Sidebar recs are there, but YouTube injected a plea to turn watch history back on, an oversized block with the header "Recommendations not quite right?", followed by "When you turn on watch history you'll get more personalized recommendations." and two buttons: "Leave history off" and "Turn on history". That notification had an "X" at the top right corner to close/hide it, but the "Got it, we won't show you this hint again." message that showed when I opted not to enable watch history had no way to close or hide it.