Tired of AI Slop on YouTube? Here's How to Reclaim Your Feed

The rise of "AI slop"—low-quality, often factually incorrect content generated by artificial intelligence—is becoming a significant source of frustration for many YouTube users. Videos with clickbait titles, like "7 Dangerous Places Carl Jung Says You Must Avoid," gain massive viewership despite being based on fabricated information. This trend pollutes the platform with misinformation, especially in educational categories like psychology, history, and science. In response, users are developing effective strategies to reclaim their feeds and ensure they're consuming content from credible, human sources.

Proactive Curation: Build Your Own Feed

The most recommended strategy is to shift from being a passive consumer of algorithm-driven recommendations to an active curator of your own content.

The Subscription-First Method: Instead of landing on the YouTube homepage, make it a habit to go directly to your 'Subscriptions' tab. By subscribing only to channels you trust and value, you create a pre-vetted, high-quality content stream, effectively bypassing the algorithm's often-unreliable suggestions.
Nuking the Algorithm: For a more radical but highly effective solution, you can disable the recommendation engine entirely. By going into your YouTube settings and turning off both 'Watch History' and 'Search History', you starve the algorithm of the data it needs to populate your homepage and shorts feed. Both will become blank, forcing you to rely exclusively on your subscriptions and direct searches for content you want to watch. This puts you in complete control of your viewing experience.

Reactive Measures: Train the Algorithm (Or Banish Offenders)

If you prefer to keep recommendations active, you can take deliberate steps to improve their quality. Every interaction you have on the platform sends a signal about what you want to see more or less of.

Signal Your Dislike: When you accidentally click on an AI-generated or low-quality video, don't just navigate away. Use the 'downvote' button to provide negative feedback.
Block and Delete: For a more permanent fix, immediately block the channel to prevent its content from ever appearing again. Furthermore, go into your watch history and delete the entry for that video. This removes the 'accidental watch' from the data set used to train your future recommendations.
Recognize Red Flags: Beyond platform features, developing media literacy is key. Be skeptical of videos with generic, listicle-style titles (e.g., "N things you must know about X"). This format has long been a staple of low-effort content farms, and AI has only made it easier to produce at scale. Unless you already trust the creator, approach such titles with caution.