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.
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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’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.
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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.
People love to complain
i like this change
This is great news. I watch videos occasionally but I wouldn’t say I’m a user. I don’t want to be recommended videos. I want to watch the one I searched for, or my friend linked to me, and go on with my life.
just be prepared that the “default” YouTube recommendations are all clickbait + Mr. Beast + whatever fad is going around. The default recommendations are really really bad.
the trick is to be signed in with history cleared and turned off. Then your ‘recommendations’ homepage is just a blank screen begging you to turn on history tracking again
Though i don’t trust it not to track me secretly regardless, but that’s a different issue.
wouldn’t that have all the bad things about not having personalized recs (ie: seeing only popular clickbaity videos) while getting none of the benefits (ie: making harder for google to track you)
It just doesn’t show you any recommendations at all - i think it depends on you also ‘deleting’ your account history in addition to turning off history tracking
it does still (in theory) enable them to track you for other outside services, possibly even for pre-roll or mid-roll advertisements, so it really depends on what your priority is
if watching on desktop with adblock on, you can get the best of both worlds - no recommendations and no ads (disclaimer: i have not yet been given the boot for using adblock, YMMV).
AFAIK - Watching on the youtube app does not allow you the benefit of adblocking, at least not in my experience.
*edit: this is what I see on my home page
That home page is perfect. No junk and a message explaining why there’s no junk and how to get it back if you want it.
Agreed.
I’ve been using NewPipe lately and it’s given me a greater appreciation for the YouTube recommendations. Because NewPipe just uses the basic, generic recommendations that YouTube shows everyone that isn’t logged in, and holy shit I’d forgotten how just bad “mainstream” YouTube is.
just be prepared that the “default” YouTube recommendations are all clickbait
That’s not what Google is doing. They’re literally showing an empty page with a search box (and a sidebar of categories). Similar to going to google.com.
It’s clearly being A/B tested though - I only see the empty page sometimes. Other times I get the usual Mr Beast recommendations (this is with no login, not with a login but watch history disabled).
Wait… that makes no sense. You won’t see them now. There are no recommendations.
This is amazing. I saw YouTube only showing a search bar when I went there, and it was liberating. I could search and watch the video on the topic I wanted, then promptly leave. Without all the Hot and recommend shit being shoved down my throat.
Exactly! I love this new feature :)
You know you can always just search for stuff without checking the recommended section right? Its helpful to discover new channels though
Except the algorithm has been horrible for, like…, five years maybe?
yeah. Its constantly trying to force right wing bullshit down my throat, because like once a month I’ll watch a video about heavy machinery or camping or something.
Lol the users being upset about this is the strangest part, I never ever want to see the recommended feed, how can I opt into this while signed in? XD
delete and pause your watch history, at least that’s how it works for me.
Yeah, I actually want my watch history though, been helpful a few times trying to remember some obscure vid I watched like 4 years ago
Subscriptions page really needs an overhaul, at least it mostly actually shows all the videos posted these days, would be nice if we could categorize them in some fashion, or if it auto-groupes videos from the same creator, an example… I like Kyle Kulinski’s Secular Talk, but he posts like 4-10 segments a day so it fills up my subs page
There’s browser extensions for it
True, probably like tamper monkey scripts if that’s still a thing
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.
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.
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.
You can get extensions which make the homepage redirect to your subscriptions page. Lifesaver imo.
Uh, how could Google show any personal recommendations without storing any data to base that on? If anything this seems to be Google actually doing what they say they’re doing.
They could do what they did back in the day; show recommended videos based on the current one.
show recommended videos based on the current one.
They still do in my recent experience.
It’s just not based on any longer viewing history than the current session.
The homepage rhat starts the viewing session will generally be just what’s popular with the general audience in the approximate location they can geolocate from your IP address. If you are logged out and try a few different locations on a VPN, you’ll get different homepages to start a new (logged out) session from.
Yep.
Though there is still a reason to be upset IMHO, because I’ve had history turned off for several years now, but until recently I always had a home page with ‘recommended’ videos regardless, which to me indicates that they were not honoring my request before the recent data regulations went into effect in the EU, or were otherwise using data from other services or browsing history to base recommendations on.
Google has been perfectly happy to track you with browser fingerprints – just if they showed personalized results, it would be giving their hand away …
Cookies… But yes i noticed it too recently that you dont even get a homepage / trending list anymore when turning on proper privacy settings.
They kinda don’t! It’d be trending videos near your IP locations + your watch history for this browser session
Not personal recommendations, they won’t show anything. It would be like loading up Lemmy/Reddit and not seeing anything until you logged in or subscribed to a community.
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
Honestly, so glad they are making this change. Now I don’t have to see the bottom of the barrel popular slop every time I use the incognito mode thing on Revanced.
YouTube without suggestions? You mean how it was back in the early days?? I would LOVE that.
You can use the Unhook extension to do this right now on at least Firefox and Chrome.
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.
Best. Change. Ever.
" 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.
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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.
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.
This is too good to be true. How long until Google reverses this decision? 😂
They change their mind about 100 things bi-weekly. I’m frankly numb to it. I never know what’s going on, just keep riding the unpredictable rollercoaster.
like remember a few weeks ago for one day YouTube had an option to choose from recommended videos based on our favorite color scheme? So weird & pointless but i chose Blue lavender then They presented me with a bunch of videos with a blue lavender-ish thumbnail, and I chose one to watch, then everything went back to normal and they never gave me the colors option again.
In EU the next time the law changes 😁
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