iCast · Innovative Studios
How Recommendations Work
Effective November 4, 2026 · Provided by Alessandro Mori and the Innovative Studios team
This page explains, in plain language, how iCast decides which videos to show you on Home, in Up next, in Trending and in Search, and how you can change it. It fulfils our transparency obligations under Article 27 of the EU Digital Services Act.
1. How the Discovery Engine works
For every view of Home, the engine first collects candidate videos from several sources: new uploads from channels you subscribe to; videos that viewers with similar tastes watched to the end ("people who finished A also finished B"); videos whose topics match your interests; other videos from creators you engage with; what's trending now; and fresh uploads from new creators. It then gives every candidate a score and arranges the results to keep your feed varied.
2. Main parameters
| Signal | How it's used |
|---|---|
| Watch time and completion | The strongest signal. Finishing a long video counts much more than clicking it; leaving in the first seconds counts slightly negatively. |
| Likes, dislikes, comments, saves | Positive actions increase similar recommendations; a dislike removes the video and lowers similar ones. |
| Subscriptions | Recent uploads from your subscriptions get a boost, especially in their first 48 hours. |
| Recent searches | Briefly increase related topics; their influence fades twice as fast as watch history. |
| "Not interested" / "Don't recommend channel" | Removes the video or the whole channel from your recommendations. |
| Quality | Average share of the video people watch, like-to-dislike ratio (statistically adjusted for small numbers), how often people choose the video when shown it, and engagement. |
| Freshness and popularity | Newer and more-watched videos get a modest boost. |
| Diversity and fairness | We limit how many videos from the same channel appear together, avoid near-duplicate topics side by side, and reserve some positions for promising new videos from smaller creators. |
| Language | Videos in the language you usually watch are slightly preferred. |
Your activity loses influence over time: it counts half as much after about two weeks. Trending is calculated from the speed at which videos are gaining views, likes and comments in the last 48 hours. Search combines how well a video's title, hashtags, tags, channel name and description match your query with the quality and freshness signals above.
3. What we never do
- We don't accept payment to rank content higher.
- We don't use sensitive personal data (health, religion, political opinions, sexual orientation) to recommend content.
- We don't show age-restricted videos to signed-out viewers or users under 18.
4. How you can change your recommendations
- Switch off personalisation in Settings → Privacy. Home and Up next will then be ranked only by quality, freshness and popularity — no profiling.
- Pause or clear your watch and search history in History or Settings → Privacy.
- Use Not interested or Don't recommend channel from the ⋮ menu on any video.
- Remove individual videos from your history.
- Every recommendation on Home shows a short reason, such as "From your subscriptions" or "Based on your interests".