YouTube

YouTube is showing recommendations when logged out or with watch history off again, but it won’t last [U]

Ben Schoon | Nov 30 2023 - 10:10 am PT

Amid its crackdown on ad blockers, YouTube also recently disabled recommendations for users who had turned off watch history or used the site while logged out. Now, though, that decision has apparently been reversed.

In August, YouTube stopped showing any recommendations on the YouTube.com homepage when users were either signed out or had turned off watch history. YouTube announced the change in a support post, explaining that the change made it “clear which YouTube features rely on watch history.”

YouTube said at the time:

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.

But, suddenly, it seems YouTube has reversed course, as users are now widely seeing recommendations again when logged out or when having their watch history turned off. There are widespread reports of the change across Reddit and social media, and we’ve also confirmed that YouTube.com, when loaded up while logged out, shows generic video recommendations as well.

~~YouTube has yet to comment on the change~~ and, as PiunikaWeb points out, isn’t acknowledging the change in Twitter/X support responses and is still linking to the original announcement of removing recommendations.

Update: In a statement, YouTube tells 9to5Google that recommendations are showing again as part of an error and that, as of now, users without watch history and/or are logged out will not see recommendations going forward. The rollout of the “new experience” has, at this point, effectively restarted.

A spokesperson explains:

We found an error in our systems that has since been resolved. We’re continuing to roll out the new experience for recommendations based on viewers’ Watch History settings.