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?
1: Build up a good list of subscribed channels.
2: Set
https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptionsas your default youtube bookmark.That will show you only channels you're subscribed to, in chronological order with the most recent first. No recommendations, no algorithm.
(I'm sure they'll disable this if too many people start using it, but for now, that's how you make finding things on youtube bearable.)
And if your subscriptions page is turning up dry, you need to explore some and subscribe to more good channels ... or go crazy and explore Peertube instead or something.
Too bad you can't set your home screen in the apps (mobile or set top also Nvidia shield or Google tv) to a url like that
I watch yt within the TV app more than anywhere else, and it is easy enough to go to subscribed but would be nice if you could set that to the default page
I mean, this kinda makes OP's problem worse. I'm all for the subscription feed (>90% of my watch time is on channels I'm subbed to), but it'll only ever show you channels you've already watched. If I'm looking anywhere else like OP I don't want it to show those channels.
But I wanna find new channels 😭 I listen during work so I spend a lot of time and feel like I deplete my pool of content so easily! I would love to find new channels, ( for example my fiancee loves cinema sins and I've found I love it too but if I hadn't had that outside influence I know my algorithm would never have suggested it)
Maybe I'm being too picky??
It's just all crap, popular videos and channels invade your feed because they're popular. If you like obscure stuff you're gonna have to dig and subscribe, dig and subscribe and as mentioned above use your subscription page after.
Discovering leans too much on popular over your interests IMHO
If you like cinema sins, check out cinema wins (same idea but positive), also make liberal use of "Don't show me this shit channel again" available under the 3dots on each video. I swear my blocked channels list is prolly 3x the size of my subscribed and some days I can still exhaust my list.
You know what could be a fun experiment, a post where we can share some or all of our subscribe lists, using the oldest algorithm there is "Word of Mouth". I'd contribute to that
If you were too picky you prolly would have kicked yt to the curb already :P