YouTube · Reviewed

Recommendations repeat watched videos and push unwanted content

Raised by 206 people over 17 years (2010–2026), in 16 of them.

What people report

2010-07
they don't cycle through the videos automatically (i.e., it's not passive) -from one video to the next, how do you find other content to watch?
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2020-07
YouTube will recommend a video that I've already watched all of it.
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2022-05
disable YouTube's Autoplay "feature" in almost every way that I possibly can
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2023-09
of course that does nothing to stop the recommendations so they keep popping up in my feed
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2026-11
YT constantly recommends me stuff from 3 years ago which I already watched, even with my highly curated account.
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Principle

Feedback (Norman)

People report that pressing 'not interested' or 'already watched' changes nothing they can see, as the same watched or unwanted videos keep coming back, so the system gives no evidence their input was registered or acted on.

A fix

When a viewer dismisses a video, remove it at once and say what will change, for example 'Fewer videos from this channel', with an undo option. Leave fully watched videos out of recommendations by default, add a settings page where people can review and edit these signals, and offer a per-video 'don't use for recommendations' toggle.

Grouping, principle and fix drafted with Claude and reviewed by Justusability. Counts are people whose comment Claude labelled a usability complaint about this issue; see Method for how, and its limits. Something wrong here?

All 215 source comments