To those who don’t turn on the YouTube Watch History, the platform is turning off the video recommendations to let you browse your subscribed channels and explore Topic tabs.
It’s because YouTube relies on your watch history to show video recommendations, and disabling it will virtually kill it. This change in the home feed is rolling out to users in the coming months, but users can always switch settings to see video recommendations anytime.
Recommendations Based on Interest
YouTube is one of the many platforms that rely on user interests to show content recommendations. And a way to know user interest is by tracking their watch history of what the user is searching for. YouTube’s video recommendations in the home feed rely on the same, but the platform offers an option to turn this off.
And for users who disable the watch history, YouTube will stop showing video recommendations in the home feed soon. This move was announced yesterday, where YouTube said the accounts that have “watch history off and no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled.”
This leaves the home feed with few elements, like 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.”
Saying that the change will roll out slowly, YouTube says the move is to offer a “more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations.” Well, if you’re not okay with this view, YouTube asks users to turn on their watch history for relevant video suggestions from the My Google Activity settings page.
