The term “enshitification” is overused. It’s tossed around any time a product or service changes in a distasteful way, regardless of the reason behind that change. The term “slop” has similarly lost its edge, now used to deride bad or low-effort content, regardless of whether it was generated by AI or not. While I mourn these terms, I believe that when held tightly to their original definitions they describe perfectly what’s happened to YouTube and the majority of its content. The “algorithm” (an unfortunate term used to describe how a platform decides which content to recommend) is getting worse. We will likely never know the actual machinations of YouTube’s algorithm (aside from some vague ideas), but we can safely say that it, at least subjectively (but arguably objectively as well), sucks. I haven’t subjected myself to YouTube’s recommendations for a long time now, but I gather that these days it’s far more likely to promote popular conspiracy theories, misinformation, lazy content, TV clips, or genuine AI slop than it is to recommend content that any sane person would actually desire to watch.

In fairness, the decline in quality is not entirely YouTube’s fault–creators have been finding ways to exploit the system from the beginning. Inaccurate titles, rage-bait, misleading thumbnails, and low-effort content have been steadily spreading their diseased tendrils through the platform for as long as YouTube has existed. Despite apparent efforts by YouTube to crack down on the practice, unleashing a torrent of low-effort videos has become vastly more profitable than releasing less frequent high-effort content. The “AI side hustle” has become an entire industry on its own, with entire YouTube channels dedicated to teaching future grifters how to churn out their own slop and distribute it for money. And while these problems are obviously fueled by unscrupulous “creators” whose only goal is to extract as much money as they can from the platforms they’re infesting, the methods they employ are driven and enabled by corporate algorithms that completely align with their profit-driven motives.

Unfortunately the problem on YouTube goes beyond drowning out quality content with a constant flood of low-effort trash and slop. High-effort content is actively punished by vague and confusing content policies, often rendering videos that took months or years to create completely profitless and unseen–even by a majority of users who explicitly subscribed to their creators. Draconian copyright tools allow greedy corporations and other malicious actors to actively sabotage creators by stealing their income, removing their videos from the platform, or in some cases having their channels deleted entirely. This all happens with YouTube’s consent, which notoriously provides little to no recourse for creators to fight back without further risking their livelihood. If you’ve ever heard someone use idiotic terms like “unalived,” “corn star,” “seggs,” and other “algospeak” phrases you can blame overzealous content filters used by video platforms–filters that are explicitly designed to root out and punish discussions (including those educational in nature) of mental health, suicide, and other topics deemed “unfriendly” by equally overzealous advertisers. Despite mass confusion among YouTubers around what is permissible and what will result in demonetization, the actual message from YouTube to its creators seems increasingly clear: Putting more than a trivial amount of effort into any single video, and making videos about all but the most banal and inoffensive topics will be unprofitable and, in many cases, actively punished.

Add to all of that YouTube’s comical initiative to restrict content from users whose viewing habits have been deemed too childlike by AI, and now you have some cohort of adult viewers who, probably without their knowledge and definitely without their consent, cannot even see certain videos in their timelines. YouTube has handed the role of your Mommy over to AI, giving it control over which videos you’re allowed to see based on how mature you appear to it. For a creator, getting tossed into the “mature” bucket by that AI means a huge slice of your potential audience can vanish, and that audience won’t even know it. Given all of that, it’s no wonder that the vast majority of new content being uploaded to and recommended by YouTube right now is vanilla, low-effort, regurgitated AI slop scraped from the bottom of the bottom-most barrels.

The situation for content consumers on YouTube is, at the time of this writing, not completely unsalvageable. Nothing can be done about good content creators being cowed into mediocrity or embarrassing themselves with algospeak due to a fear of unknowable policies and lurking copyright trolls–that problem is fully baked into the platform and wholly unavoidable. But we do have tools to mitigate other problems, and in this article I hope to inform you of those tools and their pros and cons, as well as suggest some other alternatives to consider. While there are technically complex solutions out there–browser plugins and alternative frontends, for example–the things I discuss here are less technical and should be achievable by anyone capable of logging into YouTube and clicking a few links.

Step 1: Disable History

This is the most important step in your fight against the algorithm and AIs. The result will be the transformation of your YouTube home feed from something that looks like this:

Into something that looks like this:

Behold the glory of an empty home feed, completely free from the clutter of AI-suggested brain-rot. By disabling your history you can stop YouTube from serving up only the blandest advertiser-friendly clickbait that makes them the most money, and you can sleep soundly knowing that your deep-dive into the worlds of My Little Pony and Skibidi Toilet no longer come with the risk of Mommy AI deciding that your brain is underdeveloped and hiding arbitrary content from you for your own good.

The primary downside of disabling your YouTube history–far outweighed by the benefits–is that YouTube will no longer indicate which videos you’ve already watched, and you can no longer automatically resume partially watched videos from where you left off. You’ll have to keep track of that information in your head. I initially found this to be burdensome, but after living with my history disabled for a number of years it has become second nature.

Note that I’m writing this guide in October 2025, so if you’re reading it much later than that there’s a good chance this information may no longer be relevant. Given YouTube’s track record I wouldn’t be surprised if they remove the ability to disable history at some point. Hopefully, if you’re reading this in the future, it’s to learn about the morbid history of online content in the dark ages that preceded the utopian society you currently inhabit.

To disable your history, visit myaccount.google.com, and make sure you’re logged into the same account that you use to watch YouTube. Click the “Data & Privacy” link in the sidebar, look for the section on that page labeled “History Settings,” and click the “YouTube History” link. (I would recommend disabling all history here–not only YouTube–to prevent Google from training on, selling, or otherwise exposing your history across the wider Googleverse, but YouTube is my primary focus here.)

If your YouTube history is already listed as “Paused,” then you’re done–at some point you already made the wise decision to disable it. Otherwise, you should see a button to turn it off. Click it, and then confirm your decision in any popups that follow.

The next thing you should do is delete any existing history that Google has already saved. One of the popups may have already prompted you to do that, or alternatively you can click the “Manage history” link from the YouTube history settings.

Whether you go the popup route or through manage history, make sure you select the “All time” option when asked how much history you want to delete.

Bear in mind that deleting your watch history does exactly that–once you pull that trigger you’ll lose the ability to distinguish a video that you have already seen from one you haven’t, and any partially watched videos will no longer remember where you left off. Personally I think it’s a small sacrifice to make, but you need to decide for yourself whether that’s a dealbreaker or not.

Step 2: Smash that Subscribe Button

After completing the above process, you can confirm it’s working by visiting YouTube while logged in. Instead of your eyes being violated by a grotesque array of AI-generated kittens and crying celebrity faces, you should be greeted by a zen-like blank page, interrupted only by a desperate plea from Google to turn your history back on so that they can continue to harvest your data and Mommy AI can decide whether you need to be sheltered from videos made for the grown-ups.

The question you are probably asking yourself at this point is how, now that the home feed is empty, are you supposed to actually find videos you want to watch on YouTube? The answer is that you will use a little-known secret that Google probably wishes they could get rid of: the subscriptions page.

You know how YouTube creators are always asking you to subscribe? And how doing that results in a theoretical non-zero chance that Mommy AI might put new videos from those creators in your feed? Now that you’ve escaped the algorithm, you should update your YouTube bookmark to go straight to your subscriptions page. This page will show every new video by every creator you’ve subscribed to in chronological order of their release. No matter how badly YouTube wants to sink a video, as long as you’ve subscribed it’ll show up here. Did a creator fall to the dark side and convert their channel into an AI-voiceover stock footage slop farm? Unsubscribe and you’ll never see another video from them on this page ever again. Did someone link you a video from a new creator that you fell in love with? Subscribe to them and every new video they post (as well as their full back catalog) will integrate into this feed. Decided you don’t like that creator after all? Unsubscribe and all of those videos will vanish from sight just as quickly. Want to deep dive into a specific creator? Find them in the sidebar under “Subscriptions,” click them, and you’ll be presented with every video ever posted by that single creator in chronological order.

YouTube will still occasionally recommend new creators through their “what to watch next” feature when you’ve finished watching a video, but you may want to explore other avenues to discover new creators as well–join some forums where people share links to their favorite videos, use YouTube’s search feature to explore new content, and never worry about how accidentally clicking one video about Labubus will suddenly convert your entire feed into an endless nightmarish hellscape of creepy fluffy rabbit monsters for the rest of eternity. YouTube can’t ram its favored content down your throat anymore. YouTube can’t stop you. Now you are in charge of what you see. Now you are the algorithm.

Step 3 (Optional): Pay for Alternatives

As mentioned earlier, disabling history and curating your own feed through subscriptions solves YouTube controlling what you see (and are allowed to see) on the platform. It does nothing to address the gradually increasing hostility, indifference, and disdain that YouTube shows towards its own creators who make high-effort content. One step towards a potential solution is to do something even more radical–spend at least some of the time you would otherwise be watching YouTube on alternative platforms instead. Ideally platforms that charge you money–business models in which creators earn money directly from their viewers allow those creators to escape the creativity-numbing demands of prudish advertisers like the ones turning YouTube into an AI-fueled cringefest.

Nebula is a fantastic platform that hosts original content as well as many channels you may already know from YouTube. By following a creator on Nebula instead of YouTube, you’ll often get uncensored versions of their videos as well as exclusive content that they only post to Nebula. As an added perk, a subscription to Nebula also includes a catalog of both exclusive podcasts, and ad-free versions of podcasts you may already be listening to with ads through other platforms.

Dropout is another great service hosting an ever-growing trove of comedy series (and also tabletop RPG stuff if you’re a weirdo who’s into that kind of thing).

You can also seek out creators on Patreon. (Although since you subscribe to each creator independently over there I could see the cost spiraling out of control if you go too crazy. Their app also isn’t great. I support a handful of creators over there but typically don’t consume any actual content through that platform.)

The only way we can help our beloved creators escape the mountains of slop, infuriating restraints, and constant threats looming over them on YouTube, is to support better alternatives. I’ve listed a few above, I’m sure there are others out there, and hopefully even more feasible competitors crop up over time. Even if you’ve decided that the downsides of disabling your YouTube history are too much, you can still partially escape the algorithm by choosing to spend at least a little bit of your video-consuming time on alternative platforms. Give them a shot!

None of the links in this article are affiliate links, and no service has sponsored or endorsed this article. I’m just sharing some of the services that I personally use and enjoy and think that someone who’d make it this far in an AI- and YouTube-hostile article may find interesting.