The algorithm is a combination of things they think you want to watch and things they want you to watch. The latter are things that tend to keep people watching, increasing ad revenue for youtube.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
208 points (86.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
35273 readers
953 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Top #1 sign(s) that you're spending too much time on YouTube.
Watching YouTube in the shower for one
Guilty. I like to call YouTube my morphine drip. It's quite literally an addiction for me on the same level as drugs have been for me, but more addictive.
Some drugs are cheaper too
Convention be damned, you'll never take my shower phone
load more comments
(1 replies)
Or too little. As someone else suggested the algorithm would understand me better if I watched more.
Tell you a problem I've had with it recently: search.
Used to be, you'd search Youtube for something like 'how to make a zero clearance throat plate for table saw" and you'd get pages of useful results, then some not so great results, then things that make you say "no not that kind of throat." and by then it's just giving you results with at least one of the search terms in it.
Now, you'll get maybe ten relevant results, then about ten results that have absolutely nothing to do with your search, just...stuff it would clutter your home page with. Like you're not trying to find information. You can feel that "increase watch time at all costs" shit.
When you search for something that doesn't give tons of results with decent or above views, they keep injecting sections of 3 "other videos you might like". Which makes it really annoying to find something less popular.
One trick I usually use to get at least another ten or so relevant results is to explicitly click the "videos" Tag below the search. This way (at least on mobile) I actually have a chance of finding the video I was hoping to find...
I watch so much niche stuff that it’s hard for YouTube to sneak their suggestions in.
- someone nerding out about history
- someone nerding out about science
- someone nerding out about Star Trek
- ✅ EPIC FAIL COMPILATION ✅
You’re spending too much time on YouTube if you have the opportunity to yell at it 10 times in one day.
Yeah you are right I just move away from YouTube altogether again.
Never had this problem with YouTube’s algorithm. If anything, it offers 20 more videos from the same channel after I watch just one.
Are you using the options where you tell it you don’t like this video/don’t recommend this channel/thumbs down the video? There are like three different ways to tell YouTube you’re not interested.
load more comments
(2 replies)
It seems to know my tastes so well, most recommendations are either things I already watch, or things so similar that even the people in them look and sound almost identical to the things I watch. Like I have found at least 2 other chemistry channels that I thought were NileRed until I actually looked at the channel names. And no, one of them is not NileBlue, his other channel.
Please tell me one of the suggestions was Explosions and Fire.
Interesting, I've always found it to work incredibly well for me, to the point I generally only watch the stuff it recommends. Like, out of the 6 videos it shows me, maybe 1 every now and then is something I don't care about. But like, if there's 4-5 ones I'm interested in out of 6, I think that's pretty good, and the 2 wild cards are how I tend to find new stuff to be interested in.
Use Grayjay. No ads, no algorithm, all video platforms in one feed.
Grayjay is not open-source, sadly; FreeTube and NewPipe are, though they are YT-based.
The source is available, right? You just can't fork it to include ads? Or you can't fork it at all?
You can fork it but you can't redistribute it or change the name. You also can't do anything that would be considered making a profit.
Essentially you can't do anything but contribute free labor. If Greyjay put ads and malware into the app you would be powerless to start something based on it.
No ATV version....
Do what I do fuck the YouTube algorithms and just only use the subscription part. I use the "recommended" part once every few months if that. Got my subscriptions on my smart tube and that's all I need.
It's frustrating, but to make it somewhat work you have to keep using the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" options, and go into watch history and remove ones that you click on by mistake or find out you don't like while watching.
What algorythm? I turned off watch history so all I see is turn on history notifications.
my subscriptions work so I have more than I have time to watch available.
Tell me about it... Started clicking "Do not recommend this channel" solely based on the thumbnail - if there is trump, musk or anything political, I clicked the button. Recently I started noticing pro Chinese "propaganda" which is something I don't want to watch either.
My solution: sticking mainly to subscribed channels and if I don't see anything I want to watch I'll try the YouTube feed algorithm.
I need YouTube word filter or figure out how to do the same I did for Lemmy and reddit in ublock custom filters. Example I found for reddit which works for me: reddit.com##article[aria-label]:has-text(/tesla|trump|vance|biden|republic|democrat|conservative|senate|congress|candidate|politic|healthcare|capitalism|billionaire|inflation|corporation|greed|tariff/i)
I'd love the same thing for YouTube, but I don't know how to configure it.
You need to clean your watch history. Remove any video you dont want affecting the recommendations and if you accidentally watch some video like that then you need to remove it from history. If you dont have history on then I have no clue how it recommends stuff though. I dont think it bases it on every single thing on the history or maybe it weights recent videos more heavily.
I recently had it recommend way too much certain kinds of videos after i watched a bunch of them and it reverted to what it recommended earlier when i removed most of the ones i watched earlier.
I don't have history on, I keep my "subscriptions" list curated to perfection so every morning I find interesting videos to watch/listen while I make coffee
that is also good way to do it, i used to do that too until i noticed the recommendations were actually worth my time. I dont think there is too much malicious meddling with them either since I have had videos recommended i dont think any corporate executive would even want me to see but still i try to be wary.
I've been thinking – somebody should make a 3rd party YT front page with its own algorithm. Google would probably be livid but we do already have alternarive front ends.
I still find it funny it thinks my 3 year old is interested in solar panels.
The more concerning one was a divorce lawyer for fathers. That shit wasn't even on my account or my computer, it just assumed daytime watching of kids stuff means a guys going through a divorce, lol.
Switch to peertube mate
If you have an account and are subscribed to YouTubers you want to see regularly, just visit https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
You choose what YouTube serves you, much like visiting your subscribed communities overview on Lemmy!
Bonus tip: If you're on Linux, install webapp-manager, add a webapp for the address mentioned with a browser of your choosing, its own addons if you'd like such as Return YouTube Dislike and Enhancer for YouTube!
YouTube has the worst commenting system as well. Oh a highlighted reply in a 500 comment thread I never commented on? Great just what I didn't need YouTube!
Dang that's a lot of youtube you're watching there
I'm so glad I never have to deal with youtube's idiotic algorithm
Mines pretty spot on weirdly enough.
view more: next ›