I'm with @GunnarRunnar on this one, I'm not entirely sure what exactly your issue is. If you don't allow YouTube to know what you've watched in the past, how do you expect them to recommend you things to watch now?
The only things left then are your subscription feed and anything very popular at the moment, both of which already have their respective feeds.
I'm not certain what kind of warning it does serve for you but this seems just fair for them to block it, even if you discount the fact that the algorithm doesn't "know you" if it can't access your history. If you don't teach the algorithm anything with your view history, it doesn't learn anything that it could serve others either. It's give and take.
I guess it could just work out with some kind of prompt of "select five channels you like" or by your subscriptions (if that's available) and serve you stuff based on that. I wonder how good it would be if that's the data it gets to access. But it's not like it's that good even at the moment, for me at least.
Funny OP talked about the "big pop up to guilt trip you" because it was the opposite for me: I was happy to get it! Having an empty page instead of videos that don't interest me and shorts that I don't want to see is great.
Of course, the ideal would be to have my default homepage set as my subscriptions page to reduce a click, but I guess we can't have it all :)
YouTube's generic homepage is full of awful clickbait so I don't really see a problem. I do think it's weird to trust them to serve you videos but not to keep track of what you watch. Seems like if you don't trust them you wouldn't use the service at all.
I've heard of this before. As far as I've heard, it'll literally wipe your home page clean if your view history is completely empty; but even putting one item in there will restore it to working order. So enable history, watch one video, disable it again and you should get something if that's your issue. The quality of any recommendations would presumably depend on the quality of data you feed the algorithm.
I didn't notice this because my YouTube bookmark goes straight to my subscriptions page. The homepage was always trash, filled with lowest-common-denominator garbage content that I actively despised, especially with history turned off.
I agree with other posters here in that if you actually want YouTube to recommend stuff to you then you'll need to enable your history and let them profile you. If you're just looking for something to recommend generic popular content there's still a Trending link in the sidebar that works with history disabled.
Yeah, this is actually a feature I've been wanting for a while now. YouTube's homepage is constantly trying to nudge me down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and other insane crap like that. I've had a difficult time trying to quit doomsctolling that algorithm though, so if I can diasble it completely, then maybe that will finally free me from it.
I've just made a separate account for youtube. I know they still collect data from there as well but at least its not connected into my actual emails etc.
I doubt anyone will like my strategies for Youtube. I have a Google account, mostly for Gmail, but I log out immediately after looking at mail. At Youtube, I log in sometimes, to subscribe to a channel I want to support, but almost never watch videos while logged in.
Without logging in, I deliberately choose videos from the channels I like, which tends to bring similar types of videos on the opening page whenever I go to Youtube. If there is something offbeat that I want to watch, I copy the link address and open it in Brave, which I've got set to never save cookies or links or anything else.
Eventually, Youtube starts showing weird stuff on the opening page that I have no interest in, so I wipe all the Youtube cookies from my main browser, Vivaldi, and start over.
I have to wonder how much useful info Google gets from this, but it is probably more than I am comfortable with.
A good option to follow channels while not logging in is to use an RSS reader. Every channel has an RSS feed. I do this and can watch the video without even going to YouTube because the video is embeded in my reader.
Yeah I've had the same experience. For me, turning off watch history was a necessity to prevent the feedback loop of getting increasingly suggested the same kind of video, which gets old very fast. Annoying that they can't do suggestions based on my subscriptions (they still manage to suggest "related videos" to the one I'm watching after all), but I guess that just means I'm going to do less mindless browsing of YouTube from now on, which is probably for the best.
I don’t give this recommendation to everyone, because it’s a little oddball and quite a bit janky, but if you’re looking for a privacy-respecting way to watch YouTube, the FreeTube app is decent. You can use the Privacy Redirect browser extension to open all YouTube links in the app.
I like it for a few reasons:
It’s a completely separate app from your browser so it’s effectively sandboxed from your trackable or fingerprintable data
It uses Invidious wherever possible
It allows you to subscribe to channels and see age-restricted content without a login
It has built-in support for directly downloading videos (or just their audio) as local files
It skips all ads, including embedded ads using SponsorBlock
It has downsides, of course. It can be slow, particularly when using a VPN. It’s clunky to use a standalone app instead of just loading the website. You won’t be able to have personalized recommendations, which you indicated you’re interested in. And sometimes it just breaks in weird ways, since it’s an infrequently updated open-source content scraper. But if you're a privacy-paranoid, ad-loathing power user like me you may agree that it’s worth it, despite the drawbacks.
I personally follow YouTube channels I'm interested in using RSS. The videos are even embeded in the reader. If you want an easy way to self-host your own RSS reader, check out PikaPods. You can run your own Miniflux RSS feed reader for $1 a month. I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy customer.
I love this change. I only care for content I'm subscribed to and wished the app would open directly into the subscriptions tab. While I do see the question about enabling history every time I open it, I think it's better than loading the regular feed, maybe it's just my perception but seems to load faster.
I'm with @GunnarRunnar on this one, I'm not entirely sure what exactly your issue is. If you don't allow YouTube to know what you've watched in the past, how do you expect them to recommend you things to watch now?
The only things left then are your subscription feed and anything very popular at the moment, both of which already have their respective feeds.
I'm not certain what kind of warning it does serve for you but this seems just fair for them to block it, even if you discount the fact that the algorithm doesn't "know you" if it can't access your history. If you don't teach the algorithm anything with your view history, it doesn't learn anything that it could serve others either. It's give and take.
I guess it could just work out with some kind of prompt of "select five channels you like" or by your subscriptions (if that's available) and serve you stuff based on that. I wonder how good it would be if that's the data it gets to access. But it's not like it's that good even at the moment, for me at least.
The algo would be perfectly simple to use if you subscribed. That's ease as nodes om a graphdb to interprete as interest and then pass to the algo.
No subs or watch history? Then nothing. But this is particularly egregious nonsense.
Funny OP talked about the "big pop up to guilt trip you" because it was the opposite for me: I was happy to get it! Having an empty page instead of videos that don't interest me and shorts that I don't want to see is great.
Of course, the ideal would be to have my default homepage set as my subscriptions page to reduce a click, but I guess we can't have it all :)
YouTube's generic homepage is full of awful clickbait so I don't really see a problem. I do think it's weird to trust them to serve you videos but not to keep track of what you watch. Seems like if you don't trust them you wouldn't use the service at all.
I've heard of this before. As far as I've heard, it'll literally wipe your home page clean if your view history is completely empty; but even putting one item in there will restore it to working order. So enable history, watch one video, disable it again and you should get something if that's your issue. The quality of any recommendations would presumably depend on the quality of data you feed the algorithm.
I didn't notice this because my YouTube bookmark goes straight to my subscriptions page. The homepage was always trash, filled with lowest-common-denominator garbage content that I actively despised, especially with history turned off.
I agree with other posters here in that if you actually want YouTube to recommend stuff to you then you'll need to enable your history and let them profile you. If you're just looking for something to recommend generic popular content there's still a Trending link in the sidebar that works with history disabled.
Yeah, this is actually a feature I've been wanting for a while now. YouTube's homepage is constantly trying to nudge me down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and other insane crap like that. I've had a difficult time trying to quit doomsctolling that algorithm though, so if I can diasble it completely, then maybe that will finally free me from it.
Now I need a setting to disable comments too.
Tbh I don't see why your subscriptions isn't sufficient information to profile you with.
I've just made a separate account for youtube. I know they still collect data from there as well but at least its not connected into my actual emails etc.
I doubt anyone will like my strategies for Youtube. I have a Google account, mostly for Gmail, but I log out immediately after looking at mail. At Youtube, I log in sometimes, to subscribe to a channel I want to support, but almost never watch videos while logged in.
Without logging in, I deliberately choose videos from the channels I like, which tends to bring similar types of videos on the opening page whenever I go to Youtube. If there is something offbeat that I want to watch, I copy the link address and open it in Brave, which I've got set to never save cookies or links or anything else.
Eventually, Youtube starts showing weird stuff on the opening page that I have no interest in, so I wipe all the Youtube cookies from my main browser, Vivaldi, and start over.
I have to wonder how much useful info Google gets from this, but it is probably more than I am comfortable with.
A good option to follow channels while not logging in is to use an RSS reader. Every channel has an RSS feed. I do this and can watch the video without even going to YouTube because the video is embeded in my reader.
Where do you find this setting?
Yeah I've had the same experience. For me, turning off watch history was a necessity to prevent the feedback loop of getting increasingly suggested the same kind of video, which gets old very fast. Annoying that they can't do suggestions based on my subscriptions (they still manage to suggest "related videos" to the one I'm watching after all), but I guess that just means I'm going to do less mindless browsing of YouTube from now on, which is probably for the best.
I don’t give this recommendation to everyone, because it’s a little oddball and quite a bit janky, but if you’re looking for a privacy-respecting way to watch YouTube, the FreeTube app is decent. You can use the Privacy Redirect browser extension to open all YouTube links in the app.
I like it for a few reasons:
It has downsides, of course. It can be slow, particularly when using a VPN. It’s clunky to use a standalone app instead of just loading the website. You won’t be able to have personalized recommendations, which you indicated you’re interested in. And sometimes it just breaks in weird ways, since it’s an infrequently updated open-source content scraper. But if you're a privacy-paranoid, ad-loathing power user like me you may agree that it’s worth it, despite the drawbacks.
I personally follow YouTube channels I'm interested in using RSS. The videos are even embeded in the reader. If you want an easy way to self-host your own RSS reader, check out PikaPods. You can run your own Miniflux RSS feed reader for $1 a month. I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy customer.
OP: don't give me recommendations
YouTube: you got it, dude!
OP: what the heck, dude, why am I not getting any recommendations? This is straight up discrimination against privacy concerned citizens.
/Sorry for a reddit style comment.
I love this change. I only care for content I'm subscribed to and wished the app would open directly into the subscriptions tab. While I do see the question about enabling history every time I open it, I think it's better than loading the regular feed, maybe it's just my perception but seems to load faster.