Is anybody noticing a change in your YouTube opening page recently?

I go to the Tube of You for primarily one thing, because that's where many of my favorite current artists share their latest.

Today I go there, and...there's is nothin' - nothin' musical on the whole opening page. I scroll down, down, down...and it's all crap I couldn't be less interested in. Almost as if there is a metric geared to purposely offer me nothing but non-music videos.

Oh, I can still get the music I'm looking for, if I specifically search for something. The pages/channels I seek are still in there...they're just not out there where I first expect them to be. Mind you, I've never signed up for it or anything, it's just a link to YouTube.com, like it always has been. And, I don't think I've done anything to my cookies or given the page any indication I would be more interested in cooking potatoes, Evel Kneivil, or cats walking across a busy street. But, suddenly...there they all are. There's not even any links to any of the tech topics I sometimes look at.

Anybody else seeing this?

 

Oh, also, the first panel location in the upper-left of the screen has been blank for the past two days. Whut up wit dat.

 

So...nobody else...?

 

I use the Roku app and it's fine there.

 

I'm not having any new issues either.
When I sign in, videos from the channels I watch the most are there as usual. When I sign out, it feeds me music as it always has.

 

Did you clear your browser history/cache/cookies?

 

Just checked ... I have music 'suggestions', but also many more political "news" video suggestions than usual. But considering that Youtube is owned by Google, that isn't surprising.

 

Could it be something to do with the algorithm?

 

Could be. It should be a mixture of selections of the individual's past viewing, what's trending and what Youtube wants to promote.

 

I tend to get a lot of clickbait videos when I go on YouTube as well.

 

That's been happening to me on and off for about a month. First time it happened it was then the same for several days, then it started happening again maybe 3 or 4 days ago.

For your other issue of not getting the expected video recommendations, are you definitely still signed in on your Google account?

 

Yeah, but when it's none of anything I've ever viewed, and nothing but the crap Yotube wants to promote, something's going on.

Last night I deleted all my YouTube cookies at once, shut down the browser, put it back up, went to YouTube, and just as a full screen of videos was loading, and you could see them for an instant...it went back to the crap videos, and the first panel area upper-left that should have a video loaded, was blank again.

I went back in, and deleted all the YouTube cookies in my browser again, and I got back to some sort of normalcy - videos actually loaded in all areas that were blank space before, I began seeing subjects I had viewed before, and music videos I was familiar with, came back.

It's something hinky, I tell ya.

And of course, neither my virus programs find anything amiss.

 

Well, I sure saw this guy entirely too much during the last year:

 

Happened again today, after not happening for a few days: no video loaded in the first panel in the upper-left region of the grid - gone...as is the one that would normally be in the far-right region of the third row. Just blank.

Also, I've removed the YouTube cookie from my browser several times, refreshed, and the grid shows up normally for a second, with videos loading in all the places they should...and then in a flash, the two spaces again disappear.

And, as before, none of any of the subject I've searched for in the past seem to be loading, just the usual crap.

Here's a fun project: Open YouTube, and make note of all the things in the first, I dunno, 25 videos or so that load. Then, go into your browser preferences and remove the YouTube cookie, and re-load YouTube. Notice how many of the same videos show up, in the same spots they did before. And then, do that again.

YouTube is getting aggressively more pissy with me, and I don't get why this isn't happening with more people to the point of frustration.

 

It's probably not worth worrying about the missing video top left, it's likely a YouTube issue, it's not just you it's happening to, let YouTube worry about fixing it.

 

It's worth worrying about because I've never seen it before, now it's happening several times in the past couple of weeks, and all I am doing is identifying the unusual aspects.

What's more concerning is telling me something isn't worth worrying about, because, y'know, I don't deserve to be concerned.

And no, I haven't heard anybody else mention it except for you; in fact you're sitting smack dab in the middle of a thread in which I'm asking people if they've seen it, and nobody else has mentioned it.

And of course it's a YouTube issue, and so I am mentioning it. And I am also providing the symptoms and my experiences, because, that is what I started the thread for.

Your telling me I don't need to worry is more worrying. They call that "condescension". If it bothers you too much, I'm sure there are other threads where you can poke into and tell other people they don't deserve to worry, if you're still bored.

 

OK forget it, you go ahead and stress about something you have zero control of, no skin off my nose.

 

Nope.

The only things I can think of is that you have been logged out, or, you use magic Actions and it does get buggy.

 

Great parody thread. People dying of Covid all over the world, and a 'sultan of snark' puts up a tread lampooning first world obsessions with completely trivial stuff, and pretending to get hissy and deep in projection over people who try help, seemingly oblivious of how self obsessed they appear to be.

Excellent snark. It is intended as satire, right?

 

I agree with this one. I'm getting blank spaces in the same spaces the OP is. It doesn't matter if I'm signed in or not. YouTube has been recommending crap videos for me lately anyway, so I figure I'm only missing out on more crap.

 

That top left space is usually an ad for me. Are you using an ad blocker? Also, make sure you are logged into your account. That could be the cause of your interests being missing. If you are logged in try logging out and back in.

 

Looks like you're absolutely right. I have Adblocker Plus activated, just deactivated it and the top left space is now filled with an advert.

 

I never log IN. I only visit the site, not a member or anything. I use no actions. To them I'm just a guy off the street.

 

So, when your car needs a muffler, and you go into the garage, and the guy tells you there's a pandemic, and so that's okay with you.

I'm trying to solve a problem, here. It's not world hunger or anything major, but then I don't recall putting "pandemic", "world hunger" or "Robbie Williams" in the thread title.