Systemic fixes are needed. In the meantime you can improve your own experience (and hopefully others a bit too). When you hover over a recommendation, there's a menu icon to the right side (three vertical dots, gray). Clicking it opens menu with option to indicate "Not interested" and "Report". The former is supposed to train your own instance of recommendation algo, the later does the usual reporting.
According to the current scuttlebutt lore, Youtube makes a concerted effort to steer users towards authoritative sources (typically the big media brands), especially on spicier subjects. This is in response to the recent slew of articles accusing Youtube of user radicalization.
Not interested doesn't work. One or two weeks later it 'forgets' your preferences and someone else uploads the same content as a clip so it gets suggested too.
Googling around shows there used to be a 'Don't recommend this channel' button which would be awesome to have back.
I find it very annoying listening to a two hour debate, understanding difficult topics and then disagreeing with the speaker and being unable to block content from said speaker.
There's a bunch of one-topic people pushing their opinions out to the youtube user base and it would be great not to have to see their face in 30 different suggestions after you find yourself deeply disagreeing with their opinions or you're just done with their conversations after hearing all of their views.
Those don't do shit. I tried getting it to stop recommending me fucking Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro videos for years, but I guess I just can't escape the angry 30-something category.
I think Youtube's recommendation algorithm is an abomination that has caused real harm to society.
Same here! God forbid I watch a video by someone who's ever been in front of a camera with those two guys, I'm immediately pushed into a rain of suggestions.
Try watching a comedian that's slightly edgy like bill Burr, you get immediately showered in videos of people "showing feminists what's what" or "shutting up liberals". I'm not even American, not right wing, but YouTube seems to try its hardest anyway.
According to the current scuttlebutt lore, Youtube makes a concerted effort to steer users towards authoritative sources (typically the big media brands), especially on spicier subjects. This is in response to the recent slew of articles accusing Youtube of user radicalization.