• cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
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      9 months ago

      Funny you mentioned that. YT took away my homepage in order to force me turn on watch history. Instead I changed my habit and only watch stuffs on my Subscription tab. My daily YT time decreased from 4-6 hours a day (I know, I’m kinda addicted), down to just 40-60 minutes a day.

      And you guess what, in less than a month, my YT homepage magically returned 😂😂😂 I didn’t do anything, it just reappear one day. But it kinda too late, I’m already picked up a new hobby and my YT time keep decreasing.

      Too bad I’m just a fluke in the statistics, and wouldn’t matter whatsoever. A lot of people cave in and turn on watch history.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Wow - super interesting.

        Wonder if you were straight A/B tested but definitely assume your behavior influenced their attempt to claw your free time back.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      That is so annoying, how YT’s algorithm just wants to show you the same thing.

      Being Google and all, I would expect them to have a sophisticated algorithm that learns your daily patterns and gets really good at what kind of content you want to watch next. But no, it’s “yo dawg I saw you watched a car video so I queued up car videos to play after your other car videos!”

      It’s not a mystery why, though. I assume their algorithm is much better at keeping people watching anything for as long as possible, rather than delivering the best product.