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by codeflo 22 days ago
It's clear that YouTube doesn't want you to have much influence over your feed. You can't even ban specific channels from being shown to you, which would be the simplest thing to implement, and other knobs that previously existed were silently removed.

Since Google does nothing that isn't based on metrics, we can deduce that they have data to show that giving people settings to focus the recommendations on what they want reduces total watch time. We'll only get an AI filter if it turns out that AI slop offends people so much that they disengage with YouTube altogether, which outside of HN and similar bubbles, I don't yet see happening.
1 comments
filoeleven 22 days ago
> You can't even ban specific channels from being shown to you

Yes, you can. Click the video's 3-dot menu > Don't recommend channel. Though I have noticed that this only blocks them from showing up in the feed, not in the recommendations sidebar. I also have to run uBlock to hide shorts, already-watched videos, subscriber-only stuff...ain't saying the YT experience is good, not by any stretch of the imagination.

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theshackleford 21 days ago
> Yes, you can.

You can click a button that makes a strong "suggestion" to the algorithim, which they will honor for as long as they feel like.

I went through this a few years ago when the channel of a large far right "news" broadcaster kept being jammed on my front page, and the best I could do was keep hitting the button and have it it "temporarily" be removed from my front page before it would inevitably show up again months down the line.

Perhaps it is not deliberate, and merely incompetence. Either way resolved on desktop with an addon because if I wanted to gamble, i'd go to a casino.

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filoeleven 20 days ago
Yes, this is true. I did notice that a bunch of channels I knew I had blocked started showing up again, but in my case it took 2-3 years. If it only lasts months for you, it's much less useful.
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theshackleford 19 days ago
To be fair, it is entirely possible it works better today, than it did then. I was just so aggrivated at the time, thinking each time I had resolved it, only for it to appear again that I just gave up!
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