On the flip side, this also means users have the option to have a cleaner, less cluttered interface.
Full text:
[AUGUST 8, 2023] A new viewer experience that better corresponds to your YouTube watch history preferences
One of the benefits of having YouTube watch history on is that it enables YouTube to provide video recommendations you may be interested in; however, we know some prefer to clear and turn off your YouTube watch history. Starting today, we’re changing how you see recommendations on YouTube, based on your Watch History settings:
Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled – like your YouTube home feed. This means that starting today, your home feed may look a lot different: you’ll be able to see the search bar and the left-hand guide menu, with no feed of recommended videos thus allowing you to more easily search, browse subscribed channels and explore Topic tabs instead.
We’re rolling these changes out slowly, over the next few months. We are launching this new experience to make it more clear which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make it more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations. You can change your YouTube watch history settings at any time based on whether you prefer us to provide video recommendations or not.
Yes, I do wish it had a longer memory. It feels like only the past few days of watching has any impact on suggestions, if you’ve neglected to watch videos about a certain topic for over a week it’s basically ancient history and never comes up again. I’d love to get a varied mix of things I’ve been interested in for the past 6 months or even longer.
I’d even like a ranking scheme like we have here on the threadiverse. Show me videos with a lot of activity, ones that have been showing a lot of promise, what’s been happening over the past 12, 24, 48, or 72 hours.
I guess what I’m saying is I want long form video content like YouTube to be delivered and ranked like comment threads on Lemmy and the older link aggregator(s)