Sony's CD players used to choose the next when the song finished, however it removed the ones 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.