On the flip side, this also means users have the option to have a cleaner, less cluttered interface.

Full text:

[AUGUST 8, 2023] A new viewer experience that better corresponds to your YouTube watch history preferences

One of the benefits of having YouTube watch history on is that it enables YouTube to provide video recommendations you may be interested in; however, we know some prefer to clear and turn off your YouTube watch history. Starting today, we’re changing how you see recommendations on YouTube, based on your Watch History settings:

Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled – like your YouTube home feed. This means that starting today, your home feed may look a lot different: you’ll be able to see the search bar and the left-hand guide menu, with no feed of recommended videos thus allowing you to more easily search, browse subscribed channels and explore Topic tabs instead.

We’re rolling these changes out slowly, over the next few months. We are launching this new experience to make it more clear which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make it more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations. You can change your YouTube watch history settings at any time based on whether you prefer us to provide video recommendations or not.

  • phx@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    118
    ·
    1 year ago

    This initially sounded like they were forcing users to their history under the guise of providing suggestions, however it really just means “no history, no suggestions”

    I’m ok with this

      • ElBarto777@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I can see how autoplay can be useful, though.

        What I don’t like is that it’s opt-out.

        So every time I use a new browser, I have to disable it yet again.

    • Fredselfish @lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 year ago

      I see no downside here I hate suggestions 90% are crap. I prefer to discover things on my own. I don’t want your suggestions and turning off autoplay be cherry on the top.

    • justastranger
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      They could go back to suggesting only videos related to the one you’re watching but they really want The Engagement Algorithm to be the only one available :(

    • vd1n@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Technically couldn’t they do this without “history”… Isnt that what cookies are for? I mean they can already show me shit based of what I say with my phone in my pocket, lol.

      • phx@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        Cookies are a way of establishing persistence between a device and a site (most commonly a server session).

        They could technically put some of your history in the cookie, but it wouldn’t be retained between devices nor if you logout/clear-cookies.

        To keep it consistent and build those suggestions across devices and logins, it needs to be saved on a server somewhere, which is essentially… history tracking.

      • bluGill@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Not legally because of various data tracking laws around the world. Maybe they can where you life, but then then need to be 100% sure they have that right. By making this clear they can argue in court they need to track this data, and that you have the option to not have it tracked.

  • GreenMario@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    65
    ·
    1 year ago

    Maybe they should stop recommending videos I’ve already watched. And if I reroll give me a brand new list.

    • reddithalation@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, 70% of my reccomended is just videos I’ve already seen, and 29% is clickbait trash, but every now and then I do get a very good reccomendation, that I simply would never know about without it, so I’m not sure if I want to turn recommendations off yet.

    • zoe@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      they now they run out of interesting content when they recommend you already watched stuff. Youtube™ is overblown

    • I_Miss_Daniel@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not always their fault. Seems the dashcam channels have started copying each other’s content and rebranding it.

      Would be nice if videos 90% watched would bugger off though.

    • hypelightfly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      They did the opposite and shoved a pointless shorts section in the middle of your subscription page so you can’t see what you actually want to look at.

      • g0zer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I know I’ll catch shit for this but I kinda don’t mind shorts. Sometimes I don’t have anything specific to watch and I just wanna waste 10 mins…

        The content quality varies wildly and it doesn’t seem to have a very good algorithm but it succeeds in helping me burn 5-10 mins while I’m waiting on someone or something.

        I think YouTube expects people to burn hours on it like TikTok but I don’t see that happening.

        • LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Still, it sucks that they’re pushing them so hard on everyone. I tried to see the appeal, but I can’t stomach short form content at all. I get whiplash!

        • hypelightfly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t mind them existing either. My issue is with how they show up in the subscription feed now. I’d prefer separate feeds for shorts.

  • meathorse@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    1 year ago

    Do they think this is some kind of threat?

    Fuck the recommendations - all I get is the same 15 suggestions across multiple categories, most of them I’ve already watched or in my subscriptions.

    The beauty of YouTube used to be the random jewels of clips that would surface, now it’s just corporate friendly pop stars latest music videos and the same shitty content over and over and over again.

    It’s impossible to just stumble across anything unique on yt now.

    • Potatisen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Totally agree, there’s so much good content on there but all I see are the same 10-ish content creators and it fucking sucks.

      Any 3rd party site that gives better YT recommendations?

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Thank goodness! Finally, I won’t have to suffer through “suggestions” that are unrelated to anything I’ve watched and are just pushing clickbait. It does make sense though. They can’t suggest anything, if they can’t digest what you’ve watched.

    • sugar_in_your_tea
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Well, they could suggest popular content, which seems to be mostly what I get. It’ll be good to not have a bunch of nonsense I’m going to ignore anyway I guess.

    • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I feel like folks have a very different YouTube experience than I do. My suggestions are all already related to either my watch history or are from my subscriptions.

      It’d be nice if they would stop pushing Shorts though.

      • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I usually use yt on a wifi network with upwards of 200 other people, so I’m sure the suggestions are relevant to us as a unit, but not so much to me as an individual.

        And, yes. The shorts can die.

        • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Certainly possible! My husband watches a completely different type of content than I do and I never get recommendations from his feed unless we watch something that we’ve watched in a shared chromecast feed, and then only very rarely.

  • mtchristo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is youtube being salty about people not wanting them to keep track of their watch list. because even without it youtube could make a lot of bucks by just suggesting based of other parameters. They are betting on nudging people the way they want.

  • DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Their recommendations are always a bit shit anyway, so I’m not too bothered about this on a personal level.

    • Klicnik
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Lately I have been spending more time looking for videos that actually interest me than I have been watching videos. It’s all either extremely similar, or stuff I have already seen. I often end up just closing the app without having watched anything at all.

      • BURN@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Once they had to change the algo because it was shoving people down the right wing pipeline at an alarming rate it got a lot worse. They basically had to nerf it and start over and it’s never recovered to the point it used to be at. The recommendations used to be significantly better, but that also coincided with alt right content doing extremely well.

      • justgohomealready
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It seems to be getting worse every day. I used to always find something interesting to watch, and now my feed seems to be the same 10 videos or so, and the rest is stuff I’ve already watched? I feel stuck in such a small bubble!

  • masterairmagic
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m perfectly fine with that. I don’t want recommendations, I want a search engine.

  • Zeppo
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    This is nice because one of the most annoying things has been to randomly watch a video and then they start suggesting all of this content that is not relevant or is bothersome. Like, watch a video on certain topics one time and all of a sudden “check out Ben Shapiro!”

    Surely Google is still tracking watch history for analysis for ads and profiling though, right?

  • BURN@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    On the flip side here, almost everything I watch is from recommendations and this is going to be a change that drastically changes how I use the platform. I’m probably just going to have to turn watch history on, which is what they want, but it’s also apparently now the only way to get a decently curated YT feed.

    No, the subscription box doesn’t do that. I don’t want to only see things I subscribe to. I specifically want to be recommended things to watch on my homepage.

  • Tygr
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Huh. This presser just taught me I can disable watch history. That’s awesome. Unintended consequences of them trying to force people to turn it on will be teaching others that this setting exists.

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Kind of makes sense - the suggestions are based on your watch history after all.

    I cleared mine a while back, and it also reset my feed to whatever random popular stuff they suggest. As it rebuilt the history, it became nice again.

    At least it makes it somewhat clear what it’s suggesting you stuff based on. Can’t have suggestions if they don’t have data on your watching habits.

  • slug@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    youtube suggestions are genuinely terrible for the individual and humanity as a whole

    • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I disagree. Spotify and YouTube are the only platforms that actually do a good job recommending me content I’m interested in. Other places like instagram, twitter and lemmy needs heavy curation to be usable.