this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I've had my YT history off for years, today I was prompted to check the setting. I kept it off, now my Home feed is just a prompt to turn it on. I actually like it.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is now mandatory to have a watch history on YouTube if you want to keep getting video recommendations.

Me, who hates the recommendations and YouTube storing my watch history: I see this as an absolute win

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why do you hate the recommendations? For me it goes thru my subs and pics the videos I'm actually interested about and then fills the gaps with related videos at which it seems to do pretty good job at.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah not impossible to get good recs, I just find them more often to be not that helpful/interesting. Also they really soak up everything, so if I watch one video about solar panels or something my feed is suddenly 8 deep-dives into what BIG SOLAR doesn’t want me to know

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don’t forget the consistent recommendations for subtle and not-so-subtle right wing content

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What IS big solar hiding… just asking questions!

[–] Snapz 2 points 1 year ago

Must see! Watch now! BIG SOLAR HATES this one thing!

(It's shade from clouds and trees, they hate shade)

[–] meekah 4 points 1 year ago

I've curated my subs for years and there are basically no videos I don't wanna watch from it. YouTube fails to include all the videos I watch, so the recommendations are useless for me, unless I caught up with my sub feed already.

[–] Snapz 2 points 1 year ago
  1. It's a big miss for me most times - because I watched a video critical of a far right wing nut job DOES NOT mean I want to see videos from prageru (not an actual university) or toiletpaperusa.
  2. I don't trust a big org's algorithm to not recommend what benefits then over what benefits me.
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. When I used to use YouTube I had a browser extension that directed the home page to my subscriptions.

[–] bappity 20 points 1 year ago

yep this is their newest tactic to get people to willingly turn on more data collection to use their basic features

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I recently disabled history after getting annoyed about getting bombarded with recommended videos for something I only needed to watch once (e.g. a recipe, or instructions on how to repair something).

Now my YT homepage is literally stuck with the same videos, even the ones I've already watched. Doesn't matter how many times I refresh.

YouTube recommendation algorithm is extremely rudimentary, it's shocking. I really wished that they gave us the ability to tune the recommendation model, or some sort of include exclude filtering.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You want to tune the recommendation model yourself?! Youtube knows better than you what you should watch, just shut up and keep clicking the ads!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Try removing the problematic video from your history. That usually seems to help.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Been doing so over and over. The problem is that the recommendation model is pretty basic. You start watching a new channel or new topics, your recos start being mostly about topics related to the new channel/topics.

If I'm subbed to 200 channels, rarely do I get recos from channels I've subbed to early on. As a dev, I would love for the ability to tune what gets shown on the home page.

[–] AcornCarnage 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I don't know how it's going to help YT or creators, but having a completely empty home screen with just a logo and search box is fantastic.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's awesome. I've been using a browser plugin to remove all video recommendations. Good to hear that it's a native feature now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Unhook on Firefox is very good.

[–] Bootheal0179 8 points 1 year ago

It’s the best look for YouTube app, since my first iPod touch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I usually just go straight to my subscriptions feed, but now that my home feed is literally a glorified searchbar, I wonder if I can just remove it. I use the Re[redacted]ed app on mobile, and I wonder if there's a setting or an "add-on" I can use to do that.

[–] meekah 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know YouTube is looking to serve content more algorithmically but I hope the sub feed stays...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If they remove the sub feed, youtube would lose all its relevance to me. I only go there to see what's my subscribed creators are doing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This actually makes the recommendations below videos a LOT better

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't even go to YouTube anymore since I started using FreeTube a couple weeks ago. Highly recommend.

[–] cedarmesa 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://freetubeapp.io/ There ya go! I use that on my desktop, and LibreTube for my Android.

FreeTube doesn't have separate playlists available yet, but you can still save videos too 1 playlist. And I prefer it's UI over Piped as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I Only have it on to track videos I've already seen it's gotten very useless at this the last few months so it's made itself a bit pointless imo.