Asklemmy @lemmy.ml jtk @lemmy.sdf.org 11 mo. ago

YouTube Home Feed Empty With History Off, Anyone Else?

I've had my YT history off for years, today I was prompted to check the setting. I kept it off, now my Home feed is just a prompt to turn it on. I actually like it.

31 comments

It is now mandatory to have a watch history on YouTube if you want to keep getting video recommendations.

Me, who hates the recommendations and YouTube storing my watch history: I see this as an absolute win
- Why do you hate the recommendations? For me it goes thru my subs and pics the videos I'm actually interested about and then fills the gaps with related videos at which it seems to do pretty good job at.
  
  Yeah not impossible to get good recs, I just find them more often to be not that helpful/interesting. Also they really soak up everything, so if I watch one video about solar panels or something my feed is suddenly 8 deep-dives into what BIG SOLAR doesn’t want me to know
  
  I've curated my subs for years and there are basically no videos I don't wanna watch from it. YouTube fails to include all the videos I watch, so the recommendations are useless for me, unless I caught up with my sub feed already.
  
  It's a big miss for me most times - because I watched a video critical of a far right wing nut job DOES NOT mean I want to see videos from prageru (not an actual university) or toiletpaperusa.
  
  I don't trust a big org's algorithm to not recommend what benefits then over what benefits me.
  
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- Absolutely. When I used to use YouTube I had a browser extension that directed the home page to my subscriptions.
yep this is their newest tactic to get people to willingly turn on more data collection to use their basic features
I recently disabled history after getting annoyed about getting bombarded with recommended videos for something I only needed to watch once (e.g. a recipe, or instructions on how to repair something).

Now my YT homepage is literally stuck with the same videos, even the ones I've already watched. Doesn't matter how many times I refresh.

YouTube recommendation algorithm is extremely rudimentary, it's shocking. I really wished that they gave us the ability to tune the recommendation model, or some sort of include exclude filtering.
- You want to tune the recommendation model yourself?! Youtube knows better than you what you should watch, just shut up and keep clicking the ads!
- Try removing the problematic video from your history. That usually seems to help.
  
  Been doing so over and over. The problem is that the recommendation model is pretty basic. You start watching a new channel or new topics, your recos start being mostly about topics related to the new channel/topics.
  
  If I'm subbed to 200 channels, rarely do I get recos from channels I've subbed to early on. As a dev, I would love for the ability to tune what gets shown on the home page.
- Is that on the web site or the app? On the web, it's just the prompt to change the setting for me.
  
  Edit: Just checked, it's just the prompt in the app for me too. Not sure why yours is stuck.
Yeah, I don't know how it's going to help YT or creators, but having a completely empty home screen with just a logo and search box is fantastic.
That's awesome. I've been using a browser plugin to remove all video recommendations. Good to hear that it's a native feature now.
- Unhook on Firefox is very good.
It’s the best look for YouTube app, since my first iPod touch.
I usually just go straight to my subscriptions feed, but now that my home feed is literally a glorified searchbar, I wonder if I can just remove it. I use the Re[redacted]ed app on mobile, and I wonder if there's a setting or an "add-on" I can use to do that.
- I know YouTube is looking to serve content more algorithmically but I hope the sub feed stays...
  
  If they remove the sub feed, youtube would lose all its relevance to me. I only go there to see what's my subscribed creators are doing.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/youtube-will-display-a-blank-home-feed-if-your-watch-history-is-turned-off/

Does the subscription feed work? I might have to try it out lol
- Yeah, now I'm only using the subscription feed. Just wish I could get my browser to go directly there when I type "y" in the search bar :)
  
  If you set your default search engine to Duck Duck Go you can use “!yt” followed by your search terms and it’ll go right to the results on YouTube. There’s a whole lot of other bangs, too. I do it with google maps all the time with “!gm.”
I Only have it on to track videos I've already seen it's gotten very useless at this the last few months so it's made itself a bit pointless imo.
I don't even go to YouTube anymore since I started using FreeTube a couple weeks ago. Highly recommend.
- 💀
  
  https://freetubeapp.io/ There ya go! I use that on my desktop, and LibreTube for my Android.
  
  FreeTube doesn't have separate playlists available yet, but you can still save videos too 1 playlist. And I prefer it's UI over Piped as well.
This actually makes the recommendations below videos a LOT better
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