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by karmakaze 471 days ago
I started using Youtube as a frequent content source in the past year. I've been aggressively curating my recommendations by clicking "Not interested" on anything I don't want to see a lot of. If I'm curious I'll watch the one video but in Incognito. If a channel gets repeatedly re-recommended I don't hesitate to use "Don't recommend channel". I also +like everything I've watched and subscribe to channels I'll more likely watch than not watch new content. Getting recommendations pruned feels like getting to a zero email Inbox.
1 comments

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work like that. If you say "Don't recommend channel", the channel may in fact be recommended and similar channels will definitely still be recommended. "Not interested" works even less accurately.
IME, Not interested at least prevents that single video from showing in my feed. It may reduce similar content from same or other channels--I see some reductions. Don't recommend channel always works for me as far as I noticed, except in search results which seems correct. I never expected it to not recommend similar channels, e.g. I filtered out Linus Tech Tips but watch similar content.

It probably helps that I only permit a handful of specific topics: physics, fun math, synthesizers (but not modular), tiny bit of music theory/training, StarCraft 2 (not SC1/BW), and recently the Nvidia/AMD GPU release saga.