I always keep watch history turned on, because the recommendation system has always sucked if you kept it turned off. It’s more honest to the user now that they give up instead of intentionally sucking – “we can’t give recommendations if we don’t know what you tend to watch”. That basically makes sense to me and I accept the tradeoff this poses.

I know a lot of people think Youtube recommendations always suck and are therefore not even worth trying, but I beg to disagree. You can cultivate good recommendations, even if your interests have no overlap with the default front-page. It comes down to two basic ingredients:

1. Use the “Not Interested” button on bad recommendations
2. Click on the like/dislike buttons after watching videos

By default Youtube is going to try feeding you lowest common denominator junk. This is because it starts out knowing very little about you besides broad demographics. The more feedback you give it the less it falls back on this crutch until eventually you get solid recommendations. Every single bad recommendation is a hidden opportunity to tell Youtube to get that garbage out of your face.

And, yeah… in my experience this really works. If you click the buttons and make it a habit, you can get some really great stuff! As encouragement, I’ll share a selection from my home feed full of fresh videos relevant to my tastes. Even the topic bar is on point:

I’ll probably watch all 3 of these videos at some point, which I think indicates a pretty successful outcome. In fact, over the years, I’ve found hundreds of channels almost exclusively using the recommendation system. Even if you primarily stick to your subscription box, improving your recommendations can help you with building that out little by little.

(Note: I am deliberately avoiding the question of whether or not one should want an algorithm to intimately understand their interests because that’s a hard conversation and my soul has already long since been sold)