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YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

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Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I finally got around to subscribing to YouTube Premium, and they already burned me once by raising prices. What are you paying for, exactly? Youtube is already free. Actually wait, I don't want to know. I'm happy with my life, there's no way that knowing this will improve it.

no ads on non-browser devices (and browser based as they've taken stronger stances against ad-blockers). The amount of ads I see people watch is ridiculous, I can't stand them at all anymore.

What about pihole? What about watching less TV/youtube?

Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#52
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The things I watch on YouTube, I generally have zero interest in watching again, and if I really want to, then I'll find it in my history. There's an exception to this that I suspect is not uncommon: there's music one likes to listen to when one is chill/buzzed; having to poke into (or worse: dig thru) one's watching history is a procedure-intensive buzzkill. > (where there is no clear indication if you've seen bef…

youtube is clearly able to treat music tracks differently from ordinary videos. its android app won't allow you to play music in the background (a dark pattern driving sales of youtube music premium subscriptions)

document.querySelector('meta[itemprop=genre]')?.content

Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#53

I'll admit I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of dark patterns involved in turning these settings off: https://myactivity.google.com/u/1/activitycontrols Disabling a setting asks if you also want to delete your history for that setting; if you say yes it shows a sample of what you're deleting, you confirm it, and it's done. Nothing tried to encourage me to stick around, keep my data, they could easily have let me…

If you open your google account settings, the very first section is labelled "privacy and personalization". If you click on that, the option to disable youtube watch history shows up. In terms of "dark patterns", they do have a nag prompt begging you to reenable watch history which shows up in the recommended videos section of a youtube video. The only way to disable this nag permanently is seemingly to block it with…

Yep, I was looking in YouTube settings instead. I wouldn't have thought to leave YouTube to change a setting that affects YouTube, but it's a reasonable-in-hindsight design decision to collect all the privacy stuff for various google apps in one place.

Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#54
post #16

How about a "don't recommend things I've already watched" option? The thing is, I like having a watch history and I like having suggestions based on it. If I watch something that I don't want affecting my suggestions, I'll delete it from the history after watching. The things I watch on YouTube, I generally have zero interest in watching again, and if I really want to, then I'll find it in my history. What I really d…

> The things I watch on YouTube, I generally have zero interest in watching again, and if I really want to, then I'll find it in my history. There's an exception to this that I suspect is not uncommon: there's music one likes to listen to when one is chill/buzzed; having to poke into (or worse: dig thru) one's watching history is a procedure-intensive buzzkill. > (where there is no clear indication if you've seen bef…

How about an on screen slider that says, "New to Me" which would turn off previously viewed videos when on.

If that was a paid subscriber only option that one thing would be enough to get me to subscribe.

Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#55
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My self discipline hack was only navigating to my subscription feed, that way it "ends" and there is only a handful of videos to check each day. But now they put Shorts into the subscription feed, a gateway into another endless feed. So I have blocked YT altogether until I can update my little chrome extension to remove them. When my executive function started to falter shorts could vacuum up so much of my attention.…

You can also block Shorts with uBlock Origin. https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube...

This is a superpower, I had uBlock but didn't realise it had the element picker feature. It took seconds to clear up the annoying parts of YT. Cheers for the recommendation.

Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#56
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also block Shorts with uBlock Origin. https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube...

This is a superpower, I had uBlock but didn't realise it had the element picker feature. It took seconds to clear up the annoying parts of YT. Cheers for the recommendation.

Glad to hear it. Note how it can also re-style elements, eg restoring the old (non-bold) Youtube titles

  www.youtube.com##h3.title:style(font-weight: 400 !important;)
or un-float navbars:

  ! Disable floating navbars
  nytimes.com##.live-blog-above-main-content:style(position:absolute !important)
  latimes.com##header[data-element=header]:style(position:absolute !important)
  wired.com##.persistent-top:style(position:absolute !important)
  vice.com##.nav-bar:style(position:absolute !important)
You can even run a selection of scripts from a built-in library.[0] For instance, to disable Youtube rollover previews (including network traffic), you can interrupt the event handler with addEventListener-defuser:

  www.youtube.com##+js(aeld, /^(?:mousemove|pointermove|pointerenter|mouseenter|mouseleave)$/, buttons)
The best thing is to read the wiki (which I procrastinated for way too long!), especially the parts on filter syntax[1][2] and blocking modes[3]. I used uBO for years without appreciating its full power.

Maybe this whets your interest. Cheers

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Resources-Library

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax

[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...

[3] (watch this first: https://youtu.be/2lisQQmWQkY?t=114) https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode

Re: YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no ads on non-browser devices (and browser based as they've taken stronger stances against ad-blockers). The amount of ads I see people watch is ridiculous, I can't stand them at all anymore.

What about pihole? What about watching less TV/youtube?

> What about pihole?

I had trouble with pi-hole breaking things and requiring too much manual intervention (compared to browser based ones that I can toggle with a mouse click without changing screens).

> What about watching less TV/youtube?

I generally have youtube on pretty much all day for music as I haven't found anything else that approaches it for music recommendations (which is pretty sad as they're still not great).

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