If you have a profile and a playlist that consists of things you like (can be the Liked videos one):

1) Nuke the built-in youtube history

2) Download browser plugins that disable the "are you still watching" popup and one that lets you watch videos faster than 2x

3) Click on your playlist, make sure autoplay is on

4) Leave the entire thing overnight so that the history fills up

This didn't fix the problem, but it at least made it bearable and improved the quality of recommendations.

I also recommend the "Channel Blocker" extension, works a lot better than built-in functionality

Go to history and X these videos from there. Also unlike if you accidentally liked it. In general, dislike irrelevant content actively, don’t let it creep in. History hygiene is a must nowadays.

is there a product manager from Google that understands that not every video you watch is related to long term interests

When you stop thinking of google as a high-tech company with good managers and engineers, and realize it’s been 20+ years and now it’s just a leetcode-fenced club full of mediocrity, many dots in this picture connect by themselves.

I think you can just turn off your YouTube watch history? https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?hl=en&co=GEN...

And then if you pay for Premium, that should also stop the targeted ads.

The thing is what exactly is "unrelated" ? If you want just quality unrelated videos then just check the most popular ones on a topic or in your country. If you don't care about quality then just find a YouTube randomizer (I'm pretty sure it exists)

But I'm pretty sure it's super rare to find something that is unpopular, that fits your tastes, and that is unrelated to your history, all 3 at the same time

I very regularly (every week or so) go to my YT history and delete any random isolated videos that I watched that don’t suit my general interests. Keeps the recommendations relevant to the majority average of what I choose to watch.

Their recommendation algorithm is pretty terrible and seems to be based around people linking remotely to youtubes, rather than finding things on platform. Watch one “sleep white noise” video and that’s all that shows up in recommendations despite hundreds of subscriptions.

Like almost everything else Google it’s sort of not improved in 10 years and one can bet they’re ramping up “AI” recommendations internally right now to get near where TikTok was 4 years ago without “AI”.

I have been using more the "not interested" option on the videos I’m not going to watch lately. It’s a bit annoying that I have to do that instead of scrolling down and ignoring them, but that’s the only way to get more diversity in my YouTube feed.

Don't log in. Use a VPN. Clear browsing history after each visit.

They're still profiling you, but at least they pretend not to do it with the above.

YouTube's recommendation system is, in my opinion, bordering on worthless. My solution is to ignore the recommendations entirely so I don't have to manage my viewing with an eye toward its impact on them.

Go here and cleanup and adjust settings as needed.

https://myactivity.google.com/product/youtube

Use NewPipe to watch!

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