[UN-SOLVED!!!] YouTube's 'Recomended' recomendations now suck AGAIN.

[Cyberdragon]

Although that happens eventually, YouTube actually recommends videos it knows you've already watched. It even shows the progress bar at the bottom of the thumbnail completely filled in. Completely non-helpful.

I thought that was the "watch again" section.

[rdl]

When the Firefox devs took the attitude of "we know better than you how you should like your browser to look" and switched the UI to Australis, I switched to Pale Moon and have been using it for years now with no problems.

It really is time to look into alternative browsers like PaleMoon etc. Any recommendations? Please don't even mention Chrome.

[RoGeorge]

Never heard about PaleMoon before, thank you! 

[tooki]

Although that happens eventually, YouTube actually recommends videos it knows you've already watched. It even shows the progress bar at the bottom of the thumbnail completely filled in. Completely non-helpful.

I don’t think so. Those are in either the “watch again” or “continue watching” sections. When scrolling through quickly it’s easy to miss which section you’re in — and YouTube will mix up the order of the sections, too...

[bitseeker]

Ah, I think I figured out where the discrepancy lies. You're referring to the Recommendation section on the home page and I'm referring to the recommendations that appear with the video being watched. The recommendations on the home page don't have this "bug."

[RoGeorge]

For me, both the home page (only open it when terrible bored, just a couple of times in a year) and the videos listed on the right hand side while watching something (as what to "Watch Next" - which I also never do) have the bug of recommending videos I've already watched.  Some were watched recently, some watched months or years ago, doesn't matter. I wrote them at least a dozen of times to stop recommending what I've already seen (by pressing the feedback button on the bottom of the page and giving step by step instruction of how to reproduce). After a year or two, I stopped giving feedback, and just use the subscription only page and addblockers.

Also, I don't have a "Watch Again" or a "Continue Watching" section. I thought this was sarcasm, but there are already two persons talking about such things, so I start to think those are a real thing for some. For me (I am still using the Polymer interface) there is no such section as "Watch Again".

Do you guys have "Watch Again" or "Continue Watching" sections? 'Cause I haven't.

[bitseeker]

I see Recommended, Continue Watching, and Watch Later. However, I rarely look at the home page. I use the Subscriptions page as my "home page."

[Electro Detective]

For me its 98% mindless brain numbing garbage thats on the homepage.

I don't log in but until I start looking for something, it all looks like its aimed at pre-teens and adults that still think like pre-teens.

Garbage music, sports, gossip, Ellen Degenerate and late night TV talk shows meant to brainwash.

And as for "news", its all establishment propaganda from the big networks.

But I watch utube like I used to watch TV. My roommates have cable with hundreds of channels, but there's not much on there compared to utube.

98% is being a bit conservative isn't it?  99.9999% is more like it every time I've blundered on to their 'hellpage'   

FWIW once you hook up to a few good Youtubers and their links and comments recommending other tubers,
you can do fine for ages without any of 'YouTube's 'Recomended' recomendations'
and IMHO still beats "cable with hundreds of channels" of mostly drivel that seems to appeal to multitudes of numbskulls,
repeats, BS panel blab, and facepalm worthy 'new' movies and shows 

As mentioned somewhere by our EEVblog host, Youtube needs some competition

...to get off their overconfident butt, drain the staff swamp, lose the obvious paid trolls and shills, and get serious about running their business,

or flog it for a realistic price to someone that can


Perhaps decadent cable shareholders have sunk some funny money into Youtube and 'advising' YT admin to do 'things' that make cable a better option for the paying decent folk? 

[JugglingElectrons]

Hopefully someone can tell me I'm crazy and there's a better way to customize YouTube. I just want my homepage to have a custom layout where I can choose my favorite subsciptions to be at certain locations. I feel like every time I refresh the homepage the layout gets shuffled around and the suggestions appear in different orders. If there's a way to get away from some of the algorithm and have some customization please let me know!
 

[RoGeorge]

Greasemonkey can rearrange a web page, but it's not trivial to do that. There might be some free Greasemonkey scripts already written so that can modify the YouTube pages.

To avoid the Youtube home page mess, I use https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions.

[JugglingElectrons]

The subscription page is about as close as I've found as well to a more customised homepage. I've even had to unsubscribe to some channels just to try and clean that page up a bit.

[Cyberdragon]

I love it when every time a video is sponsored, they won't show the sponsoring ads, but instead a competetor's ads throughout the video. This seems like a deliberate evil troll. (on mobile, I have adblockers on desktop)

[bitseeker]

(install an adblocker on mobile, too )

[RoGeorge]

This might be the cause of the strange recommendations: Google wants to guide your thoughts, because it now pretends to know what you'll want, better than you do and before you'll realize. 

I don't know if that is true, just my own speculations from this announcement
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-google-tunes-prescience-pictures.html

What I know for sure is that I already have problems finding what I want by using Google search, mostly because of the stupid AI that disregards my searching keywords. Even Verbatim mode fails.
Lately I found myself repeating a search, but with other search engines, just because Google ignores what it is typed in its search box. 

DuckDuckGo seems better at obeying the searched words. Any other suggestions for alternatives to Google search, with mandatory and optional words, maybe some OR, AND, NOT operators, too?

[tooki]

Ah, I think I figured out where the discrepancy lies. You're referring to the Recommendation section on the home page and I'm referring to the recommendations that appear with the video being watched. The recommendations on the home page don't have this "bug."

So you don't mean the recommended videos for you, but rather the related videos to a video (the "up next").

[BrianHG]

So you don't mean the recommended videos for you, but rather the related videos to a video (the "up next").

The "up next" does still seem to be good.  But, if you cant first get to an interesting 'recommended' videos from your home page, then, you will never get to see any good 'up next' videos...

[bitseeker]

Yes, the videos that appear below the Up Next one. There's a horizontal bar separating the Up Next video from these others, so I don't know what they're supposed to be. They could be related, recommended, or something else. I've seen completely irrelevant videos show up in there. In any case, I find that list to be poorly implemented as it includes videos I've already watched and, thus, wastes space that could be occupied by something I might actually want to watch.

[tooki]

Yes, the videos that appear below the Up Next one. There's a horizontal bar separating the Up Next video from these others, so I don't know what they're supposed to be. They could be related, recommended, or something else. I've seen completely irrelevant videos show up in there. In any case, I find that list to be poorly implemented as it includes videos I've already watched and, thus, wastes space that could be occupied by something I might actually want to watch.

I think it includes videos that are frequently watched together with the one you're watching, as might happen when a video mentions another video, or when it's segments of the same presentation or series. That, to me, makes sense even if you've already seen it.

[apis]

Just a tip: you can click on the little "..." icon on the recommendations and choose "not interested" which helps the algorithm know it made a mistake.

[BrianHG]

Just a tip: you can click on the little "..." icon on the recommendations and choose "not interested" which helps the algorithm know it made a mistake.

Do you have any clue how many time I now have to click that BS for every single video in the list, all of them, hit refresh, and do the same again and again and again, and repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse...

[BrianHG]

It's getting even worse....

Does anyone else have Youtube now 'FORCE' the stupid 'Gaming For You' channel listing?
For the last few months...  I tried clicking the [X] again and again, yet, it keeps on coming back.
How do I permanently get rid of this junk?
Even worse, now, gaming topics always end up in 20%-40% my recommendations...
I keep on selecting telling Youtube 'I'm not interested in this channel/junk'
How is this possible?  I don't play computer games.  I haven't ever searched for any video game content.

[glarsson]

Just as thumbs up and thumbs down both indicates activity for the channel, trying to get rid of the games also indicates interest in games? :-)

[EEVblog]

I get videos I've watched before (on that login), it's silly. And yes, refreshes do very little.

[SiliconWizard]

Yeah, it's basically as useless and annoying as Amazon's recommended items.

[EEVblog]

I just got recommended the new Cobra Kai sneak peak video, 4 days after it was released. Yet they know I'm a premium member and have watched every episode and associated video of the series.
They can't even recommend their own stuff to known existing viewers in a timely manner
It was the only decent recommendation today, half of which I've already seen, and the other are the same ones that have been there for days. Very little variety