YouTube is testing a new feature called Your Custom Feed, which allows users to customize their home feed based on text queries, rather than relying solely on the algorithm, likes, and the «Not Interested» button.
YouTube is testing a new feature called Your Custom Feed, which allows users to customize their home feed based on text queries, rather than relying solely on the algorithm, likes, and the «Not Interested» button.
As TechCrunch reports, selected participants in the experiment now have a «Your Custom Feed» option next to the Home button on the home page. By clicking on it, you can enter a short description of what you want to see in your feed: from «home cooking» to «explanatory physics videos.» Based on these prompts, the service rebuilds recommendations and tries to quickly clean the feed of random topics that the algorithm once «picked up.»
The feature is intended to give people a simple way to «reload» their home screen without having to click through each video and hide channels. Instead of having to fix the consequences of a one-night stand with children’s cartoons or accidentally clicking on trends, the user can formulate what interests them right now and have the recommendation system adapt to that request.
Your Custom Feed is currently available to a small group of users, and YouTube hasn’t revealed any plans for a full-scale launch. The company is testing how often to update such a feed, whether to keep it as a separate mode alongside the classic Home, and how to combine active queries with automatic algorithm suggestions.
User-controlled feeds are already being tested by other social networks. Threads is experimenting with recommendation settings, and X is working on allowing tagging by its AI chatbot Grok to moderate content. Large platforms are moving away from the «algorithm knows best» model to a scenario where people have some control over what they see.
YouTube’s long-standing criticism of intrusive recommendations, information bubbles, and the difficulty of cleaning up your feed has been the backdrop for these changes. If the Your Custom Feed test is successful, the service’s homepage will more accurately reflect users' interests.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how YouTube began implementing a deepfake detection tool that helps content creators find videos with unauthorized substitution of their face or voice and quickly demand the removal of such videos.
