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About six months or so ago YouTube started suggesting me videos about "Aliens". These are home made videos from folk that seem to see "aliens" everywhere: e.g., white dots in photos of the Moon mean the satellite is "crammed with aliens", Mimas is the death start from Star Wars and similar kind of nonsense.

I understand YouTube suggests content considering the my watched history. However, the vast majority of videos I watch are either on sports or politics. The only remote explanation would be a subscription to the PBS Space Time channel, but that is a science tube.

The past month or so I started opening these videos just to click on the thumb down icon and go away, hoping it would instruct YouTube to stop with this nonsense. Apparently this only made it worse and now I permanently have 2 or 3 "Aliens" videos right at the top of the home page in the Recommended section.

Is there any way to teach YouTube to stop suggesting this sort of videos?

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  • On your YouTube home page you can over over a video and I believe there is a "not interested" option to be found - this may just be on suggested lists or channels though. Do you have kids?
    – JaredT
    Jun 7, 2016 at 20:07
  • "The past month or so I started opening these videos just to click on the thumb down icon and go away, hoping it would instruct YouTube to stop with this nonsense." This most likely made the alien invasion worse - by visiting a video's YouTube page, the video starts playing and YouTube counts that as a 'view'. If you keep 'viewing' alien videos, more will be suggested Jun 7, 2016 at 20:52
  • You are asking an off-topic question. Web services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are off topic. See On Topic. Try Web Applications.
    – DavidPostill
    Jun 7, 2016 at 21:39
  • There is a youtube tag with 460 questions, that is probably why the search engine brought me here. There is already an accepted answer, you can close this question as it is. Jun 8, 2016 at 6:39

2 Answers 2

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YouTube mainly ends up recommending the Search History and Watch History on a user's Channel. If you reset/clear both of these, you can pretty much reset your recommendations back to regular recommendations after which you'll be able to see only the Trendy Videos on the Home Page.

srch

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I get suggested channels and sets of videos recommended to me. You can find a [x] close icon to the upper right of those rows. I find this causes those suggestions to stop coming.

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  • This might work too, although these videos mostly appear in the Recommended row. Clearing the history is just more convenient. Jun 8, 2016 at 6:35

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