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.

    • Riker_Maneuver@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I love the content/creators, but hate the company that runs it. Sadly, unless you are willing to give up the channels you love there isn’t much in the way of alternatives.

    • Geometric7792@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s funny because I agree with you - out of everything that collects my data I get the most out of YouTube, it often recommends things I like quite a bit and it’s the primary way I discover new music

      • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Only the people who provide content for profit tbh. For the original focus of YouTube, which was simply to provide the ability for the collective “you” to post videos and share them with the world, it’s fine. The problem was, like every platform that provides a financial incentive to do anything, it gets gamed by those seeking to profit off of it and devolves into a corporate hellscape.

        Ignore the monetization aspect and, other than the ads (which can be blocked by uBlock at least for the time being), it’s still a fine platform.