YouTube Recommendation Complaints

Users vent frustration about YouTube's recommendation algorithm repeatedly suggesting already-watched videos, flooding feeds with similar content, and failing to promote subscriptions or new discoveries. Many share workarounds like clearing history or using incognito mode to avoid poor suggestions.

📉 Falling 0.4x Other
4,732
Comments
17
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#4173
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2010
8
2011
12
2012
15
2013
29
2014
16
2015
30
2016
95
2017
120
2018
204
2019
476
2020
586
2021
634
2022
823
2023
715
2024
400
2025
547
2026
24

Keywords

AI contentdiet.xyz YT YouTube i.e UI NASA videos youtube recommendations watch video recommendation channels subscriptions recommended recommending

Sample Comments

synu Sep 7, 2022 View on HN

How did you get YouTube to stop recommending videos you’ve already seen?

Smithalicious May 18, 2021 View on HN

YouTube primarily recommends me videos that I've already seen

lnsru May 5, 2022 View on HN

I hate YouTube for their recommendation system. I watch few things and then get million recommendations of the same thing by different author. I don’t want that, I want to see other topics and must actively search for them.

rorykoehler Aug 23, 2020 View on HN

YouTube recommendations are really annoying. I don’t want to see 50 million variations of the same video. Impossible to discover new concepts etc

haolez Oct 16, 2019 View on HN

I watch a lot of YouTube content and sometimes I refrain myself from watching a video because I know that it's going to mess up my recommendations in a way beyond repair :)

Proven Sep 30, 2021 View on HN

I don't want to discover anythingI don't want to spend more time on YT than necessary to see the video I want to seeI don't want to teach their recommendations system

zamadatix Nov 24, 2020 View on HN

The thing I hate about recommendations on the homepage is clicking one 30 second funny video from a friend results in clicking "not interested" in 30 videos on the homepage to stop them from being recommended. Similarly, even if you use a different account, if you watch something you like and the algorithm decides it's more related to some other topic you don't like or thing you have no interest in it also floods the recommendations with this "fresh" topic you'

pimlottc Feb 23, 2024 View on HN

YouTube has been getting really aggressive about recommendations lately. They’re easily the majority of my homepage, and you can’t watch a single video on a new topic without getting flooded with related suggestions. Never mind there’s dozens of channels and topics I have enjoyed in the past, they rarely show up in the suggestions.It’s gotten to the point that I use incognito mode for random video links to avoid wild swings in recommendations.

nittanymount Mar 12, 2024 View on HN

"I grew sick of youtube recommendations"totally agree, the recommendation algorithm is kind of weird, if you watch something, it keep pushing similar ones, is it really users want? and to an extreme, after a while, the whole recommendation list only covers very limited topics, it is kind of building a castle for yourself, isolated from the rest of the world, haha ...

malka Mar 14, 2022 View on HN

you are literally the first person I know that enjoy youtube recommendations.It pushes trash to my feed.