Before AI took center stage as the major buzzword of the 21st century, algorithms were the focus. Algorithmic suggestions have frequently faced backlash, with YouTube notably promoting subpar content and serving as an entry point to right-wing echo chambers.

The most effective solution has been to pause your YouTube viewing history. By doing this, recommendations rely on your preferences, saved videos, and subscriptions, instead of being swayed by a solitary late-night video altering your feed.

Nevertheless, this remedy seems to be faltering. Recently, YouTube users have reported that upon pausing their watch history, homepage suggestions vanished, replaced by a prompt urging them to turn watch history back on.

The problem does not affect every user. Those who recently paused their history still encounter recommendations, likely due to leftover data. Users who have had their watch history disabled for years are the ones most impacted. This writer, for instance, experienced no issues since pausing watch history in 2017 until now.

The alteration has led to outcries on Reddit. “I’ve kept my watch history off since 2013. Why is this suddenly mandatory?” states a top comment. Another user adds, “Haven’t had watch history on for 9 years. Now they’re compelling me to activate it to receive recommendations.”

This isn’t YouTube’s first attempt at tracking, but some perceive it as a more forceful initiative to collect search histories for advertising. It prompts the question: why is YouTube now requiring watch history for recommendations when it wasn’t necessary before?

Mashable reached out to YouTube for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Users have discovered a workaround: re-enable watch history, refresh the page, and then pause it once more. To accomplish this, navigate to Settings, select “View or change your Google Account settings,” head to Data & Privacy, and turn off YouTube history.