The change that YouTube has implemented in its service is one of those unexpected. At the same time, it’s quite drastic and you could say that it seems to go against a lot of the work the platform has been doing in recent years. And as such, it has not taken long to generate comments of both criticism and support.
YouTube loves to recommend things to us. The same thing happens to Google and other tools that are part of this family of services. If this was already common in previous years, now with the introduction of AI they have become even more obsessed with giving us ideas on how to invest our time. But YouTube, in relation to this, has made a decision that, as we tell you, is peculiar to say the least.
Without identification, there are no more recommendations
This is how things are in the YouTube house. Right now the radical decision has been made to not show you any recommendations or video ideas at all unless you have already logged in with your corresponding Google account.
What you can find when you enter without identifying yourself or if you open a session in the Incognito mode of your browser, is exactly what you see just above these lines. The white screen, or black if you are using night mode, and that little message that says “Look for something to start.” As explained below, as you watch videos the feed will be created, but to do so you will need to be logged in. The difference is that, previously, even in incognito mode, randomly recommended videos appeared according to the choice made by the YouTube algorithm (without any relationship to your personal tastes).
doing tests
We wanted to see if this change, which some users say appeared to them a few days ago, has been a mistake or if it is something that can be avoided without having to identify yourself. We must say that we use YouTube a lot in incognito mode and, until today, we had not encountered it. It’s something quite interesting.
There is a group of people who believe that it is a way in which YouTube is pressuring users to use their Google account no matter what. Another party applauds the movement, since it is a clean way to be able to use the video website once and for all. That is, how long can we have dreamed of entering YouTube and not suddenly finding ourselves with tons of videos that we are not interested in or that we do not want to see at that moment? The clean session, with nothing in the image, is formidable in many moments and the reality is that it is something worth applauding.
It would remain a mystery to know what YouTube’s reason was for making this change, but today, it is something that is welcome. However, returning to the tests, we can tell you that we have tried searching and watching videos, but when we returned to the main screen, we again found the message “Search for something to start.”
We have tested it both in incognito mode and in a normal browser window without being logged into Google. The result has been exactly the same: when you return to the main page there is absolutely nothing. And beyond those who complain looking for conspiracy theories such as YouTube trying to pressure users to identify themselves, we prefer to see it as a novelty aimed at those who are interested in a purer user experience without distractions. In fact, this is something we would have loved to have been available earlier, since going to YouTube and not watching tons of recommended videos is something that brings a lot of peace. Then you are free to search for what you want, but at least there are no distractions involved.
