[briandon]

Yes. This just began today, even though I've had watch history off for a long time, such a long time that I don't recall turning it off.

Out of curiosity, I briefly turned watch history back on and "Home" (the YouTube page that shows a mix of content you've viewed and content YT hopes you will view) returned to normal. Then I switched it back off, reloaded "Home" and got a blank page with a plea to enable watch history.

It seems as though YouTube tracks and records users' activity on the site regardless of whether or not they assent to having their watch history recorded, but wants users to explicitly assent to being tracked and having their activity recorded before YT will provide their (marginally useful in my experience) 'personalized recommendations'.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Yes, all of Google's (and Facebook and everyone else) controls regarding history and tracking of various things is for the user's benefit to keep them activated, because if you disable or delete them, you are the only one who loses access to that juicy data.

Whenever I delete an object in cloud storage, I simply whisper, "now accessible to everyone but me..."

It's a nice deception, telling you that you have control over all this tracking and history, tricking you into deleting it, and completely losing control.

I will say this, though: if you frequently open your phone or apps in front of other people and may have embarrassing stuff pop up, perhaps it's good to disable it. I found myself hiding my screen from a neighbor this week; not a good feel.

[Shawnj2]

They still track things like videos you liked and comment on if watch history is off and used to use that for recommendations