I actually like the recommendations. I usually only get content that's relevant to my interests, and I'm always finding new channels that are interesting and worth my sub.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing differently from everybody else, because I never see much of the spammy/irrelevant content everyone else seems to be getting. Or maybe I'm just easy to please.

I never went to the homepage unless I accidentally landed there because of autofill. I normally just go straight to subscriptions. There are still recommendations under videos, so I check that out every so often, mostly because my secondary monitor is portrait and I can see them under the video

Why would I have my watch history turned off? I assumed that Google knows what I watched whether or not I tell them to keep that info available for me.

90% of my recommendations are videos I have already watched.

No. Mine decreased when ad frequency increased.

As someone who routinely watches YT through Invidious and NewPipe, I haven't changed my habits.

I’m watching less because I’m not getting any new or interesting recommendations. I just keep seeing the same stuff over and over again. I hate algorithms. I hate that something is deciding what I should watch while not showing me 99.999% of the other things on the platform.

Oh, and the ads are absolutely out of control. I have to decide if the content is really worth sitting through all the infuriatingly jarring ad placements. Most times, it’s not.

I have history turned on and it generally recommends stuff I'm interested in. My only complaint is that it doesn't update often enough and likes to recommend videos I've seen already.

Nah recommendations are shit anyway. I just watch my subscriptions

I use subscriptions only for a long time and occasionally throw off dead weight there. No need for such a feature to be honest. I get most new interesting channel either by recommendations from youtubers i subscribed to or from random links like on lemmy. Which happens rarely, like, I subscribe to 5 new channels max per year, and remove about the same number each year.

Honestly, my YouTube consumption went down when Hipyo refused to endorse trans rights and then the Linus stuff came out shortly after. The one two punch kind of made me start seeing nearly all YouTube personalities as unhealthily egotistical and probably kinda scummy. There are some creators I like, but at this point I just really don't care what most of these people think anymore.

I'll always tune in for Philosophytube or Contrapoints, though. I'm a sucker for the format when it's done well. And I do enjoy Matt Colville and that D&D animated guy.

I always keep watch history turned on, because the recommendation system has always sucked if you kept it turned off. It's more honest to the user now that they give up instead of intentionally sucking -- "we can't give recommendations if we don't know what you tend to watch". That basically makes sense to me and I accept the tradeoff this poses.

I know a lot of people think Youtube recommendations always suck and are therefore not even worth trying, but I beg to disagree. You can cultivate good recommendations, even if your interests have no overlap with the default front-page. It comes down to two basic ingredients:

1. Use the "Not Interested" button on bad recommendations
2. Click on the like/dislike buttons after watching videos

By default Youtube is going to try feeding you lowest common denominator junk. This is because it starts out knowing very little about you besides broad demographics. The more feedback you give it the less it falls back on this crutch until eventually you get solid recommendations. Every single bad recommendation is a hidden opportunity to tell Youtube to get that garbage out of your face.

And, yeah... in my experience this really works. If you click the buttons and make it a habit, you can get some really great stuff! As encouragement, I'll share a selection from my home feed full of fresh videos relevant to my tastes. Even the topic bar is on point:

I'll probably watch all 3 of these videos at some point, which I think indicates a pretty successful outcome. In fact, over the years, I've found hundreds of channels almost exclusively using the recommendation system. Even if you primarily stick to your subscription box, improving your recommendations can help you with building that out little by little.

(Note: I am deliberately avoiding the question of whether or not one should want an algorithm to intimately understand their interests because that's a hard conversation and my soul has already long since been sold)

I've primarily only watched my subscriptions for a few years now.

I've purposefully avoided the recommended videos for a long time now. They only exist to increase the amount of time you spend watching ads.

After switching to Newpipe, yes a bit

I've been using RSS feeds for youtube channels for a few years. I don't visit the site if I can help it, I don't login, I don't "like & subscribe", I don't see any clickbait thumbnails and most important: I don't see any ads. Just newsboat & mpv.

spent a few hours yesterday sorting all of my subscriptions and moving them to newpipe. while having everything auto-backed up by google was convenient, newpipe is much better - i go in, watch some videos i saved into a playlist or that have come out from subscribed channels, then go out. it feels way better then being sucked in by the algorithm. i think i'll still use youtube's algorithm on my pc sometimes, as this setup hinders new content discovery. but overall, i'm really pleased so far with the new setup.

Nope, subscriptions give me what I want. And peertube has a lot of cool channels if I want discovery.

Nope. I've always had my history disabled, so my homepage was always full off clickbait junk which I never paid attention to. Usually I find new content by searching for stuff that I'm actually interested in, or by recommendations IRL or online.

Yes, and it's been great! I mainly watch my subscriptions now, and the occasional tutorial I have to search for, but I'm glad to not have a bunch of clickbait thrown at me when I first open the app, now I don't get sidetracked or waste nearly as much time on useless schlock.

I took the steps to pry myself away from google. Turned off all that stuff, nuked my yt channel history, all that. Exporting sub's into RSS feeds and invidious. Freetube is an awesome desktop app for watching yt. The only thing I miss is interacting in the comment section but also at same time a blessing since I am the kind of person to accidentally write a 5 paragraph essay noons would ever read, no yt comments means less chance if wasting my time.

Also as I got older my taste and willingness to sit in front of YouTube all day has changed When I was a teen I spend hours and hours watching gaming content. As an adult I have better shit to do and would rather actually play games myself. I my sub's list has whittled down from 200 > 100 > 50 and I only get a few new vids in my feed a day if that.

I've always just watched things that I wanted to watch from followed channels for the most part 🤷

Yes. No, I'm not gonna turn it back on, even though I really want recommendations back.

I stopped using recommendations years ago and only use NewPipe and Invidious. I did notice a reduction in my watch time, but there is plenty to watch when using a subscription-only feed. I havent added very many channels to my list since then, but personalized recommendations aren't worth the privacy cost. Hoping to leave the platform eventually

Yeah, I had a similar experience

I wonder why they did this though, before the change YouTube would recommend me videos based on videos I watched so it's not like they actually needed the watch history to be turned on

I have a list of subscriptions, a rather large one at that. One good day I decided to start trimming the fat and remove accounts I didn't quite follow, or that made me lose too much time watching them. No need for recommendations if I already have like a thousand channels followed

I have been using Revanced YT to avoid ads which made me watch more YouTube, but with the recent no home feed update I also have been only going on YouTube to watch the few channels I'm subscribed too and specific things I search for.

No because I haven't used the app for years so I'm not signed in. I use browser with uBlock "etc" on both mobile & laptop/desktop.

Any feeds that I watch regularly plus interesting videos I stumble on or recommended in places like !videos@lemmy.world i put directly into a notes app which syncs to all my devices. All grouped by length so its easy to find something depending on how little spare time I have to kill. Its a slight extra step compared to clicking "watch later" in the YouTube app but ive done it for so long now its become second nature

I've noticed a lot of users on here actually really like the lack of recommendations. My use hasn't gone down but I do miss having videos on the YouTube main page, particularly on my PC.

oh yeah, much less jumping from video to video nowadays.

YT could have provided recommendations based on categories you picked out, or countries, or just what's popular today. Instead they decided to throw a hissy fit and show a blank homepage.

I'm taking it as my detox from social media. Facebook many years ago, Twitter last year, Reddit this year, now YT (although to be fair I still use the subscriptions tab, but it's made me spend less time on YT).