YouTube is going to explain why it suggests certain videos

YouTube will briefly publish the underlying reason for the submission of videos that it presents to users as suggestions. Users are also given the option to prevent certain channels from appearing as suggestions any longer.

According to YouTube, the video platform is consistently getting feedback from users that they want more control over the videos that appear on the personalized front page and on ‘next’. As an extension of that, YouTube is going to make it somewhat clear to users why certain suggestions appear on the front page.

The platform regularly shows videos from channels that users have never watched, after which those viewers wonder what the suggestion is based on. This concerns videos that users with, according to YouTube, like and watch. From now on, YouTube will indicate the reason among those submitted videos with a single sentence, in the form of ‘Viewers of channel X also watch this channel.’ The feature will be available first to the iOS app, then to Android and the desktop.

If YouTube advises a channel that the viewer does not appreciate, they can indicate this later via the menu behind the three dots. There the option ‘Don’t recommend channel’ appears. This option is coming to the YouTube app on iOS and Android worldwide. The feature will appear on the desktop at a later date.

Finally, YouTube is going to give suggestions for videos based on keywords at the top of the front page. This side-scrolling list is personalized and also appears with the ‘Up Next’ videos list when the user swipes up with their finger. The lists will only appear for logged in English-speaking users of the Android app for now, but will come to iOS and desktop later, also in other languages.