Comment by phony-account
16 days ago
I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendations.
I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack.
But apart from ignoring me when I say I’m not interested in whole genres of ‘fun’ videos, it also resets the streaming quality to the lowest setting every single day and then hides the quality setting deep inside a menu with several fiddly clicks.
And this isn’t for my benefit of course: I can easily stream 4K video to my screens. It’s to shave a few cents off each stream and max the gouging.
YT is desperate for me to engage with rage bait news, and I’m not biting.
It’s so god damn annoying, regardless of how often I choose to ignore channels or don’t suggest feedback.
All they care about is vote time…give me content I want to view!
Also, in the evenings, my timeline gets weirdly paranoid phobia centric, like deep insecurities people live with that are triggering and keep you up late. It’s so obvious YT is doing this to try and bait me into watching these deeply emotional and personal content, and again, ignoring it and providing feedback seems to do nothing to my feed. I hate it.
I kept having issues like this, with a different kinds of videos, until I scrubbed my history of any of the kinds of videos I did not want.
If I click on something I thought I would want to watch and it is the kind of video I do not want recommended to me I immediately delete it from my watch history, block the channel, and some times block that profile from viewing my youtube channel.
~2 years ago I never had to delete anything from my watch history and my feed/recommendations were ok, now I have to if I do not want my feed/recommendations to occasionally be flooded with something I do not want.
I watch things from unknown-to-me creators in a private window, then copy the URL over to logged in window if it's any good. Same idea, might be an easier workflow.
Absurd that we have these sorts of workarounds, but of course the view numbers are better if it keeps fishing for just the right kind of clickbait trash that you'll wolf it down endlessly.
I only use YouTube with my watch history set to off. So there is no feed, and I only see updates from channels I actually subscribed to. If I want to see some random crap I go search for it but it’s a clean slate next time I open the app. I have found this method of using YouTube to be extremely useful.
I transitioned to using youtube with just that left sidebar for updates from channels i subscribed to, id watch the 2-3 creators videos maybe, slowly that became 1, now its 0. I still consider watching that final creator, but if i do its gonna be because i went to youtube and wanted to type that channel into the search bar, not because of a notification.
Everyone seems to act like youtube is something we need, I just don't really agree. If i want to watch something for entertainment, there are so many amazing shows with deep stories to choose from. If i want to learn, the video medium to me is just straight up garbage. I prefer to read to learn.
Of course there are topics this doesnt totally apply to, but for my purposes, videos are almost always just a way to not only likely repeat the same things you already know for a good chunk of the video, but when you finally find the meat, its still being delivered in a slower way than it could be ingested by reading.
This is the way. I get plenty of feeds, recommendations etc. from others, enough to keep me busy. Follow who I want, and drop in when I see they have something new.
Do not give them the satisfaction. Dont like videos and never comment on anything. The videos are the bait. The comments sections are the trap. Use youtube as a multi-channel TV. Keep it a one-way stream of data. Give them nothing beyond the unavoidable knowledge of what you watch.
I am waiting for the day when they permanently turn off the channels rss feeds. Recently, after years of smooth sailing, they had a couple of outages, first selective, with only about 50% of my feeds effected and yesterday again with 100%, returning 404s. I am concerned given this development and alphabets apparent plan to kill as much interop as possible.
For the uninitiated, afaik, some feedreaders can auto discover the rss url when you add the channels url. Otherwise you have to manually search the channel page source for 'RSS' or 'channel_id='.
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I just use two browsers. On one my recommendations are truly well curated but I can’t watch a single out of place video or my feed is corrupted. The other browser is for brain rot time and it’s the Wild West.
I used to have an account for my kids. I thought I would be smart by seeding the history with educational content. I clicked on a lot of videos, let them play etc. I was there when my kids would watch videos - and slowly but surely YouTube started recommending junk AI generated videos.
It is my opinion their algorithms are tuned to push this kind of engagement no matter what.
Turn off history. Completely disables the food. The only content you see is what you search for.
To me history is useful to continue watching or find videos I’ve already seen. Turning it off will remove a feature I actually need. They force us to see their horrible “for you” content in exchange - so shameful.
I'm amazed that they still haven't added any way to organise/categorise your subscribed channels, it's just a big flat list.
YouTube is social media first, even if it also happens to be a repository of useful content. Social media does not want you to navigate with agency. They want to choose what you see because it lets them keep you on the platform longer, which is the entire goal.
No, that's like calling Amazon a social media platform.
YouTube is a content delivery platform that has social media features. You can tell because if you shut off all the comments, people still visit the site in droves. But if you shut off the videos and left the comments then nobody would visit the site at all.
Now, it's possible that YouTube doesn't realize that, but I think they're just unwilling to make any changes at all if it doesn't give them any competitive advantages.
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What's crazy is that their adtech definitely knows how to categorise stuff down to super specific topics, yet they only use that internally.
And not even alphabetical. It's ridiculous.
You should see me or my wife sometimes scrolling down this nine miles long single column list on the Roku to find a particular channel. It's in there, it just could be anywhere in there...
They didn't happen to post any new videos lately so they aren't on the main subscriptions page of latest videos, you have to go to the menu on the left to the list of all subscribed channels and just arrow down forever, back up, down again... Why in the ever loving world isn't that list at least alphabetical?
Oh and why is the list nine miles long anyway? Self-inflicted problem subscribing to so many channels you can't possibly be watching...
Well I've always had history turned off, and a few years ago YT blanked out the home screen if you have history turned off. Ever since then I have a blank home screen with just a message saying to go into settings to correct the error that I have history turned off.
I never used to subscribe to any channels, but then when they blanked out the home screen you have no other way to get any kind of feed. So only after they did that, I subscribed to a bunch of channels so that at least the subscriptions page would have some kind of feed.
This still doesn't give you anything related, just exactly the subscribed channels. If you want any kind of variety and quantity you have to keep subscribing to more and more channels so that the subscriptions page can almost sorta provide something like the old home page before they blanked it.
I complain, but I gotta say one thing, this way I NEVER see Mr.Beast or SsssniperWolf or anything like those any more. So, maybe it's better this way.
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You can do it by using a feed reader and subscribing to the channels rss feeds. Keeps you better isolated from dark patterns as well.
edit: has the added benefit that there are different feeds for All/Videos/Shorts/Live/Specific Playlists, so this is another way to avoid shorts
PocketTube is great for this.
Why are you still paying for Youtube? I run uBlock and haven't seen ads in years, don't see any cellphone format crap now thanks to this list, and VacuumTube on my TV defaults to 4K.
I'm not OP but I pay because I want to support content creators. It also removes ads from players that don't have blocking, such as Roku.
Of course there are other ways to support creators such as donating and buying swag. I do that too.
By paying for youtube, you're supporting Google and walled gardens more than creators, I'd argue.
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You are much better off donating money directly or buying merch than further inflating Google's profits.
> I pay because I want to support content creators
I do too; I pay them via Patreon.
i'm the same as you, but YT has started to place its content behind sign-in wall
Anon usage + uBlock and VPN, is a dead man walking
> YT has started to place its content behind sign-in wall
Any examples of that?
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Because it’s $6 a month where I live and at that price it’s easier than any faffing or arms race with Adblock.
uBlock Origin updates its lists automatically. If you want to spend $6, just donate to uBlock instead and never see an ad again on 99% of the Internet.
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Hacker News commenters: “I don’t like ads. They are evil”
Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”
I pay for plenty of goods and services. Just not YouTube. As others have noted, YouTube premium makes ads go away, but none of the other engagement baiting and user disrespecting anti-patterns. As far as I'm concerned, Google is in adversarial relationship with its users, whether your paying or not.
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I pay for plenty of other media (music, games, sports, comedy, books) and even do some Patreon for a few podcasts and YT channels, but I refuse to directly support a publishing monopoly that has had an actively user-hostile interface for over a decade.
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And how do I pay for a YouTube competitor that's libre or at least won't spy back without losing access to its monopolisticly large catalog?
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Also HN commenters: “I don’t want to pay for goods and services”
People became used to getting a thing for free then it slowly enshittified over time into the current blend of grift and bait. They also strongly promote via shorts the very things they discouraged because sex sells. Now they are promoting AI generated bait. As such they deserve any and all vitriol in my opinion. I personally would never pay for that hot mess.
I watch a few popular channels because I can but probably not much longer. Eventually I will just watch the videos people copy over to Rumble until that platform follows the grift patterns of YT. It won't be long.
With the change in culture here, especially in the last 2-3 years, HN might as well be called Reddit News now. So it's not surprising that most people aren't consistent with their principles.
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Normies who can't figure out the 3 buttons it takes to use ublock pay for such things.
Its a tax on not being smart?
I'm mostly kidding, but I just use ublock and I've never considered buying youtube premium. Try harder google?
I pay mainly because a really like being able to play the videos in iOS pip background mode. I do find it crazy that Apple allows that OS level feature to be paywalled by apps.
doesn’t work on iPad or iOS? Also not worth my time given how cheap it is
I use ReVanced on Android and it allows me to hide shorts. A 'pirated' version of the app offers a much better experience than even the paid option of it.
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.
- Gabe Newell
Yep. Gabe was right when he said it and he's still right now. Valve knows the product is service. This is why Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store have such a hard time. Good games come and go, but good service is good service.
And now, Valve is pushing to leave Windows, because they see which way the wind blows in Redmond. They don't want to be leashed to Microsoft in 2026 anymore than Microsoft wanted to be leashed to IBM in 1986.
Yup. I pay for YouTube, but not being able to disable shorts made me use ReVanced.
Since the beginning of Youtube, it has always struck my as reeking of such desperation to keep you hooked. Just the idea that you're watching a video, and there is simultaneously a list of 10 OTHER videos right next to the view. Most have become so numbed to that, but if you step back you should find it just such a sign of desperation to hook you (is the best way I can put it).
Before a video is even over, they have to plaster the video window with MORE VIDEOS. "Here try this, what about this other thing, here have you considered this?"
My mind is always "I haven't even digested this one video and you're already PUSHING MORE!"
When my kids are over my shoulder on YouTube I'm constantly zooming in w/ Mac zoom to obscure the other videos, the other spam, etc.
Just learn to absorb and soak in one thing. And digest it for a moment.
It's all so obnoxious and it's now the norm.
FWIW, I only ever login in a fresh private window.
First I will say that clearly all these attention hooks must work or they wouldn't keep doing them but, for me, it just doesn't match how I use YT.
Specifically, I am almost always going to YT with the intention of watching something specific. It could be because I need to solve a problem (eg installing a smoke detector). I also for some reason use it to play music despite having Spotify. I honestly don't know why.
But I almost never go to YT to look for something to watch. I do sometimes watch a related video after I'm done but this wouldn't happen more than 10-15% of the time. I think I'm in the minority here as people seem to go on YT and just keep chaining videos.
But I find YT's interface to be a confusing mess of "me too" products that are half-assed and various likely fiefdoms that force UX onto things that don't make sense.
For example, YT's Live streams are, well, ass. The player is terrible. The UX is terrible. And you still have that right panel showing related videos. But watching Live videos is a vastly different UX than watching VODs. So why is it there? I suspect because whatever team owns that recommendation panel has a lot of power. And it probably drives metrics still so it's still there.
And bringing this back to YT Shorts. Ugh, I too would like to never see them. It's a "me too" Tiktok. And it's worse. Tiktok's UI/UX is just a step above Shorts (and Reels). And I spend 98% of my Tiktok time on my fyp.
But yes the "please watch another video" UI is everywhere. The end of a video, your home page, the right panel and in-video prompts/
As the other guy said, it's like having a drug dealer wait outside your house and try to push you some smack. This must be illegal, the fact that it's not illegal must be illegal.
I can sympathize a bit with YouTube trying to boost engagement to increase ad views, like, love it or hate it, thats the game they have to play hosting and serving petabytes of video.
But all of that shit should disappear the moment I start paying for it out of pocket. Like, I'm already paying, getting me to watch more videos costs them more money that it would to leave me the fuck alone!
We have such powerful AI tools these days. Every media recommendation service should have a slider you can set to indicate how much you want to be "challenged."
High challenge = CS papers explained
Medium challenge = bridge engineering videos
Low challenge = some guy playing video games for you on YouTube
This is exactly the only reason why I don’t pay for YouTube. Why would I pay money to make it even more addictive, when what I want is to make it less addictive.
Turn off your watch history. It stops all shorts except from your subscriptions.
If they remove this, I will surely be done with YouTube. I was so desperate to disable shorts and ready to be done with the app, but then I learned that disabling watch history pretty much perfectly allows me to use the app how I want to.
Pretty sure shorts disables if you turn off watch history: (https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/youtube-update-homepage-wa...)
I’ve had watch history off for years and it shows me shorts above my actual subscriptions.
> I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack.
This should be illegal..
YouTube's hostility is truly remarkable, by far the most egregious that the Subscriptions page in the TV app having a dedicated row for "recommendations" and "shorts" before you can proceed.
Not only I cannot turn off shorts, recently the iOS YouTube app auto plays random short the millisecond I start the app. That is against my user desires in three different ways - and there's no way I can find to stop it.
Grrr.
Why are you still watching youtube, then? What's drawing you in?
And Google whines when people install ad-blockers. It's pathetic.
I was willing to watch ads. But then Google introduced NEVER-ENDING ads, when the program is interrupted frequently and will never return unless you herd it along periodically by clicking Skip. Screw you, Google. I'm cooking, with my hands covered with who knows what, and now I can't watch the program.
Then stop paying if you are unsatisfied
Don't pay for YouTube
And yet if Youtube didn't have a paid option (and still now, even while it does) people would be saying If you're not paying, You're the product
Sorry - these companies have proven they're malicious even while you're paying them
(Except possibly Gmail. Facebook Verified is apparently a crock of shit, but Gmail MIGHT give you some account support more than people who don't pay)
but you're still paying
I hate that you can’t block specific channels from showing up in your feed. So much ai slop.
This is not true. You can in fact block specific channels. From YouTube support[1]: > On certain pages, such as your Home and Watch Next pages, find a video from a channel that you don’t want recommended to you.
> Click More next to the video title.
> Select Don't recommend channel .
[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en
This is also not true and hasn't been so for years. One can set a preference to "not recommend", but one can not explicitly block any channel.
Depending on your particular "preference constellation's weights" (over which you have no direct control), you can, in fact, be shown videos from that channel again.
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You can block from recommendations but there's either a fixed length with the oldest bumped off or it resets. I have to reblock stuff all the time.
I, too, believe anything Google says and deny the evidence in front of my eyes.
And the community posts and polls from random communities you have no interest in and don’t give you the same “don’t show me content from this channel”
this is a filter im using that blocks a channel from showing in the search results. just add a channel name after "title"
youll have to have to repeat the same name with other filters to also hide them on the homepage or the suggestions sidebar.
freetube is another option that works on desktop and it lets you block a channel by name by adding it in the "distraction free" section of the settings. if youre on android theres also a version of freetube in the f-droid store that works ok enough, even thought the freetube UI is not really designed for mobile
obviously this only gets you so far. at some point there could be more slop than non-slop so it wont be possible to block them all, but so far im finding this useful for the few repeat offenders that keep showing up in the search results*
If you pay for youtube, you are part of the problem
Youtube is far too significant a video collection to risk losing it. Yes there is insane anounts of garbage and yes their history is getting spottier by the day, but nothing else comes close to all of the good stuff that is still on it.
Google needs to get its shit together and give users power tools. YT hasn't improved materially for many years now. I hope they can snap out of whatever governance dysfunction they're in. Not sure whether increasing financial pressure (above what must, no doubt, build up on its own) is the right answer here. It will probably only lead to more enshittification, and a long, slow death and I'm pretty saddened by that thought.
Youtube could vanish from existence tomorrow and I'd probably just be upset that there isn't a place that might show me a 180p 20 year old video of how to properly clean my old dishwasher. I don't really know what these super high value videos are other than those. I really don't know why they must all exist on this one platform either.
>Youtube is far too significant a video collection to risk losing it.
> Not sure whether increasing financial pressure (above what must, no doubt, build up on its own) is the right answer here.
fantastic, an appeal to personal guilt to fund large corporate money making and national/corporate-soft-power efforts.
an acquired predatory advertiser, the worlds #1 inadequate and neglectful child nanny, and world wide cultural trend-setter is also bad at making money? and they need more? and you say they won't squander it?
I think i'll donate to PBS while aiding YT archival efforts.
Yes, enshittification.
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