YouTube kept recommending me grainy UFO footage until a commenter said my viewing history was the problem

I'd been watching conspiracy docs for a week and the algorithm pegged me as a believer, but one guy pointed out I'd clicked three fake videos in a row and that's why my feed went nuts, so I cleared my history and now I get car repair tutorials instead, has anyone else had their algorithm totally flip after cleaning up their watch log?

2 comments

2 Comments

seana146d ago

Honestly, I used to think the algorithm just knew what you were into based on your soul or something, but after reading this it clicked for me. I was getting nonstop flat earth videos and creepy cryptid stuff for months, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized I had clicked on three obvious clickbait "ghost caught on camera" videos in a row out of boredom. Cleared my history and now I get cooking hacks and guitar tutorials. It's wild how one dumb click can send you down a rabbit hole.

wyatt8625d ago

I gotta say, that line about "based on your soul" made me laugh because I had the same thought once. But here's the thing, it's not just one dumb click that does it. It's more like the algorithm watches how long you watch something, not just what you click. So if you clicked three ghost videos but watched two seconds of each, that's different than watching the whole thing. I had a similar thing happen where I got stuck on alien abduction stuff for weeks, turns out I left a video playing while I fell asleep and it autoplayed a whole marathon. Clearing history helped but I also had to manually tell YouTube to stop recommending certain channels. It's a whole process honestly.