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

Maybe they should stop recommending videos I've already watched. And if I reroll give me a brand new list.

They could at least add a filter to remove shorts; but no, they do this.

Do they think this is some kind of threat?

Fuck the recommendations - all I get is the same 15 suggestions across multiple categories, most of them I've already watched or in my subscriptions.

The beauty of YouTube used to be the random jewels of clips that would surface, now it's just corporate friendly pop stars latest music videos and the same shitty content over and over and over again.

It's impossible to just stumble across anything unique on yt now.

Thank goodness! Finally, I won't have to suffer through "suggestions" that are unrelated to anything I've watched and are just pushing clickbait. It does make sense though. They can't suggest anything, if they can't digest what you've watched.

This is youtube being salty about people not wanting them to keep track of their watch list. because even without it youtube could make a lot of bucks by just suggesting based of other parameters. They are betting on nudging people the way they want.

Their recommendations are always a bit shit anyway, so I'm not too bothered about this on a personal level.

Kind of makes sense - the suggestions are based on your watch history after all.

I cleared mine a while back, and it also reset my feed to whatever random popular stuff they suggest. As it rebuilt the history, it became nice again.

At least it makes it somewhat clear what it's suggesting you stuff based on. Can't have suggestions if they don't have data on your watching habits.

Holy shit there's a way to avoid recommendations coming soon???????

Can this be the social media trend for the rest of 2023? Please?

As long as NewPipe still works, I do not care.

I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't want recommendations, I want a search engine.

On the flip side here, almost everything I watch is from recommendations and this is going to be a change that drastically changes how I use the platform. I’m probably just going to have to turn watch history on, which is what they want, but it’s also apparently now the only way to get a decently curated YT feed.

No, the subscription box doesn’t do that. I don’t want to only see things I subscribe to. I specifically want to be recommended things to watch on my homepage.

Huh. This presser just taught me I can disable watch history. That’s awesome. Unintended consequences of them trying to force people to turn it on will be teaching others that this setting exists.

This is nice because one of the most annoying things has been to randomly watch a video and then they start suggesting all of this content that is not relevant or is bothersome. Like, watch a video on certain topics one time and all of a sudden “check out Ben Shapiro!”

Surely Google is still tracking watch history for analysis for ads and profiling though, right?

youtube suggestions are genuinely terrible for the individual and humanity as a whole

Now we need the option to hide shorts from the recommended page

this wasnt already the case?

Good. For some reason YouTube keeps throwing sports content at me, even though I loathe sports (aside from F1). Hopefully now I’ll be able to remove it from my watch history & get rid of it from my feed.

This is possibly the best thing YouTube could do to make this app bearable

On the flip side, this also means users have the option to have a cleaner, less cluttered interface.

That's what I'm hoping for.

My history log has been shit lately. When I search this log, it seems many of the videos I've watched are missing, but if I search my browser history I can find them normally. That's the only reason I turn on my watch history, as my browser's history gets deleted automatically after 6 months.

Cool cool cool, disabled watch history and cancelled YouTube premium. GG YouTube.

I already curate my own watch history and occasionally go on a remove spree when my recommendations get stale or full of shit I don't really care about.

I just use the Subscriptions feed and skip the algorithm altogether. Combine a bookmark of the subscriptions feed (With Ublock origin , ReturnYoutubeDislikes and sponsorblock) with NewPipe (a fork of newpipe with sponsorblock, specifically), and you get a good YouTube Experience. Otherwise, you can just forget it.

Edit: RSS is also an option if you want to go that route.

i don't want video suggestion. they are shit.

The only thing I'll potentially sort of miss is the cynical comedy of the absolutely godawful shit they recommend when they don't have a watch history to base anything on.

I just miss grouping channels together to have curated independent feeds. They removed it for algorithm based shit.