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.
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
If they also kill autoplay it would be super.
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.
Isn’t that a toggleable option?
On the TV version of YouTube, I still have no idea how to turn that off. It’s much easier on desktop and mobile.
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.
G O O D. Their suggestion engine provides no diversity. Once you watch one video about something, that something is all they show you
Yes, I do wish it had a longer memory. It feels like only the past few days of watching has any impact on suggestions, if you’ve neglected to watch videos about a certain topic for over a week it’s basically ancient history and never comes up again. I’d love to get a varied mix of things I’ve been interested in for the past 6 months or even longer.
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 :(
Technically couldn’t they do this without “history”… Isnt that what cookies are for?
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.
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.
I’m COMPLETELY okay with this.