Summary
- YouTube is testing a “Most Relevant” feed for select users, allowing them to see top content first.
- Opt-in feature may streamline viewing experience but may overlook small creators in favor of algorithm-recommended content.
- The future of YouTube content may become more formulaic if platform-wide change is implemented.
If you’ve spent any time at all on YouTube, you’ll know that the video-hosting site is always in a state of flux. Whether it’s the new desktop redesign from last week or the improved picture-in-picture functionality popping up in Europe last month, YouTube is always trying out something different. If you’re one of the lucky few, you might have seen YouTube’s latest quality-of-life update show up in the subscription feed on your phone. Instead of showing you a sequential feed of videos from channels you subscribe to, you can opt to see videos that YouTube deems “Most Relevant.”
YouTube is finally cracking down on third-party apps like ReVanced
Prepare to see error messages or increased buffer times if you’re using an app that blocks YouTube ads
Is YouTube killing the chronological feed?
This news comes directly from Google who says that this new functionality is rolling out to a “small percentage” of viewers. If your account made the cut, there will be a button or avatar labeled “Most Relevant” that you can tap on to put content from channels you watch and interact with the most at the top of your feed. For right now, this is a completely opt-in experience and the chronological feed will still be the default.
On the one hand, this is a welcome change because it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to subscriptions (I’ll unsubscribe later, what if the next video is a banger?). On the other hand, YouTube sucks at featuring quality content from small creators on its main feed and tends to over-recommend new genres that I’ve watched one time.
How to cancel YouTube Premium on Android, iOS, or on the website
You may cancel if you can tolerate a few ads
Another issue is the slow demise of the chronological feed across the internet. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook have all removed their chronological feeds as the default view, and every single one is worse off because of it. Many small YouTube creators are overlooked because they don’t precisely match what the algorithm happened to be pushing that week. This change threatens to make them disappear entirely.
In addition, YouTube has gotten more formulaic over the past few years. This is because content is made for the algorithm first and the viewer second. If this change is pushed out to the entire platform, it could herald the arrival of even more formulaic content designed to rise to the top of your subscription feed rather than entertaining you.
The sky probably isn’t falling
Or I could be overreacting! This limited test isn’t even a day old at this point, so we’ll just have to wait and see how YouTube implements it. And if you’re tired of looking at YouTube, take a gander at our guide on how to listen to YouTube videos with the screen off.
