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Comment by hdgvhicv | Hacker News Reader

I find that shorts are constantly repeating the same ones I’ve already seen.

The “subscription” tab is the best way though.

I don't understand why I keep getting recommendations for videos I've already seen. Do other users like watching the same videos over and over? Why would I want to see videos I've seen before when there are plenty of unwatched videos from the same creators?

> Do other users like watching the same videos over and over?

Yeah, that's my bad. I can't handle being alone with my thoughts so I need constant background noise.

> Do other users like watching the same videos over and over?

Sometimes. Not always. It depends on the video and my mood.

If you disable watch history YouTube will disable shorts (the exploration feed, not shorts from your subs) and the algorithmic homepage. The setting will affect all of your YouTube clients. It's a great way to keep away from the general slop.

You can only "pause" your watch history, as they call it, for some reason. And I keep having mine become unpaused constantly which I find interesting. I'm not sure if it's one of my clients doing it automatically or if Google just reenables the setting from time to time.

My watch history has been off for almost a decade now.

They may weasel you into activating it via some other route that states in the fine print that they need to activate your watch history to provide [random almost unrelated feature].

Huh interesting. I'm guessing it might be one of my clients then because I haven't actively enabled it again myself, fine print or not.

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