YouTube Home Feed Empty With History Off, Anyone Else?

AcornCarnage , 10 months ago

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.

Teknikal , 10 months ago

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.

rush , 10 months ago

I will gladly continue to use Piped and not have to worry about watch history

howrar , 10 months ago

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.

Freeman , 10 months ago

Unhook on Firefox is very good.

bappity , 10 months ago

yep this is their newest tactic to get people to willingly turn on more data collection to use their basic features

CrypticFawn , 10 months ago

I don’t even go to YouTube anymore since I started using FreeTube a couple weeks ago. Highly recommend.

cedarmesa , 10 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

💀

CrypticFawn , 10 months ago

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.

megane_kun , 10 months ago

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.

meekah , 10 months ago

I know YouTube is looking to serve content more algorithmically but I hope the sub feed stays…

megane_kun , 10 months ago

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.

jetsetdorito , 10 months ago

This actually makes the recommendations below videos a LOT better

wrath-sedan , 10 months ago

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

Thorny_Thicket , 10 months ago

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.

wrath-sedan , 10 months ago

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

Casmael , 10 months ago

Don’t forget the consistent recommendations for subtle and not-so-subtle right wing content

wrath-sedan , 10 months ago

What IS big solar hiding… just asking questions!

Snapz , 10 months ago

Must see! Watch now! BIG SOLAR HATES this one thing!

(It’s shade from clouds and trees, they hate shade)

meekah , 10 months ago

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.

Snapz , 10 months ago

1. 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.
2. I don’t trust a big org’s algorithm to not recommend what benefits then over what benefits me.

rubikcuber , 10 months ago

Absolutely. When I used to use YouTube I had a browser extension that directed the home page to my subscriptions.

unscholarly_source , 10 months ago

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.

jtk OP , 10 months ago

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.

Blizzard , 10 months ago

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!

JWBananas , 10 months ago

Try removing the problematic video from your history. That usually seems to help.

unscholarly_source , 10 months ago

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.

Bootheal0179 , 10 months ago

It’s the best look for YouTube app, since my first iPod touch.

GammaGames , 10 months ago

cnet.com/…/youtube-will-display-a-blank-home-feed…

Does the subscription feed work? I might have to try it out lol

jtk OP , 10 months ago

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 :)

shua_too , 10 months ago

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.”

jtk OP , 10 months ago

I use them all the time but I’ve got about 15 years of muscle memory locked on to Ctrl+L -> “y” -> Enter.