Welcome to Youtube, person who has never been to Youtube before. Here’s what we have to offer:
Your title makes this sound like a bad thing, but this looks like it would probably be preferable over being shown whatever YouTube_wants_ you to see.
The bizarre, dismal page you see if you open YouTube without an account.
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub to technology@lemmy.world
https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/5aa705d2-4d7b-456e-bc77-059591120342.png
Comments
SatyrSack@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Yes and no, I don’t have an account but I also don’t use the frontpage because why would I, it’s empty. When you watch a video you still get the recommendations in the sidebar.
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Compared to seeing Mr.Beast clone 678-1080 taking up the front with jimmy Kimmel for some reason, Yea I’d rather see a blank page too.
Marty_TF@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
no ads no algorithm no preset slop machine
a gentle reminder to use my own decisions in what to search and watch
true zen
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
No matter how frugal the surface, underneath it’s all still there. Also something to remember when using Google search. the fact that it’s all white and clean does not mean it’s minimal.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Honestly, I like it. I run google and all of its platforms in their own tab containers, without signing in and that's what my Youtube looks like. It's great, I can search for the thing I need, and otherwise interact with google ad spam as little as possible
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Same Ada.
I’d rather see nothing than the slop the algorithm keeps plastering across my screen. (Though I do like the topic buttons at the top.)
Goretantath@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I can get this when logged in too! Just disable history! Its great.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
Just came here to say this.
The suggested videos are terrible.
l_b_i@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Its not this simple, it looks like this to me on my fairly locked down browser (firefox), but on a fresh profile (image attached), that page is populated. I assume its a cookie setting, as I see the same behavior when I turn off tracking protection and ad blockers. I didn’t play around beyond that.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I assume its a cookie setting, as I see the same behavior when I turn off tracking protection and ad blockers.
It goes way deeper than that. Fingerprinting is a whole thing. Your IP, combined with some characteristics about your browser, operating system and hardware… pretty unique.
Interesting to see what YT “thinks” about you.
I see 1995 twice there.
l_b_i@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Probably cookies, I did another quick test and created a new profile. The front page was unpopulated. I went to a technology connections video, and the refreshed the front page. It was populated, cleared stored information, (history, cookies, cache, etc…) and when I refreshed the homepage it was blank again.
The fairly default browser I used to take the screenshot is to watch some free with ads movies on youtube, most recently was waterworld, fun to watch, makes no sense.
codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Nostalgia marketing operates on roughly 20 to 30 year cycles, so we’re dead center of 90s nostalgia. As the current decade wears on, there should be a gradual shift to 2000s era nostalgia (and another revival of the 80s, the most marketable decade). I can’t say that looming war in the middle east doesn’t give me those warm Bush 2 era vibes, though we are a bit early for it.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
It’s cookies for sure. I use Firefox Focus on my phone and it clears cookies after every session. Blank front page of YT.
Private browsing window with Librewolf on my computer? Blank front page.
otp@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I actually like this. No politics. No big name personalities. No distractions.
Just a search bar to ASK me what I want to see before it tells me what it thinks I want to see.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
It’s almost like old school Google front page.
four@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
But then it shows you one bad result and then “other people also viewed this” and its just some barely related shorts
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You guys are signing in?
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Each day I go to the YouTube app on Roku to my subscriptions tab and watch whatever is new. Then I go to Recommend and it’s 90% or more previous videos from those same subscriptions and very little new creators it hasn’t showed me.
After almost a year of this it figured out last week I might like AronRa, a person I’m very familiar with. And after countless videos on anthropology, evolution and paleontology he should have come up so much sooner. So much for big data.
But what is completely lacking is a “show me completely random stuff, old, new, not in my algorithm, short, long, completely against my algorithm, etc.” it lacks almost any way to discover new stuff that isn’t 100% related to content you already have.
YouTube gets more uploads than any one person can possibly watch and yet it’s almost incapable of showing me something unless I explicitly tell it to find it for me.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Best we can do is some Jordan Peterson videos and something where trump appears to be yelling.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You watch one ContraPoints video about Jordan B Peterson and the next thing you know … Still not any JBP video recommendations. So I guess there is an upside to the failure of big data.
Bieren@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The best thing about this. No shorts.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Only positive change google has made in the last decade
BT_7274@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They probably got tired of those videos where people see how quickly you can fall down an alt-right rabbit hole directly from the home page on a fresh account.
rottenmummy@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
They are really pushing you to log in. This was not YouTube a year ago. Upside, you skip all the brain rot videos.
midori_matcha@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
THE JOY OF NOT BEING RECOMMENDED ANYTHING
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Get the extension “DeArrow” it replaces thumbnails with random frames from the video and let’s the community edit titles, and auto un-capitalizes titles.
BoycottPro@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Looks wonderful to me!
pr06lefs@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I love it actually. Better than nazi adjacent vids and body horror stuff like boil maintenance and botfly removal. Fresh youtube accounts get the WORST stuff.
Kinokoloko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
In an internet full of advertising and distractions, it’s nice to see a landing page that lets me decide what I want to consume.
PunksAlwaysWin@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Also if you turn off your viewing history.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
It’s been like this for quite a while. What about it?
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The only way to use YouTube.
Danitos@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
This is not no-account YT, but no-cookies YT. If you are interested in experiencing this, some extensions automatically delete cookies for certain websites for you. I use Cookie AutoDelete
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I see it whenever I go there.
ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
This is always what my YouTube homepage looks like because I only access it in ghostery browser, using a ghost tab by default (like incognito/private/inprivate, but because ghostery, also blocks tracking, cookies, etc.)
I typically completely close the browser between links (it’s my default link handling browser for Lemmy), so it gets reset frequently enough to have nothing on home if I actually navigate there.
Zoldyck@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
YouTube should have never sold out to Google. Such a shame
JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
bizarre, dismal
What’s bizarre and dismal is that someone is so starved for dopamine and attention from corporations that this is how they perceive what life looks like when you are not being targetted.
This is my normal view and it is far better.
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Tried this on a private window, and yes, that’s what it looks like. Thought I’d click on Shorts and let the first 3 seconds of the opening auto-play video play. Then back to the home page and wow, full of absolute trash.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Holy shit it works, and transforms the front page into an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
I’m like, “Is this what normal people in 2025 watch?” I feel like an alien on earth, except the planet changed and not me.
kurcatovium@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
How am I not surprised? Shorts is video equivalent of cancer.
Vinny_93@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I just get a notification stating I don’t allow them to track me so they have no garbage to stuff down my throat
wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
🥹 it’s so clean and beautiful
Lojcs@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
You too can get his by disabling history
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In fact if you disable history it will refuse to show you things even after you search something.
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, considering what garbage tends to top the trending charts at YT, I think a blank page is better than if they just show the most popular videos of the day.