YouTube users report their recommendations are suddenly a total mess

YouTube users on r/YouTube are reporting issues with their recommendations. People are saying irrelevant videos are overtaking their feeds, abandoned "Watch Later" lists, or live streams from random channels they’ve never subscribed to.

One Reddit user, u/Whhheat, mentioned how their homepage went haywire in a span of 20 minutes, filled with content from channels with almost no subscribers. Several others reported similar experiences: subscription content disappearing, autoplay behaving unpredictably, and Shorts completely vanishing from the main page. For instance, u/Spiritual_Basil2832 found that scrolling far enough down the homepage eventually showed content from their subscriptions, but the top of the page was cluttered with unrelated suggestions.

This sudden change could mean YouTube is testing updates to its recommendation algorithm. If you've been around YouTube long enough, you know it frequently tweaks its algorithm to enhance user experience, though not always with the best results.

YouTube’s algorithm messing up isn’t new. Over time, there have been plenty of instances where things went completely off track. One major instance was the platform's struggles with its content moderation algorithms, which often failed to filter harmful or misleading content effectively. For example, inappropriate videos made it into YouTube Kids, causing backlash from parents.

More recently, YouTube and other platforms like TikTok have faced scrutiny from the European Commission under the Digital Services Act for not being transparent about how their recommendation systems work. This includes concerns about promoting harmful content or amplifying misinformation. Regulators are now pressuring these platforms to reveal more about how their algorithms mitigate risks like election manipulation and mental health issues for minors.

If you’ve been affected by this, it might just be part of a testing phase YouTube is running, and the recommendations should hopefully go back to normal. Until there’s an official explanation, your best bet might be scrolling way down your homepage to find something familiar—or just turning to your subscription tab for now.