[HN Gopher] YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don't ...
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YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don't have watch
history on
Author : DemiGuru
Score : 49 points
Date : 2023-08-08 18:57 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.google.com)
| WorldMaker wrote:
| This sounds like a feature I've wanted for a while. I'm seriously
| trying to decide if deleting my watch history is worth the major
| benefit of disabling the YouTube homepage and recommendations
| area.
| netsharc wrote:
| The Improve-YouTube browser extension can disable sections of
| the screen, the homepage is just the search for me, I haven't
| seen the recommendations on the right side for months now, and
| I don't miss it.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improve-youtube-%F...
|
| On mobile, NewPipe is an alternative player where you can
| enable and disable many parts of YouTube (comments,
| recommendations, trending...).
| m348e912 wrote:
| So this happened to me. I submitted a support request and they
| fixed it very quickly. My watch history is still off and the
| homepage is back.
|
| It's still a pretty crappy thing to do.
| branon wrote:
| Sounds minimalistic, I like it. My dummy Google account loaded in
| a Firefox container tab with YT watch history disabled just got
| even better.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| YT users built their castles in the sands of the shores of a
| globalized megacorp.
|
| Time to find another platform more transparent about crap content
| and where corporate crap isn't given a soapbox.
| tmm wrote:
| How about a "don't recommend things I've already watched" option?
|
| The thing is, I like having a watch history and I like having
| suggestions based on it. If I watch something that I don't want
| affecting my suggestions, I'll delete it from the history after
| watching.
|
| The things I watch on YouTube, I generally have zero interest in
| watching again, and if I really want to, then I'll find it in my
| history. What I really don't want is for something I've seen to
| be recommended at the end of a video (where there is no clear
| indication if you've seen before it or not) or polluting the
| sidebar of suggestions.
|
| I'd also very much like suggestions to fall off the list if I
| don't watch them in a day or two. Sometimes suggested videos
| stick around for weeks. I don't want to click "don't recommend
| this channel" or "not interested", because I might want that
| channel's content recommended later, and I might be generally
| interested in the topic, but not enough to want to watch it now.
|
| And while we're dreaming of features: let me disable shorts
| permanently. I refuse to support vertical aspect video (and based
| on the minuscule number of views the recommended-to-me shorts
| get, people interested in the sort of content I am agree).
| euroderf wrote:
| > The things I watch on YouTube, I generally have zero interest
| in watching again, and if I really want to, then I'll find it
| in my history.
|
| There's an exception to this that I suspect is not uncommon:
| there's music one likes to listen to when one is chill/buzzed;
| having to poke into (or worse: dig thru) one's watching history
| is a procedure-intensive buzzkill.
|
| > (where there is no clear indication if you've seen before it
| or not)
|
| This is definitely a bug not a feature. But if the music that
| one evidently likes to hear and re-hear is posted prominently
| (based on the time of day, say) AND flagged as such, that's a
| feature not a bug.
| londgine wrote:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio... I
| use this addon because I was sick of the clickbait and nsfw
| homepage videos that I would get on incognito. I guess after this
| update I won't need it.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I don't have watch history on, and I don't see a blank homepage.
| I still see a grid of videos from channels I've never watched. It
| doesn't say "recommendations" or anything, but I'm not sure what
| else it could be...
| duskwuff wrote:
| From the post: "We're rolling these changes out slowly, over
| the next few months..."
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Oh I see, thanks for the attention to detail :) The title
| should probably be changed, then, since it says "YouTube will
| _now_ show... "
| danShumway wrote:
| This is a great change but either it's not fully rolled out yet
| or it's not enabled when logged out. I still see a cluttered home
| page when I visit.
|
| It stinks that a user interface improvement this large would
| require you to log in; hopefully that's just a temporary issue.
| In the meantime there are scripts, css tweaks, and alternative
| clients that can make the watching experience cleaner and less
| distracting, but people shouldn't have to have technical
| knowledge just to get a clean home menu when visiting the site.
| hollerith wrote:
| I turned off "watch history" just now, and the home page still
| shows me (personalized) recommendations--which makes me sad
| because I hoped this would an easy way for me to quit my bad
| habit of scanning the recommendations when I am bored.
|
| I used to welcome these recommendations, BTW, but they've been
| crap for the last 5 weeks or so.
| veave wrote:
| Have you considered using an ublock origin filter?
| youtube.com##[page-subtype="home"]
| wanderingmind wrote:
| I'm tired of youtube recommendations and comments full of vanity
| praise and flamewars. These days I use ublockorigin to kill most
| of youtube recommendations and comments to just use it as a
| searchbar. A lot of it is adopted from reddit[1]
|
| www.youtube.com###contentContainer
|
| www.youtube.com##.ytd-two-column-browse-results-renderer.style-
| scope > .ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope
|
| www.youtube.com###below
|
| www.youtube.com###related
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-comments
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-live-chat-frame
|
| www.youtube.com##yt-live-chat-app
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-thumbnail > a#thumbnail > div#mouseover-
| overlay
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"]
| /annotations_module.js$script,important,domain=youtube.com
| /endscreen.js$script,important,domain=youtube.com
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sif7x3/how_to...
| gus_massa wrote:
| I use YouTube without logging in. I got something in between.
| Instead of a blank page I got a generic page with popular topics
| instead of videos similar to the ones I watched previously.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Boycott YouTube, use:
|
| https://piped.video
| duskwuff wrote:
| That's just using YouTube with extra steps.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| > if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant
| prior watch history
|
| I don't know what they consider to be "significant prior watch
| history". I have mine paused for nearly 4 years, and have spent a
| lot of time removing videos from my watch history to improve
| their recommendations. I've talked about it on HN before [1].
|
| I finally got around to subscribing to YouTube Premium, and they
| already burned me once by raising prices. If I'm affected by
| this, I'm canceling it and donating the equivalent between
| NewPipe [2] and Piped.video [3]
|
| I truly despise this company. No matter what you do or how much
| money you give them, you are always the product to Google - never
| the customer.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34385025
|
| [2] https://newpipe.net/
|
| [3] https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > I truly despise this company.
|
| maybe it felt good to say that, but don't expect any change.
| The number one hated company in the USA for years according to
| some poll, is monopoly cable TV in many regions. "hate" all you
| want, they know that, and they hire people who are increasingly
| immune to feedback.
|
| basically, I agree with you here in California.. with the added
| content that some of those who hold stock in that company are
| the ones buying overpriced houses.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >I finally got around to subscribing to YouTube Premium, and
| they already burned me once by raising prices.
|
| The first burn is that you are paying them with money AND your
| data (which they now can link to your CC#). I'd be more than
| happy to pay for a service like YT to get it ad free as long as
| it doesn't harvest my data (for any damn purpose).
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The willingness to pay, actually makes you a more valuable
| customer to premium services, it reclassifies you for the 2nd
| tier web. Like a higher-refined product for advertisers.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| > I finally got around to subscribing to YouTube Premium, and
| they already burned me once by raising prices.
|
| What are you paying for, exactly? Youtube is already free.
|
| Actually wait, I don't want to know. I'm happy with my life,
| there's no way that knowing this will improve it.
| ender341341 wrote:
| no ads on non-browser devices (and browser based as they've
| taken stronger stances against ad-blockers).
|
| The amount of ads I see people watch is ridiculous, I can't
| stand them at all anymore.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| I was previously in an apartment that had its own internet
| setup, using my Xbox to watch what was basically more ads
| than video. I don't think there's a way to set up a PiHole on
| their connection (maybe there is, but at the time a Raspberry
| Pi would cost more than a year's worth of YT Premium.. I was
| also not aware of NextDNS back then).
|
| That, and Premium views apparently pay creators more than ad-
| supported views [1], so I justified it that way.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Rh5hL47z2us?t=154
| dangus wrote:
| I don't understand why people get so upset over being
| recommended content.
|
| You can stick to the subscriptions tab.
|
| You can search YouTube from your browser (!yt in DDG)
|
| Somehow YouTube wronged you by doing...what exactly? Raising
| prices? And who didn't raise prices?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I'm more upset at the quality of the recommended content. I
| yearn for a YouTube recommendation engine as good as TikTok.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| It's just annoying a) not having control over how I want to
| consume my content, b) the fact that I spent all this time
| cleaning up my Google account history just for them to
| potentially throw water on my efforts, and c) I'm paying them
| for them to do this to me.
|
| To start off, I already lost two of my favourite ways to
| consume content this year: Flamingo for Twitter and Sync for
| Reddit (the latter thankfully resurrected as a Lemmy app).
|
| I do use the Subscriptions tab, but that's for existing
| channels I found via YT's recommendations. I can't add more
| if I can't find more. My current YT setup has been working
| perfectly fine for me to discover cool stuff.
|
| !yt is only as useful as the results YT provides, which
| they've recently messed with as well. If I search for "pizza"
| I'm provided with results that have absolutely nothing to do
| with pizza. https://i.imgur.com/gxhNViW.png I checked the
| transcripts of both Architectural Digest videos - not once
| was "pizza" mentioned. The "Fresh Guacamole" film has no
| dialogue, and is also not about pizza. It's about guacamole.
|
| I think it's general consensus that Google's consumer
| products have been on a decline. Just 2 days ago "Google Maps
| has become an eyesore" was at the top of HN with 764 points
| [1]. If I search "Google Search" on HN, the top post that
| shows up is "Google Search Is Dying" with 3636 points [2].
| And we're all familiar with the infamous Google Graveyard
| [3].
|
| I enjoy not seeing ads and being able to support the creators
| I watch (Premium viewers apparently earn creators more money
| than ad-supported viewers [4]). I just think it's reasonable
| to want _some_ control over what and how I feed them
| information about myself, if I 'm paying $14 a month.
|
| I understand that costs for a lot of other things have gone
| up, it's still annoying to be affected by it.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37030044
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Google+search
|
| [3] https://killedbygoogle.com/
|
| [4] https://youtu.be/Rh5hL47z2us?t=154
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| I'll admit I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of dark
| patterns involved in turning these settings off:
|
| https://myactivity.google.com/u/1/activitycontrols
|
| Disabling a setting asks if you also want to delete your history
| for that setting; if you say yes it shows a sample of what you're
| deleting, you confirm it, and it's done. Nothing tried to
| encourage me to stick around, keep my data, they could easily
| have let me turn off collection of new data but not mentioned
| that they still have the existing data around -- I expected
| trickery but found none.
|
| (Except for one small detail: I can't figure out how one is
| supposed to discover that this page exists in the first place;
| the support update we're discussing contains a link to it, but I
| can't find it anywhere in the YouTube preferences or advanced
| settings or anywhere else.)
|
| (Oh, and it had no visible effect on my YouTube home screen, I'm
| not seeing the empty page I hoped for, just the same garbage
| videos it usually prompts me with for no clear reason. So there's
| that too.)
| summerlight wrote:
| AFAIK, this "My Activity" page is controlled by the user trust
| team which is mostly independent from other products, hence it
| doesn't share much incentives to "optimize" metrics.
| jsnell wrote:
| > I can't figure out how one is supposed to discover that this
| page exists in the first place
|
| Click on "History" in the YouTube sidebar. It'll take you to
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/history. Not only does it shows
| the watch history, it has embedded controls for clearing the
| entire history, deleting individual entries, turning off new
| collection, as well as links to the more granular activity
| control pages.
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| You're absolutely right, thank you. I was so hung up on
| "preferences" or "settings" being the place to look that I
| missed the link that was literally named the thing I was
| looking for!
| marssaxman wrote:
| This sounds like an improvement. I only ever view YouTube videos
| in a private browser, in order to avoid getting a screen full of
| personalized video recommendations based on whatever random thing
| I happened to look at last, but the generic recommendations are
| completely worthless. It would be nicer to skip the whole thing.
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(page generated 2023-08-08 23:02 UTC)