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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?
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.
I'd even like a ranking scheme like we have here on the threadiverse. Show me videos with a lot of activity, ones that have been showing a lot of promise, what's been happening over the past 12, 24, 48, or 72 hours.
I guess what I'm saying is I want long form video content like YouTube to be delivered and ranked like comment threads on Lemmy and the older link aggregator(s)
I'm COMPLETELY okay with this.
Technically couldn't they do this without "history"... Isnt that what cookies are for? I mean they can already show me shit based of what I say with my phone in my pocket, lol.
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.
Maybe they should stop recommending videos I've already watched. And if I reroll give me a brand new list.
they now they run out of interesting content when they recommend you already watched stuff. Youtube™ is overblown
Yeah, 70% of my reccomended is just videos I've already seen, and 29% is clickbait trash, but every now and then I do get a very good reccomendation, that I simply would never know about without it, so I'm not sure if I want to turn recommendations off yet.
Not always their fault. Seems the dashcam channels have started copying each other's content and rebranding it.
Would be nice if videos 90% watched would bugger off though.
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.
I feel like folks have a very different YouTube experience than I do. My suggestions are all already related to either my watch history or are from my subscriptions.
It'd be nice if they would stop pushing Shorts though.
I usually use yt on a wifi network with upwards of 200 other people, so I'm sure the suggestions are relevant to us as a unit, but not so much to me as an individual.
And, yes. The shorts can die.
Certainly possible! My husband watches a completely different type of content than I do and I never get recommendations from his feed unless we watch something that we've watched in a shared chromecast feed, and then only very rarely.
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.
same feel.
Holy shit there's a way to avoid recommendations coming soon???????
Can this be the social media trend for the rest of 2023? Please?
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.
As long as NewPipe still works, I do not care.
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.
Now we need the option to hide shorts from the recommended page
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.
this wasnt already the case?
Yes I'm a bit confused as well, how are they supposed to know what to recommend if they don't know what you've been watching?
Sounds like they kept a watch history anyway but in secret, and turning it off just means that the user can't see it anymore. Exactly like back when turning off location history on Google apps just meant you couldn't see it anymore, but Google still collected and kept the info.
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.
They become good if you use youtube a lot and subscribed to a lot of channels. After some time they become really, scary good.
I just use newpipe, subscribe to all the channels I care about and watch them. To discover new people I use the fediverse
I am borderline worshipping the algorithm for constantly bringing me new music to dig. A good 80% of the artists I've picked up in the last few years came as recommended by youtube or GPM/YT Music. And we aren't just talking well known artists, either. Lots of good indie shit too! Idk, I guess if the internet is going to be allowed to know anything about me, it's gonna be my music tastes.
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.
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.
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.
You can already remove videos from your watch history.
Yes, but now it should mean something.
It already does? I use it to remove videos that my wife or kid accidentally watched on my account. Removing the vids keeps them out of my algorithm.
Thats
I'm a bit confused.
Will this affect only the home feed or also the recommendations beside a playing video?
I'd assume that "related" suggestions would still work, unless Youtube decides to break them out of spite.
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.
You can get that experience any time by going to Trending.
You could also pour milk in your boots.
Good thing my browser destructs all history every day