YouTube has changed how it works for people not signed into Google account or using incoginto mode, and it's not showing suggested videos anymore. This change, which is being tested with some random users, shows a very simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tips on what to watch.

YouTube is no longer showing recommended videos to users logged out of a Google account or using Incognito mode, making people concerned they are being bullied into always being signed into the service.

This change, which is now rolling out, shows a simple YouTube homepage without any videos or tips on what to watch.

As noted by some on X, users who have cleaned their search and watch history or turned off their history settings also see no suggestions when they’re logged in. Some people think YouTube is being pushy about this, trying to make users turn on their history settings.

  • Björn TantauEnglish
    450·
    7 months ago

    Uh, how could Google show any personal recommendations without storing any data to base that on? If anything this seems to be Google actually doing what they say they’re doing.

    • usualsuspect191English
      400·
      7 months ago

      They could do what they did back in the day; show recommended videos based on the current one.

      • kent_ehEnglish
        160·
        7 months ago

        show recommended videos based on the current one.

        They still do in my recent experience.

        It’s just not based on any longer viewing history than the current session.

        The homepage rhat starts the viewing session will generally be just what’s popular with the general audience in the approximate location they can geolocate from your IP address. If you are logged out and try a few different locations on a VPN, you’ll get different homepages to start a new (logged out) session from.

        • archomrade [he/him]English
          70·
          7 months ago

          Yep.

          Though there is still a reason to be upset IMHO, because I’ve had history turned off for several years now, but until recently I always had a home page with ‘recommended’ videos regardless, which to me indicates that they were not honoring my request before the recent data regulations went into effect in the EU, or were otherwise using data from other services or browsing history to base recommendations on.

    • cerementEnglish
      131·
      7 months ago

      Google has been perfectly happy to track you with browser fingerprints – just if they showed personalized results, it would be giving their hand away …

    • unexposedhazardEnglish
      60·
      7 months ago

      Cookies… But yes i noticed it too recently that you dont even get a homepage / trending list anymore when turning on proper privacy settings.

    • Aatube
      50·
      7 months ago

      They kinda don’t! It’d be trending videos near your IP locations + your watch history for this browser session

    • someguy3English
      30·
      7 months ago

      Not personal recommendations, they won’t show anything. It would be like loading up Lemmy/Reddit and not seeing anything until you logged in or subscribed to a community.