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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

I can live with not having recommendations. What annoys me more is that Google is essentially holding useful features hostage to get their tracking fix.

I.e., I would actually love to have a list of the videos I've watched recently - on my device, with a simple option to delete it, exactly the same way that browser histories have worked since forever.

However, with YouTube, it's all or nothing: Either, I let them track my viewing history globally across all devices, store it on their servers for all eternity and do who knows what with the data - or I don't get any history at all, to the point where when I restart the app, it will completely forget the video I just watched a second ago.

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What's weird to me is once upon a time the home feed was your subscriptions feed.

They eventually started trickling in suggestions based on watch history and today that's most of the feed.

I can see the argument that not having watch history means they shouldn't be building the per-user dataset to feed into the model to get the history based suggestions. Sure, but then... why not use the subscriptions, the information that users have provided you and what they thought that feature was for?

> What's weird to me is once upon a time the home feed was your subscriptions feed.

it's not weird if you examine it from the point of view of user retention metrics.

A subscription recommendation runs out, since you have small number of subscriptions (compared to the whole of youtube). Google wants to keep you clicking, and watching the next video. Algorithmically recommending videos instead of your subscription means you now have effectively infinite list of videos to watch, keeping your eyeball youtube.

But an empty list runs out immediately, so the subscriptions still seems preferable for YouTube than that.

NewPipe has that feature.

https://newpipe.net/

That looks interesting. Thanks a lot!

Edit: or not. Seems youtube is not happy with the app and blocks playback randomly with 403 errors.

Also, the app seems to insert undismissable fullscreen ads every few minutes, without even having the courtesy to stop the video when doing so. But at least background play definitly works, I guess...

(Undismissable in the sense that it tries to block me from going to the homescreen if I didn't click the ad - not even talking about going back to the video player or other parts of the app)

I think you're using a copycat app from Play Store. It's not a real app which is only available through F-Droid.

Ah, that was probably it. Gotta admit, I deserved it then, for not reading carefully enough :)

It's a sad state of affairs, NewPipe being forbidden from distribution because the ad company that owns YouTube also owns the platorm's app store, and the app store being full of scammy apps including clones and malicious forks of F/OSS. No one deserves to be presented with traps like that. :-\

No clearer evidence of monopoly harming the consumer than this!

Yeah that ain't Newpipe. Newpipe doesn't have ads.

Follow the link in GP.

As mentioned, that's not the genuine app in my experience.

The 403 error should be fixed in release 25.2.

The ads are because you're some copy someone made of the FOSS app and added ads

Yep. Switched to the F-Droid version and now the ads are gone.

Also explains why the ads in the copycat version didn't integrate at all with playback controls or the rest of the app: Someone probably took the original apk, slapped the ads on as a separate thread/process inside the apk and never modified the app's original source.

Someone recommended NewPipe, it's a great app for Android.

If you watch videos on your laptop or your non-Android phone, invidious is quite good. I self host but I believe you could use any public instance and create an account there if you are fine with this public instance having your history and subscription list (which are separate from those you have on YouTube itself).

I don’t know why they thought this was a good idea. I opened up YouTube and was met with what’s basically a blank timeline. How is this good for engagement? All this made me do is quit the app…

So you don’t need recommendations and you’d like a list of videos that you’ve watched recently locally.

This literally is browser history. Your browser is already giving you this.

The YouTube mobile app does not store watch history in your browser history.

Indeed, and that's exactly what I'm using on desktop. But on mobile, I prefer the app, and that one doesn't keep a local history.

If you have strict privacy requirements, it’s interesting to also use the mobile app instead of the mobile website.

My suggestion is to stop worrying about hypothetical privacy problems and just use the watch history feature. Google will even automatically clear old history for you if you want.

HN nerds get the worst user experiences because they have these random lines in the sand. I’ve been guilty and often try to break out of it when I realize that the people who don’t know better are enjoying themselves more.

Libretube, Newpipe

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