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

The same thing happens to me. The solution was to use a Firefox extension called YouTube Unhook. So I block everything that distracts me.

Turn off watch history for that fresh homepage feeling?

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

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?

In the AppleTV app the "Don't Suggest This Channel" option has been extremely buggy lately. Right now, if you select that under Recommended videos the video disappears from the New Videos section, but if you select that from the new video section it doesn't disappear from recommended. There was a brief couple of weeks where you would select "Don't Suggest This Channel" and it would just ignore the command all together and not even disappear the video.

The other thing I have noticed is that the algorithm changes based on the day of the week pretty hard. How in the world is it that my feed gets jammed with pirate college football feeds during the weekends? It's all gotten much worse under the new CEO. Glad I am not alone here.

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?

I bookmark and use the subscriptions page to avoid the algorithmic recommendations. https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

[delayed]

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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 into eternity.

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.

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.

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.

The only thing I've found to really work is clearing my entire watch history, subscriptions, comments and likes

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.

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.

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.

Others similar to you really like that content, so you must’ve mistakenly thumbed it down.

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.

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

The state of YouTube recommendations is absolutely terrible, I wish it was possible for someone to build a third-party recommendation system to compete with them. The most frustrating part of YouTube recommendations is that it keeps suggesting videos I've already watched, and which I'm not interested in the slightest in rewatching. It reminds me of years ago when Amazon would recommend more of the thing you had just bought.

If I add something to my Watch Later list, it keeps recommending that video, but it never surfaces older entries.

Recommendation systems in general feel so limited in how much user input they allow as well, I wish we had more knobs to twist. There's definitely whole categories of videos and content that I'd love to blacklist.

It definitely feels like an area with potential for improvements and optimization, but I'm not sure if YouTube's APIs are sufficiently flexible for anyone to build a competitor. And even if you could build a competitor, it would probably end up getting shut down or incapable of being monetized.

Something cool about Blue Sky is that they actually allow you to build customized algorithmic timelines. You're not locked in to a single opaque recommendation algorithm. Would love for this feature to be available on YouTube.

Yep, I'm having the same issue.

It's extremely frustrating given the amount of really triggering content that keeps being recommended to me (anorexia, body horror, pus, holes, etc)

I really wish there was a robust way to block channels on YouTube. There is one YouTuber (Simon Whistler) that I check in on a lot--not because I enjoy his content, but because he is a parasite. He did paid voice work for me for years, but then one day I discovered he had started working with a competitor, and together they were systematically poaching my entire catalog of non-fiction content. They started releasing videos covering the same obscure topics with the same details, sometimes even using my original artwork without permission. It's been going on for years now, across multiple channels and hundreds of videos. What he's doing is (mostly) not illegal, but goddamn is it slimy.

I keep an eye on his channels to catalog the egregious poaching, but as a consequence, YouTube thinks I'm his biggest fan, and keeps recommending his videos. I am tired of seeing his smug, parasitic face in my sidebar. What a scumbag.

If you use uBlock Origin, you can experiment with blocking page elements. I found these by googling and there's probably an actively maintained filter out there that is better.

The downside to this list is that blocking the videos on the homepage also blocks the videos on a YouTuber's profile page. When I go to a creators page I just hit the disable cosmetic filtering button as a workaround, open the video I want to watch in a new tab, re-enable cosmetic filters, and then hit refresh. I hate YouTube recommendations so much that this is acceptable for me, but I still hope someone can find a workaround. This doesn't break search results, though, so it's pretty good.

  ! Removes all video content on the homepage.
  ! However, it will also hide the videos on a YouTuber's profile page. 
  www.youtube.com###content > .ytd-rich-section-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com###content > .ytd-rich-item-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com##ytd-continuation-item-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1)
  www.youtube.com###grid-title
  
  ! Removes all the trending topics underneath the search bar
  www.youtube.com###scroll-container > .ytd-feed-filter-chip-bar-renderer.style-scope
  
  ! Blocks items which have the text 'Recommended' in them
  www.youtube.com##li.video-list-item:if(span:has-text(/^Recommended/))
  www.youtube.com##div.content-wrapper:if(span:has-text(/^Recommended/))
  
  ! Hide all of the recommended videos on the right side of the page.
  ! Leaves only the first video that will be played next, if autoplay is enabled. 
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(3)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(4)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(5)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(6)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(7)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(8)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(9)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(10)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(11)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(12)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(13)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(14)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(15)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(16)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(17)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(18)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(19)
  www.youtube.com###items > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(20)
  
  ! Prevent the above list from expanding.
  www.youtube.com##ytd-continuation-item-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com###continuations > .ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com##.use-ellipsis.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
  www.youtube.com##ytd-compact-playlist-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
  
  ! Removes recommendations from the right side of the page.
  www.youtube.com##.ytd-compact-movie-renderer.style-scope.details
  www.youtube.com##ytd-thumbnail.ytd-compact-movie-renderer.style-scope
  
  ! Removes Shorts from search results
  youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer:has(#rich-shelf-header:has-text(Shorts))
  youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer:has(.ytd-reel-shelf-renderer:has-text(Shorts))

I recently noticed that Youtube has been adding videos to my watch history that I didn't watch. Not just random videos, but ones the algorithm keeps pushing that I'm not interested in.

I know I didn't watch them, but there they are on my history page. It feels kinda icky and I don't know how to stop it.

They're not going to stop. They don't care what you want to see anymore, they care what they want you to see.

All you can do is either abandon the algorithm entirely, or live with it.

You can abandon the algorithm with tools like RSS, invidious, and suggestions elsewhere in this thread such as bookmarking channels. This very much limits discoverability, but discoverability is broken with these algorithms anyway and the only way to have real discoverability nowadays is to engage in online communities where people share videos, so it's not really a loss.

How about FreeTube? It saves watch history locally, you can set your homepage to just your subscriptions, and IDK if it's just me, but the recommendations are really related to the video I am watching / clicked on, just like early YouTube.

my current solution reinstall YouTube on iOS whenever I miss-clicked a bait video. manually search for the few topics that interest me afterwards.

You can do nothing. This feature has been broken for ages and YouTube doesn't care. Your best bet is to remove the homepage via some browser plugin and make it redirect you to the Subscription page instead.