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As I remember at least some series videos used to be recommended in order, but I haven't seen that in a while. The behavior that really gets me now is having t

As I remember at least some series videos used to be recommended in order, but I haven't seen that in a while. The behavior that really gets me now is having the top recommended videos on my YT homepage ones I've watched... Recently. I can watch a video from my notifications, and then have it stay at the top of my homepage until I hide it manually. Refreshing the page changes some videos, but rarely the top few. Of course, hiding the video helps but I get tired of having to do it constantly. I think I'm resigned to my YT homepage being useless at this point.

spraak 8y ago
I wondered how many others experienced this. It really makes it demotivating to use YT
beart 8y ago
It's possible your adblocker is preventing YouTube from tracking your watched video history. I know pi-hole does this by default unless you whitelist certain domains.
- mistermann 8y ago
  Happens to me on non-adblocked mobile all the time, it is infuriatingly dumb. Google seems to not be able to do user friendly UI's. Don't get a started on discovery!
- rasz 8y ago
  user agent hits Google random-string.googlevideo.com/videoplayback with referrer, ip, signature and several other parameters coding your individual user id, Google knows every single time who, why and when requested particular resource.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Just because they have the data doesn't necessarily mean that they use it. They might rely on some javascript XHR to tell them when a video is really watched. Just guessing here.
abakker 8y ago
I think this behavior is probably driven by people like me, who use youtube mostly for music. I repeatedly listen to/watch performances on youtube because to me it's the only streaming service I have. I frequently come to youtube just to watch stuff I've already seen. I find the recommendation in that context to be uncannily good and they keep me coming back to find new music and to see the cool performances I've already seen. Maybe youtube has trouble differentiating these use cases?
- noir_lord 8y ago
  When I'm programming, gaming I mostly listen to retrosynth and outrun. For that youtube is great because it's autoplay just seamlessly plays one after another. For everything else it's recommendations are hilariously bad.
longway2go 8y ago
I think when you turn off tracking what you watch it warns you this will happen. it does this for me i think and didnt before i turned off watch history.. but maybe i am just imagining that. And maybe you havent turned off watch history.
ZoomZoomZoom 8y ago
What drives me insane is there's no way to mark videos as watched. You can hide them only with "not interested" even though you totally are.
- sorenjan 8y ago
  When I mark a video as "Not interested" I get a link to "tell us why", where "I've already watched the video" is an option.
rasz 8y ago
I wrote my own tempermonkey userscript just for that occasion to hide already watched recommendations :/

spraak 8y ago

I wondered how many others experienced this. It really makes it demotivating to use YT

beart 8y ago

It's possible your adblocker is preventing YouTube from tracking your watched video history. I know pi-hole does this by default unless you whitelist certain domains.

mistermann 8y ago
Happens to me on non-adblocked mobile all the time, it is infuriatingly dumb. Google seems to not be able to do user friendly UI's. Don't get a started on discovery!
rasz 8y ago
user agent hits Google random-string.googlevideo.com/videoplayback with referrer, ip, signature and several other parameters coding your individual user id, Google knows every single time who, why and when requested particular resource.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Just because they have the data doesn't necessarily mean that they use it. They might rely on some javascript XHR to tell them when a video is really watched. Just guessing here.

abakker 8y ago

I think this behavior is probably driven by people like me, who use youtube mostly for music. I repeatedly listen to/watch performances on youtube because to me it's the only streaming service I have. I frequently come to youtube just to watch stuff I've already seen. I find the recommendation in that context to be uncannily good and they keep me coming back to find new music and to see the cool performances I've already seen. Maybe youtube has trouble differentiating these use cases?

noir_lord 8y ago
When I'm programming, gaming I mostly listen to retrosynth and outrun. For that youtube is great because it's autoplay just seamlessly plays one after another. For everything else it's recommendations are hilariously bad.

longway2go 8y ago

I think when you turn off tracking what you watch it warns you this will happen. it does this for me i think and didnt before i turned off watch history.. but maybe i am just imagining that. And maybe you havent turned off watch history.

ZoomZoomZoom 8y ago

What drives me insane is there's no way to mark videos as watched. You can hide them only with "not interested" even though you totally are.

sorenjan 8y ago
When I mark a video as "Not interested" I get a link to "tell us why", where "I've already watched the video" is an option.

rasz 8y ago

I wrote my own tempermonkey userscript just for that occasion to hide already watched recommendations :/