YouTube no longer suggests videos if your ‘watch history’ is turned off
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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.
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)
Follow the link in GP.
Also explains why the ads in the copycat version didn't integrate at all with playback controls or the rest of the app: Someone probably took the original apk, slapped the ads on as a separate thread/process inside the apk and never modified the app's original source.
This literally is browser history. Your browser is already giving you this.
My suggestion is to stop worrying about hypothetical privacy problems and just use the watch history feature. Google will even automatically clear old history for you if you want.
HN nerds get the worst user experiences because they have these random lines in the sand. I’ve been guilty and often try to break out of it when I realize that the people who don’t know better are enjoying themselves more.
They eventually started trickling in suggestions based on watch history and today that's most of the feed.
I can see the argument that not having watch history means they shouldn't be building the per-user dataset to feed into the model to get the history based suggestions. Sure, but then... why not use the subscriptions, the information that users have provided you and what they thought that feature was for?
it's not weird if you examine it from the point of view of user retention metrics.
A subscription recommendation runs out, since you have small number of subscriptions (compared to the whole of youtube). Google wants to keep you clicking, and watching the next video. Algorithmically recommending videos instead of your subscription means you now have effectively infinite list of videos to watch, keeping your eyeball youtube.
If you watch videos on your laptop or your non-Android phone, invidious is quite good. I self host but I believe you could use any public instance and create an account there if you are fine with this public instance having your history and subscription list (which are separate from those you have on YouTube itself).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Your 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).
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.
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.
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.
Gotta make sure the user does the "right" thing, after all.
At some point that stopped working it seems.
YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817 - 75 points, 56 comments
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.
I'd get my storage elsewhere at the very least especially when they will disable your email because of their incompetence.
My email address is linked to several hundred accounts which I use to run my life, manage my household, do finances, etc.
My email address is, of course, the primary means of communicating with me other than phone.
YouTube is my primary means of entertainment, but that's disposable.
I also use Sign In With Google on dozens of the above accounts, so they are a definite dependency on the Google account.
I own an Android phone and a Chromebook. I operate 3 personal accounts, and my employer relies on Google as our primary business platform.
My Google Calendar and Tasks are my sole method of scheduling everything I do in life, from daily tasks to events I attend and everyone's birthdays.
My Google Contacts contain all contacts of everyone I know and is the sole repository of that data.
Google Docs and Sheets are my sole word processing and spreadsheet apps, which I use to great effect for writing letters, managing household, etc. etc. I know them like the back of my hand, and I also use them every day for work.
All the photos I've ever taken since 2015 are stored only in Photos. Not many, of course, but some I'd miss.
I'm increasingly using Wallet and GPay for financial transactions and event tickets. I even hear tell that my jurisdiction is putting driver licenses on Wallet now.
So could you rephrase your advice to me please? Which $20/year service replaces these apps, and permits easy import of all my data from Takeout?
If someone used 365, would you demand that they GTFO Microsoft and junk their Windows systems? What should we run? A PDP-11?
Any reputable service allows changing email addresses. For less important services like Amazon you can use an email alias. Tutanota and Proton are nice email providers whi do not read the content of your emails and and not scan files.
> My email address is, of course, the primary means of communicating with me other than phone.
If you have a phone, can't you just install a messenger? Session does not require a telephone number nor a smartphone, I think.
> I also use Sign In With Google on dozens of the above accounts, so they are a definite dependency on the Google account.
In your Google Account settings which accounts use Sign In With Google. Go to each account and change authentication to email and password wherever possible.
> I own an Android phone and a Chromebook. I operate 3 personal accounts, and my employer relies on Google as our primary business platform.
Does not prevent you from using a secondary email for your personal important stuff like government and financing.
> My Google Calendar and Tasks are my sole method of scheduling everything I do in life, from daily tasks to events I attend and everyone's birthdays.
> My Google Contacts contain all contacts of everyone I know and is the sole repository of that data.
Should be exportable as ics files I think. Make at least a backup once in a while.
> Google Docs and Sheets are my sole word processing and spreadsheet apps, which I use to great effect for writing letters, managing household, etc. etc. I know them like the back of my hand, and I also use them every day for work.
Get an offline editor like LibreOffice. Online editors are crap when your internet connection is off or need to make a ton of content.
> All the photos I've ever taken since 2015 are stored only in Photos. Not many, of course, but some I'd miss.
You can download them for offline use, make a backup and then print out the ones you really care for.
> I'm increasingly using Wallet and GPay for financial transactions and event tickets. I even hear tell that my jurisdiction is putting driver licenses on Wallet now.
If you use GPay, it is even more important to not have any content stored in your account. See the case of a father sending his doctor a picture of his son for diagnosis. It was falsely recognized as child porn and the father had no way to get back the account. If your account gets suspended, you are out of luck.
> So could you rephrase your advice to me please? Which $20/year service replaces these apps, and permits easy import of all my data from Takeout?
> If someone used 365, would you demand that they GTFO Microsoft and junk their Windows systems? What should we run? A PDP-11?
Noone said to nuke your Google account. In fact you're being very passive aggressive despite not having made any effort on researching alternative apps. Don't tie your whole offline and online identity to one provider who doesn't care about you except for your (and people close to you) money and data.
If anything, it has strengthen my resolve not to turn on history tracking on Youtube.
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.