Ask HN: Is there ANY way to filter out unrelated videos from YouTube search?

6 pointsPythagoRascal3y ago3 comments

I recently started to notice how more and more videos in the results of a YouTube search have absolutely nothing to do with the search term. It looks like these videos are injected recommendations based on watch behaviour or even just trending videos.

Here is a real example: https://i.imgur.com/Vu9V6jg.png

First two videos are relevant to the search, third is relevant to my other watch interests and fourth just seems to be a trending video. This is AFTER already filtering out all the "Similar videos" or "Recommended for you" shelves that are normally also present in search results.

The frustrating thing is that these videos don't seem to have any distinguishing attributes, classes or tags that could be used to build a uBlock filter. I've even tried to see if there is any data in the requested JS that could help indicate if a video is injected, but no luck so far.

Has anyone had any success filtering out this crap?

3 comments

normhill3y ago

You can use advanced filters, for example:

https://youtube.com/results?search_query=%22jailbreak%22+int...

PythagoRascalOP3y ago

I didn't know these worked on YouTube as well and not only on Google. Thank you! I guess this will have to do for now :/

musicale3y ago

Youtube would be a lot better if you could filter out related and unrelated videos.

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