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YouTube Stories appearing for non-subscribers in YouTube for Android’s ‘Home’ feed

Last year, YouTube began rolling out its Stories vertical video format to more creators. The Google company is now surfacing YouTube Stories in the Home feed and even recommending accounts that users don’t follow.

Given the algorithmic nature of the Home feed, the carousel of Stories does not consistently appear and will occasionally disappear with users unable to manually recall it. In my case, I was shown five YouTube channels that had stories. Notably, I only follow two out of the five accounts.

This might be surprising on other social media networks, but given that the Home feed frequently shows videos from accounts that are not followed this is par for the course. Users can click to open the full-screen story, while an overflow menu in the top-right allows users to “Manage recommendations.”

Tapping opens a “Stories recommendations” sheet that allows you to remove “stories you’re not interested in.” This feature is likely still rolling out as part of an A/B test. So far, we’ve only encountered it on one account and device.

Back in November, YouTube expanded Stories to creators with over 10,000 subscribers. On the Google video service, Stories are for online personalities communicating with fans rather than personal one-to-one communication. However, it does feature user comments for community engagement, and a wealth of customization options.

The latter includes YouTube stickers, text, music filters, and a green screen powered by video segmentation. Additionally, Stories last for seven days and appear to both your followers (in the Subscriptions tab) as well as non-subscribers on Home and in “Up Next” below videos.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com