8 ms·

YouTube no longer suggests videos if your ‘watch history’ is turned off

66 points by fortran77 3y ago

fortran77 3y ago
They also warn me EVERY TIME with a dialog I have to dismiss that my watch history is turned off--and tries to trick me into turning it on.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  I was tricked once--and only once--into signing up for Premium. I was setting up the app anew on a new account, and IIRC it was my school account, of all things. And I was just mindlessly tapping through dialogs to get it set up ASAP, and I hit a button that probably read "Let's Do It" or "Sounds Good To Me" or some other sort of stupid, slangy, unclear thing, and that was the "consent" to sign up to the service and so I got the Free Trial. Thankfully I did notice and I properly cancelled and had no billing issues. That was definitely a dark pattern. I see them wording the buttons all the time so you're not quite sure what you're agreeing to. I also once "consented" to a Walmart+ subscription, and I had a bit of a crazy time recovering the money they charged for it. I believe that my bank had flagged it for fraud and so I contacted them and said no, I certainly did not authorize this. And then we had a little, er, discussion on what "authorization" meant. Because what I think had happened was a recent purchase that I made had an "opt-out" checkbox clicked for me, and I didn't notice, failing to opt-out of the subscription, and thereby "authorized" it in the financial opinion of my financial institution. Hey, that's not consent, that's a deception. Anyway, I did pursue a refund and I did get satisfaction from that, and strangely ever since, it's been an opt-in checkbox and not opt-out. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened. Has there ever been an age where it's easier to accidentally spend money? I suppose any time that a wink and handshake (or :thumbsup:) suffice for a contract, anyone could give away the farm unintentionally.
  - hermannj314 3y ago
    It used to be that the government protected its citizens. Laws were written to force companies to make disclosures, certain contracts had to be in writing, some documents require notaries, even fair credit reporting standards allowed citizens to see the data banks kept and shared about us. We used to be safe because the government protected us. Now you can consent to be spied on for an eternity because you clicked "ok" once. You have no recourse to do anything with the data SV keeps on you and our government simply doesn't care. As long as SV plays nice with government demands to curtail 1st and 4th amendment protections there will be lax regulation.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    That doesn’t sound right. It should’ve brought up the standard Google payment sheet where you would’ve had to confirm your payment method.
- nullc 3y ago
  My favorite was the old android location services dialog-- there was a "and don't ask me again" checkbox on by default ... but it greyed it out if you disabled location services. So it was just a matter of time until you fat fingered the wrong button and got it stuck on and no longer prompting you. Gotta make sure the user does the "right" thing, after all.
- sebnun 3y ago
  On the Gmail app in iOS, when opening a web link I get the option to choose Chrome or Safari, I choose Safari and set the checkbox for "Don't ask me again" but the app keeps asking ... dark patterns are common in Google products.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
HN's submission history must be turned off, if we are to judge from the deluge of dupes on this story
- janosdebugs 3y ago
  Curious: how does one find dupes before submitting? I looked but didn't find one when I posted.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22watch%20history%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... worked for me
  - kioleanu 3y ago
    I wrote an extension that would help: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-commenter/glhpoenomnnhjddjloedbjoeeianflod https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-commenter/glhp...
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    It used to work sufficiently well at detecting them itself that sometimes I submitted links to interesting stories because it was the quickest way to find the existing story with comments, where it would immediately redirect you. At some point that stopped working it seems.
    - Macha 3y ago
      The auto dupe detector only really works if it's the same URL which is not the case for the dupes of this one (4 discussion posts, 1 different news site link)
fooker 3y ago
That seems reasonable. If you don’t have a watch history, on what basis would YouTube suggest videos? Maybe there’s a legal angle here too, good suggestions might prove that they store your history even when you have turned it off.
- nullc 3y ago
  > on what basis would YouTube suggest videos? Your subscriptions.
  - o_m 3y ago
    If you just want videos from your subscriptions I recommend using RSS instead
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Or maybe the subscriptions page... Third option from top.
    - chii 3y ago
      that's not what they meant by recommendations from subscriptions. The OP meant that youtube scans the videos that belong to the subscribed channels, and suggest more videos that have similarities in topic or idea, from different channels (that have not been subscribed).
      - nullc 3y ago
        Exactly.
- megous 3y ago
  They can suggest videos popular in the users's location.
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    I'd rather they don't. It's always a girl playing guitar very well but you can see her nipples through the top and the camera is set to show you her panties up her skirt. I don't trust myself not to click it every time.
csdreamer7 3y ago
Like a previous comment from another poster: I consider this a feature.
- terramoto 3y ago
  This and,the more they take away, the easier it is to move to another platform.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    Not happening because no body wants to replace YouTube.
- physicles 3y ago
  I turned off my history about a year ago in an effort to reduce the time I spend on YouTube. It sort of worked. I suspect this new change will help much more.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
I recently had a real drama with my Google One subscription. I cancelled it months ago, because I projected being poorer and trying to tighten my belt. Then I thought better of it, and so I wanted to resubscribe. Although my subscription was good through August 12, the system would not allow me to reactivate it early, would not allow me to update payment methods, although it was tantalizingly displaying several "upgrade" buttons for more expensive plans. And it was also displaying a prominent yellow banner that told me I had cancelled "but I can restart it anytime!" So in mid-July, I contacted a support agent. And they started explaining to me that there was no way to resubscribe until the day it lapsed. And I described their banner and they said welp, just wait for that day. And they also repeatedly said "you can contact us anytime and resubscribe!" and I kept telling them to quit lying! I was also reminded of a terrible threat, that email is counted in disk quota, and if I was in excess of 15GiB when the 100GiB subscription lapsed, my email would be disabled! Since I can't guarantee I'll have the subscription for life, I'll just have to ensure I never exceed 15GiB, even though I pay for 100, sad... So the termination day rolled around, and I contacted support to ask them why I couldn't restart it, and they said I had to wait for the cancellation email (different story than the first time around) and I was finally able to safely renew, and hopefully set up autopay on that too. The funny thing is that if the One subscription lapses, I'd of course lose access to those live agents as well, so if I had any further trouble, I'd be screaming into the void. I mean, if One expires, you're over quota, email won't work, you don't receive the email, you can never resubscribe, nobody will help you... ouch.
- behringer 3y ago
  Never ever ever trust Google like this. You need to go a different route for your storage.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    My... storage?
    - behringer 3y ago
      Yes. Who you gonna call when they block your email and you have access to no files? It seems like half the time you have to reach someone who works at Google here for help. I'd get my storage elsewhere at the very least especially when they will disable your email because of their incompetence.
AraceliHarker 3y ago
Since it is more problematic to push videos that are "related" to the video being played than to display recommendations based on the user's past browsing history (since they are usually not very relevant to the video and are popular in the region where the language of the video being played is used and contain discriminatory, violent or sexual content), these measures do not seem to be an essential solution.
benabbottnz 3y ago
I’ve had watch history disabled for years, and the suggested videos were always perfectly fine. Now I have zero ability to discover new channels, and already my engagement is much lower since I’m limited to what I’m subscribed to, or whatever random search query I make. My YouTube experience is significantly degraded now. Fortunately, they appear to have created more interfaces for mass deleting old comments and likes / dislikes, so I’ve been utilising that too. I look forward to seeing what else they punish me for, for using the settings and tools they provide.
- rgoulter 3y ago
  If you want recommendations based on the content you enjoy watching, YouTube still displays recommendations beside videos (even with watch history turned off). If you want to see a list of videos unrelated to your subscriptions, you have the options of looking at Trending videos, or videos under Gaming, Music, News, Sports. (...And of course, if you do want recommendations on the home page, you have the option to re-enable watch history and get those). I don't agree that "zero ability to discover new channels" is a reasonable description of the options someone has with watch history disabled.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  I don't subscribe to anything and never use YouTube from a session that's logged into Google. Now all I see is the default vapid millennial influencer dreck that used to disappear after I watched some of my preferred content.
xg15 3y ago
I can live with not having recommendations. What annoys me more is that Google is essentially holding useful features hostage to get their tracking fix. I.e., I would actually love to have a list of the videos I've watched recently - on my device, with a simple option to delete it, exactly the same way that browser histories have worked since forever. However, with YouTube, it's all or nothing: Either, I let them track my viewing history globally across all devices, store it on their servers for all eternity and do who knows what with the data - or I don't get any history at all, to the point where when I restart the app, it will completely forget the video I just watched a second ago.
- Jenk 3y ago
  NewPipe has that feature. https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/
  - xg15 3y ago
    That looks interesting. Thanks a lot! Edit: or not. Seems youtube is not happy with the app and blocks playback randomly with 403 errors. Also, the app seems to insert undismissable fullscreen ads every few minutes, without even having the courtesy to stop the video when doing so. But at least background play definitly works, I guess... (Undismissable in the sense that it tries to block me from going to the homescreen if I didn't click the ad - not even talking about going back to the video player or other parts of the app)
    - Corsome 3y ago
      I think you're using a copycat app from Play Store. It's not a real app which is only available through F-Droid.
      - xg15 3y ago
        Ah, that was probably it. Gotta admit, I deserved it then, for not reading carefully enough :)
log101 3y ago
Thankfully! Best feature of the Youtube history. I've always hated irrelevant suggestions. There is always a search bar if I wanted to explore. right?
butz 3y ago
And if your watch history is turned on - it will keep suggesting the same videos you already watched.
- joombaga 3y ago
  This is what happens to me with the history cleared and turned off.
egberts1 3y ago
Why bother enabling YouTube history tracking, they will just send us down a dark pattern of enabling a paid subscription. If anything, it has strengthen my resolve not to turn on history tracking on Youtube. We have over 143 alternatives to YouTube. https://alternativeto.net/software/youtube/ https://alternativeto.net/software/youtube/
- bandergirl 3y ago
  > We have over 143 alternatives to YouTube. Sorry but that’s just wishful thinking. Many on the first page are only alternative YouTube UIs. Most of the actual alternatives only offer short videos, there’s nothing with the breadth of content that YouTube has. Very few options could actually evolve into the next free generic video platform.
gmerc 3y ago
Remember when Facebook gave you the option to delete all tracking data about you … but made sure there was no way to exclude 3rd party login - to make sure you can’t actually use it without irrevocably losing any login. Same thing, malicious compliance - Leadership vetoed any attempt to make it useful while simultaneously chest bumping about how much we care about privacy. Was one of those examples that clearly shoe how double faced senior leadership there always have been - talk to bunch of motivated millennial PMs into great privacy initiatives that prove ‘we care’ but poison pill the features to ensure nobody can actually use them.
jondwillis 3y ago
I might cancel premium over this. However, having a subscriptions feed is still usable. If you want to get sucked into the algorithm, there are still recommendations on actual video pages.
_xivi 3y ago
Related discussion: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817 - 75 points, 56 comments
tb_technical 3y ago
Good. I always hated that front page, anyway.

66 points by fortran77 3y ago

They also warn me EVERY TIME with a dialog I have to dismiss that my watch history is turned off--and tries to trick me into turning it on.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
I was tricked once--and only once--into signing up for Premium. I was setting up the app anew on a new account, and IIRC it was my school account, of all things. And I was just mindlessly tapping through dialogs to get it set up ASAP, and I hit a button that probably read "Let's Do It" or "Sounds Good To Me" or some other sort of stupid, slangy, unclear thing, and that was the "consent" to sign up to the service and so I got the Free Trial. Thankfully I did notice and I properly cancelled and had no billing issues. That was definitely a dark pattern. I see them wording the buttons all the time so you're not quite sure what you're agreeing to. I also once "consented" to a Walmart+ subscription, and I had a bit of a crazy time recovering the money they charged for it. I believe that my bank had flagged it for fraud and so I contacted them and said no, I certainly did not authorize this. And then we had a little, er, discussion on what "authorization" meant. Because what I think had happened was a recent purchase that I made had an "opt-out" checkbox clicked for me, and I didn't notice, failing to opt-out of the subscription, and thereby "authorized" it in the financial opinion of my financial institution. Hey, that's not consent, that's a deception. Anyway, I did pursue a refund and I did get satisfaction from that, and strangely ever since, it's been an opt-in checkbox and not opt-out. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened. Has there ever been an age where it's easier to accidentally spend money? I suppose any time that a wink and handshake (or :thumbsup:) suffice for a contract, anyone could give away the farm unintentionally.
- hermannj314 3y ago
  It used to be that the government protected its citizens. Laws were written to force companies to make disclosures, certain contracts had to be in writing, some documents require notaries, even fair credit reporting standards allowed citizens to see the data banks kept and shared about us. We used to be safe because the government protected us. Now you can consent to be spied on for an eternity because you clicked "ok" once. You have no recourse to do anything with the data SV keeps on you and our government simply doesn't care. As long as SV plays nice with government demands to curtail 1st and 4th amendment protections there will be lax regulation.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  That doesn’t sound right. It should’ve brought up the standard Google payment sheet where you would’ve had to confirm your payment method.
nullc 3y ago
My favorite was the old android location services dialog-- there was a "and don't ask me again" checkbox on by default ... but it greyed it out if you disabled location services. So it was just a matter of time until you fat fingered the wrong button and got it stuck on and no longer prompting you. Gotta make sure the user does the "right" thing, after all.
sebnun 3y ago
On the Gmail app in iOS, when opening a web link I get the option to choose Chrome or Safari, I choose Safari and set the checkbox for "Don't ask me again" but the app keeps asking ... dark patterns are common in Google products.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

HN's submission history must be turned off, if we are to judge from the deluge of dupes on this story

janosdebugs 3y ago
Curious: how does one find dupes before submitting? I looked but didn't find one when I posted.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22watch%20history%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... worked for me
- kioleanu 3y ago
  I wrote an extension that would help: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-commenter/glhpoenomnnhjddjloedbjoeeianflod https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-commenter/glhp...
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  It used to work sufficiently well at detecting them itself that sometimes I submitted links to interesting stories because it was the quickest way to find the existing story with comments, where it would immediately redirect you. At some point that stopped working it seems.
  - Macha 3y ago
    The auto dupe detector only really works if it's the same URL which is not the case for the dupes of this one (4 discussion posts, 1 different news site link)

fooker 3y ago

That seems reasonable. If you don’t have a watch history, on what basis would YouTube suggest videos? Maybe there’s a legal angle here too, good suggestions might prove that they store your history even when you have turned it off.

nullc 3y ago
> on what basis would YouTube suggest videos? Your subscriptions.
- o_m 3y ago
  If you just want videos from your subscriptions I recommend using RSS instead
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Or maybe the subscriptions page... Third option from top.
  - chii 3y ago
    that's not what they meant by recommendations from subscriptions. The OP meant that youtube scans the videos that belong to the subscribed channels, and suggest more videos that have similarities in topic or idea, from different channels (that have not been subscribed).
    - nullc 3y ago
      Exactly.
megous 3y ago
They can suggest videos popular in the users's location.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  I'd rather they don't. It's always a girl playing guitar very well but you can see her nipples through the top and the camera is set to show you her panties up her skirt. I don't trust myself not to click it every time.

csdreamer7 3y ago

Like a previous comment from another poster: I consider this a feature.

terramoto 3y ago
This and,the more they take away, the easier it is to move to another platform.
- jacooper 3y ago
  Not happening because no body wants to replace YouTube.
physicles 3y ago
I turned off my history about a year ago in an effort to reduce the time I spend on YouTube. It sort of worked. I suspect this new change will help much more.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

I recently had a real drama with my Google One subscription. I cancelled it months ago, because I projected being poorer and trying to tighten my belt. Then I thought better of it, and so I wanted to resubscribe. Although my subscription was good through August 12, the system would not allow me to reactivate it early, would not allow me to update payment methods, although it was tantalizingly displaying several "upgrade" buttons for more expensive plans. And it was also displaying a prominent yellow banner that told me I had cancelled "but I can restart it anytime!" So in mid-July, I contacted a support agent. And they started explaining to me that there was no way to resubscribe until the day it lapsed. And I described their banner and they said welp, just wait for that day. And they also repeatedly said "you can contact us anytime and resubscribe!" and I kept telling them to quit lying! I was also reminded of a terrible threat, that email is counted in disk quota, and if I was in excess of 15GiB when the 100GiB subscription lapsed, my email would be disabled! Since I can't guarantee I'll have the subscription for life, I'll just have to ensure I never exceed 15GiB, even though I pay for 100, sad... So the termination day rolled around, and I contacted support to ask them why I couldn't restart it, and they said I had to wait for the cancellation email (different story than the first time around) and I was finally able to safely renew, and hopefully set up autopay on that too. The funny thing is that if the One subscription lapses, I'd of course lose access to those live agents as well, so if I had any further trouble, I'd be screaming into the void. I mean, if One expires, you're over quota, email won't work, you don't receive the email, you can never resubscribe, nobody will help you... ouch.

behringer 3y ago
Never ever ever trust Google like this. You need to go a different route for your storage.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  My... storage?
  - behringer 3y ago
    Yes. Who you gonna call when they block your email and you have access to no files? It seems like half the time you have to reach someone who works at Google here for help. I'd get my storage elsewhere at the very least especially when they will disable your email because of their incompetence.

AraceliHarker 3y ago

Since it is more problematic to push videos that are "related" to the video being played than to display recommendations based on the user's past browsing history (since they are usually not very relevant to the video and are popular in the region where the language of the video being played is used and contain discriminatory, violent or sexual content), these measures do not seem to be an essential solution.

benabbottnz 3y ago

I’ve had watch history disabled for years, and the suggested videos were always perfectly fine. Now I have zero ability to discover new channels, and already my engagement is much lower since I’m limited to what I’m subscribed to, or whatever random search query I make. My YouTube experience is significantly degraded now. Fortunately, they appear to have created more interfaces for mass deleting old comments and likes / dislikes, so I’ve been utilising that too. I look forward to seeing what else they punish me for, for using the settings and tools they provide.

rgoulter 3y ago
If you want recommendations based on the content you enjoy watching, YouTube still displays recommendations beside videos (even with watch history turned off). If you want to see a list of videos unrelated to your subscriptions, you have the options of looking at Trending videos, or videos under Gaming, Music, News, Sports. (...And of course, if you do want recommendations on the home page, you have the option to re-enable watch history and get those). I don't agree that "zero ability to discover new channels" is a reasonable description of the options someone has with watch history disabled.
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
I don't subscribe to anything and never use YouTube from a session that's logged into Google. Now all I see is the default vapid millennial influencer dreck that used to disappear after I watched some of my preferred content.

xg15 3y ago

I can live with not having recommendations. What annoys me more is that Google is essentially holding useful features hostage to get their tracking fix. I.e., I would actually love to have a list of the videos I've watched recently - on my device, with a simple option to delete it, exactly the same way that browser histories have worked since forever. However, with YouTube, it's all or nothing: Either, I let them track my viewing history globally across all devices, store it on their servers for all eternity and do who knows what with the data - or I don't get any history at all, to the point where when I restart the app, it will completely forget the video I just watched a second ago.

Jenk 3y ago
NewPipe has that feature. https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/
- xg15 3y ago
  That looks interesting. Thanks a lot! Edit: or not. Seems youtube is not happy with the app and blocks playback randomly with 403 errors. Also, the app seems to insert undismissable fullscreen ads every few minutes, without even having the courtesy to stop the video when doing so. But at least background play definitly works, I guess... (Undismissable in the sense that it tries to block me from going to the homescreen if I didn't click the ad - not even talking about going back to the video player or other parts of the app)
  - Corsome 3y ago
    I think you're using a copycat app from Play Store. It's not a real app which is only available through F-Droid.
    - xg15 3y ago
      Ah, that was probably it. Gotta admit, I deserved it then, for not reading carefully enough :)

log101 3y ago

Thankfully! Best feature of the Youtube history. I've always hated irrelevant suggestions. There is always a search bar if I wanted to explore. right?

butz 3y ago

And if your watch history is turned on - it will keep suggesting the same videos you already watched.

joombaga 3y ago
This is what happens to me with the history cleared and turned off.

egberts1 3y ago

Why bother enabling YouTube history tracking, they will just send us down a dark pattern of enabling a paid subscription. If anything, it has strengthen my resolve not to turn on history tracking on Youtube. We have over 143 alternatives to YouTube. https://alternativeto.net/software/youtube/ https://alternativeto.net/software/youtube/

bandergirl 3y ago
> We have over 143 alternatives to YouTube. Sorry but that’s just wishful thinking. Many on the first page are only alternative YouTube UIs. Most of the actual alternatives only offer short videos, there’s nothing with the breadth of content that YouTube has. Very few options could actually evolve into the next free generic video platform.

gmerc 3y ago

Remember when Facebook gave you the option to delete all tracking data about you … but made sure there was no way to exclude 3rd party login - to make sure you can’t actually use it without irrevocably losing any login. Same thing, malicious compliance - Leadership vetoed any attempt to make it useful while simultaneously chest bumping about how much we care about privacy. Was one of those examples that clearly shoe how double faced senior leadership there always have been - talk to bunch of motivated millennial PMs into great privacy initiatives that prove ‘we care’ but poison pill the features to ensure nobody can actually use them.

jondwillis 3y ago

I might cancel premium over this. However, having a subscriptions feed is still usable. If you want to get sucked into the algorithm, there are still recommendations on actual video pages.

_xivi 3y ago

Related discussion: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817 - 75 points, 56 comments

tb_technical 3y ago

Good. I always hated that front page, anyway.