Many of your probably know that motive of YouTube forcing users to turn on their watch history-- which is trying to get as much eyeball attention from you as possible for more data generation personally about you and send them to advertisers.
Well, I turned my viewing history off indefinitely. I have the Subscription page bookmarked as the default page when I go to YouTube. It’s finally great to see videos from channels I have missed in a long while! Not only that, because I am not inundated and distracted by thousands of videos being recommended to me due to YouTube algorithm spying on me, I am able to catch up with my backlogs of videos in “Watch Later”. I am still adding some videos for later viewing but it is not as many as it had been.
Thank you YouTube for enshittification of your service! This actually made me enjoy the viewing experience of YouTube even more! (although, is it enshittification if I like the end result?)
I noticed that YouTube recently started popping up the control overlay when starting a video on my streaming box. This dims the video and obscures much of the screen. At first I thought it was because I was clicking an extra time or something but I realized the other day that it’s because it’s highlighting a big “SHOP” button in the toolbar. It takes several seconds to disappear. Dear YouTube, I’m not going to buy shit using my remote control.