Youtube power is in its recommendation engine. I discovered amazing content through this engine. You say you come to watch what you want, but how do you initially fill the "subscription" page without exploring first?
There can be various levels of exploring. Maybe visiting the home page only once a month. But the distribution capabilities are what makes Youtube what it is.
I don't think it's necessarily bad to use the automated recommendations but there are certainly other ways to discover new content.
Every once in a while after scrolling for a while it gives me a "Want something new?" link and then the recommendations are fanatic but that feed has no bookmarkable URL or reliable way to get to it.
Did you actually discover it through youtube's algorithms and discovery engine or was it linked to you by friends and you simply watched it on Youtube?
These are completely different things in this context.
> But the distribution capabilities are what makes Youtube what it is.
Hold on, I thought it was the recommendation engine? Which is it? Distribution is about economies of scale and good engineering, recommendation is about putting the user first, rather than monetization.
For example I watched and subscribed to PBS ST to kick start. It instantly flooded my feed with low-quality sci-pop with “pro voice actors” voices and stupid sensational topics like “shocking alien planet” or “will our sun explode tomorrow? Emoji emoji emoji”. No astrophysics was recommended yet. Yesterday I searched for and binge-watched about hyena clan relationships, today it recommended me two quran surahs for good sleep, few colorful open-mouth-sensation morons (not sure which topic they were trying to “wow”) and a very badly compiled drama about different snow leopards chasing goats. And that’s while I’m holding my finger on “not interested” trigger for weeks.
What am I doing wrong?
if there is anything you started to watch, but didn't like, clean that stuff from your watch history.
click the "Like" button on any videos you like a lot, and favorite the very best.
sometimes YouTube's skull is very thick, but it will get a bead on you fairly soon if you do what you can to tell it what you like and don't like. that's been my experience, anyway.
I tried to turn it on for a while and it didn’t make any difference. Same for likes/dislikes. The only effective methods are channel-wise, i.e. “subscribe” and “don’t recommend channel”, but then the feed becomes 90% of videos I have watched or new videos (from these channels) in which I mostly have no interest in. Other 10% are irrelevant to me.
Anyway, I’ll try to follow your advice (thanks!) with more active liking etc for a while, but my hopes are weak atm.
If I'm looking for potentially interesting content outside my core subscription views, I'm better served by turning on FM radio.
all those videos in your watch history? others have watched those videos, too. youtube will recommend videos that those others have watched and that you have not.
the narrower the focus of your viewed videos, the narrower the focus of the recommendations will be.
I say that because, as someone who does not sign into YouTube, I have no idea if it gets more complex.