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.
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.
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).