos never show up in searches.

I use, "Unhook", to remove recommended videos from YouTube pages.

I use, "YouTube-Shorts Block", to block shorts.