Remove Category names on top without CSS

Question

I used WP_Query to get related post in the same category but when showing to html, the category names appear on top of the posts. How can I remove them by setting parameters to WP_Query and not using CSS?

<ul class="post-categories">
  <li>...</li>
  <li>...</li>
</ul>

PHP:

    <?php
        $relateds = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'post', 
        'posts_per_page' => 10, 'cat' => the_category(), 'post__not_in' 
        => array(get_the_ID())));
        if ( $relateds->have_posts() ):
        while ( $relateds->have_posts() ): $relateds->the_post(); ?>

        <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" class="media">
            <div class="d-flex align-self-start">
                <?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>
            </div>
            <div class="media-body pl-3">
                <div class="media-title">
                    <?php echo wp_trim_words(get_the_title(), 15); ?>
                </div>
            </div>
        </a>

        <?php endwhile; else: endif;
        wp_reset_postdata(); ?>

    </aside><!-- /.blog-sidebar -->
    <?php endwhile; ?>

Current result is st like this:

• Category 1

• Category 2

  Post 1

  Post 2

  Post 3

  ...

But I want only:

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

Answer 1

To remove categories, just remove function the_category() of the variable $relateds, so to do this, change:

$relateds = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'post', 'posts_per_page' => 10, 'cat' => the_category(), 'post__not_in' => array(get_the_ID())));

to:

$relateds = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'post', 'posts_per_page' => 10, 'post__not_in' => array(get_the_ID())));

Hope this help you!