YouTube is no longer showing recommended videos to users logged out of a Google account or using Incognito mode, making people concerned they are being bullied into always being signed into the service.
This change, which is now rolling out, shows a simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tips on what to watch.
As noted by some on X, users who have cleaned their search and watch history or turned off their history settings also see no suggestions when they’re logged in. Some people think YouTube is being pushy about this, trying to make users turn on their history settings.
I stopped letting YouTube save my watch history years ago because their suggestion algorithm became too intrusive: watch a quick cooking tutorial, get nothing be cooking channels, look up the proper way to use a toggle bolt, YouTube wants to teach me how to re-shingle a roof. It was out of control.
First, they took away my home screen, because they claimed they couldn’t reccomend videos with my watch history (even though they’d done it for years). Then they took away the shorts tab, because they said they couldn’t reccomend shorts without my watch history (even though they’d done it for months). So now I just have my subscriptions, a curated list of things I actually want to watch. They’ve punished me with the product I wanted this whole time.