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YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on (www.theverge.com)

submitted 10 months ago by trashhalo@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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YouTube is changing the homepage experience for users who have their watch history turned off. They will now see an almost blank homepage with just a search bar and buttons for Shorts, Subscriptions and Library. This is intended to make it clear that personalized recommendations rely on watch history data. The new design aims to avoid extreme thumbnails and instead focus search. Some users have already started seeing this change, though it may not be fully rolled out yet. The goal is to both help those who prefer searching over recommendations, and potentially encourage users to turn their history back on. Overall this represents a major interface change focused on watch history preferences.

What's been your experience with youtube recommendations? For me they are consistently hot garbage.

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[-] snowe@programming.dev 13 points 10 months ago

You can delete stuff from your watch history. It usually fixes the recommendations for me.

[-] briongloid@aussie.zone 9 points 10 months ago

Any video I watch I have to consider if I want to be pushed more of it and delete from history whenever I look at something I don't want more of.

It's an annoying tightrope, I have considered no history but then I wouldn't get more of what I do want. This new change is to make turning off watch history worse, to no longer suggest any videos if you want privacy.