YouTube’s algorithm appears to have lost its apparent functionality for some viewers, with several people stating that they have been presented with videos they already have watched. The problem seems to have started on Monday, the 25th of November in the evening and has since snowballed into a series of complaints on various social media platforms including Reddit. Users are saying that the algorithm is showing them content which is old and creating confusion to the recommendations given by the platform.
YouTube Recommendations Glitching for Some Users
People have complained the problem is apparent smearing several users, with some noting that sometimes, old videos keep on being suggested. The forgoing videos are old by current time standards and are not associated with users’ present watching behaviors. This glitch is annoying as it hampers the arrival of brand-new informative posts.
Apart from repeat videos viewed by people, some are getting play list that contains new music or new videos of types which have never engaged with. This new trend is causing confusion among many users who believed the algorithm used to personalize the recommendations based on their tastes and preferences would offer recommendations good enough, now feels the algorithm is not doing that well.
They say others are reporting that the glitch also involves video suggestions from obscure or lesser-known channels. This has led to some users wondering whether YouTube is unable to correctly measure how interested viewers are or whether there is something about the flaw that has changed the way in which YouTube presents content generated by lesser-known content providers.
To this date, YouTube has not responded to this problem, and its users do not have adequate answers to the problem. The recommendations do not change even if users start setting preferences or marking content as ‘Not Interested’ in the application, making many users complain that their opinions are ignored.
YouTube Recommendation Glitch: Old Videos and Unwanted Podcasts
After the evening of November 25, a lot of users of the YouTube website began to complain, a serious problem with the recommendations. Onewellspoke, two previous studies claimed that from 90% to 99% of the suggested videos were irrelevant, including clips that the user had eagerly viewed years ago. Such operation of services has led to confusion and the viewers are wasting their feeds with irrelevant old posts.
Some users also reported what they described as a kind of shift in the recommendations they encountered once they had been using the system for a while. Instead of giving users new, relevant recommendations, the algorithm is now showing playlists from unengaged channels, and half of them are podcasts. Even more bizarre, a good number of the affected viewers assert they do not listen to podcasts, but recommendations of such continue to show up.
However, YouTube has not given any official explanation regarding the problem despite posting a high number of complaints. Interestingly, it appears to have an impact on a vast pool of users and leads to wondering whether a change in the recommendation algorithm recently implemented might have caused it. In any case, I could not find an official statement from YouTube explaining the reason in question.
But one of the more annoying features of this bug is that users cannot change or amend their recommendations. The problem becomes even worse especially when you select the ‘Not Interested’ or ‘Don’t Recommend Channel’ options, as the system only present more videos which perhaps are after years of their production. This makes users feel helpless in order to alter their feeds back to normalcy.
Currently, they have not been able to provide an estimated time within which the problem will be solved. It remains a problem to this day, and Google-owned YouTube has not said when the recommendation algorithm could be reliable again. People are still reporting about it in the hope of getting the problem solved sometime in the near future.
YouTube Users Struggle with Broken Recommendations
Unfortunately, it appears there is no perfect workaround for attempting to shape YouTube’s flawed recommendations algorithm. A user complained that even when they opt out of videos they are not interested in or dislike the whole channel, similar stale content continued to be fed to his interface. This implies that all the usual tools of organizing recommendations are not as effective as they should be.
One more thing noticed by several users and mentioned in the comments is that many of the broken recommendations are the videos from unknown channels or the channels with little to no subscribers. Cohort 2: It appears that these clips do not pertain to these interests at all using YouTube and raises questions on whether algorithm is dysfunctional in interpreting viewing patterns or YouTube lacks standard or relevant content.
While it seems that free users are commonly affected by the glitch, there are no reports showing that paid You-tube subscribers are also experiencing the same thing. This has left some users asking if the issue can be restricted with specific accounts types or if the problem is entirely scriptural. Still, the company has not done it to account for the above-mentioned disparity.
As of now, YouTube has not come out somewhere to recommend the problem making users annoyed and helplessness about it. However, till date, there is no update on the part of authorities – neither has an official statement been released regarding the problem, nor has there been a tentative timeline to when a solution can be expected. This absence of communication has only compounded problems and dissatisfaction of the viewers concerned.
As the problem continues, users are left to guess what led to it, and what might work to correct it. So, watching videos on YouTube, there is only a hope for getting an official reply or an announcement on the improvement of the financiall recommendation algorithms and pins.
