this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Technology
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I don't have my watch history off. I use it a lot to remember videos I was watching. It honestly ended up doing a lot for me and I'd rather get recommended content I might enjoy. Just like how Lemmy recommends content to me like how this post ended up at the top of my front page.
I totally get that. For most people, watch history and relevant recommendations are indeed useful tools.
But if, for some reasons, you want to switch off these tools, the price to pay was a home page full of flashy clickbait miniatures. This terrible home page could have been an incentive to switch history on.
Now, it's just a minimalistic google-ish search page. It's an unexpected improvement when they could have done much worse, like a home page autoplaying ad videos, for example.
Maybe google here is attempting to appeal to both types of people? Why should they truly care if people have watch history off? The end of the day, you are still watching videos on YouTube and that's what they want.