Welcome to Youtube, person who has never been to Youtube before. Here’s what we have to offer:
I'm not defending yt, but I am curious to know how specifically this isn't mostly an overreaction if possible
The bizarre, dismal page you see if you open YouTube without an account.
Submitted 10 months ago by Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub to technology@lemmy.world
https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/5aa705d2-4d7b-456e-bc77-059591120342.png
Comments
tisktisk@piefed.social 10 months ago
Zoldyck@lemmy.world 10 months ago
YouTube should have never sold out to Google. Such a shame
l_b_i@pawb.social 10 months 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.
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months 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.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 10 months 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.
codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months 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.
l_b_i@pawb.social 10 months 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.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Still remember the first time I saw this. It was the last time I touched YouTube for a looong time.
It would cost them absolutely nothing to show a feed of hot/high rated/popular videos. Throwing in some entropy such that it doesn’t only show the most viewed videos globally wouldn’t be hard at all either. They’re just openly stating that they don’t want you there at all if they can’t track your viewership.
SatyrSack@lemmy.sdf.org 10 months ago
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.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 10 months 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.
Marty_TF@lemmy.zip 10 months 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 10 months 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.
rottenmummy@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
They are really pushing you to log in. This was not YouTube a year ago. Upside, you skip all the brain rot videos.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 10 months 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 10 months ago
Best we can do is some Jordan Peterson videos and something where trump appears to be yelling.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
Vinny_93@lemmy.world 10 months 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 10 months ago
🥹 it’s so clean and beautiful
scarabic@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
Lojcs@lemm.ee 10 months ago
You too can get his by disabling history
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
In fact if you disable history it will refuse to show you things even after you search something.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You guys are signing in?