On Youtube, sometimes the algorithm starts recommending Youtube videos from channels that you don't like. Thankfully, there's a way to stop Youtube from recommending a specific channel, and in doing this the channel's videos, their thumbnails, will stop appearing on the sidebar on Youtube's website, which is where the recommendation feed appears.
You don't even need a browser extension to do this. All you need to do is move your mouse cursor to the sidebar, when your cursor is hovering over one of the recommendations, three dots will appear on the top right corner. Click on these three dots and a menu will appear. In this menu, you'll find an option that says "Don't recommend channel." If you click on it, Youtube will stop recommending that channel to you.
Since these recommendations are one of the main ways of seeing a channel's posts on Youtube, doing this is almost like blocking the channel or muting it, except that you will still be able to find the channel's videos in other ways, e.g. by searching for something on Youtube.
A less drastic measure is to click on the "Not interested" option in the menu instead. This might affect what videos the Youtube's recommendation algorithm picks for you.
How to Undo
If you clicked on "Don't recommend channel" or "Not interested" by accident or you regret it and you want to undo, there is a way to revert it, but the only way is to clear ALL of your feedback to Youtube's recommendation algorithm, you can't just your last click, or undo a specific click, so think twice before using this.
Youtube is owned by Google. In order "to clear all the “Not interested” and “Don’t recommend channel” feedback you've submitted"1, go to https://myactivity.google.com/, click on "Other Google Activity" in the sidebar, find a section that says "YouTube "Not interested" feedback," and click on "Delete" under that section. This should make Youtube forget all the times you clicked on those two options.
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Opinion
Personally, I think it's a good idea to actively tell Youtube the videos you aren't interested in, and perhaps that will make Youtube recommend more interesting videos.
In particular, there's a difference between a topic that is truly interesting and a topic that makes people click on the video.
Many videos have clickbait titles such as "the <noun> that is the MOST/BEST/WORST <adjective>," making you click a 20 minute video just to find out where is the rest of the sentence.
Many videos are about drama that, honestly, do not concern most people who watch it. I've seen channels that have gotten many followers just by posting multiple videos about drama in an online community. Most people who watch these videos didn't even know about the drama, the people involved, and perhaps even the existence of said community before they saw the thumbnail, but they still click the video and watch it.
Many videos are just some guy's opinion, and the only difference between him and you is that he has a Youtube channel, just like the only difference between you and me is that I have a website. Having a Youtube channel or a website doesn't make us smarter than you. You don't have to listen to us. Most of the time, you won't gain anything by listening to someone's opinion or rant on the Internet, nor by trying to argue with them. In fact, in many cases doing these things will have negative effects to your mental health, as it generates toxicity.
The best thing to do would be to simply ignore these, but because everyone else keeps clicking on them, Youtube's algorithms assume these videos are great, and it keeps showing these recommendations whether you want to see them or not. The same applies to other social media.
Every time you see something, you, as a human being, must react. You have to think something about what you just saw. Even if you don't say or do anything, you can't escape the fact your brain will think about it.
The only way to stop these thumbnails from reaching your eyes is to stop the algorithm from selecting them in the first place.
That's why I think it's perfectly fine if you mute or block 90% of the users on social media, just to avoid seeing their posts (muting is enough, but some platforms don't have this feature so you have to block). If you remove everyone who posts boring things, the only thing that will remain are users who post interesting things.
References
- https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839 (accessed 2024-05-18) ↩︎
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