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Tell HN: YouTube requires watch history on for home screen

7 points by janosdebugs ↗ HN
Until recently, YouTube would present you with a home screen that's compiled mostly from your subscriptions. As of 5 minutes ago, I'm getting a blank screen with the navigation on the left and a message:

  Your watch history is off
  You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you. Learn more
  [Update setting]
For context, I'm paying Premium and I specifically disabled the ad blocker to test. The browser I'm using is Firefox. The subscriptions page still works.

11 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 37.5 ms ] thread
NoZebra120vClip
First of all, this is a dupe, so it pays to use search and pay attention to others asking the same thing.

Second, your headline says "forces watch history on" but I'm not seeing any force. Gun to head? Kidnapped first born...?

It seems like YouTube will simply nag you about disabling Watch History, which you've probably disabled for the wrong reasons. They're not gonna display anything from now on, so, you could choose to re-enable it, or live with the nagging.

Is this a dialog or just an in-page message? Is it modal? Can you easily escape it or is it getting in the way?

janosdebugs
No, there is no way for me to get the home screen without accepting the watch history on. So, if I want a home screen, I am forced to turn it on. Edit: I've updated the title to "requires".

I disabled it because I'm happy to watch YouTube subscriptions and the occasional recommendations, but I really don't see why YouTube needs to know my watch history.

As far as the dupe is concerned, please link to it so others can find it too.

NoZebra120vClip
I mentioned in another thread, that YouTube certainly knows your watch history, and every other history, even when you disable/delete them. The only person you're hurting by disabling it is yourself, because you lose your access. YouTube's gonna collect it, use it, sell it, and leak it, eventually. Have fun.

For any given service, the only control you have over data collection is going to be the telemetry under a banner such as "Make YouTube Better!" "Send Crash Reports!" "Enable Debugging Data". Any sort of routine data is collected, no matter what settings you put in. I always turn my history/timeline settings up to MAX, never delete, because I know those are the settings most beneficial to me personally.

Plenty of data is collected that you aren't even aware of. Most people don't realize the intrusive nature of a modern browser or mobile device now. They can check your scrolling, dwell times, time spent on page (did you ever wonder why that annoying popup comes just at the wrong moment?) attempts to leave page, mouse movements: any twitch you make with the keyboard or mouse gets noticed and sent back to mothership.

Tell HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37157835

CNet article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37151135

Wow, low engagements.

janosdebugs
I believe there's a technical term for this in the EU: illegal. If it comes out that they didn't delete data that was requested to be deleted beyond reasonable technical measures and they actually used it, that's most certainly going to rain fines. Given the increasing appetite in the EU for handing out these fines, I'm not sure YouTube is taking it so lightly.
NoZebra120vClip
Well hmm. I may be totally wrong on those points. None of the articles I surveyed support my claims. They may be poor-quality articles, I don't know. None of them explicitly say that YT silently keeps track even with history off. So these controls may be really doing what they say on the tin.

It's strange though: I do recall somewhere in the Googleplex, something telling me that turning off history wouldn't disable collection. Was it in Maps? Some other product? I don't know, but now I feel weird about it.

I'm sorry if I caused confusion about these points. Please accept my retraction and apologies.

janosdebugs
No worries, on a technical level I'm sure they have the data somewhere, but that's most likely in a backup or a replication mechanism. However, if it somewere someone would know about and they would use it, it would have come out.

The recommendations for me were ok so far, but clearly not based on my watch history. It's mildly annoying that they are gone now.

NoZebra120vClip
Okay, well, if I understand this correctly, the home screen is blank and has no recommendations for you. Why do you want a home screen? You want recommendations? If you want recommendations then clearly the deal is to enable history. If you don't want recommendations then there's a blank home screen. It's a trade: you're not required to enable history, and YT's not required to recommend anything.

Is the dialog preventing you from navigating to Subscriptions, Library, or other screens? It seems like the dialog's just livening up an empty space, really.

mcflingy
Incorrect. The "home" page had recommendations with watch history turned off before. They were able to get this from likes and saved videos, and if they had no likes or saved videos they would recommend based on another algorithm that involved locality, language, age, and generally popular videos.
fedorhk
That’s great! I can now return to YT app instead of using it via a browser with a complex custom blocking to remove recommendations.
psyklic
Google Maps is similar. Google clearly stores your Home and Work locations, labels them on the map, and allows you to change them in the settings.

Yet with "Web & App Activity" off, when asking for directions it states: "To see your home and work ... turn on Web & App Activity."

botanical
They're doing this region by region and I came across it South Africa as well yesterday. Apparently, you need just one video in your watch history and then switch off watch history to circumvent this. But then maybe your recommendations will suffer as a result of this.

They could just recommend videos from your subscribed channels, but then it wouldn't be to the benefit of Google's nefarious plans.

Now I make sure never to watch directly on YouTube; I either download the video or use a 3rd-party app like NewPipe where I only see videos of channels I subscribed to. It's much better this way as YouTube is 99% junk.