Google Discover will now allow users to block entire channels from their recommendations, allowing users to more effectively curate featured videos on their feeds.
Honestly, this is a feature that I believe to be well overdue, and for good reason. Google’s Discover feed and its algorithm tend to ignore individual videos being swept aside by a user if the channel behind them continues to trend. If, for example, someone decides to do away with a Mr. Beast video in Discover, they are likely to regardless keep getting more videos by the same channel since the guy trends, like, every third day or so, even if all videos have a similar theme to them (guy spends a lot of money on something; results are surprising???). The Discover feed doesn’t delve into videos all too much or even all that often, so it’s just a little bit annoying if the videos that do show up are repetitive.
Google Discover is essentially a curated list of articles and the like surrounding current events and trending topics, which are delivered to users via platforms such as Chrome. It’s the list of articles that appears whenever someone opens the home page on Chrome, specifically. Typically, the list of articles is just that: headlines from different popular online e-mags, journals, websites, and even Reddit posts. However, the posts will occasionally include YouTube videos and Shorts, depending on just how successful and trendy the video at hand proves to be. Previously, users could self-curate their feeds by removing individual videos, and even articles, that they didn’t like. Discover allegedly will stop showing the content of a similar nature; however, as I’ve mentioned in the paragraph above, this doesn’t always work to full effect. That’s where the new addition of blocking out entire channels comes to the surface.
I’m all for allowing users more flexibility with curating their content feeds, and feedback from such users is a necessity for any news-delivery system akin to Discover. I hope we continue to get more and more curating tools of similar scope in the days and months to come. It’ll help make Discover more relevant and useful to individual users, and thus the Google community at large.
H/T: 9to5G.
Read next: Google Rolls Out Feature That Makes Judging Apps In The Play Store Easier
Honestly, this is a feature that I believe to be well overdue, and for good reason. Google’s Discover feed and its algorithm tend to ignore individual videos being swept aside by a user if the channel behind them continues to trend. If, for example, someone decides to do away with a Mr. Beast video in Discover, they are likely to regardless keep getting more videos by the same channel since the guy trends, like, every third day or so, even if all videos have a similar theme to them (guy spends a lot of money on something; results are surprising???). The Discover feed doesn’t delve into videos all too much or even all that often, so it’s just a little bit annoying if the videos that do show up are repetitive.
Google Discover is essentially a curated list of articles and the like surrounding current events and trending topics, which are delivered to users via platforms such as Chrome. It’s the list of articles that appears whenever someone opens the home page on Chrome, specifically. Typically, the list of articles is just that: headlines from different popular online e-mags, journals, websites, and even Reddit posts. However, the posts will occasionally include YouTube videos and Shorts, depending on just how successful and trendy the video at hand proves to be. Previously, users could self-curate their feeds by removing individual videos, and even articles, that they didn’t like. Discover allegedly will stop showing the content of a similar nature; however, as I’ve mentioned in the paragraph above, this doesn’t always work to full effect. That’s where the new addition of blocking out entire channels comes to the surface.
I’m all for allowing users more flexibility with curating their content feeds, and feedback from such users is a necessity for any news-delivery system akin to Discover. I hope we continue to get more and more curating tools of similar scope in the days and months to come. It’ll help make Discover more relevant and useful to individual users, and thus the Google community at large.
Read next: Google Rolls Out Feature That Makes Judging Apps In The Play Store Easier
