I posted this on reddit but those fuckers removed it immediately

Never have I ever used a platform whose algorithm is so “sticky” that I’ve exhausted my entire roundup of channels and shows, and it keeps getting harder and harder to find new stuff. Big part of this is how YouTube doesn’t have categories, especially on mobile.

And before anyone says it, yes they do have a category sidebar. Shopping, Music, Movies & TV, Hype, Live, Gaming, News, Sports, Courses, Fashion & Beauty, Podcasts, Playables. That’s it. That’s the whole list. You want to find new cooking channels? Good luck, there’s no cooking category. History? Nope. Science? Nothing. Your only option is to go into “Gaming” and get served the same giants with 10 million subscribers you’ve already seen a hundred times.

Like, I just want to find a channel that makes videos about woodworking or obscure history or literally anything I haven’t seen before, but YouTube keeps shoving the same 8 creators in my face because I watched one of their videos two years ago. The recommended page is just stuff I’ve already seen and stuff I actively don’t want to see.

And the search is somehow even worse. You search for a topic trying to find something new and instead of relevant results it just shows you the same channels you always watch. Search “game reviews” and the top results aren’t new review channels you’ve never heard of, it’s the exact same guys already clogging your recommendations, plus videos you’ve already saved to watch later. You’re not finding anything new, you’re just being shown your own watch history back at you.

Other platforms figured this out. Spotify has genre pages, radio stations, discovery playlists. Even TikTok, for all its problems, will occasionally show you something you’ve never seen before. YouTube just assumes that if you liked something once you want to see it forever, and if you’ve never seen something before that’s because you don’t want to. There’s no way out of it unless you already know exactly what you’re looking for, which kind of defeats the whole point.

And yes I know you can delete your watch history. That’s not a solution. That’s a band-aid.

**I just want to find new topics** who else has this problem?

  • worhuiEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    I’m not sure but some how I get shown a lot of feeds of people with less than 100 subs. I remember commenting on some guys video and him being so excited he was recommended on search.

    Do you spend time with and interact with smaller channels as a significant portion of your time on youtube? Do you subscribe to them?

    I’m almost invisible to the larger channels.

    I usually find new channels by looking at the sidebar recommendations on subscribed channels.

    I also only view my subscriptions page and turned off YouTube history.

    When I run out of YouTube content I just stop watching. I am also old.

    • StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      If I find a channel I like immediately subscribe , I’ll be honest idk if commenting will much affect the algorithm. I have YouTube and podcasts for my background noise, I’m quickly depleting my choices on YouTube though, but I think that’s ridiculous considering the amount of content, purely a fault of the algorithm