You can also block any arbitrary page element and that block will persist between page loads. I think it’s in right click menu. I used this to permanently block the YouTube chat feature.
I wish there was something for the app. I haven't tried it recently but you could kind of stop the shorts being displayed for a brief period of time before it re-asserted itself. And I already pay for ad-free youtube wish it was at least a premium feature but obviously makes no sense from corporate point of view.
The most annoying thing about shorts is that they seem to have more of the "old" YouTube algorithm back. The one that actually clustered around what you had watched. I often see a thumbnail, realize it's a short, then go and find the long version (often off YouTube)
One can also use an extension etc to redirect the shorts url https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xyz to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz which displays it as normal video, thus no endless scrolling etc. I have found no issue with this, but only with the shorts scrolling feature.
YouTube shorts baffle me, in a way. "We've spent 20 years developing the perfect user interface for watching videos...now let's throw it all away and remove almost every feature so that it's more like TikTok."
Well, at least they made it incredibly annoying with the auto translated AI voice. At first I didn't even find the setting on youtube shorts to switch to the actual audio track.
They should keep going though. Maybe someday I will be so annoyed that I finally stop using this website
This could be applied to most of technology nowadays and the continuous decline of software quality. A lot of UI/UX problems were effectively solved 20 years ago.
The problem is that since then technology shifted from a tool to help the user achieve a certain task to an ad delivery vehicle where success (and profit) directly correlate to the the amount of user time wasted, and it turns out bad UI/UX wastes more time and is preferable in such a scenario.
TikTok is worse. It’s pretty shocking how addictive these rapid fire algorithmically driven video feeds are.
I got into scrolling shorts once. Once. An hour and a half later I felt fried. It was literally an icky brain dead feeling like a hangover. Couldn’t focus for another hour. It’s like a drug, a bad one.
Never again. I banned TikTok at the pi.hole level but unfortunately YouTube is sometimes useful. I just refuse to click on shorts.
This stuff is really gross. Congratulations people. We found a way to deliver opioids by computer screen.
Shorts are better than many long-form videos. The ones that start with some neckbeard with a big microphone blithering about something. Then there's a demand to "like my channel". Then filler historical material on the subject, probably involving zooming and panning over old public domain stills. Then an ad for NordVPN. Then a bit more historical material. Then, finally, about three minutes of new information. Then a recap of the history. Another "like my channel and ring my bell" demand. Then neckbeard fades out.
Interspersed with this are Google ads. The padded length allows for more ad time and increases revenue.
I can live with the shorts. They just show as stills for me unless I click them.
Oh great another HN thread where everyone breathlessly moralizes meaningless bullshit. I watch them sometimes, they're fun. Often I learn new things about cooking or woodworking or brewing or whatever random hobby I'm interested in (or I laugh at comedy skits - not everything has to be productive). I get bored and go do something else after scrolling for a while. It's not that deep.
And before you start writing the reply about dark patterns and hijacking my attention and so on. THAT'S ALL ENTERTAINMENT. FOREVER. Arthur Conan Doyle was writing short stories that "exploited your attention mechanisms" in the fucking 1900s.
If you're going to complain about YouTube, complain about their opaque business practices when it comes to paying creators, not the medium.
12+ years ago, I wrote a Chrome extension that blocked comment sections on youtube and blogs. It was time well invested. Eventually everything became social apps, so my little extension got less and less effective.
I’m not looking forward to the near future where Youtube will pretty much be entirely shorts
How to do it: Click on uBlock Origin Lite extension -> Settings (cog icon) -> Filter lists -> Custom filters -> Import / Export (bottom of page) -> Paste in the list
That plus hiding everything I've already watched from the feed has somewhat improved Youtube for me. The problem I have now is that it's so adamant on showing me shit I've already watched that I'll come to the main page and frequently get only 2-3 video options.
Youtube's increasing hostility to how I want to use it singlehandedly made me reinstall Firefox just so I could use uBlock on it.
I find it slightly ironic that that statements ends with "YouTube Shorts" and not just "YouTube". What in particular makes the shorts so much worse compared to regular videos? If life is short, shouldn't one try to avoid spending too much time on YouTube overall?
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 67.8 ms ] threadThey should keep going though. Maybe someday I will be so annoyed that I finally stop using this website
The problem is that since then technology shifted from a tool to help the user achieve a certain task to an ad delivery vehicle where success (and profit) directly correlate to the the amount of user time wasted, and it turns out bad UI/UX wastes more time and is preferable in such a scenario.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2zb7S2beKOE
I got into scrolling shorts once. Once. An hour and a half later I felt fried. It was literally an icky brain dead feeling like a hangover. Couldn’t focus for another hour. It’s like a drug, a bad one.
Never again. I banned TikTok at the pi.hole level but unfortunately YouTube is sometimes useful. I just refuse to click on shorts.
This stuff is really gross. Congratulations people. We found a way to deliver opioids by computer screen.
Interspersed with this are Google ads. The padded length allows for more ad time and increases revenue.
I can live with the shorts. They just show as stills for me unless I click them.
And before you start writing the reply about dark patterns and hijacking my attention and so on. THAT'S ALL ENTERTAINMENT. FOREVER. Arthur Conan Doyle was writing short stories that "exploited your attention mechanisms" in the fucking 1900s.
If you're going to complain about YouTube, complain about their opaque business practices when it comes to paying creators, not the medium.
I’m not looking forward to the near future where Youtube will pretty much be entirely shorts
I haven't seen a short since :)
https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts/blob/master...
How to do it: Click on uBlock Origin Lite extension -> Settings (cog icon) -> Filter lists -> Custom filters -> Import / Export (bottom of page) -> Paste in the list
Youtube's increasing hostility to how I want to use it singlehandedly made me reinstall Firefox just so I could use uBlock on it.
``` youtube.com###items > ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer:last-child youtube.com##[is-shorts] youtube.com###secondary ```
Encourage your kid to be a creator. Not a consumer.
If he's busy building things, he has less time to be consuming things.
Give them a drawing book. Play a sport. Legos. Teach them how to make their own game on Roblox etc.
It's not about blocking your kid from things. It's about enabling them to expand skill sets.
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
home redirecting to /subscriptions, removing shorts, removing comments, removing autoplay suggestions
its super nice now