this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023

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Watch history required for recommendations now on Youtube/Alternative to youtube. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by serpineslair@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In order to get recommendations on your homepage you need to enable your Youtube history in order for videos to be "tailored for you". This is complete BS, as recommendations were perfectly fine before, and I have never had history enabled. This is just a stunt to get people to give their personal data to google. Now I know google has always been bad but this is what really gave me the wake up call, the final straw if you will.

This has prompted me to look for an alternative, specifically an open source alternative. Unfortunately, there are no suitable candidates to my knowledge. However, there is a small, open source alternative which is federated (similarly to Lemmy) called PeerTube. I believe with enough users it could potentially become a viable alternative. Please consider reading more about it. I have not joined yet but I will research more tomorrow. Thanks for hearing me out, just wanted to spread awareness.

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[–] dalingrin@lemm.ee 43 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If Google doesn't keep your watch history then how it can make recommendations? It seems like people who don't want Google to keep the watch history are probably also people who don't want Google to feed them videos algorithmically.

[–] handhookcardoor@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also: Do you think doing this really keeps Google from keeping track of what you watched? I bet they keep all that history already.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's still a good idea. Here's why: They are legally bound to it, thanks to EU laws, and if they still do it they could get into a world of shit. So they are really careful about what they are doing with that data. And that's a small W in my back. Otherwise I could get money in court. And I do like money too.

[–] HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

This is exactly the reason why I turned off my history. I go to my subscriptions panel anyway.

[–] rush@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Contextually, from trends and from other users which watched the video you're watching.

Oh, and they keep this data anyways

[–] pufferfischerpulver@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Exactly! OP should welcome this change if anything. It would seem that so far Google has kept a watch history no matter if enabled (visible) or not to feed it's recommendation algorithm. Now you have the choice to disable it.

[–] niisyth@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty sure they could rig something up from subscriptions. I dunno, maybe a chronological subscription feed??

But why would they when they could strongarm you into enabling watch history.

[–] serpineslair@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Precisely.

[–] emstuff@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

i am confused what OP wants to happen, i would probably say this is a change for the better that i would not mind for the sake of privacy?

just like subscribe to some ppl or something like,

[–] serpineslair@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It already did this, I'm guessing based on subscriptions or something, but as others have mentioned they probably have my history anyway. It's honestly less about the fact that I can't get recommendations and more about the fact that they are trying to force people to turn on history. But tbh even without this I am happy to have found a federated version similar to Lemmy.

[–] gezginorman@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

since i turned history off my homepage looks beautiful, filled with channels that i actually follow and not with recommendations of an unhinged algorithm which seems to think you dedicate your entire existence to a subject if you click a single video about it

[–] ElBarto@lzrprt.sbs 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Youtube api: so I saw you watched a video on how to replace a smoke detector once, here's all the videos about smoke detectors.

[–] popekingjoe@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But it's not cool stuff like "The History of the Smoke Detector". Instead it's a bunch of other videos on how to replace the battery in one, including the video you already watched. Have fun!

[–] ElBarto@lzrprt.sbs 6 points 1 year ago

Then there's the random company that uploaded an advertisement 8 years ago that keeps popping up.

[–] thecam@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

There is LBRY/odysee and there is a small community for LBRY and odysee on lemmy.