Good to see something like this, but you can solve some of the problems within youtube like autoplay, you can disable it. As for the recommendations on homepage you can clear youtube history and pause it in yours accounts activity center¹, for hiding video suggestions, personally I use theatre mode(so that i need to scroll) and extension to disable it. Similarly I hide the YouTube shorts using the extension.
Also, the landing page starts with a signup :)
1. The downside is that you also lose your YouTube Music history.
Except half of it doesn't fucking work.
I click on "show fewer shorts" on the homepage, refresh the page, and still see shorts in the second row. Sometimes I do that 10x in a row to no effect.
I deleted my YouTube history just this week, but my homepage is full of music mixes that start with a song I definitely listened to that are supposedly "deleted" from my history. I would think if I start from a supposedly blank slate that I would at least have to "teach it" that I'm not interested in pop songs that are popular in my corner of the world once again, but no.
My homepage may as well not exist, as YouTube insists of filling it up with like 2-3 niches that I am interested in, but don't want to watch all the time. Nothing new resurfaces there except when one of the people I'm subscribed to happens to make an appearance on someone else's channel.
Scroll to the bottom of the homepage in desperation and instead of showing something new it shows like 3 rows of exactly one channel.
The video recommendations on the side often have nothing to do with the video I'm watching. Listening to music? Here's a political debate. Watching something educational? Here's nothing but two video games.
The "new to you" button isn't at all "new to me", it's "things I've watched but didn't care about it enough to subscribe to".
It's truly fascinating how much I have to fight the product to find something even remotely interesting to watch that's not in my subscription feed.
Ublock origin rule to hide shorts:
!2024-03-07 Hide Shorts - HN
youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer:has(#rich-shelf-header:has-text(Shorts))
youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer:has(.ytd-reel-shelf-renderer:has-text(Shorts))
I'd suggest using YT not logged in and within a container. The "personalization" - as you mention - doesn't add much and really just increases your value to YT.
>I deleted my YouTube history just this week, but my homepage is full of music mixes that start with a song I definitely listened to that are supposedly "deleted" from my history
Consider clearing out session cookies, I am under the impression that your recommended videos are also using that as a source.
To me, Youtube and YT music are the same services in different shells, maybe the algorithm uses both (maybe it includes activites from other google products as well) to suggest them on the platform.