I think avoiding algorithms completely is tricky. Even things like podcast guests or suggestions from friends feel as manipulable but in a human way.

What works for me is checking if people I respect in a domain also blog or link elsewhere. That is how I found Peter Norvig's blog... or maybe it was on hacker news.

▲

whycome 2 days ago | parent [-]

Veritasium is another popular creator that would overlap with the HN audience. It deliberately uses different thumbnails and titles when videos are new. It's a human (afaik) using the A/B suggestions in the back end. So it's like a second degree AI manipulation.

▲

JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | parent [-]

That crap—together with the nonsensical kinetic weapon video—genuinely turned me off his channel. It clowned him up in a way that felt gimmicky, almost aimed for children versus adults.

	▲	zrobotics 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I can't put my finger on what exactly I find distasteful about his channel, but his content is just off-putting to me. The closest I can describe it is that it annoys me in the same way that shows on discovery or the history channel did 15-20 years ago before I quit watching cable TV. It just seems like it's over produced and glossing over details, maybe it's trying to aim fore a more general audience and that is what hurts it.