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.
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.