I noticed my consumption has decased quite a bit. I would visit regularly to watch content from few channels. I would probably still visit every so often to watch the new videos. But the experience has become more deliberate and conscious. I go to YouTube because I want to go and watch something specific. Mindlessly browsing and watching additional content is harder.
This is good progress from Google to get off their platform :)
I actually like the recommendations. I usually only get content that’s relevant to my interests, and I’m always finding new channels that are interesting and worth my sub.
Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing differently from everybody else, because I never see much of the spammy/irrelevant content everyone else seems to be getting. Or maybe I’m just easy to please.
My recommendations are broken. It just repeates what I’d been watching and never nothing new. I don’t know why my algorithm is broken. I have gotten to the point of watching more movies and tv shows at this point.
There’s a new tab. That might fix your issue
I love long form comedy content but it does nothing but recommend 30 second clip content. It’s absurd. I just can’t like and interact with the videos I actually like enough.
I do a search for a specific comedian with the words “full set” in the search terms. I do the search outside of the YT app (e.g., using DDG) and watch it either on Firefox with UBO or I search for it in Newpipe. And then subscribe in Newpipe ( and in the regular YT app so they get a little engagement; I also go in and randomly like a few of their videos).
I don’t know what kind of comedy you’re into but here’s a full Matteo Lane set (I think he’s hilarious) - enjoy:
Same. I like the recommended stuff, it actually matches my background noise preferences and has changed over time too and landed some shots in the dark.
It has one drawback: Repetition. I watch a dumb and savage 10s clip from an old cartoon, I get 20 clips recommended. And if one was particularly popular, it recommends that one 20 times. Thing is, it switches gears fast, specially if I tell it I’m not interested. It’s the only algorithm that just seems to GET the concept of “give me DIFFERENT trash”.
Same for me. Sure there’s crap in there sometimes and because I like some Atheist/Philosophy vontent YT kinda likes to shove Prager U and other religious channels down my throat from time to time. But hesides that, I’m usually quite happpy with my recommendations
I have the same experience and I’m wondering if it’s because I’m not American?
I also have a good experience with it and am American. But I also pay for premium for my family and I wonder if it’s not pushing contentious shit to maximize watch time because they already have my money?
I have the opposite experience. YouTube is always pushing dumbass recommendations. I only go to YouTube when someone links to a video I’m interested in, say some neat demonstration of a old analog synthesizer, and there’ll be a couple of slightly interesting suggestions on synths, I’ll click on that and then the recommendations are like “Woah!!! Check out what happens when I stick a synth cable into my butt!!!” And it’s not because I ever watch videos like that, in fact that shit is what makes me close the YouTube window and never go back until some other website links me directly to an actually good video again.
I only go to YouTube when someone links to a video I’m interested in
I wonder if this is part of the discrepancy, as I use YouTube pretty much all day long. I work from home and pretty much always put some YouTube videos on my TV while I’m working. Maybe YT just has a more robust dataset for my account to filter recommendations better.
“Woah!!! Check out what happens when I stick a synth cable into my butt!!!” And it’s not because I ever watch videos like that
You don’t gotta hide it. We’re all friends here. ;)
Hahaha going to a random invidious recommendations page also only shows tech stuff. Pretty nieche though
No. Mine decreased when ad frequency increased.
I have history turned on and it generally recommends stuff I’m interested in. My only complaint is that it doesn’t update often enough and likes to recommend videos I’ve seen already.
Same, I get the feeling very few people actively interact with the “not interested”/“don’t recommend” stuff, so they end up getting all kinds of weird recommendations. Or they also use Youtube Music. For some reason Youtube seriously struggles to understand that most people don’t consume video the same way they consume music, and conflates the two constantly.
Why would I have my watch history turned off? I assumed that Google knows what I watched whether or not I tell them to keep that info available for me.
Before youtube disabled recommendation for people with watch history turned off, having watch history turned off made it so your recommendations were only based on channels you are subscribed to and possibly videos you’ve liked, commented on, …
There are some categories where I only ever search for the category, then watch a video, but never subscribe to any channel. Those videos were never recommended to me. Meanwhile on my girlfriends pc with watch history turned on, as soon as I watch a single video from a channel she’s not subscribed to similar videos appear all over the front page.
watch history is kinda important to me because sometimes I want to continue watching or rewatch a video at a later time or on my pc instead of my phone and then watch history is the only way to easily find that video
deleted by creator
How am I supposed to know I want to rewatch it beforehand ?
deleted by creator
I use subscriptions only for a long time and occasionally throw off dead weight there. No need for such a feature to be honest. I get most new interesting channel either by recommendations from youtubers i subscribed to or from random links like on lemmy. Which happens rarely, like, I subscribe to 5 new channels max per year, and remove about the same number each year.
I never went to the homepage unless I accidentally landed there because of autofill. I normally just go straight to subscriptions. There are still recommendations under videos, so I check that out every so often, mostly because my secondary monitor is portrait and I can see them under the video
spent a few hours yesterday sorting all of my subscriptions and moving them to newpipe. while having everything auto-backed up by google was convenient, newpipe is much better - i go in, watch some videos i saved into a playlist or that have come out from subscribed channels, then go out. it feels way better then being sucked in by the algorithm. i think i’ll still use youtube’s algorithm on my pc sometimes, as this setup hinders new content discovery. but overall, i’m really pleased so far with the new setup.
What is newpipe?
I’ve been using RSS feeds for youtube channels for a few years. I don’t visit the site if I can help it, I don’t login, I don’t “like & subscribe”, I don’t see any clickbait thumbnails and most important: I don’t see any ads. Just newsboat & mpv.
I’ve been using RSS feeds for youtube channels for a few years.
Same. Don’t really follow any kind of content feed if I can’t combine it in my RSS client. I don’t want to check dozens of web pages individually.
Nope, subscriptions give me what I want. And peertube has a lot of cool channels if I want discovery.
I’ve primarily only watched my subscriptions for a few years now.
I took the steps to pry myself away from google. Turned off all that stuff, nuked my yt channel history, all that. Exporting sub’s into RSS feeds and invidious. Freetube is an awesome desktop app for watching yt. The only thing I miss is interacting in the comment section but also at same time a blessing since I am the kind of person to accidentally write a 5 paragraph essay noons would ever read, no yt comments means less chance if wasting my time.
Also as I got older my taste and willingness to sit in front of YouTube all day has changed When I was a teen I spend hours and hours watching gaming content. As an adult I have better shit to do and would rather actually play games myself. I my sub’s list has whittled down from 200 > 100 > 50 and I only get a few new vids in my feed a day if that.
deleted by creator
Yes, and it’s been great! I mainly watch my subscriptions now, and the occasional tutorial I have to search for, but I’m glad to not have a bunch of clickbait thrown at me when I first open the app, now I don’t get sidetracked or waste nearly as much time on useless schlock.
Yeah, I had a similar experience
I wonder why they did this though, before the change YouTube would recommend me videos based on videos I watched so it’s not like they actually needed the watch history to be turned on
No because I haven’t used the app for years so I’m not signed in. I use browser with uBlock “etc” on both mobile & laptop/desktop.
Any feeds that I watch regularly plus interesting videos I stumble on or recommended in places like [email protected] i put directly into a notes app which syncs to all my devices. All grouped by length so its easy to find something depending on how little spare time I have to kill. Its a slight extra step compared to clicking “watch later” in the YouTube app but ive done it for so long now its become second nature
