I finally got my YouTube recommendations to stop showing me conspiracy stuff

So I spent like 3 months watching normal woodworking videos and somehow ended up with a feed full of lizard people and flat earth garbage. Took me clearing my history, watching 20 cat videos, and hitting "not interested" about 50 times before it finally calmed down. My buddy says I should have just made a new account but that feels like giving up. Anyone else fight this battle or did you just nuke your whole profile?

2 comments

2 Comments

terryj458d ago

... wait, three whole months of woodworking and it still didn't fix it? That's wild, I figured the algorithm would have reset by then for sure. I went through the same thing with those weird alien autopsy videos and had to manually block a dozen channels before it finally gave up.

calebrivera8d ago

Not sure I agree with you there, @terryj45. Three months of watching woodworking videos sounds more to me like you accidentally trained the algorithm even harder. Those platforms don't just forget your history overnight. They keep building from what you give them, so if you stopped watching the bad stuff cold turkey but still clicked on similar channels by accident, the system might have lumped woodworking in with the old content. Blocking channels manually works way better than trying to outrun the algorithm with fresh interests. The key is hitting that three dots menu and telling the system you don't want to see that junk anymore. Give it two weeks of clean browsing and active blocking, and most of the nonsense will dry up.