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.
Wouldn’t the recommendations be crap anyway? When they don’t know your watch history?
You search for one thing and it starts showing recommendations.
I fail to see how this is a bad thing. Youtube’s old default homepage would show scam and content mill recommendations.
Recommending things when you’re not logged in means they’re tracking you without your consent. Why would anyone want that?
No they usually redommend what is trending to users who are not logged in or have no watch history
That said i personally really don’t mind the change
I’ve started using Invidious as a YouTube front end and it works really great for me
Oh, I interpreted “recommended” as recommended as in tailored to your preferences. What they mean is that youtube won’t show popular videos anymore. Still, doesn’t seem like the wrong choice to me necessarily, but I’m personally not interested in the type of videos that have the highest popularity.
As with what others are saying here, pulling out algo nonsense is good, however I do worry that it slowly devolves into something similar to what’s happening with Twitter where you can barely look at anything without being pushed to login. It’s unusable unless you have an account. Websites shouldn’t operate like that.
Imagine being mad at this 😂
I’m not mad, but I will say I underestimated how much worse it is when it isn’t curating to me. Yeah, I’d rather not have the bad suggestions, but good lord the default YouTube suggestions are nauseatingly bad.
I haven’t paid any attention to any channels but the ones I was already subscribed to the last couple years or so (mostly watching on NewPipe and Grayjay), and whenever I look at yt on my desktop where I’m not logged in, it’s just this cesspool of clickbait/ragebait and I’m like… people watch this shit? And they enjoy it, apparently?
Fire me into the sun, thanks.
The Algorithm can’t find a rhythm 🥁
People love to complain
For anyone who wants to stay logged out of YouTube, but wants to see content they follow, I recommend the pocket tube extension for Firefox… or Chrome if you really have to… It lets you create subscription groups so you can see exactly the content you want when you want it.
I’ll throw in, YouTube channels are all fully functional RSS feeds, and you don’t need to interact with YouTube at all to get your subscriptions.
i like this change
All that is left is letting people without a watch history default to seeing their subscriptions instead of a blank page. That’s the whole point of subscribing: I want my own curated experience. I don’t want to watch BS YouTube thinks I want to watch.
It was a mistake letting YouTube decide on behalf of everyone that recommendations was a better experience than letting the users decide for themselves what to watch. The recommendations are no less of an echo chamber. Worse, the recommendations are gamed with churned, garbage content. It’s the same problem as google search.
We need a return to form of user-curated content. Down with algorithmic recommendations.
You can get extensions which make the homepage redirect to your subscriptions page. Lifesaver imo.
Maybe you’d like to see some Andrew Tate shorts?
That pretty much describes how I use my Piped server in Feed mode. It only show my subs and I can filter out Shorts from those as well. Pretty sure the public Pipeds are the same if you make an account.
It actually works like this in the FreeTube app on PC or NewPipe on Android. It feels so much better having my own home page showing only videos who I’m subscribed to. Plus another added benefit is that you can put your subscriptions into categories, which is a great way of filtering down to the exact type of video’s you feel like watching at the time. FreeTube personally stopped my unhealthy video-watching habits almost instantly, which were basically psychologically trained into me by YouTube’s algorithm.
I noticed this a few days ago or so and I was delighted by it. I never sign in to YouTube and hated the garbage recommendations on the homepage.
This is more of a feature than a problem IMO.
Most services (like meta/Facebook/Instagram/anything owned by zuck’, the service formerly known as Twitter…) are going to a model of: you need an account to even see anything posted publicly.
Not just extremely limited information like LinkedIn, like, instant redirect to “you need to be logged in to see this” or simply a login page.
At least you can still find something you want to see, and go and watch it… With ads and everything, sure, but the information is there and accessible.
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.
I haven’t signed into YouTube in maybe 5 or 6 months, I turned off history two or three years ago, cookies get deleted every time I shut down the browser, and I keep my subscriptions in FreeTube. But some things, like foreign language videos that need automatic caption translation, I still watch in YouTube.
Even so, I’ve only encountered a blank page like this maybe three times in all those months. And the beautiful blankness doesn’t last: as soon as I open a specific video URL – any video URL – it fills right back up again with the same old shit, except now it’s ALL related to that one single video I open.
This is no big deal. Open up any video and you still get sidebar recommendations. I use Blocktube to ensure I don’t see channels I don’t want, so it doesn’t just fill back up with Mr. Beast and Fox News, I continue to use FreeTube for everything else, and all is well.
What? That’s literally a feature I got with a plugin. YouTube feels so much better without the algorithmic reinforced “hype” videos with no content and it’s good for your mental health too.
Not a Bug.
That’s fine, all the videos they suggest suck anyway. No I don’t want to watch Madonna’s Like a Virgin video when I’ve been watching Letterkenny clips, YouTube.
" shows a simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tips on what to watch."
I’ve had watch history off for like 7 years now and I haven’t had videos on my homepage for at least 2 years now. Hasn’t bothered me a bit, I only watch my subscription page and find new people with the recommendations based off of their videos.
That’s how I work, But I use FreeTube instead, which works the same way. There’s a trending videos page, but it doesn’t reccomend stuff based on your history.
Not sure if you care but if you turn watch history on, watch one video, then turn it back off it will give you homepage videos again. I almost always start from the bookmark for Subscriptions anyways, but this workaround has worked since the first time I did it.
Nah I also go straight to the subscription page. Just annoying that they kept videos in my homepage for years after I turned it off and then told me one day I need it on to have vids show up there.
