Sony's CD players used to choose the next when the song finished, however it removed the ones it played from the candidate list, so it never looped.

As another neat trick, they have added a small animation while seeking to next track with some lower time bound, so it looked like thinking for a second or so. In reality, the decision was instant, seeking was not.

I'm amazed youtube hasn't figured out a way to detect and avoid these loops, it seems like a solvable problem. Even a naive solution like having the client remember the last n played tracks, and not auto-play any of them (picking the next one down) would be a big improvement.

I have had the (conspiracy) theory for a while that this is by design. Kept happening to me on an account where I've disabled watch-history. Now I'm watching on an account where it's enabled and it hasn't happened even once. And it's been months since I switched.

Actually not sure if it's even that far fetched. Making the logged-out-experience worse on purpose is something all the big internet firms do.

But... You've asked YT not to remember the previous videos, and it doesn't: LGTM.

There could be advanced implementations (like with the remembered passwords, where YT would store a list of seeded hashes of your viewed videos). But they are that: advanced implementations, that impose an extra cost.

Yea I guess you're right that in this case it probably boils down to extra cost.

Though I still think "not remembering watch history" (and adjusting what you are shown based on that) to mean that a functionality that doesn't have anything to do with tracking (because it only requires information from your current session) to be a little lazy.

You wouldn't expect a slide-show of images to be shown in random order, just because you didn't consent to the cookie banner.

But in all fairness - I really like youtube's auto-play and suggestion algorithm when it comes to music. I use it for free and I haven't seen an ad in years so I don't want to complain :)

I have watch history enabled and still get the loops all the time.

I even went so far to seek out a website that does it for me, and which I set up as a bookmark https://youtube-playlist-randomizer.bitbucket.io/

Altough, seems like the site is now broken

That's interesting.

I used to get it all the time and haven't experienced it since switching to an account where it's enabled. I guess it may have just been a coincidence.