YouTube Shorts - You’re mildly infuriating!
Ever since I was forced to update YouTube on my devices, I got really annoyed with YouTube Shorts. At first, they were easily turned off. Then the option to turn them off disappeared from Settings - General. So I installed apps that allowed to skip out on Shorts. Then just a few days ago I could no longer have Youtube Vanced installed.
I’ve since learned do deal with this annoyance, but do I really have to mark “Not Interested” from channels I don’t subscribe to or “Hide” from my subscribed channels? On my Linux- and Windows PC’s I have regular blockers. But I mainly watch content on devices hooked up as small entertainment screens in the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms. And those are iOS or Android.
All I want are steady streams of content from my favourite relaxing subjects and channels. Without shorts or AI-derived “Hey, this video from a channel featuring a redneck with 15 AR-15’s shooting coyotes in the desert might be your thing!” inserted into my playlists or streams. But the AI-derived autoplay content is beside the point.
YouTube Shorts - You’re mildly infuriating!
I was thinking of making some Shorts for students, especially since attention spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter. This article was inspirational. https://www.chemedx.org/blog/how-use-tiktok-and-youtube-shorts-your-chemistry-class
There is one thing about it being voluntary to create. But they’re pushing YT Shorts down both content creators and viewers throats.
As a former teacher and mentor, I agree with the thought to make content more interesting and digestible for the younger generation. What I don’t agree with is packaging everything into mindless kick-rewarding (dopamine hitting) bits, like Candy Crush, One armed bandits or Tik Tok videos.
If you package too much study content into this kind of easily digestible and forgettable bits, you have to remember: it flows out from their minds almost as fast as they spent the effort to see it… maybe it lasted longer if they shared it with their friends/network, but the lesson you wanted them to absorb will mostly disappear faster than the time it took you to create it.
We work (and should work) to create (at least some) lasting impressions that educate. The most memorable moment that one of my study groups had with one of their “cool TikTok and Fortnite savvy” teachers was when they did candy flossing after it stopped being cool. What lessons he taught? They couldn’t remember if it was English or Math.
Sorry for my rant. I digressed.
I love the rant. Titrating (pardon the pun) content to kids and having them engage properly is such a big battle.
The more they shove these down my throat the less I want to watch them
youtube revanced allows you to disable it, i strongly recommend patching the app yourself
if you are interested here is the github link
If you are rooted the magisk module is even easier to use. When I tried compiling myself it would always crash but the module works perfectly and super easy to update.
I can second this enthusiastically, especially since it also blocks ads and sponsored segments, customizes the UI, allows background playback, allows downloads, and more stuff too.
yup it blows my mind that this is a much better experience than youtube premium not to mention you get it for free
The fact that free apps (or hacks, like Revanced) are better usually has to do with the incentives driving their development.
For services like YouTube, Hulu, etc., the developers are doing it as part of their job, with overall direction set by the company. They may not agree with the overall direction, or may not even use the product, but they have to do what the company says so they can keep their job and get paid.
On the other hand, for small independent projects, the developers use it themselves and are building it based on what they want plus community feedback. If it’s open-source, other developers can contribute features they want to see, too.
This is why pirate video apps (both old ones like Popcorn Time, and also newer ones like Syncler, Weyd, CinemaHD, etc) generally have far better UX than the “official” services - it’s developed with love, not with a “get this done so we can go home by 5” mindset.
There’s also some things the official services don’t even do. If you want to stream a movie in full quality (like a Blu-ray remux), the only way to do it is via something like Weyd plus Real-Debrid. None of the official streaming services have videos this high quality. Missed opportunity, IMO.
yup it blows my mind that this is a much better experience than youtube premium not to mention you get it for free
Pretty much sums up all forms of piracy these days, given how bad the official media landscape became.
or in some cases prices are simply outrageous, i can not afford to pay that much for a medical textbook i will just sail the high seas and repay my debt by saving lives
or in some cases prices are simply outrageous
Even if individual prices aren’t: no person with somewhat normal amount of income can pay for everything they’re interested in (unless the scope of interests is very narrow). Streaming services here, “Patreon exclusives” there. It adds up. I miss the time where all professional content was just on Netflix instead of spread over 30 services.
I don’t watch tiktok and I don’t want youtube shorts either, they are all equally stupid.
I watch youtube on android phone with NewPipe. On desktop I use Firefox+uBlock Origin with this filter sets
On mobile you can use extensions like uBlock Origin (content blocker) or Stylus (CSS injector) if you use some specific browsers, and use
youtube.comin those: Firefox, Yandex Browser (ugh I know), or Kiwi Browser (Android-only). It’s a mess, I know, but it’s a solution.Thanks. It’s helpful, uBlock Origin etc didn’t do much on my mobile devices, but I haven’t looked into Firefox or the other ones for the mobile devices.
Just use new pipe, The home page is just videos from your subscribed channels and there is no one click way to see an endless stream of shorts. You can still see them if you search them. Bonus: no ads.
Also, there is no algorithm-curated home feed on NewPipe. You’ll just get a simple feed with the latest videos from the channels you are subscribed to, which is a big plus in my book.
Also infuriating: With how much YT is incentivizing creators to create shorts, a bunch of channels I follow no longer even make regular 10-15 minute content regularly.
And I no longer follow them.
Yeah, this is the worst. The whole reason I use YouTube is for long-form content.
Ya, let’s keep shortening everyone’s attention span… Hate all short form videos!
creators cutting 16:9 videos to the worst possible format (phone vertical) ugh
Ya agreed, I wish YouTube would’ve just pushed it as another app instead of forcing it down the main YouTube users throats.
Like, I don’t even mind short tiktok like videos, but yeah I don’t go on youtube for that
This. I’m happy with these content offerings, but it’s weird to have them all mashed together. It’d be like if Lemmy randomly inserted book chapters in between other posts. It just doesn’t fit with the platform and the use cases are wildly different.
There’s a firefox addon called ’ Hide Youtube-Shorts’ and now I just never see them.
Hide Youtube-Shorts
Thank you for this! I can’t stand the shorts in my subscription feed.
I go to YouTube to watch 2 hour long documentaries on subjects I don’t even care about, twitch steam uploads or 30 minute videos from my dubbed channels.
I just watched a one hour video about a fridge, so I know what you mean lol
I’m not interested in that at all.
Gotta link?
Probably this video
Yeah, that’s the one!
Try ReVanced it doesn’t have the shorts button, and you can remove shorts from your home feed.
I’m fine with short videos, but why do they all need that terrible ui with no seek bar and fewer features than proper videos? I really hate how they don’t have the previously watched ui on them. It makes keeping up with a creator impossible.
YouTube Revanced is a replacement for the Vanced app that is less likely to get taken down since it doesn’t distribute YouTube assets
On mobile, I use NewPipe X SponsorBlock which is a fork of NewPipe. Amongst other things, it lets you completely hide shorts. :)
Revanced Manager has a patch option to hide shorts from the feed, it’s not much but it is something!
