Blocked news sources still showing up in Google News feed on your Pixel phone? You're not alone

Update 1 (February 8, 2024)

02:05 pm (IST): In a follow-up update, a product expert in the Google News forum recently said the team identified the issue and is working on a solution. This update was made a month ago and while there’s no confirmation if the issue has already been fixed as of this writing, you may want to check your home news page regularly to find out for yourself.

Original article follows:

Several Google News users have been facing an issue where the ‘Hide source’ feature is broken or not working, as stories and posts from blocked sources continue to be displayed in the Google News feed, with no apparent explanation.

To personalize the Google News experience, you can block or hide sources from which you do not want to get any posts, which will cause them to not appear in your feed again until you unblock them. However, the ‘hide all stories’ option is not working correctly, as affected users continue to receive post suggestions from unwanted websites.

The problem does not seem to be limited to any particular platform, since there are reports of people affected both from desktop browsers and from mobile app feeds (Chrome mobile app feed, Google Discover feed, and the Google News app itself).

The issue in question is annoying enough to even cause several people to stop using Google News as their news feed until it is resolved. After all, they’ve spent years debugging their ‘news algorithm’ to only receive recommendations from sites they like, but the bug is ruining it.

There are some who believe that the issue may actually be a test by Google to permanently eliminate the option to block or hide sources in order to boost their profitability. However, this is just a theory, and there is nothing confirmed about it.

Additionally, it appears that the ‘thumb down’ or ‘sad face’ button is not working correctly either. These buttons are used to tell Google News to show fewer posts related to a particular recommendation, but without completely blocking content from any source.

However, some people point out that, even after using the aforementioned buttons, they continue to constantly receive posts related to some unwanted recommendation:

Due to the numerous reports related to the issue that have been emerging in recent days, a Google Product Expert escalated it to the dev team for investigation. For now, we just have to wait for an update on this to know what is happening or to receive a fix.

Also, for those who believe that everything is due to a decision to eliminate the Google News block or hide sources option, the same product expert assures that this is not the case, and that it is simply not working correctly.

Be that as it may, let’s hope that those affected receive a solution soon so they can use their Google News feed normally again without receiving unwanted recommendations.