Not in real life, on my YouTube feed. I have been rigorously marking all channels with videos about pets, infants, toddlers, pets and infants, pets and toddlers, infants and toddlers, or anything of that ilk, as “Don’t recommend channel.” I have been doing this for several weeks now. Of couirse, YT is still throwing new ones at me, but fewer than before, and I have been fairly successful at whacking those moles.
Why? you may well ask. The reason is that, if I watch one 20-second video like that, suddenly that’s half my feed, and I’m sick of it. I have a number of subjects about which I like to watch videos, and I’m perfectly capable of looking up others I’m interested in. So I weed the garden and whack these videos whenever they show their cutesy little heads.
Yes, I spend, and possibly waste, some time on YouTube, pretty much every day. So shoot me. At least I’m not watching cat videos (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I would like a way to tell YouTube, “Show me more variety”.
There’s only so many videos worth watching on the same subjects. Surely with all the data they’ve got they could make a pretty good guess on what else I might want to watch.
I know, they only care about maximizing views, not maximizing my satisfaction.
One way not to have your subsequent search results contaminated is to open YouTube in a private/incognito window. That way, it won’t associate whatever your watching with whatever profile Google has built about you.
Try deleting your browser cookies. If you delete history, cookies etc. each time you close your browser, often that’s not good enough. You must dig a little further.
For example, I use Firefox and can delete History etc. But if I want to do a more complete cleansing I must go into Firefox Options, select the Privacy & Security tab and come to the Cookies & Data heading. Click on Clear Data or Manage Data — you’ll figure it out from there. If you scroll through the list you’re bound to see a You Tube entry. You can just select that one, or personally, I usually delete the whole lot. It won’t affect any stored login information.
If you use Chrome, I’m sure there’s a similar method. Or do a search ‘how to delete cookies from, whatever browser you use’.
No guarantee but I think it should solve your problem.
The problem is, then YouTube gives you the generic “whatever is most popular” front page, which is usually execrable. I want to discover more small-time creators. Simone Gietz, James Hoffman, Technology Connections: all very different, and there must be more like them doing something else innovative, but YouTube thinks I just want to know more about makers, coffee, and technology.
Also, stop recommending videos I’ve already seen. I rarely want to watch them again, but it’s half of what I get recommended.
That would be great. Perhaps an algorithm that would suggest areas tangential to what I am already watching, and an option to say “no thanks” to a subject matter instead of to a specific video or channel.
I realize you’re trying to be helpful, but ye gods, why would I want to go to all that trouble? I’m fine with the solution I’ve chosen, to zap any channel that shows up that shows content I don’t want. Yes, I wish YouTube worked better, but this works for me.
Funny how that works. On channels I’m following, once I watch a video it doesn’t show up again. On channels that I watch a lot without following, watched videos pop up randomly.
I wish YouTube had category filters like it used to. Every time I do a search half the results are gaming, which I don’t want, half the results are not in English, which I also don’t want, and if I’m lucky due to rounding this adds up to less than 100% and there’s something good in there.