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YouTube will soon require watch history to be enabled to show video suggestions (support.google.com)
submitted 1 year ago by soyagi@yiffit.net to c/technology@beehaw.org
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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.

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[-] chameleon@kbin.social 34 points 1 year ago

I guess a CEO opened the YouTube frontpage while logged out and went "what is this shit".

But seriously, this seems like it's a good thing overall. The "default"/empty history algorithm recommendations are truly, truly horrifying more often than not. It's almost entirely low-quality clickbait and I can't imagine many people actually appreciate it like that.

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

And after three or four clicks, you’re immediately stumbling through horrible right wing ragebait

[-] NightOwl@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

Or spoilers after spoilers if you search up some media you are interested in. I hate those youtubers so much who put the spoilers right in the tile and thumbnail.

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

It’s pretty scummy behavior

[-] Neato@kbin.social 34 points 1 year ago

I'm confused. Was anyone really considering that Youtube didn't keep a log of what every account watched even if their history was off? Being cynical, this seems to only add functionality: removing recommendations.

[-] Snapz@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

Good. Now, extending this logic, if I have ZERO WATCH HISTORY of shorts videos on my account, then... STOP CLOGGING MY SUBSCRIPTION FEED WITH SHORTS!!!!!!!!!

[-] collegefurtrader@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago

Don’t threaten me with a good time

[-] NightOwl@lemmy.one 14 points 1 year ago

Sounds like a positive to me. One of the worst things is looking up content for a game or tv/movie show you're interested in then getting suggested similar content that increases the chance of spoilers due to people who put it in their thumbnail or titles.

[-] Gbagginsthe3rd@aussie.zone 13 points 1 year ago

Does anyone else like turning history off just so they can see random new stuff?

Sometimes I use Youtube in a private browser just so I can actually be exposed to new information and channels.

Its so annoying that the algorithm is always trying to pigeon hole my feed (facebook and spotify are the same)

[-] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 1 year ago

I can definitely agree, I hate YouTube's recommendation algorithm and would prefer it was set to maybe a 10% algorithmic, 90% random mix. Every time I use it, I avoid clicking on things because I know if I do and forget to delete it from my history, it's going to be surfacing the same show/IP/creator nonstop for days. It's so goddamn aggressive.

[-] TheCompassMaker@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago

Even if youtube wasnt already recording watch history under the table, all the data that youtube needs to generate meaningful recommendations is already there in my subscription list.

[-] vd1n@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

So promote peertube more?

[-] danileonis@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Peertube needs a couple (or more) large instances to be anything to start with. Right now it's no man's land, sadly.

edit: https://lemmy.ml/post/3038208

[-] Dameoutlaw@artemis.camp 7 points 1 year ago

I wish, the content needs to get much better. I wish some good YouTube channels would also upload their videos to PeerTube

[-] danileonis@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

YT channels who claim to be libre culture should promote PeerTube in every fuckin video.

[-] noodle@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

Genuinely, what motivation does any professional content creator have for using peertube? It's just crypto shit and conspiracy theorists and doesn't pay content creators

[-] TheOtherJake@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

The best years of YT before 2017, there was an advanced maker and DIY tech culture revolving around people sharing projects and content just to share it. That died. This all pro CC thing has an up side to some extent, but it also lobotomized YT. Peertube might eventually get to the same kind of utility level, but it needs a lot of time and momentum to get there.

[-] thingsiplay@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

@soyagi I use YouTube mainly with Subscription (137) view anyway, with disabled history. I'm fine.

[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

"Either help us feed the algorithm, or we will make your experience worse"

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 year ago

Is removing the suggestions really making the experience worse though?

[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

From their perspective, yes

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Depends.

If you watch mostly technical videos and practical how-to stuff, do you really want to have the home page full of gamers and Mr.Beast wannabes?

[-] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Their algorithm sucks and I'm perfectly happy minimizing my exposure to it, but the whole premise behind video suggestions is that it's based on what you like. You could try to replicate it with subscription lists instead, but the bottom line is the feature as it is doesn't really work without knowing what you watch.

[-] bluGill@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

They have better information than what I watch: what I click like/dislike on. I've watched a number of videos someone recommended that I hate, videos I click on accidentally. Sometimes I don't watch all the way through, but sometimes I'm not sure until the end that it was a waste of my time.

It was years ago, but my feed got much better when I disabled watch history.

[-] AnonTwo@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

This seems very confusing going into the comments, because it doesn't sound like the feature would actually work without enabling this, and it's more or less curbing the feature when you don't have anything to go on.

It sounds like if anything it's reducing it's presence until you've actually used youtube, and having it enabled is the normal state we're currently in.

[-] anotherlemmyuser@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

It's okay with me, I don't rely on personalised algorithm anyway. Find what I need and off I go.

[-] kresten@feddit.dk 4 points 1 year ago

I don't get it

[-] ptsdstillinmymind@lemmy.studio 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is what happens when you let VCs and capitalists into a corporation. They will screw over there families for just another dollar.

[-] Heresy_generator@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not clear on why some people have a problem with this. If Youtube's algorithm doesn't know you from Adam it can't recommend things that might be relevant to your interests and just feeds you the popular crap, which artificially inflates the popular crap even further and creates an additional incentive to publish click-bait and rage-bait garbage.

This just seems like Youtube cutting that feedback loop. I don't see what's bad about people having to actually look for content they want rather than feeding from a trough.

[-] JohnEdwa@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Youtube knows I have subscribed to 515 channels, I have liked 2364 videos and favourited 685. It already floods the recommended videos with others based on "Users who follow<creator Y> enjoy videos of <creator X>".
They for sure do not require my watch history to be able to recommend videos to me.

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I can’t speak for everyone else, but the only recommendations I want to see are ones directly relevant to the video I have pulled up in front of me. I can get why that is not exactly what everyone wants though.

[-] speck@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I want no sidebar recommendations period.

[-] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 4 points 1 year ago

I actually like the sidebar, but only for videos related to the one I'm currently watching.

[-] MonochromeObserver@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@TheButtonJustSpins I also remember the times before the Algorithm™️, when the sidebar actually showed relevant videos to the one you watched.

[-] lontong@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

If Youtube's algorithm doesn't know you from Adam it can't recommend things that might be relevant to your interests

Having watch history off doesn't mean having no history at all. I have my watch history filled with only the videos I enjoyed (mostly videos with fit girls) before I turned it off. Youtube only recommends me stuffs based on those (and my likes/subscriptions obviously). I can watch whatever random videos I found while pooping and never have to worry it might screw up yt recommendations.

[-] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So… How do I enable this feature without deleting my watch history. I just want to be able to tell what vids ive seen when I’m popcorning through a channels back catalog.

[-] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 4 points 1 year ago

If you smash that like button, you'll add the video to your favorites list.

[-] CosmoVerde@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Isn’t this how it already works? I’ve had watch history off for a few years now and the only thing that influences my recommendations are new subscriptions; which I’m totally fine with. (I don’t thumbs up videos)

I might not want to watch everything on my home page but it’s very spot on for me.

[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

So by keeping all my google history's off I now get the simple search UI I've missed since Melissa Meyer left (albeit on Youtube instead of Google search)? Can I sign up get this rolled to my account faster please?

[-] gunpachi@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

To avoid recommendations, I just use invidious.

[-] NYPariah@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

So stupid.

[-] StorageAware@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago

It has already shown up for me and I don't really mind. The only thing I do on YouTube now is look up a creator and watch a video I want based on my Newpipe feed.

[-] millionsofplayers@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Is the homepage just a search bar or something?

[-] StorageAware@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yep, basically all the space that was occupied by video thumbanails is now empty with a graphic explaining why. I would attach a screenshot but I no longer seem to have that graphic anymore and it's back to normal.

[-] miniu@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I've switched to watching youtube from my rss feader anyway

this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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