Keep in mind that when you open YouTube from a blank history, you're not seeing what most people see when they're on youtube. In fact, due to their personalizat

Keep in mind that when you open YouTube from a blank history, you're not seeing what most people see when they're on youtube. In fact, due to their personalization algorithm, I doubt that there really is such a thing as a typical YouTube user. A quick web search suggests that there are 2 billion MAU on the platform, with 73% of US adults using it (roughly 180 million people) [0]. Opening YouTube from a private tab in the Midwestern US, I see a range of recommended videos published over the past five years, with about 1-100 million views each, most of them between 20 and fifty million views. This content is all largely inoffensive, clickbaity, and in-line with what you might expect from a publication like Buzzfeed, or viral content in the 'tens. These videos aren't the fastest growing, in fact it given their view:age ratio they've mostly peaked, so they were likely selected to appeal to the broadest swathe of the population possible, in order to kickstart user engagement. Even assuming this content is only seen by Americans, the most popular videos presented have only been seen by fewer than half the platform's users. Interspersed among the cute animal videos, the movie ads, the top n lists, and late-night TV compilations, there seems to be a selection of niche content which could be used to begin sorting you onto different user buckets. Sports videos, gaming channels, indie animated shorts, youtube poops, some Spanish content, etc. The trending tab seems even less representative of the userbase. Its engagement is in the hundreds of thousands, to maybe a couple million over the course of a few days, with notable exceptions being a few music videos, and a recent episode of JRE. I work with a lot of technically and "high culturally" illiterate people. A few that would be truly considered lowest common denominator. Not too many of them are clamoring to see the latest music video, or gushing over that Minions movie ad that YouTube thinks a new user might want to see. Nobody really gets on YouTube just to watch top ten cute animal videos unless they're really high. Videogame videos? Certainly, but there's a huge variety in those. A lot of using YouTube to learn new skills, or view product reviews. Not everybody's after the same kind of high brow content in niche x. In fact, they're likely after relevant, intelligent content that you don't even consider exists assuming they're older than 17. There's just too much variety in the population for that. But sooner or later everybody watches a movie trailer, or a music video, or a fall compilation, or a top ten list that fits their fancy. Their typical view? Not likely. But it's something everyone will probably watch. So that's what YouTube's going to show an unknown user. If you're disheartened by what you see, don't be. Just because everybody watches schlock doesn't mean nobody's watching in-depth, intelligent content. I'd wager most are. [0] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/ [1] https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-adults-live-usa-b830ecdfb6047660 https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-adults-live-usa-b8...