Normally, I use YouTube very little (watch a couple videos a month). However, I’ve been in bed with an injury for some time now, which has led me to watch quite a bit of YouTube. The thing is, I subscribe to a small handfull of channels that I enjoy content from, but after a relatively short time I had watched pretty much all the new content from those channels.
Now, I would expect that the YouTube algorithm, which is supposedly designed by competent people to get me to stick around, would be able to suggest some decent content to me based on my subscriptions. However, the past week, I’ve opened YouTube only to find the same old videos being suggested over and over. Even worse: Whenever there’s something interesting-looking from a channel I don’t recognise, it always turns out to be some shitty AI voice over some generic animations or footage.
I know for a fact that thousands of hours of content are created on YouTube daily, but it genuinely feels like there are maybe five creators out there that are making anything worth watching. It’s either that, or the YouTube algorithm is just complete crap at suggesting creators that are in any way similar to what I’m already subscribing to.
What’s going on here? Why does it seem like there’s no real content out there?
As a “funny” side note: What’s with the “aggressively American” AI narrator-voice? I’ve heard it before, but thought it was some dude until I realised it’s the same voice in a bunch of unrelated videos. It reminds me of the Discovery-channel “action-narrator”-voice from back in the day, but now it’s showing up in all kinds of crap videos.
Unfortunately, quality content is hard to find on youtube, especially because the algorithm will focus more on already established creators and channels. Videos under 20k views and creators under 1k subs almost never appear, even if they’re better related to what you’re watching than what’s being shown on the sidebar.
One thing you can try is to check the related videos while browsing incognito, or with Piped/NewPipe or Invidious, as these will ensure the recommendations are as “plain new account” as possible.
My personal experience, whenever I watch anything game related while logged in, YT will throw dozens of Brazilian Roblox/Minecraft videos as related, even if I’m watching english videos. I block them, refresh the site and another batch of similar shit shows up. I check the same video on Invidious and a different set of videos show as related.