Well, no shite. I'll use Chromium without adblock and signed-in account, then. I'll separate my YouTube and personal web browsing... oh wait, Firefox Containers exist.
I'm definitely not going to watch ads if there's no way around them. I'd just move on. The platform has been on a constant downfall for me over the past decade anyway. Most of it is just clickbait shit and the recommendation algorithms became worse and worse too. Same with the search function. They don't even allow you to search for explicit terms using quotation marks anymore and I still don't understand why they did that. All my search results are muddled with unrelated garbage now, often times in front of the stuff I actually want to find.
You won't get video recommendations on your home feed (and maybe also other parts of youtube) if you have watch history disabled in your google account settings (you request google not to save your watch history).
I leave it on, the suggestions are good as far as I can tell. What's everyone's beef with it?
I don't get the YouTube hate in general. It's much more interesting than Netflix or TV so I'm happy to pay, although I pay Argentina rates courtesy of subscribing while connected to my VPN and I use Sponsor Block to skip the in-video ad reads. It still counts
Yeah, I'm all for privacy, but I actually get interesting things recommended by YouTube. If I turn this off won't I just get random YouTube videos? No thanks. I also do use my watch history for "I watched it the other day, what was that video called again?"