On the flip side, this also means users have the option to have a cleaner, less cluttered interface.
Full text:
[AUGUST 8, 2023] A new viewer experience that better corresponds to your YouTube watch history preferences
One of the benefits of having YouTube watch history on is that it enables YouTube to provide video recommendations you may be interested in; however, we know some prefer to clear and turn off your YouTube watch history. Starting today, we’re changing how you see recommendations on YouTube, based on your Watch History settings:
Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled – like your YouTube home feed. This means that starting today, your home feed may look a lot different: you’ll be able to see the search bar and the left-hand guide menu, with no feed of recommended videos thus allowing you to more easily search, browse subscribed channels and explore Topic tabs instead.
We’re rolling these changes out slowly, over the next few months. We are launching this new experience to make it more clear which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make it more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations. You can change your YouTube watch history settings at any time based on whether you prefer us to provide video recommendations or not.
“Either help us feed the algorithm, or we will make your experience worse”
Is removing the suggestions really making the experience worse though?
From their perspective, yes
Depends.
If you watch mostly technical videos and practical how-to stuff, do you really want to have the home page full of gamers and Mr.Beast wannabes?
Their algorithm sucks and I’m perfectly happy minimizing my exposure to it, but the whole premise behind video suggestions is that it’s based on what you like. You could try to replicate it with subscription lists instead, but the bottom line is the feature as it is doesn’t really work without knowing what you watch.
They have better information than what I watch: what I click like/dislike on. I’ve watched a number of videos someone recommended that I hate, videos I click on accidentally. Sometimes I don’t watch all the way through, but sometimes I’m not sure until the end that it was a waste of my time.
It was years ago, but my feed got much better when I disabled watch history.