Feeds Full of Junk? How to Reset Your Social Media Algorithms (2024)

Just about everything you see in your social media feeds these days is governed by algorithms. Think of them as the digital rules and intelligence that social media companies use to deliver a steady stream of interesting content to your eyeballs. They're invisible conductors that take note of everything you like, click, or comment on and use that information to serve up more content you're likely to engage with.

Algorithms are far from perfect, though. Sometimes, they pick up on the wrong signals and start to stuff your feed with things you don't care about. If you find yourself increasingly uninterested in the posts you see in your feed, it's often possible to reset those algorithms. If you do it correctly, this can completely change what your social networks show when you log in.

Here’s how to take back control of your social media.

TikTok

Tiktok, the addictive mobile video app that everyone (except the government) loves can get stale. That powerful “For You” page (FYP) may be displaying things you’re not interested in.

There are a couple of different ways you can fix this. If it’s just the occasional video in the FYP that you don’t like, hold your thumb down on it, and in the popup that appears, select Not Interested. That’ll help, but won't necessarily have a huge impact on your feed unless you habitually flag videos you're not a fan of for a week or so.

The problem is a lot of that feed is based on videos you may have previously liked (when you click the heart icon on a video and it turns red, that’s a “like.”) You can manually go in and edit your like history by heading to your Profile page, tapping on the heart icon, and then tapping on any video you think could be contributing to the bad suggestions (this un-like will make the heart go back to white).

If you dislike the majority of the suggestions you're seeing and just want to nuke the whole thing and start over, you can do that too. Thankfully, TikTok makes a full refresh easy. On the mobile app, click your Profile icon at the bottom, hit the three-line hamburger icon at the top, then follow the path Settings and Privacy > Content Preferences > Refresh Your For You Feed > Continue. It will ask you to confirm, tell you that you are refreshed, and offer up a one-question survey on why you did it (in case you were triggered by something you saw).

(Credit: TikTok/PCMag)

Remember, your algorithmically curated feed will still be based on things you like and people you follow (among other things), so the FYP may feel the same again after a few months.

To get a full reset, you can unfollow everyone in your Following list (click Profile > Following) and start over. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to do this to everyone you follow at once, so you'll have to unfollow everyone individually. Just be warned: Some users have reported that you can potentially be shadowbanned if you unfollow more than 200 accounts per day. So if you care about how many views your TikToks get, keep that in mind.

According to one YouTuber, the workaround is to go toSettings andPrivacy > Report a Problem,then search for an issue like “following,” and when asked to report a problem, tell them you want to unfollow all users... TikTok will remove them for you, probably, in a day or two. You can also use this to get rid of people following you, if it turns out the majority of followers are bots or worse.

Optionally, create a new account. TikTok doesn’t care. It knows you’re probably not going anywhere. Until the government(s) shut them down.

YouTube

YouTube feeds you content based on what you watch, search for, and subscribe to. As YouTube says on some pages (accessible below), “Keeping your history makes YouTube more personal.” But familiarity can breed contempt.

First, reset your Watch History. On the mobile app, tap your name, then click the Cog icon at the top to go to Settings. Go to Manage All History.

(Credit: YouTube)

From here, you have a few options. You likely have Auto-Delete (Off) set up—click that, and you can tell YouTube to delete the tracked history of anything older than 36 months, 18 months, or 3 months. The shorter the time frame, the bigger the reset to your suggestions will be.

Alternatively, click where it says DELETE with a down arrow to access a menu to delete what you’ve seen today, in a custom range of time, or everything for all time. That final one is the nuclear option. Your suggestions will be totally fresh.

While here, click the Saving Your YouTube History link to change what YouTube saves. You may not want it to save searches because you may look for some wacky stuff. Or set it to turn off any YouTube history saving whatsoever. Scroll down the page to YouTube Customize Your Feed Feedback and click Delete to get rid of videos you specifically picked for your home feed in the past.

(On the desktop, click your avatar at the upper right and select Your Data in YouTube. Scroll down to YouTube Watch History and toggle the On button to Off so your history storage is paused. Click Manage your YouTube Watch History to access the abovementioned menus, like Auto-Delete.)

Remember, clicking “Not Interested” under select videos can also impact the algorithm.

For a genuinely full reset, unsubscribe to every YouTube channel you follow. On mobile, click Subscriptions at the bottom, then click All at the top, and you’ll see the full list. Click the bell icon to the right of each for a menu that includes Unsubscribe. (On Desktop, use Subscriptions> Manage to get to the list with the menus.)

To obliterate all your subscriptions, visit pnuk.co/unsubscribe_all. From there, you can get to the Chrome plugin that the site says doesn’t work, but the reviews and my testing show it does. It will take you to your https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels page, where you can remove each sub, step by step. After that, delete the plug-in. (If the plug-in isn’t working, a workaround on that page will help you.)

Facebook

Facebook's main display is called the Feed (it used to be referred to more as the “News Feed”but Facebook doesn’t like news). It features updates, photos, videos, and more from people, Pages, and groups you follow. Facebook’s algorithm ranks posts based on what it believes you’ll like.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to adjust the Facebook Feed. Click your avatar profile pic at the upper right on the desktop and go to Settings and Privacy > Feed. You’ll see options here to manage your favorites (people/groups you want to see the most), unfollows (people you don’t want to dump, but don’t want to see as much of), snoozes (people you temporarily want to unfollow...it is an election year, after all), and reconnect (it lets you turn off unfollows).

(Credit: Facebook)

You can also opt to avoid looking at Facebook's main page. Go right to Feeds (via the left-hand navigation), and then you can view only the Favorites, Friends, Groups, or Pages you want to see.

As you use Facebook daily, be sure to perform hides, snoozes, and unfollows on posts as you encounter them to "train" the algorithm and steer it toward the kinds of content you actually want to see.

You also can and should go into Facebook Ad Preferences and change things so you can impact the advertising in your Feed. You can also do this with ads as they pop up. Click the X to hide an ad immediately, or use the three-dot menu to hide or report it. You can also limit advertising topics you see by going to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Account Center > Ad Preferences > Customize ads; click “See All” next to Ad Topics.

You can use Page Moderation to block certain words or phrases so they don’t appear, at least in the comments. Go to Settings > Followers and Public Content and find the listing for Hide comments containing specific words. You choose the list of words to block.

Since everything you see on Facebook is tied entirely to who you friend and follow, a complete reset would require you to unfriend everyone. Starting a new profile is more manageable. This is also pretty easy—click your profile pic, and you’ll see a button that says See all profiles. In the following menu, it shows + Create new profile or Page. A personal profile is just for individuals, but you can make a new one to get a fresh, clean feed. A page is more for a business or organization, that multiple people can control. No matter what you create, you can easily switch back and forth between the profiles/pages.

(Credit: Facebook)

Instagram

Instagram is part of Meta, just like Facebook, so many of the same rules we listed above apply. For example, the Ad Preferences/Ad Topics are pretty much the same. Access them by clicking the three-line hamburger menu, going to Settings, and then, under Account Center, clicking Ad Preferences.

Again, there’s no direct way to reset the algorithm, but you can manipulate things by clicking the three-dot menu on posts to set the person as an unfollow or to add to favorites. Click into the account of someone you see, and on the Following menu, you can add a person as Close Friend, Favorite, Mute (Posts and/or Stories),Restrict (which limits interaction without a complete block), or Unfollow. Under Settings, you’ll find Muted accounts, Blocked accounts, Close Friends, and other lists you can change as desired.

The best reset is to open a new account. You can do that by logging out of Insta and creating a new user profile. After that, log in to either account, go to Settings > Account Center again, click Accounts > Add Account, and log into the second one. You can link the two accounts (or even a Facebook account) and switch between them at will. Just remember, if you follow all the same people on the new account, it’ll be a lot like the previous one.

Threads

Threads (another Meta property) will display a For You feed, or just posts from people you’re following (plus stuff you’ve Liked or Saved).

On the For You, click the three-dot menu and mark a post as not interested, mute, block, or report a poster. That’ll give you some more control of what you see.

If you go to Settings via the little two-line menu on the desktop version, you’ll see tabs for Privacy, and at the bottom, it has a link to Blocked profiles—click and it takes you to the Instagram blocked accounts page for your shared account (if you’ve got Threads, you’ve got Insta, and vice versa).

There’s also a setting for Hidden words so that you can skip any posts or replies that come in with words, phrases, or emojis you’d prefer to avoid. Add them, separated by commas, to make a blocked-word list.

(Credit: Threads)

X (Twitter)

Twitter gives you so little control over your feed that, if you want to reset the type of content that the platform serves you, your best best is to start a totally new account. If that's a bit too drastic for you, can try to adjust your existing feed by going to Settings & Privacy > Privacy and Safety > Content You See. This will let you uncheck topics and interests the service believes you’re into. Sadly, you can’t uncheck them all at once. Also, under Privacy and Safety, scroll down to Ads Preferences, and uncheck all that.

When using the service, click the 3-dot ellipsis menu on any ads you don’t like to block them. Same with anyone you follow that you’ve lost interest in. If you want to really get rid of everyone you follow to start fresh, go to Following and click the Following button (it’ll turn to a red Unfollow) next to every name to unfollow; this will take a while if there are a lot of them. If you don't want to do it manually, there’s an extension for Chrome called X (Twitter) Mass Unfollow.

LinkedIn

Microsoft’s social network for businesspeople (or those looking for work) does a pretty good job of just showing you the people you follow, but likes to sneak in a few ads based on what it thinks you like. Under your profile, pick Settings & Privacy > Advertising Data > Interests and traits to uncheck anything you’re not into. Or turn them all off...but of course, then your ads are less relevant. In fact, go through all the “Data collected on LinkedIn” and “Third-party data” entries. If you turn them all off, you’ll get a feed that’s totally new, albeit probably irrelevant.